New people are nice. She's not the colony's official teacher, but she assists in a moderately official capacity with the little ones, since she likes them all and people tend to believe her when she says she's good with kids. Her nephew has taken an interest in dismantling his toy trucks, though he is only sometimes able to put them back together again. Baby Suzanna is adorable, she is tiny and good and soft and perfect. 

One day, nobody in Elysium II can sleep because little Morris's wallaby has been lost. It is not in the laundry, the dresser, under any furniture, in his bed, in the toybox, in the refrigerator, or anywhere else his poor parents can think of, and Morris is only pausing to scream so he can inhale more air with which to scream, because it's two hours past his bedtime and Wolly is GONE, AAAAAAAH.

Oh nooooo.

She does try to solve the problem on her own. She checks the places she's seen Morris on the station recently; none of them contain a stuffed wallaby. She has no idea where Wolly could've gotten to.

And then she remembers that she knows how to summon a very nice demon, and that demons can conjure anything, and that she checked the bindings at least three times and couldn't fine anything wrong with them, and she's been looking for an excuse for almost a year.

It's overkill. It's not even a particularly good excuse. But unless she does something tremendously more stupid than summon him and ask for a particular stuffed wallaby, she doesn't think he can do anything much worse than laugh at her. 

She boots up the Spangle NW and summons one Campbell Mark Swan.

And lo, a demon, wearing the same jeans and nonshirt she saw him in before, with a violin in one hand and a bow in the other. "Kalia! I didn't think I was going to see you again. What can I do for you?"

" - oh, gosh, you remember. I didn't know if you'd remember, 'cause it's been so long and I figure you must take lots of summonses, and - "

There's a particularly distraught scream in the background.

" - uh, I'm sorry to bother you for this, but this kid Morris lost his stuffed wallaby, and he absolutely cannot sleep without it. And apparently neither can the rest of us."

"Of course I remember you, you let me talk! I will be honored to duplicate this wallaby for you. Need a token payment, it is what it is."

"Right. I will give you a list of ten books I read and enjoyed in the last year in exchange for one perfect duplicate of Morris Freeman's stuffed wallaby. Deal?"

"Deal." And he hands her a wallaby.

"Thanks! Uh - " She grabs her notebook, tears out a page with an already prepared list of books, and hands it to Cam. "I'll be right back, got a wallaby to deliver right now."

"Of course." Wag.

And she is off to complete her very important mission that is not at all an excuse for anything else she might be trying to accomplish. 

She tells Morris's parents she found Wolly in her apartment; her nephew must have found it lying around somewhere and forgotten to actually return it. She's so sorry for the mix-up.

The Freemans are much too tired to question this story. They shove the wallaby into Morris's face and stuff him into his bed and fling a blanket over him and stagger off to their own bed.

She returns to her rooms. 

"All better. That's twice you've saved us all," she says cheerfully.

"Toddlers: an existential threat."

"One should not underestimate the destructive power of a tiny human with a very loud voice. Azalea had a baby a couple months ago, and she's excellent, but she isn't great for anybody's sleep schedules. We can only handle so much more of that. You've done us a great service."

She manages to make it through this speech without laughing, but it looks like it's taking some effort.

"Anytime. Is that all you need made today?"

"Think so. I guess you probably need to get back to your violin practice?"

"I'm not leaving a tutor waiting, if you want to hear me meander through Ichranimin's Eighth, but that is what I was doing, how'd you guess."

"I wouldn't particularly mind hearing it," she says. "But I can send you back, yeah. Uh - is it a bother? In general? To summon you for things that aren't exactly life or death, I mean?"

"I can't tell anything about the situation from the summon," he says. "So I guess it's a little nerve-wracking, maybe you summoned me to invite me to a party or maybe I'll land surrounded by wreckage and medical emergencies, you know? Do I finish my shower or my conversation or my soup or do I answer right away? Maybe you could write me a letter a little ahead of time, half an hour would usually do it, if you're going to summon me but it's not an emergency."

"Oh," she says, like it had not actually occurred to her that this was a thing she could do. "That makes sense."

"Should I explain how demon mail labels work?"

"Yes. Yes you should."

"Demons who wish to correspond in this fashion, which is most of us, choose a unique string - mine is 'letter to Cam', they're mostly things like that unless someone starts spamming your label and then you go for something obscure like, I don't know, 'sofa apple elbow womprat Timbuktu ubiquitous' or a sentence you've put through translation a few times or a long number or something. We can conjure written works by title, and that means if anyone titles anything 'letter to Cam', it comes up the next time I check my mail."

"Oh. Cool. I'll - be sure to wait less than an entire year before the next time I contact you in any way, then."