"You wanna keep on with the mythology theme or do something else?"

"Kind of want to keep with the mythology theme? But I need to think of a place that isn't known for being attacked by monsters. The first thing I thought of was Heorot, and we cannot name the station Heorot."

"Ha! Okay, something not known for being attacked by monsters. Hmmm..." He flips through his computer files. "Pialral?"

"I don't think I know that one, where's that?"

He turns his computer around to display an article. "Folk mythological afterlife."

"'Reservation where extraordinary achievers during their lifetime go on to enjoy eternal bliss.' Suitably aspirational and on-theme, sounds perfect."

"And it sounds pretty too. You want it with or without the accent mark?"

"Mmm... let's do without, I doubt we'll be saying it exactly right."

"You got it." And he lets himself out to apply the name to the side of the station in various places.

What a good station!

She lets Connor out to explore the interior.

The station is a set of three rings oriented around a pinhole for gravity in the middle, held in place with magnets. The six places where the rings intersect are mostly big common spaces, dining and lounging and space for shops in case she wants one day to have five hundred people living in Pialral with her, and one is a shuttle bay; the ring isolates are corridors of apartments and a hydroponic wing and storage and generic rooms that could be made to be offices or music practice rooms or suchlike. One of the curvy triangles between rings is covered in mesh for bouncy recreational spacewalks in the low pinhole gravity.

This is an excellent size for a station to be, even without the five hundred people. Kids should get to explore places and go on long walks and run around on a regular basis. After a while, she summons Zana back (with the binding that allows for limited magic, this time). Zana is equally delighted by the station and by her ability to create ice cream at will to share with her brother.

"Note that he is not magic and still needs to worry about nutrition," Cam warns.

"I know, I know. I'll make sure he eats lots of healthy foods and doesn't gorge himself on ice cream on a regular basis. But everything's been - y'know, how everything's been, and now they have a new station - an excellent station, by the way - and I think that probably calls for at least a few hours of relaxation and celebration. With ice cream, if need be."

"Yeah, I don't mean snatch it out of his hand right now, but if she's still showering him in sugar next week. I'm glad you like the station."

"It's a really nice station! I haven't seen the whole thing, I'm sure I'll keep finding new things to be impressed with for a while. But yeah, I'll keep an eye on them. I'm pretty sure Connor is aware that he can't live exclusively off sweets. Zana may not have been, but fortunately it's a moot point for her now."

"She will adhere to her self-model of her body plan modulo age until she stops growing, it's a pretty good deal."

"I am mostly hoping that people can talk her out of various ill-advised body modifications until she has any idea what she's doing. She's the sort of kid who occasionally declares that she wants to be a shark when she grows up. Hopefully being a demon won't result in her going mad with poorly controlled power."

"It could happen, honestly, but maybe she'll wait till she understands it well enough to fix anything she does wrong and use anaesthesia first."

"At least if she doesn't hold off she'll learn something about why she should have. Hopefully. I guess we can always call an angel in to fix her if she messes up too badly, but ideally she manages to wait until she doesn't have a three-year-old's understanding of biology."

Across the room, Zana pounces on her brother, who giggles as she lets out a ferocious tiny roar.

" - yeah, no, you know what, I give it like three weeks before she attempts to give herself five rows of shark teeth. At least if she ends up going back to Hell on a regular basis, we can't realistically limit her use of magic there."

"We cannot, although maybe Rozben knows people who can deal with that - do you want a circle for him so you can discuss whatever, uh, joint custody arrangement you want to work out?"

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea. I wrote him a letter asking about summoning him a bit ago, I figured he could write to you to give the OK. But I'm also not... I don't actually know how much time Zana should spend here versus there. It seems really important to her to spend some time here, and it also seems really important that she be able to interact with people on a regular basis who aren't me and you and her brother. But, uh, I haven't exactly figured out what an ideal environment for a tiny demon looks like, and I am kind of worried that I'm gonna summon Rozben and come away totally convinced that I should have her spend all of her time in Hell and visit for like six hours on weekends."

"He's going to have been selected for wanting a kid real bad, so if that's the kind of thing that's likely to influence you, uh, prepare a response now? Zana's incredibly young for a demon, there are barely ever even eight year olds and the competition over kids as old as fourteen who arguably don't even need a guardian is pretty fierce. He must have had to beat out a hundred other people even if nobody advertised her existence in a publication of any kind."

"Well that's great," she says, a little miserably. "I just - if I knew I was the best guardian for her then I could totally argue whatever case I had to a bunch of other people. But I don't. I really, really love her, more than anything else in the world except for Connor, but I have no idea if I'm qualified to raise her at all, let alone a better choice than everyone else out there, you know?"

"Continuity is important for kids? I think? I'm not an expert on the subject, but unfortunately I'm not sure anyone you can reasonably ask is."