"You will!"

She touches her necklace and grins and hugs him.

Hugs. "Congratulations. I'm so thrilled for you both."

"Thanks. I--

the timing could be better but I've wanted this for a very long time."

"Timing's a bit of a mysterious concept in Milliways anyway."

"True."

"I don't have quite enough confidence in the landlords to say 'things happen when they're meant to', but certainly 'we are not very individually capable of changing the schedule things happen on'."

"I think I could probably have waited to get pregnant until I was immortal."

"But then we'd all have missed out on this girl."

"...Maybe, maybe not. Granted that we have a small sample size, but Edie's and my parents had the exact same set of twins despite massively different circumstances, and of course there's several of all seven of you..."

"Okay, true. And extremely weird - did you know, we realized a little while ago that the reason names are bizarrely prophetic in Abaddon is because they are comprehensibly-given-the-local-magic-system-which-includes-prophecy prophetic in shiny tree Ardas and then there's some force at work keeping the names the same -"

"Edie and Idaia aren't the same but they're close..."

"Edie and Idaia, Imliss and Emily. Bar, are there books that have been published about the phenomenon where there are alternate universe versions of people?"

Not as such. There are books about similar phenomena within groups of worlds mutually accessible without Milliways but as it happens no one has found Milliways and subsequently published on this topic as it pertains to alts found here.

"Can I have the books on similar phenomena?"

Here is a stack. Nominative Determinism says the top one.

"Thanks." Later, maybe. Another hug for Idaia. "Anyway, congratulations."

"Again, thanks."

"You two are down here to ask for a bigger suite?"

"Yeah, that was the plan."

"All right!"

"Our room is perfectly nice for a couple but not for parents with baby and my alt will produce arbitrary counterfeit currency, so."

"I think it's a great idea and I will leave you to it."

"Alright." To Bar: "If I wanted a suite the size of a house, would that be a problem?"

Not at all. How many rooms would you like?