"You have as long as you need. Ask Bar for a drink, we'll figure out how to fix your world."

She approaches the bar. It's a person, which is weird, but not as weird as the fact that she's alive right now, so. Hi?

Hello. Would you like my recommendation or something in particular?

Recommendation, please.

Here's a hot thick sweet thing that looks like it would turn into a cake if put in an oven, so dark brown it looks almost black, smelling like chocolate and chili and cinnamon and rum.

She sips it carefully, her eyes half-lidded in pleasure. Ohh this is good. I haven't tasted anything this good since--in at least eight years.

I'm so glad you like it.

Emily finally gets up off the floor and heads for the bar. "What would you recommend for me?"

How about this fruity thing? It has an umbrella.

It is a lovely fruity thing. "Thank you," she says fervently.

You're quite welcome.

"So," she says, turning to the Elves. "Do I have a counterfactual love interest?"

"Not as far as we know."

"Pity. So what's hers like?"

"I'm sure he'll come introduce himself in a minute. He's a summoner but mostly in the 'hey, I'm going to fuck off to somewhere uninhabited for several months, I could purchase and pack enough food and supplies or I could make eyes at a pretty demon' sense, he can talk to animals, he has a giant hivemind-alien-that-looks-like-a-dog best friend, he's mostly into people who can take him in a fight..."

"I have no idea what you mean by summoner but that sounds really cool, congratulations Edie."

"Thanks, I think."

"So my world's native magic - it varies by world, as I said - is that you can draw circles in the ground and get daeva - demons, angels, fairies. A summoner is a person who does this - it takes some doing to not get people killed, so it's something of an expertise. Tyelcormo doesn't spend much time on our home planet, and there have been some other ones identified that are livable for us, so he'll head over to one of those, summon a daeva under lighter restrictions than are legal back home, and go adventuring."

"That sounds nice."

"Yep. Then a rogue demon who exists in several worlds so far and is super evil in all of them set up shop and started torturing people, so we were off to try to stop him when we found this place."

"Makes sense."

And it is at this point that her alt and her alt's fiancé make it through the door.

The new Edie turns to them in shock. "You're a baseliner."

"No, I'm a demon."

"You're me but you're not a mutant--this is the weirdest thing I've ever felt."

"...you said you were not reading minds?"

"I'm not reading the contents of anyone's mind but different kinds of mind feel different."

"...okay. I think I will go ask Nechar for a ward anyway just in case someone less polite walks in, I don't know if that counts as violence in the bar..." He heads for the security office.

"Who's Nechar?"