"That sounds convenient. If my memory suffered more between lives than just the intervening time accounted for I'd probably try to pick up a similar habit," Helen says.

"Well, I even have notes from the first time when I had no idea to expect to wake up again. First life was named Aly, second life Kib. These are all nicknames - for some reason we have all received and then shortened names with the syllable 'bel', I have no idea how that happened three times in a row. Alymbel, Akibel, Beluna."

"Those're pretty," Helen observes. "Our names have no such repetition--I was Helen first, actually, and then Beatrice, and now I'm technically Annabelle. Marie's technically Ava."

"...And," Lu says, "Kib was a man."

"...That has never happened to us. I suppose it could, five instances isn't necessarily statistically conclusive," Helen admits.

"It's less weird and awkward than it could be, honestly, when I'm having Kib dreams he's accustomed to it and the rest of the time I'm fine with being a girl. Kib felt about the same way about Aly dreams."

"Inconveniences of babyhood aside, I think I like our way of reincarnating better," Marie says.

"It does sound more convenient than having to read reams of paper and occasionally re-live having the pox or something."

Helen flinches. "I really do not want to relive someone cutting my throat open with a pair of scissors, no."

"Yeah." Lu looks preoccupied.

"...Are you okay? Sorry, I...that was unnecessarily graphic," Helen says.

"No, that's not it, exactly, just - I haven't dreamed any of my deaths yet, just one of Aly's close calls. But I did dream, um, my husband's. If I can call him that. He was Aly's age, he married her, she died, and then he found Kib and - they got married too, and - there's only been one of him, but if he were going to reincarnate, he ought to be thirty. He ought to have had a lot of dreams by now but he hasn't been to the house."

"I'm actually in the middle of looking for him. He could look dramatically different, I have every time, but servants seem to recognize us the same, the golem called me 'milady' right away - and we had some parrots, and parrots live a long time. Just in case. So I've brought a couple of parrots with me and I've told them that if they see him they should go land on him. I have an idea of who he might be, because he was always the projects type. I have a few people I've heard of who could be him who I'm going to parrot-check."

"That's a good idea. I hope you find him," Helen says sincerely. "Losing someone like that would be awful."

"Yeah. I just - he should have been having dreams for thirteen, fourteen years. But that's not enough time to guarantee that any of them would be about me. It could be all childhood and teens or the interim as a widower. The dreams seem to be totally random. But I've gotten a lot of really romancey ones..."

"That, I can't help you with," Helen admits.

"Yeah. But I should at least be able to convince him to come back home and read his old notes. Not as comprehensive as mine, but decent."

"Wouldn't it be more efficient to bring his notes with you?" Marie wonders out loud.

"There's a lot of them, and I'm traveling a very long way on a zebra. I had to pack pretty light. I should be able to tell him enough to convince him that I have something."

"...Right, this is a lifetime's worth of stuff. Yeah, I guess that would make hauling the whole thing around inconvenient," Marie says.

"Next time we'll just write ourselves letters," she says, laughing a little, nervously.

"Probably a good plan. I don't know that I could write a letter to a future incarnation who didn't remember anything until I had been a future incarnation who didn't remember anything, though, if that makes sense," Helen opines.

"It would be sort of weird to find each other too young to get dreams. I'd aim the letter at someone who'd had dreams and needed to be told they were real and please come home and read up."

"...I meant to say everything, not anything. My bad," Helen says.