"He was probably experimenting. He quite literally couldn't help himself. No one tried reconstructing what he was up to, for obvious reasons..."

"And he didn't leave notes or anything -"

"If he did, someone disposed of them without telling the rest of us."

"Safety precaution?"

"Materia is terrible. So terrible it inspired renaming evil Arda, did you hear?"

"Boots explained when she proposed the rename, yes."

Antir circles the crowd and lands on Ferardrin's shoulder and then makes a perplexed face at Mitros. "Not him," he says to her, and to Ferardrin, "you're the first Finankar alt to look exactly like him."

"Ah. These are the - spellbinder familiars? Arcane magic might be able to do something about that, if you were high enough level - if you can even get high-level outside Materia -"

"Do something about - letting them exist independently without them and their humans endangering each other? That would be spectacular -" Cricket butts his head against her leg and she scoops him up. "- high level here is distinct from greater versatility and mana? Boots has done virtually all her wizardry outside Materia..."

"I mean, it might be a problem you could just throw enough versatility and mana at but in Materia high-level means the universe lets you do things, all the legendary spells and so forth that I've heard of that seem like they might bear on instantiating Hex's familiars were achieved by legendary people."

"It'd be really nice to be able to separate the spirit animals from people who don't want them. I tell myself they're just sleeping - that's what they do, if they're left long enough, they sleep more and more - but it's not as comforting as it could be."

"Yeah. I can't promise our magic will get you there but that doesn't sound like the sort of thing that ought to be impossible in principle."

Nod. "Someday, something will be able to do it."

"That's the lovely thing about expanding capabilities like this."

"Yes, it is. Welcome to Not Materia."

"Thank you! It is nice to meet you! And you," he says to Cricket. "Cam told me about you when he first arrived, he said if he had an alt in my world they'd be okay if they were just rescued to a nice science world and handed you and a physics textbook."

"I am very soft," Cricket says.

"So I have been told!" And he smiles at them again and slips away to go tell an Elf that they have prestidigitated their hair green and from what he knows of Elves were not doing that on purpose.

"Human Maitimo?"

"Why does no one ever call him 'Elf Mitros'?"

"There's more of them."

"Also because you are terrible," Cricket adds to Mitros.

"Are you terrible? Why are you terrible?"

"I'm not terrible. Lári, right? Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too. It's really weird that my brothers come in human."