Shadow spots it. He takes them back into the shadow places to ask, "Should we wait here until she reads it? What does it say?"

"You want a copy or a summary? It should take her about ten minutes to get to that page and read it, then I wanna give her a couple to process it and then go back again."

"A summary, I guess. Where should we wait? I think I heard something about the bar place pausing time, so I guess not there...?"

"Well, we could go there and do things that involved at least ten minutes' worth of holding the door, but here is fine. Note explains the alternate universe selves thing, has a quick rundown of me and Promise's features including a warning about her name, repeats the explanation I got about the bar's mechanisms, and says me and a Shadow will be along to pick her up and answer more detailed questions soon, does she want to consult on slash contribute to our exciting projects."

"Okay. I hope she doesn't try to capture me," says Shadow. "Did the note say anything about all the free elementals...?"

"I didn't give her enough to go on about that unless it's the sort of thing she could predict from the 'alternate versions of you' thing, which, if it is, you have nothing to worry about."

Shadow takes a moment to think this through, and then murmurs, "I guess so..."

"She'll just think you're mine, right? If she couldn't guess otherwise?"

"Probably yes. It's the obvious thing to assume. That I'm yours or that you're borrowing me from someone or somewhere."

"So on no account is she liable to try to capture you."

"I guess not."

"And if she does I'll steal the amulet and... you know what we should have is walkie-talkies - anyway I'll steal the amulet and figure out how to get back to the door and I will drop it in my black hole, if anything can destroy it that should."

"You could just give it to Kisonde again," he murmurs. "What's a black hole?"

"Kisonde would probably have occurred to me once I was done being generally outraged or when I walked past her, whichever. A black hole is - well, I'm not sure how similar our laws of physics are, actually. Is this planet spherical?"

"Yes."

"Okay, the reason you are pulled down towards the planet instead of floating away, and in fact the reason why planets are spherical, is a force called gravity. Black holes have so much stuff in such a small place that they have stupidly large amounts of gravity and they squish anything they catch. Even light."

"I wonder if that means they're very bright inside."

"I... don't think it means that, but I couldn't tell you from personal experience, if I fell into my black hole I couldn't get to the inside of it, I can't squish so it's just like a solid dense thing which happens to be extremely gravitational."

"I could try dark scrying it. Then I'd know."

"Sure, go for it. It's under my house."

"Well, you can check it out some other time, then, I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that you can't get all the way to my world with your magic."

"Do you think she read the note yet? Should I check?"

"Go ahead and check."

Well, she seems to be looking at the note, but only intermittently. She has set her book aside and is peering around the room from her bed.