an eight year old girl with brown-flecked white wings, looking dismayed and lost.
"Having to deciding how do. If just wanting impossible for hurting each other I think star? Probably star."
"Not me. Not even have triangles. But most places ones Mommies in charge of have thing like that. Not Samaria because being very quiet because people be scared of suddenly magic and spaceship and stuff."
Something seems to occur to her, and she stiffens in shock.
"Oh. Oh my gosh. Can you. I mean, is it possible," she bites her lip. "...Is it possible to get a dead person back?"
"Oh, yeah, easy!" Pause. "From most places. Some worlds not so much. Have an afterlife already then can't go in regular everybody one."
She staggers over to a wall and collapses against it.
"I. My father is. He saw. I have never been so conflicted in my life.
"Da--Professor Lehnscherr--Edie's dad--he's, um. He's a holocaust survivor. I have no reason to expect you to know what that means, but it's really bad. He saw his mother get killed right in front of him because he hadn't mastered his abilites yet. Edie was literally given that name because he had nothing else left of her. If we could get her back that would be--that would be huge."
"I can't. Need Jane. Or Shell Bell or somebody else for go Downside. But when someone find me can put world there, get people if it okay - has to check for okay, otherwise scaring everybody and too many people all suddenly."
"The world handled the sudden public existence of mutants less than two decades ago," Edie says, composing herself. "Not without some amount of friction, but we handled it."
"So maybe they say fine have all people wanting however many," shrugs Pen. "But having to check."
Edie, hugs back, clinging a little. After a minute she straightens up. "Right. We were going to show you your room." Beat. "Oh, come on."
"The thing about Professor X," she says, "is that while he is one of the most intelligent men and most powerful telepaths on the face of the Earth, he frequently misses the details. What do you want to bet he didn't even ask if the little angel needed a different kind of bed from normal? Her wings are totally different from Warren's."
"Am need big bed for put wings, but am little angel," mentions Pen. "Could maybe fit in mortal bed."
"Alright. Well, he didn't put you in a room where anyone else was staying right now, so worst come to worst we can move the beds next to each other. Room 427, right?" she asks briskly before striding down the hall.
The beds are a reasonably normal size for a human being. Will Peninnah fit?
To Peninnah she adds, "she was thinking of having me stretch out the frames of the beds to make them wider, and then just grabbing extra bedding. But we canask for another bed or two to be hauled up here--or rather, get permission for me to do it myself, and I"m not confident in either my ability to put it back exactly the same way after, or the structural integrity of a taffy-pulled bedframe."