"She didn't want to talk to the table. She'll talk to you if you want. But she was the one running from the demon so she's a little tired."

"The table is not the most fun to talk to. Are you always one of you at one time?"

"Holly's still a little awake. We're unusual."

"Unusual because you are two? Or unusual because you are not always one of you at one time?"

"...Second thing. All adults are two, where we're from. But if you don't have demons, maybe you just sleep instead."

"Most people are one, here. I am one." He hesitates, then amends, "I don't know if I am one, but I don't think I am two like you are two or like your people are two."

"We were three," she volunteers. "But Book moved out because he's a boy. Usually people start out one and then they move in together so they don't have to sleep. A kind of demon called a klaon eats sleeping people."

"I might be zero, or one and a half, or three..." he murmurs, possibly to himself. Then he shakes his head and says, "Here there are no things that eat sleeping people, and no people who don't sleep."

"I noticed you were sleeping," she agrees. "Even though you're an adult. It was strange."

He laughs. "That's the first time sleeping has been the strange thing about me."

Crystal giggles.

"I'm many kinds of strange," he confides.

"We're only one kind of strange. But it's very strange. They called all three of us Holly till we explained."

"I was called by someone else's name until just a short time ago."

"Why?"

"Because I'm a [untranslated word]." He frowns at the desk, thinks, then elaborates. "The other person is Miles. Someone didn't like Miles, so he - made a second Miles. That's me. He called me Miles and taught me to think like Miles and act like Miles, and made me look just like Miles, but I'm not Miles. I... don't know who I am. But when I met Miles, the first Miles, he gave me a different name. Mark."

Crystal nods. "Holly came up with my name for me. She didn't like that everybody was calling me and Book by her name. Book named himself though."

"Why was it Holly's name when people were calling all of you by it?"

"We can't remember how we decided Holly was her instead of me. We were very little. They didn't know we were there," shrugs Crystal. "But it couldn't have been Book, it's a girl's name."

Mark smiles.

"Holly is in front a little more than I am even now and it was more obvious when we were kids," muses Crystal, "that might be why."