"Oh! Well, that's cool. It's annoying you can only find those by coincidence unless you have important friends, but at least you get a coincidence."

"I keep telling you I'm sure at least one of us will be important enough someday." Cheek-kiss. "But I guess now 'one of us' just got a little bigger!"

He smiles sunnily at her. "Network effects, I suppose! Are we going to throw a party, I hear that's what the important people do."

"We're invited to their hotel room for dinner this evening, I don't know if that's suitably partyish but I'm sure if it falls short we can work something else out. I wonder what the other me is like! She apparently doesn't have a you--yet, growth mindset--poor her."

"I'll order sparkling juice and snacks, shall I? Since if it's a hotel they won't want a potted plant no matter how many times that's suggested in my book on caste signaling. Where are they at?"

She checks. 

"The Seasonal, over to the west of the university. Conveniently, aliens are highly unlikely to have any idea what any caste signals short of hair are."

He swivels his chair around, thwapping her in the shoulder with a forest-green braid. "Then I'm set." He orders juice and snacks to appear at the hotel's holding area for pickup in the evening.

She giggles and presses a quick kiss to the end of his braid. "A me isn't likely to care even if she did notice, even if aliens generally did, which they don't." 

"They don't! It's amazing! My sister thinks I should have moved to Endorë seasons ago, but the museum wouldn't - you know - make sense -"

"No, I totally get it." Hug. "It's an important museum."

"I'm glad to have domestic support." Smooch.

Smooch. "I'm glad to be able to provide it." 

At the appointed time he collects his delivery from the hotel's repository and carries up a bottle of sparkling cider and a bag of frosted rice cookies.

The door opens. "Welcome! Oh, goodness, you look so very like my Aduva--not exactly like, of course, species differences--and I don't recognize you a bit, so you must be Anevar!"

"That's me!" he says, offering the cider. "Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you!" She accepts the cider and steps out of the way. 

A well over seven-foot-tall woman with pale blue skin rises to her feet when she sees them. "Oh, you do look like me!"

"I have to admit, you look less like me than our mothers look like each other." 

"Oh, I'm half frost giant. We look a little farther from Amentans than Elves do." 

"Slightly higher budget aliens."

"I don't actually know what that means." 

"Uh--if you were fictional, it would be slightly less of a cheapass move to make an Amentan actor look like you instead of something farther from Amentans." 

"Ah." She waves at Anevar. "Hi! Tell me why Ada likes you." 

"I was surprisingly lively in response when she had museum-related questions."

"Ooh, what kind of museum."