"Mhm." He leans forward, looking at them both critically. "Tell me, talked to any ghosts lately?"

".... No?"

"There's a couple of mages who showed up in my world and one of them had ghosts with her, but I can't see them and have been pretty much ignoring them."

"Uh huh. Because that's very interesting, talking about resurrections but only enough for one. Immortality, too."

"I can do more if you have the herbs and ash and a sufficient population of birds, I just didn't bring enough herbs for more - how do you have both? I totally asked the alethiometer if mages could do resurrection or immortality when I was first writing the spells and it told me no - well, it said it would take many many more mages than were available for it to look at, actually, it's kind of terrible with numbers but still."

His alt claps. "How very astute of you. Yes, I did just say ghost running around, didn't I? Implies that she's dead."

"Edarial's mother is dead too. He's got a live biological dad, though, and no Veron. The biological dad is locked up in a dungeon on treason charges, does that sound about right?"

"It's certainly deserved, I've met the man, he is fit for incarceration."

"Iiiis yours alive too?"

"Guess who my dear mother resurrected."

"Well, that was a terrible choice. Anyway, I'll happily get your Veron if you will stop imprisoning us in this shield bubble."

"Absolutely horrific choice, certainly, there are a thousand more deserving people. But - sorry, I do not believe you."

"It's rather difficult for us to prove our sincerity in a bubble."

"Yes. And I do apologize for the bubble. But, none of what you're saying makes sense, and if Aliya's not completely gone like she should be, I really need to know that. So, in the bubble you stay."

"Okay, how do you propose we prove our - would it help if you scried Edarial? And Iobel? Spring would be less convincing, she doesn't look like me and you don't know me well enough to derive her identity with me from her behavior, but the Marlatian pair look just like us."

"Certainly, I can scry those people." He glances at his younger self. "I assume you can give instructions on aiming?"

"I can," agrees Adarin. And then he starts giving complicated instructions about how to aim for them properly.

"Is this actually going to help or are you just going to continue being skeptical indefinitely?" sighs Isabella, leaning harder on her cloud-pine.

"Those are Iobel and Edarial, assuming you've found them. They're the monarchs of a country called Marlatia, his mother left it in a precarious situation and they're mopping it up, in their world the magic is called spellbinding and requires having familiars - she has a cat and he has a snake, if you're seeing those," says Isabella, almost conversationally. "We crashed their date a while ago. They were alarmed but did not even start casting antagonistic spells on us. Oh, and his twin is a guy. You seem to match my Adarin more so I'm guessing yours is another Zeviana."

"Yes, my sister is female. This is not a hostile spell, though, this is a containment spell. You are perfectly safe."

"I didn't say it was harmful, I said it was antagonistic."