"What else has you concerned?"

"It's - I don't have a list ready, I'm afraid, but how she doesn't take other people's preferences into account and uses her own as a base for everyone else, how she can just move on from things, no problem - I worry. It's in the brotherly job description."

"The moving on might be adaptive."

"Eh, I guess. I might just be picking things to worry about for no reason, really."

He nods, and snuggles her back. "I wonder what the one who's five hundred is like, I should have thought of trying to find her while we were there."

"We can go back. We weren't expecting that reception and then we were - occupied."

"Yeah. And - to be honest I don't want to go back now, I just - want to be home with Path and Vern."

Snuggle.

Soon enough, there is a knock on their door. It didn't take as long as flying would, but there were more swear words involved.

Isabella gets the door, leaving Path to aggressively snuggle Vern as a substitute for human snuggling.

Vern aggressively snuggles him right back, like it is the high of summer in Texas and he is a giant owl-shaped ice cube.

"Hey," says Zeviana. "Where's - aha, hey, Ada." She starts addressing thin air. "Yeah. Nope, it's fine. You're welcome." She snorts. "Yes, I'm peachy. If you die a third time your extraplanar privileges get suspended, though. Mhm. Knew there was a reason for why I liked you. Besides the brother thing."

"How's he doing?"

"He's coping. He's glad to be back home and somewhere familiar. The strangers were nice, but he'd like to talk to people he actually knows."

"I wish I could see him."

"He wishes you could, too. But he stays close to you, so if you've got anything you want to say to him later he'll hear."

Isabella nods.

"Also - he's totally fine with everything the living Ada's said? I don't know why he wouldn't be, but I don't know what he said, so."

"It's still good to know they're on the same page."

"Uhhh - he's worried about continuity, he thinks one of them will lose their memories or they'll both just remember when they died the first time when they're one person again and nothing that happened after."

"I'll - check with the alethiometer. My best guess is that both sets of memories should persist but I can check."

"He says that he's just being paranoid, but it's worth checking."