"Spring, here, died of old age. Obviously, it's been fixed. But yes, if a monster crashes into your apartment, I will indeed go and be heroic. Hurrah."

"It's possible she'll have trouble with you non-humans. She had trouble with mages, until she revised the spell, and her objective-truth-dispensing artifact is only omniscient about her world, and if you go there so it can have a look at you you'll get the animal souls."

"...I'm a sphinx, I don't think I said. And I think my mom was too, but she never got a medallion, she looked human her whole life, maybe Ice can try her? She - do most of us have our moms die?"

"We should go grab - Ice? - then. So Bella can have her mom back."

"Certainly. Where would you like the portal? I can disguise it as a painting or part of a wall or something, but it does need to be large enough to step through."

"How permanent is it, and do you supply the painting as well as the magic attached to it?"

"They won't un-make themselves randomly, and they are usually meant to be permanent, but they can be broken easily enough. Either I do it with magic, or the wall where it's located breaks and the portal goes with it. I'd make the painting, I can do rudimentary stoneshaping to create a frame and then make the painting itself with complicated illusions."

"Okay - Darren? Inside the door to the water heater closet sound good to you? We can move the painting if we ever need the water heater fixed."

"We don't have a pet rock - uh, how much do you need and does it have to be all one piece? I can get you a scoop of gravel from the little park without attracting too much attention, anything more than that and I think we'd have to leave the Avalon. Avalons being where critters can critter it up," she clarifies. "Little hidden towns."

"It doesn't need to be in one piece, but I do need a significant amount of it if I want to make it very sturdy. Which I will be doing, because broken portals are terrible wastes."

"So possibly enough gravel that someone will want to know why I am taking so much. This would be easier if we were in Forks still instead of the middle of Seattle, I don't immediately know where to get lots of rocks."

"Neither do I."

"... Ah, yes. I'll just add 'fetch' to my bloodhound duties. I'll be back soon enough. Hold this for me, please." He holds his staff out to Spring.

"You seem to speak English - how, by the way? - so, common sense, and don't blink if you see critters around, within the Avalon, and don't do any of your kind of magic where anybody can see you in or out of it. Critters might be in some kind of midform," she accessorizes herself with hindpaws, tail, and wings, "or fullform." She demonstrates. "With the exact details varying between critter species, obviously, Darren is a winged deer."

Obligingly, Darren displays his winged deer status.

Slow blink. "Would you believe that I have seen stranger things?"

"Yes," says Bella, flumphing onto the bed as long as she's already cozy-catlike. "But I'd love to hear them enumerated."

"My mother's ghost resurrected the dead, granted immortality, killed every member of a certain species on an entire planet within a day, and caused an unwanted reunion with my centuries-dead father. I have seen a hilariously tiny woman easily defeat six people - each at least twice her size - in unarmed physical combat. I met a younger, married version of myself and accidentally caused them great personal distress that wasn't helped with a botched resurrection attempt. Then, I played board games with a god. All of the above happened in the past three weeks. I am five centuries old. My life was not boring before this month, either."

"Ice and Cypress are married and deliriously happily adorable about it. Iobel and Edarial are also married but they have a more complicated story."

Darren... Raises his eyebrows, but doesn't comment. He does go snuggle with his girlfriend, though. Flop, onto the bed, deer and kitty snuggles.