"Parrots are not the sort of servant I'd use to drag anyone anywhere," says the girl. "And why us?"

"Agreed. Even if there were more of them, they still couldn't manage it. If I knew why us, I'd present the information to you with a flourish and be very proud of myself for being smart. But, alas."

"Hmm," he muses. "That works. And it's not like I can't defend myself. Which do you want, go or stay?"

"If you don't care I'd sooner stay - what name do I give to Public Order if you aren't back and how long do you want me to wait for you?"

"Avedan. Nice to meet you. Uh - half an hour sound good to you?"

"I'm Sylvi," she volunteers. "Half an hour it is." She pulls out a square of wood with tame shines clinging to it and keeping time and notes their position.

Avedan peers over her shoulder at the time-keepers, nods, and then says in a deadpan, "If I don't return, remember me as I lived. Confused and covered in parrots."

"I am pretty sure I have no other memories of you," says Sylvi, confusedly tugging on a stubborn parrot.

His mouth twitches a bit. "See, that's the spirit." He waves, and then - goes where the parrots take him. Confusedly. He vaguely suspects he's going to be sacrificed to the servant parrot gods. Even though neither servants nor parrots have gods. He thinks.

"Yes!" says the golem. "Is it just you? You haven't found milord or milady yet?"

"I - am afraid I don't understand? 'Milord or milady'? The - other poor soul being mobbed by parrots?"

"Yes! You've found them after all? I have letters for both of you," says the golem, and it rummages through some papers and comes up with four envelopes. There are two sets of handwriting, each of which says on one envelope "*bel*" and "*dan*" on the other. The golem points out the "*dan*" envelopes. "These are for you and the others are for - is it milord or milady now?"

Blink. Blink. "... Milady, unless she objects." He peers at the letters, confused. "I - will go bring her the letter and then read mine, if it's going to answer all of my questions? Can I stop being mobbed by parrots now?"

"Milady can do it. She has your parrots and you have hers," says the golem earnestly.

"But, if I hadn't of found her, would I just be doomed to being mobbed by parrots for the rest of eternity until I did find the special someone that made my apparent parrots mob?"

"Well," says the golem, "her pets will listen to you and vice versa if you have the password, but if she's here it will be easier for you to just call off your own parrots."

"Yes." He looks at her parrots. "Stop mobbing her."

"Apparently," he says, "you are being mobbed by my parrots that I didn't know existed or even belonged to me, and I am being mobbed by yours of the same description. Please make them stop, it's getting a little grating."

"Did... it say what order to open them in?" Pause. "...This one looks like my handwriting."

Avedan reads his own letter again, and then folds it up and goes for the other one for him, a little stiffly.

"Apparently 'I'm' more explanatory than 'you'," says Sylvi, taking out her first letter and comparing the two quizzically. "By a long shot."

"Um, sorry?"

"Feedback for next time?" she suggests lightly. "Geez, Lu had some very strong opinions about what we ought to be getting up to in our spare time."

"Feedback for next time," he says, vaguely bemused. "More explanations. Right. I'll keep that in mind. Uh. Strong opinions how, there's a part in mine that mentions 'when I am done being a prude' and - suggestions after."

"Yeah, she, uh, warned me about you being a prude. This is so bizarre. And you really don't look like the - people in the dreams. I mean, I guess you talk like them? Except less old-fashioned and... yeah. And I don't look like the one memory I have of, I think it was Aly, looking in a mirror..."

"Warned you. Well now I feel like some kind of hazard. Beware of prude. You do sound - vaguely familiar. You don't look like the people from my dreams, either, but I suppose that's what happens with reincarnations?"

"I guess? I mean, if the people from your dreams included Aly and Kib and Lu. The Kib dreams were bizarre, I thought there was something - well, less weird than reincarnation, but something weird - going on in my head."

"I think Lu outlived him," says Sylvi vaguely. "By a few years. How long ago did the stork drop you?"

"I'm twenty-three. You?"

"Eighteen. So that fits. I guess we should - go have a look at the cache."

"So we can," he says, amused. "I have been promised lots of math from Kidan."

"Lots of math? Math about what?" asks Sylvi, directing her wood horse in the direction Avedan was dragged by the parrots.

"His opinions of things, how important they were to him, what his priorities were - that kind of thing. In math form. Apparently our scale's the same."

"I think so? Shouldn't it be?"

"That part was - clear. Yes."

"Forty point five," repeats Avedan, shaking his head. "I'm - genuinely having trouble wrapping my head around that." He glances at the letter from Kidan. "But he said the scales were the same. So - okay then."

"Well, so far. This is - more people than I ever expected to be but it's not a huge number? Maybe yours is off, you'll have to - check the others' math."

"It's possible," says Avedan, dubiously. "But Kidan made it clear that he and Aydanci were vastly different in life experiences, but their scales still managed to be the same. I'll check the math anyway, that's the general idea."

"Yeah. I don't have a math thing but apparently I get to read my past selves' condensed notebooks, all of them, it's going to take ages."

"Good luck?"

"And I'm Avedan. Thank you for taking care of things while we were - um, away."

"What does it mean to have earned a forty point five? I only have a snippet about it - the number and how happy I was and - I don't know what pronouns to use for these people - anyway, it was only a minute and then it went into a bit about Aly and then a different, regular dream. What did the number mean?"

"... Basically that she had managed to make it to the top of my - his? priorities and importance scale. As in, literally everything else was less important. Actually, looking at the numbers most of it wasn't out of love, though that was there and was a factor, but - she was competent, good at what she did, pointed it in a good direction and got things done. Essentially, she was his priority because he respected and trusted her to - I suppose the best terminology is be his greatest ally and that either one of them would handle things in the other's absence."

"Lu seems to have talked about Aly and Kib in the first person when using pronouns and the third when specifying with names," reports Sylvi, paging through her - Lu's - the provided notebook.

"Kidan didn't leave what pronouns he used for me," observes Avedan. "He left lots of math, though." Pause. "Really useful stuff, too. Hmm, I need paper - excuse me, Charp? Is there paper around here, and if so may I have it?"

"... Oh, I am likely to do that, aren't I. Uh. I'll try not to?"

"Quite weird," he agrees after a pause. "Not bothered to put in a spare bed? What if we'd met under worse circumstances and disliked each other or something?"

"Then... one of us would get a hotel?" says Sylvi.

"I suppose. But it still seems like an oversight."

"They were really convinced we'd get along, at least as of the time we'd be in the cache together anyway?" shrugs Sylvi. "I came to Lapis planning to need a hotel anyway, I didn't know what I was going to find."

"...Why are you supposed to ask me that?" wonders Sylvi.

"It doesn't say anything else on the note, aside from, 'Just ask, don't overthink it first.'"

Sylvi snorts. "Well, I'd want to give it some real thought, if I only got one, but the first thing that comes to mind if I can't just make myself omnipotent and cheat that way is that it'd be swell if Lu's research on immortality had panned out, although we might have to come up with a way to slow down population growth or find more places to put people if it got widespread. I would also accept the ability to imbue servants with healing powers. I can make shines really fast with the right automaton setup, I could cover an entire continent in swarms of 'em in my lifetime even working alone, it'd be even better if the wish-granter would let me make that a generally available power - the question really ought to specify scale of wish, definitely the first thing I'd check for would be the availability of general purpose omnipotence."

"How does that explain the note?" asks Sylvi.

"It - makes me understand why exactly they were so convinced we'd get along and why I would apparently get over my prudeness in a week. Because that was a good answer."

Sylvi laughs. "Any more notes like that?"

"Probably. But I don't know where they are."

"Was Kidan hiding things from you? I have an index - why would you need to secret them away and make them so uninformative?"

"I - don't think hiding is the correct term. I think that he was of the opinion that there were lots of things I just had to find out myself that wouldn't register if just given an index of them."

"Well, Aly did. I haven't dreamed anything about it yet, but she - invented storks. I knew they hadn't been around forever, but yeah, wow."

"That's - pretty impressive, did she leave notes on the specifics?"

"Yeah. I can add to the stork population if I need to. Lu did it once."

"Good," says Avedan. "That's - pretty amazing." Pause. "I'm going to be really bummed out if I didn't do anything cool in my past lives..."

"Uhhh," page page, "here's Lu reporting on Kib being smug that after Aly died Aydanci got pissed off at pox and proceeded to eradicate it from the planet? And then inventing vaccinations."

"What're you gonna do? I'm not sure if I want to pick up where Lu left off or not given that she didn't wind up with anything concrete and that I went with a different specialty when I was apprenticing."

"I'm going to have to read all of Kidan's notes to decide, I think, my resources have changed dramatically and that's a factor," he says. Page flip. "... Oh. So that's what he did. He was offended by slavery."

"Oh, good for him."

"Very!" agrees Avedan, with a smile. "Well, now I am free to be very smug about what I accomplished in my past lives, that's fun."

"That's kind of cute."

"They might have been embarrassed or brushed them off as ordinary if strange," points out Avedan, completely oblivious to why she is going a little pink.

"But they keep getting - more."

"Then, maybe we're just special? I'm not sure, I'm just hypothesizing."

"Yeah. I mean, I guess Kib might have wrote it off he hadn't run into Aydanci and met Aly's magpie."

"Maybe. I was tempted to write it off, but the dreams were internally consistent, so I was - confused."

"I was traveling through here anyway when I figured out where they were mostly set - and it's only mostly, no two of me have grown up in the same place, I got bits of Kib's childhood and Lu traveling and so on too. So I swung by. And then parrots."

"And then parrots," he snorts. "We need to think of something better than being mobbed by parrots."

"Parrots live a long time, I think we'd still be able to control them once we figured out what they were after even if in some life unaccountably we weren't trained as servantmakers, and they attract a lot less attention to our cache - we have a lot of money, apparently - than having Charp comb the world for us would. But if we think of something better then that'd be good."

"True. Hmm. I'll try to think of something, I think just one parrot would have been fine, it was the - all of them. All at once."

"Well, parrots can still get sick, I imagine they wanted redundancy in case the one and only leftover parrot met with misfortune. They really wanted us to meet. And Lu too, she got parroted," page page, "and went and found Kidan by herself, he was too busy to check out Lapis which did not have any slavery in it just because he was having dreams, apparently."

"... Huh. I - haven't had a dream about that meeting, I kind of want one now, it sounds interesting."

"I haven't had any first-meeting dreams yet. Just stuff from before and after the getting-to-know-you phase."

"Yeah, I'm similar. I got a lot from Aydanci's time between Aly and Kib. It was kind of depressing."

"Sorry. At least we can be sure the pox won't get me this time?"

"Yeah," says Avedan, brightening a little. "That must have been what he was talking about, I'd thought it was some sort of revenge thing, which didn't make sense."

"Talking about when...?"

"During the - interim between reincarnations. He was - very focused on eradicating something after his wife died. Oh, I - got that too, that was also depressing. My original thought was that he'd been cheating on her with Kib, and Kib got jealous and killed her or something, and Aydanci was very upset by this fact. But - nope. It's much less dramatic and sounds like something I would actually do."

"Wow. Cheating on Aly with Kib. Nnnope," chuckles Sylvi darkly. "Now there's one way the out-of-order out-of-context dream memories thing can go wrong... I have not gotten Aly's death yet, I'm - not really looking forward to any of the deaths."

"I haven't had any of the ones where I've died yet," says Avedan softly. "Or any of the others besides Aly's. I don't look forward to those."

"Well, you get to skip Lu and Kib dying, at least, you were off somewhere being a child in a new incarnation when those happened."

"Well, I've done it before, right? And came through well-adjusted enough to leave myself suggestive little notes. On net this is good news. And most of the memories won't be like that, people spend proportionally little of their time dying."

"Fair. I just - wish we didn't have to die."

"Hence Lu's project. But - she worked on it for a long damn time."

"Yeah," he sighs. "Better than nothing that we get reincarnation."

"Yeah. Sucks for everyone else, though... if they really aren't reincarnating. And this notebook says as far as any of us know Aly didn't have past-life dreams, it just - she was first."

"I hope they are and just - never mention the dreams. Or are mysteriously missing them."

"But I mean - if Aly didn't have the dreams, then people start somewhere. And if most people don't have the dreams, then they're - starting, and not going on."

"Yeah," sighs Avedan. "I need to - look into reincarnation, as a side project, I think."

"Yeah. But not immediately, I think, won't that be easier when you've accumulated more memories?"

"A bit, yeah."

"What do you do when you aren't making a pilgrimage to Lapis to be attacked by parrots, anyway?"

"I was looking into a way to automate the creation of golems with other golems and automata. I'd need to still do something, but if most of the work can be done by a system already in place, it can save an absurd amount of time."

"Huh, that's almost like what I was doing with shines. I've gotten as far as proving that big shines can read little ones if the little ones are arranged in an instructionlike way."

"Ooo. That's interesting. Also, useful, I need to figure out a way to use that...."

"I haven't gotten any farther than that with the theory, I've been working on apparatus to give me enough shines to test complicated questions with because it takes a lot of miniscule ones in various colors to assemble into anything much even if the big shine is window-sized. Lenses to shrink and project program sets and resize a light source into however big I need it for what kind of shine I want. I'm pretty sure that you can't get shines to obey instructions that don't all fit on them, no 'go slide over this entire giant list of things and remember it all'."

"That's - really clever. I wonder how small you can get them?"

"I don't know. I've been able to get them much too small to read and have them still work as normal. I think shines can 'see' better than we can."

"That makes sense, considering. Hmm. Could be good for communication, give them little spaces to travel underground or something and let them pass tiny messages around in hollow tubes - that'd be safer than flying messengers, and rely less on good weather conditions. Or ground messengers, those have to deal with things in the way."

"Shines could also travel aboveground without worrying about weather or interception, although then if the method gets too popular all inhabited areas get very shiny."

"Then it would be the fashion to switch to shades and the world would be at war with little dots of light and little dots of shadow."

Sylvi snorts. "Shines are easier to have in charming alternate colors, though."

"So the shines would always be winning, but every now and then there would be someone who roots for the shade underdogs."

"This all sounds very cute, but it'd probably be very disruptive and distracting to have them sliding around with messages in all directions from every polis in the world."

"A bit, yeah," he snorts. "Thus, the underground pipe system. Not disruptive at all once it's made, just when it's being made. Also, we'd have to throw money at the problem."

"Automatons could do it as long as we knew how fast they were and had someone on the other end to grab them when they'd gone far enough."

"I'd worry about a few decades down the line, though - what do we do if one of them collapses and is in need of maintenance?"

"Publish how to make tunneling automatons," shrugs Sylvi.

"Well, yes, but that doesn't solve the problem," he points out. "Finding where the collapses are is important if they happen."

"Program the shines to come back and make distressed little dances if they run into a problem?"

"Hmmm. That'll work, I think, though finding exactly where things are would be a problem without careful planning. But we do have time for that."

"We have lots of time, in a way. It's great."

"Yeah. Confusing, but - I think I'm getting over that reasonably quickly."

"It makes the dreams make more sense. Especially the ones where for no reason I'm a boy."

"That - must have been quite confusing. If I ever turn up as a woman, I'm pretty sure I'll be tremendously confused."

"Lu was worried that you'd turn up a girl and the 'bel' tradition of only liking guys would hold. She thought that would be very sad."

"Probably also quite awkward. Sadly awkward."

"Yeah." Page, page. "Apparently Kidan took a while to - buy what was going on and it upset Lu, who'd gotten a much higher ratio of - romancey dreams than I have so far. I'm not gonna be pushy, promise."

"Thank you," says Avedan after a very brief pause.

"You're welcome. Lu also took longer than I did to figure out where she was supposed to go - you've probably had more dreams than I did, since you're older, but I got lucky with landmarks."

"It took me a while to figure out the city, but I managed after Kidan mentioned some places I could look up. The others were a bit too vague."

"Kib's route between here and the smithy where he made and assembled Charp's component parts went right by that big blue tower, which was easy to look up, and he had to make the trip several times."

"I think the problem with me is that Aydanci was a recluse that never went outside unless he had to and Kidan kept traveling places. I hadn't known why, but now it's for making slavery go away, which makes sense."

"Huh. Are you - travel-y?"

"Not... Really? I will if it gets me something I want, but I don't particularly want to travel just to travel. I think Kidan's travel was specifically because of the slavery thing, not him secretly wanting to see the world."

"Right, but if you had a travel-y project underway or weren't satisfied with how Kidan left his," she says.

He shrugs. "Then, yeah, I would be. Hypothetically."

"But in fact you are not. Okay." Pause. "Should one of us get a hotel room? I'd rather not have to hunt one down while half-asleep from having stayed up to read all these notes."

"I... don't know yet. Sorry."

"Okay. Please let me know sometime before sundown."

"Sure. Uh - let me know if you'd like me to shoo and get a hotel room?"

"I'm finding myself pretty open to just - taking Lu's recommendation as read, putting the big pillow in the place where the big pillow is meant to be, and going from there. If you want to get a hotel room you can do it and I won't be offended or mopey or anything."

"What's to thank me for there? Declining to pout at you because you have not yet decided if you want to sleep in the same bed as someone you met less than two hours ago?"

"Being understanding. I'm - you seem to be adjusting to all of this faster than I am. It's probably a bit annoying. Thanks for not being annoyed."

"I suspect I have an advantage relative to people in general at this - sort of thing. Wouldn't be fair to expect you to catch up instantly."

"Well, thank you."

"Okay then. I'm going to go scope out the apartment, then, I was up early this morning and might want to crash soon." Sylvi bookmarks her page and ascends the stairs. They have two banisters, which she uses.

"Uh - not picky." Pause. "Pears would be nice, though."

"I think they should have pears even this far south. I'll be back in a while." She goes out, has her wooden horse bend to let her step up onto it, and trots off.

She is back after about an hour. She puts a ripe pear on Avedan's desk, retains possession of a sandwich, and hands everything else to Charp to put away, which it goes and does, and she resumes reading.

Avedan smiles at her, says a little 'thank you' and devours his present. Then, predictably, goes right back to reading.

Later, Sylvi yawns, suggests to Avedan that he not stay up too late, and goes up to bed.

"Don't look at me," he says. "I'm just as confused as you are."

"It's not yours?" the boy asks. "It's somebody's, I can tell that much."

"No," he clarifies. "Just me."

"Okay. Well - I promise I didn't try to co-opt it, or - anything. I mostly do golems anyway, I only ever did bugs for practice with pets."

"I believe you. I'm - quite confused. Sorry about the trouble, I suppose."

"It's no trouble. Pretty bird." He reaches up to pet it, tenatively; it leans into his hand.

"Does it listen to you enough that you can take it back when you want it, or do you need help...? I don't want to, like, steal your wife's pet."

"Ha. No, he listens to me. But I'm glad he's - making friends."

"Aww." The kid keeps petting the bird. "I'm Kib, by the way." The bird keeps nibbling on his hair. "Leave my hair alone." The bird stops nibbling on his hair.

"...I guess he just... really likes me? I don't know. How friendly is he told to be to you and to people in general?"

"Just the basics - no biting or inappropriate bowel movements. He comes when called and will follow my instructions, but I had to win his everlasting love and affection through bribery. Also a long-suffering role as his perch."

"I was present when it was mastered," he says, raising an eyebrow. "And I am reasonably confident that she never gave it contingencies like that."

"Then why is it sitting on me and doing what I say? I promise, I didn't co-opt the bird, go ahead and check if you know how."

"Already did. He still belongs to Aly. Er - my wife."

"Short for Alymbel."

"... It's not, no. Why?"

"I've been having weird dreams about a woman named Alymbel who goes by Aly. They're - well, weird."

"...This is more than I usually would tell a stranger about my weird dreams, but, uh, in the dreams I am her? And they're - consistent, she's always the same dream-character, just at different times, out of order."

"That - is very weird. If you don't mind my asking - what do you do in the dreams where - you are her?"

"All kinds of - stuff. Learn servantmaking, like my teacher isn't on my case about that enough while I'm awake - I like hers better, it's always the same lady, just in one dream Aly's seven and in another she's twelve and then she's eight, you know. Read books, which oddly enough don't collapse like a handful of wet sand when I wake up - I mean, I haven't found copies of the books in real life, but I can still more or less remember them as having plots and content, at least whatever part I dream through. Puppet a little scooter to get around. That's how I got the idea for the chair, actually, although it's a golem."

There is a long, long pause from Aydanci. Then, abruptly: "What are the three questions?"

"I would never. I have left my wife's alone, even if she's been gone for - what, almost eighteen years now," he says, sort of testily and vaguely insulted. "So no. That is not the sort of thing I do. Ever. Are you in the chair because you're clumsy?"

"Your wife's one thing, a stranger is another, for some people - and - yeah? I mean, it's also faster and less tiring than walking, but - yeah."

"Why the hell would I - the magpie landed on me before I even looked at you. You checked yourself I didn't co-opt him. What conceivable motive would I have, anyway, stalking some poor widower to claim to have - what, prophetic-after-the-fact dreams -?"

"I don't know! But this doesn't make sense!"

"And then if that ones goes well, others after, when we know the ropes a bit better and can more confidently weigh what we do and do not want in apprentices."

"I mean - not yet, it's not, I admit that, but - the first time I had an Aly dream a month went by before I had the next one and these days I'm having two or three a week."

"I - they're not distressing, are they?" he asks, sort of - worried.

"...It depends what happens in them? Not usually. The being a girl part is weird conceptually but not while it's happening, she's - accustomed."

"It'll be eighteen years since the stork dropped me this autumn," adds Kib. "When...?"

"The autumn. It - she was sick for quite a long time before then, months, but that was - when. Do you want the specific date? I try not to think about it -"

"I don't know how this works, I don't know if it'd even be meaningful, don't - stress out about it," says Kib quickly. "I don't know what's - happening to me."

He nods. "Thank you. I - don't know either, but I'll help how I can?"

"And occasionally," adds Aydanci, softly, "'What sort of person am I?' though that was less for day to day things."

"Relief," whispers Aydanci. "Because in some form she's alive. Everything else could be - absurd, upside down and backwards, but if she is alive, that's - good enough for me. I can ask for nothing else."

"My full name's Aydanci Evaret. I'm - very glad you're - here. Alive." Pause. "And the pox will not be able to get you again, it pissed me off."

"Is that what - are you the - okay. I consider eradicating the disease that killed Aly a reasonable and proportionate response, congratulations, full marks."

"I feel very - avenged. Uh, do you want any help?"

"If you like. I don't require it, though, I have a reasonable handle on the situation. Thank you, anyway."

"...Is that 'yes, I have a job opening, but you won't personally make or break the project if you have other demands on your time' or 'no, please go be alive and somewhat-Aly somewhere that is not near me'?"

"First thing." Gently, like he is in love, he adds, "I will never ask you to go be alive and somewhat-Aly somewhere that is not near me."

"Okay. Good. Because I'm slowly increasing in proportion-of-me-that-is-Aly over time and I am pretty sure she was very attached to you just based on the part where she married you and the eclipse."

"I don't seem to have any ability to steer the dreams or I'd - I don't know, look for key moments instead of further excerpts from her learning to master goldfish."

"Do you want me to give you highlights?"

"Yes please. Uh, we probably want to be surer than we currently are before - do you have her notebooks?"

"I do. I - wish I could have gotten her consent for this specific situation before she died, but alas. I did not account for this at all," says Aydanci dryly. "Do please forgive me. Tentatively, you may read them."

And Lu is handing him a parrot. "One for me, one for you. I have no idea what the trapper thinks I'm doing with them."

"He might," says Kidan, taking the parrot, "think you have a strange parrot obsession. Like a collector, but with parrot pets."

"Well, at any rate after a while we'll have a breeding population and can have them get busy making more parrots, in case we live to be a hundred and twenty but not longer than that and this batch's lifespan won't cut it. And then the trapper need no longer concern himself with my parrot obsession."

"As long as you never tell him that you're planning on getting a breeding population going. That'll make it worse."

"I was thinking we could order them if they didn't do it on their own. But we're not in a terribly desperate hurry for chicks, these ones are still young."

"Right, let's put that off for a while. I don't want to order parrots to have sex. Not to mention, we'll have to be careful about them to prevent inbreeding."

"The first generation shouldn't be related. If they lay eggs we can tell those chicks not to have sex with their siblings, I suppose."

"That's - helpful. Okay, and then if there is a third generation we tell them to not have sex with either siblings or cousins."

"Yep. That's us, the parrot dormitory monitors," she giggles. Her parrot is starting to becalm. She pets it. "These are prettier than the kind Kib and Aydanci left, those gray ones. But it's still a pity about the cats getting at them, that would've been cheaper if we'd just bred the grays."

"Yeah. Oh, well. How should we try and prevent another situation with the cats again, I mean, obviously the same thing's not going to happen, but if we - er, restart, they'll have at least twenty years left alone to fend off cats on their lonesome."

"We can put in a complicated door mechanism for the roof aviary and tell the parrots how to work it without divulging the secret to any cats?"

"Maybe also have them defend each other if attacked. A cat would attack one and the others nearby come by and peck at it to make it go away or something."

"Ooh, yes. Although I don't want them to actually hurt the cats. They might belong to somebody. Who, one, would be upset about the cats, and two, might follow the parrots home and figure out the door mechanism and get at the cache. I suppose Charp could also guard the parrots, but I don't want the neighbors wondering about the unattended golem on the roof."

"Let's not upset any cat owners," he agrees. His parrot's calmed enough to tolerate petting, and he takes advantage of this fact. "Uh - make them incapable of hurting living creatures. Might doom a few parrots to horrific death by cat, which I would feel bad about, but it's the smarter decision."

"I'm not sure about that - I mean, the parrots are live too. Just keep them from going for the eyes or anything, cats aren't by and large masochists."

"That works, I'm much happier with that outcome."

Lu hugs her parrot and leans on Kidan.

He smiles at her, leaning over to kiss her forehead before going back to petting his own parrot. Goooood parrot. Nice parrot. Become the lifelong servant of Kidan and his inevitable reincarnations. Bwuah. Ha. Ha.

"Having trouble standing, my dear?" teases Kidan, amused.

"I may collapse. Perhaps I should be put in bed," she grins.

"Do you now. Well, for safety's sake..." He smirks, and then scoops her up to carry. Off to the safety of bed, where she is unlikely to collapse!

Kidan laughs and doesn't resist. "It's spreading! Obviously I need to stay here. For safety."

"We are contagious and should be quarantined," she giggles.

"Yes. We didn't get vaccinated, my previous self would be very disappointed in us, but if we follow proper quarantine measures I think I can forgive myself."

Sylvi is snoozing peacefully on the other side of the pillow. "Waterfall. Pear. Hagiography."

"Democracy," mumbles Sylvi rapturously as he departs.

"Gerrymandering barley coruscation," whimpers Sylvi.

"Flint -" she starts, but then she squints, waking. "Ayd- Avedan." She takes a deep breath, obviously trying not to cry.

"Hi," he says, gently. "... Hug?"

"Except in my head. Ow."

"Yeah. I'm - so sorry. I'd undo it if I could."

"You came near," she murmurs. Hug hug hug. "That wasn't even about Aly dying, it was - I don't know how long before. I woke up in the night and didn't want to wake you and just - held still."

"I'd - have tried to distract you. That would have been something."

"It wasn't a - distractable amount of discomfort." She shakes her head. "I don't remember the part where Aly died but I remember Kib writing about it, just a snippet - and I'm afraid I'm going to get to it and it'll turn out Aly could've held on if she really tried and just didn't want to anymore."

"No, probably not. I imagine getting more than a snippet of Kib writing would have disabused me of the notion. But it crossed my mind."

He nods, a little. "I'm sorry. If there's - anything at all I can do, let me know?"

"You're helping," she says. "Uh, sorry to - unload on you like that on Day One."

"It's completely fine," he says, sincerely. "Really, it is. Don't be sorry, you didn't - plan the timing of the dreams, and I'm likely to have bad days after having some of them, too. I'm glad I'm helping."

"Yeah." She snorts. "The one before that was way nicer," she mutters.

Avedan - coughs. He can't think of anything to say that wouldn't be really awkward.

"You're welcome," he says. He glances towards the hallway. "... Sleeping on the floor is painful. Let's just - avoid that, now."

"You were on the-? Why? I thought you were okay with the setup or one of us would've gotten a hotel."

"I was on the bed," he explains. "Then there was an -" He coughs again. "- awkwardly timed dream and I decided the floor would probably be a better bet."

"Apparently," says Avedan, dryly, "in our past lives we were extremely married."

"Like I said. Awkwardly timed."

"Well. You sleep wherever you're comfy. I'm gonna roll over and hope I get Kib working on Charp or something." She lets him go and stretches and flops back onto her pillow.