"I would never lie to you!"

"You would lie to me if we were under hostile observation! Hostile observation was significantly likelier on priors than alternate universes!"

"If you thought I was under hostile observation why did you invite me over on short notice without a dozen enclave guards in the wings?"

"--I admit I hadn't specifically come up with the hostile observation hypothesis at that point; I just thought that if you had such an overwhelmingly good reason to lie to me, that I should then act essentially as I would if I believed you, because you would need an extremely good reason to lie to me."

"I guess that's fair. Unless you suspected mind control, which under many assumptions would have resulted in somewhat fewer remarks about how reasonable it would be not to believe me, or something. Anyway, these are -" She introduces witches. "- and they are witches-not-wizards from another universe!"

"You and I are going to have a long talk later about our respective magic systems."

"I look forward to it! --Bella and her friends have already made some progress on learning things from our system." 

"Ooooooh." 

"So I hear you have a little brother?"

"--Do you not have a Robin?"

"We do, we do, it's just that witches are overwhelmingly female and all my siblings are girls." 

"Huh. --What's your eldest half-sibling's name--"

"Tamsen." 

"--That's etymologically related to Didyme's deadname." 

"And she's sufficiently out about being trans that you can just drop the word deadname in front of this many people?" 

"Yes."

"Okay, well, you got almost all of Matka's social incompetence so I felt the need to check. --Uh, I have no idea which one of your parents isn't a woman if you're not witches with casual shapechanging magic--I mean I assume one of your parents isn't a woman." 

"Father is certainly the one I'd call socially incompetent. Why do you refer to yours with a diminutive?"

"Do you and yours not get along?" 

"He had five children in a situation with a less than stellar survival rate." 

"--Yes, that's fair, I'd be pissed off about that too. Witch survival rates are fine."

"Rather than airing the family dirty laundry in front of everyone, why don't you two go off for a private little chat if you're going to talk about this." 

"Good idea."

"We think but have not checked that witches going into the enclave would be safe," Bella says, "if that affects where you can go for breakout conversations..." She looks around; she's never been to Atlanta before.

This particular atlanta entrance is in a tiny studio apartment legally owned by one of the Atlanta enclavers who's frequently on gate-guard duty. Kanimir tugs his counterpart out into the hall. 

("So have you noticed you have a crush on Bella yet."

"Have I WHAT. Oh, shit, I have a huge crush on Bella."

"She's gay, I never had a chance, you should definitely go for it."

"...Now is maybe not the time!"

"That's true, but you should let Jaromira decide when the time is so you don't just waffle indefinitely.")