"I got used to it in... about a year."

"Alrighty then. The angels and everything are just fine with this?"

"They don't really like Lunabella but I think that's just the gratuitously extra paganism and the king who may have literally been Apollo back before he founded it. They seem to be fine with the general liberal norms."

"Huh. Okay."

"The other two big organizations are mostly not witches, but fully-informed and behind the Veil. Alphazon Industries is an absolutely enormous megacorporation which has a near-monopoly on commerce that crosses the Veil. Technically they run HexVPN and a lot of the Veil internet sites, and they do money-changing between Kisses and mortal currency and own large portions of all the public un-Veiled companies. They pay extremely well but their contracts are pretty heinously complicated and Faustian. ORC is law enforcement and also enforce Veil breaches; they interface with mortal police, do more than their fair share of hunting monsters and Outsiders, and try to rein in the excesses of the Hespatians, Alphazon, and occasionally the other Big Sixes, they're on good terms with Lunabella and Arcadia hasn't fought them yet but that's it. They're heavily armed and pretty brutal but arguably they have to be. And they take an especially hard line on magichumanity getting involved in major mortal political disputes - they tend to assume you're breaching the Veil if you try, even if there's no direct evidence you're using magic."

"What, so like, I can't, uh, run for mayor? I didn't really want to but now I can't?"

"You'd probably get a visit from ORC if you ran for mayor, but they'd probably be okay with it. Governor or Senator, though, they'd nix it. And sirens probably more than most, given the effects of the magic singing voice."

"What if my dad runs for something, because he sometimes talks about doing that."

"You should try not to make many public appearances for him, if so. Beyond that... I don't know, you'd probably want to go to an ORC office and ask."

"I guess I should do that then. Wow. Did not realize this implication. Can I have a singing career though?"

"Sorry, I should have been clearer. They'll probably get antsy about concerts for mortals, but even if that goes badly there are several other worlds of people to perform for."

"Do they have Disney."

"Oh, I'm pretty sure Alphazon owns like a quarter of Disney, it's not on every Earth but several of them. Mostly the same movies as our Earth but I've seen clips from a Veil-only one."

"Okay. I will settle for Alternate Dimension Disney Princessing. Probably."

"I hope it works, that sounds lovely. Anything else you want to ask about?"

"How do I take care of feathers?"

That is a thing Gwen totally knows and can explain, so she does.

And she wants to hang out in the shop for a bit longer, learning her way around the magical Internet and getting adjusted to the sensory shock and getting some help with her Arcadia application.

Gwen can help with this, too (and give her email, which is gwenwake@hexmail).

What's the Arcadia website say? Do the Watchers have a web presence? What about, like, the magic end of the Vatican?

The Arcadia website is a college website. It's more detailed than most, and has departments of lab magic, elementalism, dimensional studies, personal magic, and several of the usual kind of mundane college majors. (All the kinds of magic she's learned except ministration are specifically listed if she looks closer, sorted idiosyncratically into the various departments.) There's lots of student clubs and associations mentioned, including multiple chapels and a Watcher program that seems a little like ROTC (not the only thing of that type on campus either, ORC and a Hespatian coven have similar things).

The official Watcher presence is the kind of bland you get when an organization with complicated internal divisions has some PR people try to minimize them and only say things everyone can agree on, which ends up agreeing with what Gwen said about them and not providing much more detail. They do have a big list of branches, organized by classes of denomination, almost all with several entries - there's a Lutheran section, Calvinist, Unitarian (in line with nominative determinism, only one group listed), Mormon, and of course Catholic, of which there are apparently seven, whose names imply that 'the Roman Catholic Church' is not sufficient to pick out a single church on this side of the Veil. If she checks out their websites, they're still focused on the things Watchers agree about - the celestials are the messengers of God, an apocalypse is coming and we need to watch and prepare for it, all the believing faiths should work together - but also have some comments that are clearly veiled barbs against other people who have theological or possibly political differences. And declarations of allegiance to particular churches which they consider the 'most true' faith. Two of them also express nasty sentiment towards pagans.

It's initially hard to find the website for the magic side of her familiar Vatican because it's smaller and less visible than the Vaticans which exist on this side of the Veil. Since they all know more about the structure of the world, they consider themselves better authorities on Jesus, the Bible, and various exegesis and points of doctrine; since they couldn't always easily communicate across worlds, there are three of them. Two of the three consider the mortal prime-world Pope authoritative for humanity outside the Veil, the third broke with him at the declaration of infallibility. When she finds the official hexVPN site of her Vatican it's trying hard not to commit to either of the two that recognize the Pope's limited authority and seems to be trying not to alienate the other one too much either. There's notes of disapproving of immodesty but they stop short of actually telling anyone they're wrong in God's eyes or anything quite so explicit.

Wow, seven different Catholic clubs just at Arcadia. And every one of them on the side of the angels! She'll be spoiled for celestially backed choice.

She will make sure she's got Gwen's hexmail right and has down the present address of the shop so she can return the coat after she goes shopping, and head out to break it to her folks.

She's back with the coat in a few days.

"Hey! Adjusting alright?"

"On the whole I think so yeah! I'm glad the touch shock thing liked me, stubbing my toe sucks super super bad but nice stuff feels so nice now. My parents were pretty freaked but my siblings think it's awesome and even my parents eventually agreed I could go to Arcadia if I pass the GED so I can have a real high school credential!"

"Oh good! Arcadia's great, the people and the campus both. You think your folks will mellow about it with time?"