"...probably."

"We'll have to work on that, then." She lets him go, and bumps his shoulder with hers. "To answer your earlier question, no, we're not all named after colors. Arguably three of us are, but not all five. Sable, Maya, Neopolitan, Hailey, and Ruby, in order of arrival."

"...wait, so, which one's the third colour—?"

Sable giggles. "Neo, she's three colors at once. Her name's a reference to an ice cream variety: strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate all in one carton. You might not have it on the world you came from, though."

"I mean, we have ice cream, but I've never known anybody to get that fancy with the flavours. Do you mix them all up together or scoop them in side by side—?"

"Side by side. It's one of my favorite flavors. She picked the name herself, though."

"How do you get more people in your head, anyway? Do you do it on purpose or does it happen by accident?"

She hums and smiles. "It can happen both ways. Maya was on purpose, because I was deeply lonely. The other three were more accidents, beloved characters from stories — or variants of stories — deciding they liked how I thought about their source material and moving in. It can happen lots of different ways, though."

"...characters from stories. Huh. Well at least that way you know them first. It'd be weird, I think, if you didn't know somebody and they were right there in your own head." He seems unsettled by the prospect.

She smiles bittersweetly and nods. "I knew some plural systems — that's what we call groups of people jammed into one head in my old world — that had to work on getting to know each other from scratch. It was hard on them, sometimes. We're lucky, in a lot of ways."

"Wow, yeah. So you're not, like born that way? Or is it that you're born with the talent for it but you didn't use it until later?"

"No way to know for sure, but my personal guess is the latter."

"Well. I like you and Ruby so far. Hope I get along with the rest of you too."

"You probably will," she says with a grin. "They're all sweeties, even if Hailey tries to hide it under snark sometimes, and Neo is a bit of a pranking gremlin once in a while."

"I guess you'd know! —you can all tell what each other is up to, right? You weren't confused or anything when you came in after Ruby panicked."

"Yep! We all share memories, unlike some systems, so there was at most a moment of catching up."

"So if I tell you Ruby's cute, am I saying it to her face, behind her back, or both?"

"A little of both," she replies with a giggle. "She really is, too. Oooh, and there she goes, blushing in mindspace."

"Awwww."

"Yeah, it's adorable. So, while I wait for Palla to return, tell me about yourself? What sorts of things do you like to do, where are you staying right now, what are your goals?"

"I used to split my time between Lily's place and Zithra's—she's a bee girl I met in the forest—but uh, now I don't." Awkward shrug.

She gives him a gentle squeeze. "As for me, I'm staying with Lily as long as she'll put up with me, and then I'm going to find various places to stay until the caravan comes and I can head to the city. Plan's to do some work there for a bit, get myself a set of tools, then come back out here and build a house. Along with lots of other things, hopefully ones that'll help a lot of people."

<Bit of a guess there, about where these perks are going,> Hailey notes.

<Even if they don't, we'll leverage 'em that way.>

"—I can take you to the city. I mean. Maybe not as safely as the centaurs can, but safer than going it alone, I bet. I haven't been all the way there, but I've gone walking in the desert and made a friend who lives in a tent by an oasis, she won't let us stay the night with her but I bet she'd let us stop for lunch. If you want."

She eyes him appraisingly. "Now that's a thought. How long do you think the trip would be?"

"Well, the way people talk about it, it doesn't sound like I'd need to sleep on the way there as long as I walked fast? Unless the witches fucked with me again and I got lost. But maybe it'd be harder to do that to two of us."