"You're married? Ew."

"I would not have been very enthusiastic about the idea when I was six either."

"We were much older than six," he agrees. "Who's that?" at the strange animal.

"This is Zag! He's my Zigzagoon. I didn't name him that, Renée is not very creative and just sort of asked him what his name was and that doesn't get you a lot of variety with Pokémon, but it's his name now."

"I see! The Valar used to say Valinor had every kind of animal but I guess they will have to stop saying that now that we've found the multiverse."

"He's not an animal, he's a Pokémon, we don't have animals and they sound weird."

"Huh. What about them sounds weird?"

"A lot of them are too small and they just look kind of wrong and none of them are plants or rocks or things."

" - I can hardly argue. What's the world you're from like?"

"Well, we have Pokémon. They're for fighting and keeping as pets and making milk and eggs and riding around and generating electricity and gardening and all kinds of things, it must be weird not to have them. I only have this one but I got checked and I can have six, most people can't have that many, so I'm going to have six when I'm older and travel around."

" - what do they check to see how many someone can have?"

"I went to a place with rentals and tried holding onto as many as I could and I could do six! Then I gave them back."

"I mean, what usually goes wrong if someone tries holding onto too many? Which things predict being able to hold on to lots of them? What does holding on to them constitute?"

"Oh, there's a little bit of a psychic thing where the 'mon knows it's yours at least for right then, and they'll do what you say - or at least think about it, they're not all really obedient - and if you try to add another one it doesn't work and if nobody has it for too long it'll go wild unless it was really really tame. I don't think it runs in families or anything - Charlie can do four and Renée can do three -"

"Huh, that's interesting."

"Zag used to be Renée's but he likes me more." Pet pet.

("Zig," says Zag.)

"He is fascinating! Do Pokémon live forever?"

"No. There's stories about ones that do but not regular ones."

Nod. Frown. "Maybe once the Valar have set off their competence cascade they can do something about that."

"That'd be nice." She snuggles her critter. It nuzzles her.

Miranda shows up. She aims her wand at Bella and says, "Plectere." Then she sticks her wand back in her hair. "Hi!"

"Hi," says Bella, feeling behind her head at her new pigtails. "I'm Bella. This is Zag he's a Zigzagoon you don't have them."

"We don't! Can I pet him?"

"Sure!"

He will also pet Zag!