"Yeah. Have you tried shortbread, last time Cam was up here he made us shortbread and we got around to trying it. It's more of a cookie than a bread."

"I have not. Should I?"

"Yeah, it's nice." Kib grabs him a piece.

It's a little hard to talk around everything that happened but they manage it all right. 

Eventually:

"- one-sentence summary?"

Pause. "New Bell from a world with scary mind control, lot of people got scarily mind-controlled until the Valar stepped in."

"New Bell okay?"

" - turned into a demon for the invulnerability to the kind of mind control, Ambela is singing to her a lot. The Maitimo from that world also daevafied for the protection; he's a fairy."

Nod.

"Everybody'll be okay, just a bit shellshocked for the next while. And we're checking, now, so it can't happen again."

"Okay."

"I love you."

"I love you too."

Does Aydanci want a more complete explanation later -

Yes; suspects he can process it better than Kib and will then be able to dispense further details-on-request.

"The world has aliens called Yeerks. They're slugs; they enter the brain through the ear canal, read the person, learn enough to impersonate them flawlessly, and then control their body. The new Bell - and her sister, this one had a twin - were both controlled when they entered. They imported slug friends and took control of Milliways. Maitimo and I got lucky, they just murdered us, osanwë means the impersonation trick wouldn't work. Everyone else they infested. They paused the outside worlds so they couldn't help us. Eventually Timothy made a deal with his to secretly start time running again, and then the Valar intervened and got everyone freed. We think they left you alone because they were short personnel."

"What was the deal?"

"I think he convinced him that we could offer Yeerks better living arrangements than the ones they were getting themselves with the planetary invasion model, promised to do that for all Yeerks, promised that if his Yeerk didn't cooperate he would instead given an opening kill the whole species - and he thought he'd get an opening, eventually, even if it took ten thousand years - and promised not to make his Yeerk personally leave - he'd gotten attached - until better accommodations were in progress. Only everyone else found it very hard on our nerves being around the still-Yeerked Timothy so my alt talked him down on that one."

"So there's still one of them around."

"Timothy's sure of him. And I think the demons are routinely checking."

"And if he touches Kib I don't give a fraction of a damn what Timothy promised," continues Aydanci.

"Of course."

"Probably a bit obvious."

"Whole time I was dead I thought they had him and -"

"No - we've been fine -"