"Yeah, that's true. Did the Valar grab Cayaldwin when they got you -"

<They didn't. I suppose now that things have calmed down I will ask them to. And Minor wanted me to appear on his talk show...>

"It's weird that there is a Cayaldwin who is a teenage human wizard from 1802 and runs a vlog. Like, it's also weird that there is a you who is a teenage human wizard from 1802, but less weird?"

<If you'd met Cayaldwin under happier circumstances it might seem a better fit. Minor does remind me of him before the war.>

"Yeah, that's probably all it is."

<There might be other underlying differences - the alts of my father were sure that they wouldn't have done the things my father did - but I don't know. I am unsure how I am supposed to appear on a talk show when I can't talk, and Minor said morphing human would ruin the effect, any ideas?>

"Sign language, if you can load one onto your chip, and subtitles."

<Maybe someone who speaks one wants to summon me, I don't know how the chip would represent it.>

"Yeah, that'd do it too."

Minor is so delighted to get this scoop. He is possibly a little theatrical about it. Andalites have excellent artificial gravity; he steals Cayaldwin's notes and then talks to Cayaldwin himself once the Valar fetch him and then consults some Elf architects and builds a stunning space station with Earth gravity on this half and Lunar on this half and free fall gymnasiums in which modified Quidditch can be played. 

"Hi!" he tells his viewers. "I have such cool news. But first, remember that next week is the EU vote on escort laws. Call your representatives and tell them that escort laws don't keep you safer. And now, this is War-Prince Matirin-Ashal-Nelinfir and his brother Cayaldwin-Hashal-Firayar and they are Andalites from a dimension with hundreds and hundreds of alien species! And an Earth, where it's 2007 and they are in the middle of conducting a war with bodysnatching aliens."

He daevafied too. Seemed safest. Had a Fëanáro summon him. <Minor, I think that's an information density too high for broadcast journalism,> he tells his alt. 

<When we first addressed the people of our dimension's Earth, it was in the middle of a state of emergency; their world was at war. It is a pleasure to address an Earth safe from external sources of such horrors and having done away with them internally.>

"Andalites have really cool artificial gravity! Which means we have it too, because demons are awesome. And it's looking like Hazel's gonna be paused for a while. So I've made a space station out in an orbit nobody was using. Half has lunar gravity and half has Earth gravity and it does not have escort laws - it does have safe summoning laws, though, safe summoning is important. Its name is Gateway, and you're all personally invited to come live here if you're interested in helping with multiverse projects and with introducing aliens, and alien technology, to our world. Miranda and I are going to be running it."

<You should have told her that off-air.>

"Thought it was obvious," he sign-languages back. 

Butterfly is the only person watching this broadcast who will recognize the thing Matirin's tail is doing as 'giggling'. 

Butterfly doesn't think Miranda will object.

His text-to-speech is reading him a history of the Second Age for one of the variant Ardas. He has it muffled. 

"Which variant?"

"Midnight's."

"...set it so I can hear it?"

"Sure but don't ask me for context I haven't been paying that much attention."

"I have some context, he talks about it sometimes." And he returns to Transfiguration practice.

"About the decline, the historical consensus had it, there was much to say and little to explain. The Enemy was at this point exerting the capacity to cause crop failures at will, poison rivers, assassinate political figures, impersonate other ones, and engineer an end to the war that involved little direct fighting on his part. Extant literature focused on why he'd chosen this tactic, not how it had succeeded. Altacil's Look At What Happens argued that the Enemy believed his victims would languish longer in Mandos if they died at one another's hands; Yahavanar's History of the End concludes he was trying to prevent the Valar from intervening. It was in this context that The Final Years caused such controversy. The provocative mid-century history," intones the text-to-speech, "claimed that the structural and organizational collapse of the empire in the year 620 was more directly attributable to the death of the King's prisoner-and-consort than to-"

Theodore hits rewind.

The audio plays again.

"Uh," he says. "The fuck."

"- I actually kind of thought it might be something like that, I talked to Findekáno because, uh, that's what you do when your alt's boyfriend is aggressively hitting on you, and he said he 'got a defective one' -"