In his world babies just appear. In a past life he invented storks to go scoop 'em up. In this life (and before he'd realized the dreams of a past life were that) he landed by magical accident on his Arda, ended up dating the local Maitimo and Findekáno, dreamed back his husband from his first life and went to go find him and got approval not to drop the boyfriends, found out Melkor was smuggling servantmakers and got captured in the war against him and recovered and now governs federated Stork with his husband.

"How do they check if I'm a Bell?"

"I think there's a standard set of questions. I can write the network -"

He does that. Cor read about some Bell adventures and thinks he might be one. Midnight thinks so also.

I wish I had come to the meeting instead of just being on standby. Where is he now?

Shadow.

She pops in to just outside the palace and says she's there to see Cor.

They let her in.

"Hello. I was on tap if your conversation with the peal Maitimo you met needed a Bell but at the time it didn't seem to. We really should start waving Boots at everyone who drops usefully on an Arda just on principle. Is Cor short for something?"

"Corbelan."

"Do you know what I mean if I refer to 'the three questions'?"

"Yeah."

"Boots can check this sort of thing automatically with subtle arts without doing anything else but I have touch telepathy -"

Cor steps back.

"You're probably a Bell, congratulations."

"Huh."

Snort. "Do you still love me?"

"Why would confirmation that saving the world is a persistent tendency make me love you less?"

"Cause my alts fucked up with yours? I did not expect a no."

Hug. "It sounds like my alts fucked up too."

Hug.

Sigh. "Most of them wanted to just sort of execute Midnight. We objected."

"I mean, if you're going to deny my humans magical medicine because you don't want those resources anywhere where I command them - execution at least only kills the people you have a grievance with -"

"There are a lot of worlds deprioritized relative to others for a variety of reasons. Ardas usually get special treatment because they're diplomatic known quantities. This one was instead unusually difficult."

"I understand that. But still."

"It would be aggravating. Well. You have a Bell and we're not much inclined to listen to standard Maitimos wanting to limit a Bell, although we should have Boots check him for mind magic just in case."