a profusion of whistles

[self_composed]

"I didn't wind up interacting directly with Micaiah much," says Stella, after returning home from a certain visit. "Does he deviate from template significantly? He didn't have wings, so I imagine it was by less than Angela deviates from my template."

Comments

[self_composed]

"I'm sure the Bat would be thrilled to learn that the terrorist attacks were all her fault," says Stella. "What do you think would happen if I dropped the Joker off in Angela's world on that continent full of Edori?"

[truthwright]

"I don't know," says Kas. "He might like it. He might not. He wouldn't start blowing up Edori."

[self_composed]

"That's good, because they sound like very friendly people and I would not like to be responsible for their exploding."

[truthwright]

Kas laughs.

"You're cute," says Petaal.

[self_composed]

"Thank you."

[truthwright]

Petaal lets out a butterfly-sized giggle.

[self_composed]

"Am I still scary?" she asks.

[truthwright]

"Dunno," says Kas.

Petaal turns herself around until she's facing Stella directly.

[self_composed]

"Boo?" attempts Stella.

[truthwright]

Petaal giggles again, fanning her delicate wings.

[self_composed]

"The daemon thing is very nifty," remarks Stella. "I wonder if I'd have an owl like Amariah's, if I had one."

[truthwright]

"I bet not," says Petaal. "Not unless you were a witch."

[self_composed]

"What d'you think I'd have instead, then?"

[truthwright]

"Path wanted to be a firefly," says Kas. "Or a dragon."

[self_composed]

"Ooh, a dragon," muses Stella.

[truthwright]

Petaal turns into one to demonstrate, a tiny round-bellied green-scaled creature with a long thin sweep of a tail and a short arched neck and batlike wings folded neatly to her back.

"Dragons are fun," she asserts.

[self_composed]

"Looks like," Stella agrees. "I take it all these possibilities for what a daemon winds up as - mean things? Correlate with things?"

[truthwright]

"They mean something about who you are," says Petaal. "I never really got that. But I guess that makes sense, because we asked the alethiometer and I'm never gonna settle."

[self_composed]

"Do you know what her version of Charlie and Renée have? It doesn't say in our book."

[truthwright]

"Her dad's a wolverine," says Petaal. "I don't think she said about her mom."

[self_composed]

"A wolverine, huh. It's surprising that your world's wound up so recognizably similar to mine - I'd expect all this daemon-having to affect the course of history very sharply - but then again I suppose similar worlds isn't that much more of a surprise than there being versions of me and Whistles in worlds that are any amount of dissimilar."

[truthwright]

"It's weird that you call us Whistles," Kas muses. "I mean, it makes sense from you and it's kind of cute, but it's weird."

[self_composed]

"Well, you don't have name consistency even to the imperfect extent that we do," says Stella. "Alice's middle name is Whistle because I used that for a code name to refer to him anonymously and gender-neutrally when I thought I was having coffee with my nemesis, even though I turned out to be having coffee with my future personnel officer."

[truthwright]

"Like I said, it makes sense from you," says Kas.

"But maybe we should name ourselves too," says Petaal.

"If we can all get together and talk about it sometime," says Kas.

[self_composed]

"I tried it once to see and I can only force the door to places I've been before," says Stella. "But that still means I could get you and Alice and the Joker all together now, if that's enough for a quorum."