who will be coming?

[small_magics]

Aianon has made a plant in the open airless space above the surface of Thilanushinyel. It is a very, very large plant - some dragons will be attending the party, after all, even if Ansharil in particular is going to be assorted small things and stay on Sarion's person the bulk of the time.

The locals will be Sarion, her beloveds, their other beloved, the five conjured dragons (and their Bondmates, where applicable: Virgivere and Lissa), and Liselen - Magania has, as usual, declined, and so far no Bell party has featured Bell parents.

Amariah is bringing her boyfriend and spontaneous daughter and two of the spontaneous daughter's friends, as well as an Alethian instance of the Rupert template.

Shell Bell is bringing Pearl and Screwdriver.

Golden is bringing her usual large contingent, as usual not including her husband but including her daughter and daughter's grown fosterling (the other remaining at home) and his wolf, both mothers-in-law and one father-in-law, adopted siblings, staff members including the Joker and Nathan, and the children of the aforementioned.

Glass is bringing both wives, all three daughters, Kanim, and her cat. She invited Icarin and Valeria, but their parents are not willing to let them gallivant into other worlds unsupervised and had a scheduling conflict.

Stella's bringing a smattering of people including Alice, Anna, Sandy, Libby, Bridget, her college roommate Janine, and Lazarus.

Tab is bringing Aelise (but not Kers) and Luhan.

Etty is bringing only Nona.

Aether, likewise, brings no one but Celo.

Pattern comes with Ripper, Slipstick, Queenie, and Ghosty.

Aegis is accompanied by her four-bodied boyfriend, Merryweather, Whitlock, and Howlett.

Aurora comes with Brilliance, Lexi with her Device Persica, Agent Honey with her Device Adularia, and Beth.

Rose brings her husband and three children and her former apprentice, Luc.

Angela brings her husband, her four children, several of her friends, and some of those friends' children and grandchildren with and without wings. Keziah also brings a friend.

Juliet shows up with Soph, Minus, Red, Giles, James, Virginia, Minnie, Ike, and Val.

Cam brings Jellybean and Tilly and stops there.

And from unBelled worlds hail additional Sherlocks and Tonies, Darcy, Matilda, Pepper, and Eights.

Comments

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Not very talkative. He likes the computer games. He fixes food for himself, he'll eat what Jake conjures, he wanders around the island. He didn't register any opinions on colors or anything when I offered him a set of pajamas, so I made something up, but I did get him to pick out which bedroom he wanted. He seems to find it entertaining when I fail dismally at lying."

[yourheartstrings]

"Huh," says Ghosty. "Mm, one sec."

She dissipates; a short time passes, but longer than a literal second; she reappears—

[pythbox]

—accompanied by Corona, who declines to dance.

"What's it like when you fail dismally at lying?"

[her_imperial_radiance]

"My name is Kelly," asserts Elspeth. (Nope. It is not. It is very much not Kelly. At all.)

[pythbox]

...Corona cracks up.

"That's beautiful," he says.

[her_imperial_radiance]

"What's so great about it?"

[pythbox]

"You mean apart from being hilarious?" He grins and shakes his head; the grin fades. "It means you can't lie. Sounding all trustworthy all the time is one thing, but there are people who can sound all trustworthy and still be lying. It happens. You can't."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I can actually lie to people who haven't ever heard me say anything true before, but obviously most people don't fall into that category."

[pythbox]

"Right, yeah. And he doesn't. That's the important part. He's not going to give a fuck if you can lie to anybody else."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"What would he be imagining I'd lie about?"

[pythbox]

"Anything. Everything. How safe he is. Whether or not somebody's going to hurt him if he fucks up."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Oh. Well, I can't, and he burned the house down anyway."

[pythbox]

"...I'm not following," says Corona.

[her_imperial_radiance]

"He was going to be testing boundaries and so on, right? He burned down the house, and when I asked him he said he didn't have fun, so he wasn't just doing it for kicks. So I guess my not being able to lie convincingly isn't completely closing the gap in his confidence."

[pythbox]

"I bet it didn't," says Corona, "but I also bet it helps. And that's not the only reason he might burn the house down, anyway."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"What reasons am I missing?"

[pythbox]

"...I'm not sure if 'reason' is even the word," says Corona. "Just. Sometimes he'll do things that don't make any sense. He'll hurt himself or hurt somebody else or cry for days or break things, not because he's trying to get anything out of it, not because he decides to, but just because he has to do something and that's what came up. It won't all necessarily be destructive, either. I used to clean things a lot. The kitchen, my room, other people's rooms, whatever I could get my hands on."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I see."

[pythbox]

Corona shrugs.

"If he's like me. We still don't know for sure. We're the same cluster, but we're the only two of it so far. I'm more - fragile, I guess, than other Jokers, and we're pretty sure my cluster has something to do with it, but we're not sure sure."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"How much is known about the clusters, apart from that they exist and Glass can see them? I mean, I've been informed that I'm 'green', but I don't know what to do with that, either."

[pythbox]

"We know some things about 'em," says Corona. "Not a lot. There's only the one big one with all those Jokers in it, and then the rest of us."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I might be able to provide more insight if I'd judgesighted you or Felicity, but I haven't."

[pythbox]

"Yeah," says Corona.

[her_imperial_radiance]

She doesn't press that point, but: "Felicity mentioned his stepfather's name. It's not the usual unpleasant parental figure name."

[pythbox]

Corona nods. "It's stepfathers for us, fathers for the big cluster, mostly fathers for everybody else - all the ones with the 'usual unpleasant parental figure name' are in the big cluster."