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

[lifes_sake]

Cam looks up.

[newtimov]

"Oh, I was looking for my sister," Ike explains. "She is likely to show up and interrogate you if she notices that we are talking. But she does not seem to have done that yet."

[lifes_sake]

"Why is she likely to do that?"

[newtimov]

"She is very protective."

[lifes_sake]

"What, exactly, is she likely to expect me to maybe do to harm you?"

[newtimov]

"...Lots of things, none of which I think you are actually going to do, but there is a really long list, because I have had very bad luck with boys," says Ike.

[lifes_sake]

"Aw, that sucks."

[newtimov]

"So now she makes sure to intimidate anyone she catches maybe sort of slightly flirting with me, but I don't think she is going to try to intimidate you in particular because you are probably not very afraid of being punched even if it's by Val, but I think she will probably still glare at you a little just in case."

[lifes_sake]

"I am fully warded up, yeah. Is she unusually good at punching?"

[newtimov]

"I'm not sure if 'good' is the word. Maybe 'enthusiastic'. Also Sessiaki have iron bones."

[lifes_sake]

"Sessiawhonow? Are you one of the innumerable forms of Sunshine demon?"

[newtimov]

"Yes! Well, partially. Full Sessiaki also have scales and tails," he says. "I'm slightly more than half human. I have shiny fingernails, an iron skeleton, some human-toxic dietary requirements, and I never need a compass or a ruler."

[lifes_sake]

"That is an interesting array of features. Can I have a look at the fingernails?"

[newtimov]

"Okay," says Ike. He holds out his hand. His fingernails are, indeed, shiny - and a little smoother than human ones, and faintly opalescent.

[lifes_sake]

Cam takes his hand and peers at them. "Very cool. I'd think it was a deliberate aesthetic if you hadn't told me. How does the geometry thing work?"

[newtimov]

"I have a perfect sense of distance and direction, by eye and by physical orientation," he says. "The Sessiaki writing system tends to boggle humans because they don't see angle and distance automatically. But for example I can tell you that you're slightly taller than five-ten, about a sixteenth of an inch to be exact - heights are really interesting around here actually, with all the templates, your alts are mostly about five-four but very few of them are exactly the same as each other, and some of the other templates I've seen really are exactly the same across the board." He takes a breath. "And if I close my eyes and spin around several times I still know which way is north. Or, well, any direction. And if I were to walk around blindfolded I could tell you exactly how far I'd gone and draw the route on a map. Moving between worlds is always weird that way because it doesn't feel like going anywhere, but I am still demonstrably somewhere else."

[lifes_sake]

"Huh. Is your sense of direction freaking out about being in space?"

[newtimov]

"Not particularly. Most things are in space if you step back far enough," he says. "I don't have trouble with the moon orbiting the Earth or the Earth orbiting the sun, either. Actually when I was little it took me a while to get used to moving around in vehicles - I used to get horribly carsick, and I have thrown up on at least five separate trains - but it did not stay a problem for very long."

[lifes_sake]

"I would not actually have speculated that the moon would give you trouble. Do you generally track arbitrary moving objects? Tides in the Indian Ocean, tectonic plates, comets, particularly energetic whales?"

[newtimov]

"Only ones I can see," he says. "And I can pay more or less attention to particular ones. But I see dimension and distance with about the same immediacy as colour."

[lifes_sake]

"So other stuff gets in the way of it? How much stuff does it take to be 'opaque' to this sense?"

[newtimov]

"It's a visual sense," he says. "Well, partly. Mostly. One is... as though everything in my field of vision comes with little labels saying what the distances are between any part and any other part, and the other is orientation relative to known landmarks. But—" he starts to make a gesture, discovers that Cam is still holding his hand, goes very suddenly very pink, and continues after a short pause without continuing to gesture "—I don't orient relative to where something is, I orient relative to where I remember it. I can always find where we parked the car, but if somebody moves the car I can't immediately tell where they put it. If someone teleported my house three feet backward, I'd notice the next time I looked out the window or went outside, but I don't think I'd be able to tell right away. I haven't actually experimented with teleporting, come to think of it."

[lifes_sake]

"What about distorting lenses, funhouse mirrors, that kind of thing?" Cam asks. He appears to find the blushing very cute. "Also, happy to teleport you someplace if you'd like."

[newtimov]

"Distorting lenses... imagine looking at a ruler in a curved mirror," he says. "You can see all the tick-marks even though it looks like it's a funny shape. Visual distortions don't change the underlying dimensions, and they don't change my perception of the underlying dimensions. But mirrors are interesting, actually, because they're almost like those optical illusions where it's two faces and you blink and it's a vase. I see the real relative position of reflected objects, but I can imagine the relative position they would have if the reflected light had been travelling in a straight line through a transparent pane. There's, um, a science museum back home that has a hallway lined with two not-quite-parallel mirrors, and I used to stand in it and make myself dizzy trying to see all the imaginary relative positions of all the reflected Ikes."

[lifes_sake]

"This is fascinating. And the science museum part is adorable."