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

[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."

[newtimov]

Ike giggles.

"You can teleport me somewhere if you want!" he says. "That would be interesting."

[lifes_sake]

"Sure. Should we find your sister and get her attempt at intimidating me out of the way?"

[newtimov]

...Ike giggles harder.

"Sure!"

[lifes_sake]

Cam makes sure his hold on Ike's hand is secure and smiles and ports them both to wherever Ike's sister may be.

[newtimov]

They appear in midair, outside the space plant, with nothing below them but the planet of Thilanushinyel very very far away.

Ike squeaks.

[grabsthebutt]

An indistinct glowing figure with massive indistinct glowing wings, swooping through the air toward them from about ten feet up and thirty feet forward, brakes suddenly. The humanoid silhouette drifts to a halt standing upright in midair at the edge of conversational distance, with her wings spread out flat to either side and rippling gently to keep her in place.

If those darker shapes blurrily visible in the glowing white form are what Sessiaki skeletons look like, they have a lot more differences from the human kind than just being made of iron.

Then the glowy white stuff around that skeleton shimmers and contracts slightly, revealing a very human-looking person with a definite family resemblance to Ike. She's wearing jeans and a T-shirt; the glowy white stuff seems to flow through the material to reach her skin, and stops being a window to her skeleton as soon as it is all the way through.

"Hi, what the hell?" she says.

[lifes_sake]

"Hello, you must be Ike's sister. I'm Cam."

[grabsthebutt]

"Val," says Val. (She is not wearing her nametag.)

[newtimov]

"He is sort of slightly flirting with me," Ike says helpfully. "I think."

[grabsthebutt]

Val snorts.

[lifes_sake]

"I didn't think I was being that ambiguous about it."

[grabsthebutt]

"You have to be pretty direct before Ike will stop looking for alternate interpretations," says Val. "Try not to make him cry. I punch people who make him cry, and I think I might get kicked out of the party or something."

[lifes_sake]

"I don't think I have ever made anyone cry. Also, it wouldn't be automatic for you to be kicked out, it'd depend on how mad I was and how much Juliet likes you and whether you seemed likely to be otherwise disruptive."