and my ears will listen

[truthwright]

Time goes by. Shura's mother lets her cut a cloudpine branch, and she and Helen go flying together.

Helen celebrates her eighth birthday by baking all her favourite people a cake again. And then she goes away with Kas, to Iceland and Russia and back by way of Alaska.

When they fly in, Kas on Petaal's cloudpine and Helen on her own, Helen is wearing blue jeans and a pink T-shirt.

Comments

[carillons]

Kalavar turns into a turtlecat.

"Like this?"

[alicornucopia]

"Like that," says Nicoa.

"And - I don't know if it means things, what if Kalavar isn't even a bird? Could you make her not a bird by doing not-witchy things? I never heard of anybody else trying," says Shura.

[carillons]

"What if I'm not a bird?" says Kalavar. "What then? I don't think I'm not a bird. But I don't know what being a bird or not a bird feels like, we're not that old yet."

[alicornucopia]

"But all witches' daemons are birds," says Nicoa. "If you're not I don't know what that means."

[carillons]

"Me neither," says Kalavar. "But if I'm not then I'm not, and that's just how we are. We won't know until I settle. If I do."

[alicornucopia]

"Are you really a witch," Shura asks slowly, "or just - a kind of peculiar that can do some witch things?"

[carillons]

"I don't know!" exclaims Helen. "I think I'm a witch. I can do all the witch things I've tried, so far."

[alicornucopia]

"Well," says Shura, "you do more witch things than Petaal. But not as many as the rest of us."

[carillons]

"Is 'wearing silks all the time' the kind of witch thing you mean? I don't think that's the kind of witch thing I mean. I mean the kind of stuff that mortals really can't do. I can do all that."

[alicornucopia]

"It's a witch thing. I guess maybe it's not the same kind," says Shura dubiously.

[carillons]

"I can do the kinds of witch things that are about being a witch," says Helen, "but I don't always decide to do all the witch things that are about witches deciding to do stuff some particular way. Because - if I just feel like doing something some way, and it's not hurting anybody just by me doing that, then that's important. Even if I don't have a really good reason, or if people think I'm weird, it's important that I want to do the thing."

[alicornucopia]

Shura mulls this over.

"I think," she says after a while, "you are probably pretty lucky that you have your dad and not somebody else's if that's how you are going to be."

[truthwright]

(Kas grins.)

[carillons]

"I am!" says Helen. "I love my spinach."

She smiles at him.

[alicornucopia]

"Okay, well," says Shura, "if I don't have to understand or think it isn't weird, I guess that's okay then."

[carillons]

"Okay," says Helen. "So do you want to go flying?"

[alicornucopia]

"Okay."

Shura hops on her cloudpine; Nicoa hangs from it as a little white cottonball of a bat.

[carillons]

Helen lifts off higher, and Kalavar takes off as a dragon and then keeps pace with her as a condor.

Whee.

[alicornucopia]

Ranata is at the clan lands a few hours later. She finds Kas before she runs across Helen, and lands near him.

"Helen all better?"

[truthwright]

"Yeah. She talked it out with Shura and they went out flying."

[alicornucopia]

Ranata smiles.

And then she says, "So. Sue."

[truthwright]

"Yeah. Sue," says Kas. He sighs.

[Where do you want me to start?]

[alicornucopia]

[I don't know! I don't know enough to know what the places you could start might be.]

[truthwright]

[All right,] he says, [well - Sue. Sue is me from another world. I don't mean another world like the kind you already know about; I mean that every world you've ever heard of is all part of one collection called Alethia, and there are more whole collections out there. Sue's is called Peace and there's only one world in it. Me and Isabella found a way to get to different collections - we just call them 'worlds', we didn't realize worlds could have more worlds in them until we'd already been calling them that for a while, I know it's confusing. And in different world-collections, there can be different versions of the same people.]

[alicornucopia]

[...How did he get here?]