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

[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?]

[truthwright]

[Sue can just do that.]

[alicornucopia]

[What does this have to do with Isabella having gone missing?]

[truthwright]

[She went to another world. One none of us had been to yet - there's a lot more of us than just me and Isabella and Sue and Aegis, I think there was thirteen of Isabella or something and a dozen or so of me, and one more of Isabella found us and our Isabella was one of the ones who went to her world to say hi. And... there was this way we had of keeping in touch in between worlds, keeping time moving the same way in all of them, and it breaks sometimes if something happens to Aegis, and Aegis was one of the other people who went, and it broke while they were both there. Without that, time passes all differently in different worlds; that's why it took two minutes for Sue and sixty years for us. So Isabella is in some other world, I don't know where or what's happening with her or even how long it's been for her - but she's extra super immortal, like me, that's one of the things we found in another world, so I know no matter what happens she's gonna be back someday.]

[alicornucopia]

[Why did you never tell me about this before?]

[truthwright]

[Because she never did, and I don't know why she never did, and if she wants you to know then she can tell you when she gets back but if she doesn't and I tell you anyway then there's not much she can do.] He sighs. [But now you've met Sue, the cat is pretty much out of the bag, so I might as well tell you the rest.]

[alicornucopia]

[How much are you like Sue - or how much is Aegis like Isabella - why are there several of people? Are there several of anyone else?]

[truthwright]

[There's several of you; the Bells all have the same set of parents,] he says. [The Jokers - that's me and my alts - mostly do too, but some of us have different ones, or don't have any parents at all. Speaking of which, Helen happened because of some magic we got from another world. I used it to make myself pregnant, but I didn't specify another parent, and I guess the magic just picked one. People are... more like their alts than they're like anybody else. It's different for different sets. We don't really know why; one of the Bells has magic that can see stuff about alts and things, but she can't see that.]

[alicornucopia]

[...Are there more Helens?]

[truthwright]

[There's two. One named Damaris, one named Yseult.]

[alicornucopia]

[But they have their mothers.]

[truthwright]

Kas covers his face with his hands.

[alicornucopia]

[I'm sorry,] says Ranata helplessly.

[truthwright]

[I love Helen so much, but - I had a kid because I couldn't stand waiting, fifty years of waiting, I needed to be doing something that wasn't completely about how much I miss Isabella, and, and shit.]

[alicornucopia]

Ranata hugs him.

[truthwright]

Kas hugs back. He cries on her a little.

[alicornucopia]

[So - what are the other worlds like?]

[truthwright]

[I barely remember, it's been so long. Um... Sue is from a couple hundred years in the future or something, I forget what year it actually is for him, guess there's less of a difference now. Nobody else has witches or daemons or armoured bears except us. Samaria, where Damaris is from, has angels - humans with big fluffy wings - Damaris is one, so's Angela, her mom.]

[alicornucopia]

[That's incredible.]

There has been some contact with the shades of other worlds for decades now, but the dream-based communication method, plus, in most cases, the language barrier, has limited how much cultural interchange there has been. The average person, such as Ranata, knows almost nothing about the rest of the sheaf.

[truthwright]

[I guess.]

[alicornucopia]

[Can't anyone else do what Sue does?]

[truthwright]

[Not so far.]

[alicornucopia]

[Goddesses all.]

[truthwright]