many people move here to start families

[cross_and_bow]

Bella is hanging out in a Jarvis - the familiar one - handwriting a nonaggression proposal-slash-bribe. Has to be handwritten. Damn fussy demons. At least it's okay for her to conjure rather than personally harvesting the weird ink she's supposed to use.

Comments

[cross_and_bow]

"...Bath Lady can glow and turn into Shower Dude. Apparently what they're wearing is tracked separately. I don't really know what to make of that."

[keyed_up]

"Well, look, if they were in the crystal ball they'll be important but that doesn't mean they have anything to do with me - why don't you pastwatch me -"

[cross_and_bow]

Bella squints at Soph, then shrugs and moves her pastwatching focus.

"Nothing if I look for you a month ago," she reports. "No results, like if I was looking for the Tooth Fairy."

[eversomuchfun]

"Track backward from the present," says Sherlock.

[cross_and_bow]

Bella nods.

She does.

"Here she is with us in Canada, there she is in my bedroom with the bunkbeds, there she is sorting through her tacky jewelry -"

[keyed_up]

"Hey!"

[cross_and_bow]

"And here she is looking in the fridge but apparently not finding anything she likes, and here she is reading a school copy of The Great Gatsby, and - thirty seconds before that there's no her, no bunkbeds, no tacky jewelry, no Great Gatsby. Looks like she popped into existence with all her stuff an hour and fifteen minutes ago."

[keyed_up]

"No - no before that I was on the phone with Barb and before that I was - what did I - before that I was doing my math, and before that you picked me up from school and complained about me not being able to teleport without spending a coin every time and I said you could just give me more coins and you said maybe if Jane weren't down - and - and before that I was in school, I got peanut butter on my shirt but Carrie loaned me this one -"

[cross_and_bow]

"An hour and fifteen minutes ago the room was how I remember it. But let's see if I can track backwards from when you appear and see what made you."

[keyed_up]

"Our parents made me! You brought a sample of me to that party where Jane was doing gene sequencing and I'm your sister!"

[cross_and_bow]

"Nope," says Bella absently, tracking backwards almost frame-by-frame.

The view shifts, dizzyingly, and she's "followed Soph" to something that doesn't look like Soph at all.

[pythbox]

It looks glowy and green, and surrounded by worried-looking monks. The monks appear to be hurriedly casting a spell.

[cross_and_bow]

"That glowy green-ness you saw in your crystal ball," says Bella. "There's a lot of that, and there's monks around it, casting something. I'm gonna skip back to the beginning of the ritual and pentagon the language they're casting in..."

[keyed_up]

Soph is shivering, in spite of the fixed temperature, and looks desperately at Sherlock.

[pythbox]

The ritual was set up in a hurry, and concerns the safety of something called "the Key". Most of the monks do nothing but chant, "The Key will be hidden. The Key will be safe. The Key will be protected."

And then the spell ends, and the glowy green light winks out, and the monks clutch each other in relief.

[cross_and_bow]

Bella reports a translation of the words of the spell.

And then she goes on watching the monks in case any of them are going to conveniently explain what just happened to each other.

[pythbox]

Nope.

Instead, two minutes after the spell went off, they were all casually slaughtered by Bath Lady.

[cross_and_bow]

"Bath Lady has some serious strength and she killed everybody who cast the spell a couple minutes after they were done," reports Bella.

[eversomuchfun]

"That's going to make it difficult to question them about it," Sherlock observes.

[cross_and_bow]

"Yes. Another reason to be upset Jane's down, I guess we didn't have enough." Bella nibbles her lip. "- I know you're conveniently immune to all kinds of things," she says to Soph, "so you're not a mint and you've never been to Alethia, but what did you get in your fake memories when I presumably checked out your counterfactual daemon and coin color?"

[keyed_up]

"...G-glowy green," says Soph slowly. "And a - a pretty bird, I didn't know what kind it was."

[cross_and_bow]

Juliet conjures up one of the Alethian books of daemon identification.

She spends another square on reproducing Soph's counterfactual daemon in illusion form.

She looks through the book, silently, swiftly, following the identification key.

"Shiny cowbird," she reports.

[keyed_up]

"...And?"

[cross_and_bow]

"Cowbirds are like cuckoos. They lay their eggs in other birds' nests and expect the other birds to look after them like they belong there."

[eversomuchfun]

"Or perhaps," says Sherlock, "to put it another way, they are laid as eggs in the nests of foreign species and are dependent on the host family for sustenance and protection until they grow to adulthood. Two hours ago you did not have a sister, dear Juliet, but now you do."