Amber and Zidanya are still out when I walk through the door of our home, Khetzi hovering outside. Well, that or—no, actually, with the Home Key in my pocket, they’re definitely still out. I make a point of asking Khetzi if it would be appropriate for me to invite them in or offer them anything, even water, and they look sort of horrified and inform me that the sentiment is appreciated but no, and Vonne has a fit of snickers on the couch once the door is closed.

“I’ve never seen a Brightshadow have an emotion before! That was great!”

“A Brightshadow? Is it because they’re shadowing me, and they wear the white-and-silver?”

“Yeah. They?”

“They.”

She nods once, concentrating a little, then flops back onto the couch. “Wow. This is super comfy.”

“This whole apartment is super comfy. It’s kind of ridiculous, actually.”

“Why?” She looks around, sort of quizzically.

“Well, I mean. The layout and general configuration is just good design, but the size, the comfort everywhere, the shower, the kitchen, the preservation runes? It’s just so…”

“I guess it’s bigger.” She sounds unimpressed, and I raise an eyebrow at her. “I mean! It’s great! It just doesn’t seem all that special other than size? Oh! And the runework in the walls and floor and ceiling, obviously. There’s good work there.”

“Please describe these runes.”

Vonne’s reaction is a lot more emphatic than mine. I turn, head tilting, to give Sara what’s probably a really weird combination of a good-natured eyebrow-raise and a scowl. I don’t get far in doing that, because Vonne, on the other hand, literally tackles me to the ground and stands over me, snarl echoing across the room. It’s shockingly loud, terrifying, and adorable. Less adorable, and slightly worrisome, are the three mandalas that manifest, indistinct but rapidly firming up, in a triangle of circles around us.

Her tails are still amazingly fluffy-feeling, and now there’s five of them, each of them almost as big as she is.

Right, I need to intervene. “Stand down, please! Vonne, down, it’s Sara, she’s a teammate, it’s okay. Sara, please don’t do anyth—”

I can feel Sara’s magic fire like a tingling against my skin. Vonne’s spells gutter out with a drawing-in feeling as though they’re imploding, and she staggers, her snarl turning into a high-pitched whine of pain.

“Are you under any duress, sir?” Sara’s voice bears its usual flatness, a casualness startling in context.

“No! Vonne’s a friend, we came back here to talk about stuff and maybe cuddle.” The awkwardness twists at me when I say the last one, but I ignore it. It’s not like Sara isn’t well aware of how much time I spend snuggled up to Amber or Zidanya; even leaving aside sex, I tend to be in physical contact with one or the other whenever possible. And Vonne is currently entirely collapsed across me, feeling lighter than she has any right to be, her single tail twitching. “What did you do, and can you undo it?

“Fundamentally? Light, Sound, Intrusive Whisper, and Wrest. I decline to elaborate in front of a stranger.”

“Nyii.” Vonne’s voice makes a series of unintelligible noises, and then she manages to lift her head and look around. “Ow.”

“You alright there?”

“Mrrr.” She squinches her eyes shut harder, grumbling.

I get my legs under me, under us, and stand as steadily as I can. “Couch is pretty comfy,” I say by way of explanation, and lay her on it. “Got flashbanged, huh?”

“My only weakness,” she groans, smiling a little. It looks pretty forced, and honestly it’s way more grimace than smile, but I feel like I should commend her for effort. Her fur is flat, and she’s flattened, with the exception of her head, pressed down to the couch. “Anyone who’s ever seen combat.”

Okay, definitely a commendation for effort; that was a joke. “Hang tight. Sara?”

“Sir, I would like to confirm that you are not compromised.”

“Oh? How, wait, never mind, I know the answer to this question.” I stand up, and then glance down. “Do it. Obviously, if I am compromised—”

“—I will kill her immediately and then remove the effects.”

“No, you will not!” Both of my palms hit my face hard enough to sting. “Why am I surrounded by people who always choose murder? How would we interrogate a corpse, Sara?” There’s a pause, and I sigh, shoulders coming down. “Sorry. I really shouldn’t be yelling at you. I apologize for that.”

“If you are compromised,” Sara says after a moment, “I will hand this sed over to Lady Sheid to remonstrate with. This is better. Thank you for your feedback, sir.”

There’s a whole layer of meaning in those words that I’d really like to be able to unpack, but I settle for grimacing and nodding. “Do the thing.”

Sara makes a sort of sniffing noise, and her hands come together, palm to palm. The weight comes off of most of Vonne’s body, to judge by the fur, but her head falls back down to the couch with a whump, jaws snapping shut. “Sit,” my companion snaps peremptorily, pointing to a chair on the opposite diagonal corner from the occupied couch-segment. She pauses a moment, after I obediently take the chair, and turns towards Vonne. “I will not harm you, beyond the harm already done, if you genuinely do not have the Magelord under duress, but I cannot take risks.”

“Mrh.”

Vonne doesn’t sound particularly offended or hurt, and she’s got only the one tail out, curling around the part of her torso where her fur is pressed flat, so I figure everything is about fine as it’s going to be. “Do you need me to do anything?”

“Relax as best you can.”

That’s not particularly hard. For all that I just got a full-on flaresworth of shock from Sara’s chosen manner of revealing herself, I’ve had an absolutely wonderful second shift, with the thought of conversation in good company to fill the rest of the time until I went to sleep. And how did Sara hide herself, anyway? I’m fairly confident that she was barely a meter, at most, from where Vonne flopped onto the couch to test its comfort, and neither of us noticed her in the slightest.

“Efficient.” Sara startles me out of my reverie. “Have you learned a new meditative technique? Thank you for your patience, miss.” Her hand waves vaguely, and an unlocalized feeling of fullness that I hadn’t even noticed fades away, leaving behind an equally unlocalized mild ache and a slight headache.

“You must be Sara!” Vonne doesn’t seem the slightest bit fazed or annoyed as she sits up. “You have a really gentle touch with that spell. Was it Phantasmal Force applied with Guiding Intent? That takes a lot of precision! And you’ve used so many different spells so fast. But you’re only in your second tier! You’re really good, aren’t you. Hi, I’m Vonne!”

“Thank you.” Sara’s face loses its usually expressionless mask, blinking a few times. “Vonne. That is a nickname?”

“Yeah. My full name is Gavonne. But I only let people I don’t like call me that! It’s too much like making people brag for me, cause it means sage, like someone who’s real wise and smart. I earned it a bit over three hundred cycles ago and I’m still not used to it, cause I had a different name before that!”

Sara’s quiet for a few moments. I do the conversion while I wait; three hundred cycles is around six years, a fifth of a gigasecond. She’d been alive eight or nine times that long under whatever her previous name was; no wonder she still wasn’t entirely used to it.

“You are correct with regards to my spells, but I would prefer not to discuss them in detail, since you do not have a need to know.” Sara’s got a very little bit of inflection to her voice, which I think might be unusual, given what I’ve gotten to know of her in the last few days. “How did you make the deduction?”

“Oh, it was easy! I mean, okay, you’re second-tier. That means you can’t be using anything higher than a two-component amalgamated spell, and obviously you can’t be using most of the first-order spells I can think of because of course it was multi-located and invisible, which rules out most of them, and just a little bit squishy, which rules out all the rest. I mean, it pretty much has to be either pure Force magic, right?”

“Why not Pressure?”

“Well, I mean, if you were third-tier, sure! But you can’t do Pressure with Guiding Intent when you’re in your second tier, even if you’re a genius, the System just won’t let you combine metamagic that high.” I note Sara’s reaction, a minute flinch at the word genius, and smirk a little. “You could do it with a rod or a bound spell, and I mean, rod is a term of art, it could be anything, but I have pretty good Manasight and I think I’d have seen it. And I knew you had to be using Guiding Intent ‘cause if I flexed just one arm a little, that arm and only that arm would get more force. But it could have still been Force Bands instead of Phantasmal, only as far as I know, nobody alive knows Bands, ‘cause Mama Vix came up with it after she died and nobody she’s taught has made it out.”

The words pour out of Vonne in an uninhibited stream. Sara leans forward fractionally in her seat, folding her fingers over each other. “Miss Vonne, I am glad to make your acquaintance.”

“Me too!” Vonne giggles, bright and cheerful, as she bounces onto her feet. “You don’t look like you’re a hugger. Do you do hugs?”

“No.” The answer is immediate, almost reflexive. “I prefer not to engage in physical contact,” she says more slowly, as though expecting a rebuke.

“That’s okay!” Vonne more or less tackles me with a hug. “Here! I’ll hug Adam. He likes hugs, so just…” She releases me, giggling again, more quietly. “I’m excited. You’re so young, and your fundamentals are so good.”

“... how old are you? I do not know how to estimate the age of sed.”

“Mama Vix says it’s not polite to ask a woman her age, especially not an older woman.” Vonne tries for prim, deliberately, and almost gets it. Her mien dissolves almost immediately, and she drops back onto the couch, clearly enjoying the way she bounces almost back to her feet when she does so. “Younger than Adam! That’s all I’m saying.”

“Your own spellwork is very well-formed.” She delivers it in an even, casual tone. “Slow and impractical, but I would not care to oppose a ritual you had constructed.”

“That’s sed!” There’s a sadness to Vonne’s voice, but it’s quickly banished. “Oh! Can you show me again how you did the spell-linkage with Whisper and Wrest? That was really good!”

Sara pauses for a solid five seconds, visibly thinking about it. “Yes. Afterwards, I would like to learn Force Bands, if you can teach it.”

“I’ve never tried.” Vonne’s eyes light up with glee. “This is going to be fun. New friends, playing with magic. Best kind of evening.”