Milliways Again

[her_imperial_radiance]

It lurks. Oh how it lurks.

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[prima_sequentem]

Libby takes the middle of a different couch.

"So," she says. "There was a pamphlet, but it didn't go into the kind of detail I'd like. Does someone want to explain the situation?"

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Orfeo imprinted on you," says Elena wearily. "I keep telling Jake to tell Her Majesty to put imprintable guests somewhere else, that it's not sufficient leeway that people can just change packs if they don't want to be mixing with imprintable people, but no one listens to me. And Orfeo looked out the window, and, well. He's like Elspeth except with how he feels about people instead of facts. So you can tell what that did. And wolves are not meant to be all by themselves, so unless you want to move here, or someone - realistically me - can come back with you to wherever you're from, Orfeo's choices are feeling like he's got a few big holes in him or feeling like he's been put through a shredder."

[prima_sequentem]

"I don't plan on moving here," she says. "I have a lot of friends and it would be impractical to bring them all. How would you feel about coming back with me?"

[her_imperial_radiance]

Elena digs the heel of her hand into her eye. "Well," she says witheringly. "If you make me decide between sending my brother to another world packless - packlessness having driven the occasional determined lone wolf to suicide - and staying home, obviously my friends, and our parents, and our half-sisters, and my job, and so on, cannot begin to rate."

"Elena," says Orfeo soothingly. "It wouldn't be that bad. No one else who's gone lone had an imprint, that's got to change things."

[prima_sequentem]

"It's also possible that this is the sort of problem that could be fixed by throwing sufficient magic at it," she says thoughtfully. "Most problems can, in my world. But you'd have to apply to my empress for that; I don't have the resources. And I don't know that it would help, it just seems likely."

[her_imperial_radiance]

Elena frowns at her knees. "Imprint bonds are immune to magic. The problems with packlessness might not be. I don't know what kind of magic you or your empress have to throw around."

[prima_sequentem]

"Short version: Some people from our world can generate coins that grant wishes. Coins come in power levels from 'get that stain out of the carpet' to 'terraform Mars'. Bella has a hundred or so of the most powerful kind and can easily get more; I've got one."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Good for Bella. This the kind of thing she's likely to spend time on?"

"I'm sure I'll be fine either way," says Orfeo.

[prima_sequentem]

"If I ask nicely, then yes."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Okay. That's good. But unless she can do it now, or, you know, before you go home, I still have to come along at first. Packlessness is not a joke."

[prima_sequentem]

"A short visit to another universe isn't a huge deal," she says, not without a certain amount of irony. "And no, we left all the big coins at home, to appease your very safety-conscious princess."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Of course you did," sighs Elena.

"...So I do get to go with you," Orfeo says. "Right?"

[prima_sequentem]

"Yes," Libby says fondly. "Yes you do."

[her_imperial_radiance]

Orfeo grins. Elena groans and mutters under her breath.

[prima_sequentem]

She grins back.

"In the meantime, why don't you tell me about yourself?"

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I'm youngest of four," says Orfeo agreeably. "Born during the Volturi control of the wolf population, in the Volterra village; our dad's a wolf and my and Elena's mom is his imprint. So I'm half-Quileute half-Italian. We stayed there even after Her Majesty took over but when I activated me and Elena joined the Imperial pack to have more stuff to do. I run the village paintball games - it's not a big deal, Chiara can take over - and I have field medic training but it's only applicable for wolves and you shouldn't set me at a hurt human, and I can speak Italian natively, and I won yellow gold in the Ultra Olympics for wolf division wrestling once, and white gold in mixed middle division long-distance swimming twice. I'm on the holiday decoration committee. I make really good risotto. I'm decent at chess and great at knowing which way is north and lousy at singing."

[prima_sequentem]

"I don't speak Italian," Libby says thoughtfully. "I should learn it."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I mostly just use it to talk to Mom," says Orfeo.

[prima_sequentem]

"It's nice sharing multiple languages with somebody, though. Me and my aunt speak English, German, and French."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"I know... maybe a few hundred words of French, and I could probably fake more than that if I had to," muses Orfeo. "There's a stationary branch of the Imperial coven in Québec so I hear it in my head and we go there sometimes, but I've never systematically tried to learn it. I don't know a lick of German. Except, like, 'ja' and 'heil' and 'schadenfreude'."

[prima_sequentem]

Libby giggles. "Not a bad start. You can learn them with magic when I take you home," she offers. "Although I'm not sure it wouldn't be more fun teaching you the long way."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"It sounds like you do a lot of stuff with magic," he observes.

[prima_sequentem]

"I didn't use to. Then Bella happened," she says, smiling. "And now there's a palace on the moon, a rapidly expanding city on Mars, and little things like installing a whole language in somebody's head are starting to look comparatively trivial."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Huh. What do you do while she's doing all that?"

[prima_sequentem]

"My specialty is personnel," she explains. "When I said I had a lot of friends, I may or may not have meant I run an extensive international organization full of useful people of all varieties. Not unlike your empire, from what I can tell. Whenever Bella needs someone to run the Mars immigration office or her magic bank or something, I find the right person for the job."