Isabella Marie Swan ⚚ "Aurora"

Bella's checks for templates other than herself, Brilliance, Matilda, Libby, and people attached to them like her and Lexi's parents or Libby's Chris turns up nothing - no friends, no villains.

Before Libby contacts her, she gets visitors.

"Shell Bell! Juliet! Wow, how long has it been for you guys?"

"At home, no time," says Shell Bell.

"Longer for me. I can get to Milliways anytime, but Jane is really fucking broken," says Juliet. "Not years, though, just a few months, and for a while nothing I urgently needed offworld help for came up. I finally had to force the door to Atlantis to get Shell Bell so we could go to Yggdrasil - the Jarvis there lost connection - and then we swung through all the other Jarvised worlds to quarantine a certain transmissible spell from Sunshine, and then we figured as long as we were together and Shell Bell can door near anywhere we'd stop here. For your charming company and also coins. Next is picking up Glass and trying for the world where Aegis went."

"Yeah, sure," says Aurora, "you can have coins, no problem - I'm not down much time, more than before but only about a week. It turns out I have a Matilda and also a Libby, but my Libby is less than impressed with me, I think, Juliet, can you run and get yours?"

"Working with Shell Bell's doors instead of Jane means the best way to do that without losing any time is going to your Libby and opening a door there," says Juliet. "Will she be up for that?"

"She said she'd call me today when she wasn't busy, I can bring you guys," nods Aurora. "If you don't mind waiting around a little."

"Well, in the meantime we could maybe meet your Matilda? Is she busy?" asks Shell Bell.

"I'll check."

[Hey, Matilda! Guess who's here!]

Brilliance is probably the first person to notice Rainbow's Janepoint broadcasting the message, "error 112358: inferior pattern recognition".

[Hey Brilliance!] says Jane. [Amariah is fixing Alethia's afterlife! It's a big job. She wants ten-pointed coins.]

Aurora goes home before Brilliance does. She wants an aura; she's admired all the others enough to feel out of place by not having one. (Even Sarion does now.)

She asks Jane to let her know when Brilliance comes home to Rainbow.

And when she gets this notification, she says, +Hey Brilliance.+

There are now one dozen Bells.

They and most of their friends are all here on Planet Rainbowsand II, to celebrate the addition of Sarion, the elf one, and Aurora, the one with a sister.

Bella goes to bed, happily exhausted. She can make stuff! Not a lot of stuff, not yet, but still. She will be able to solve Brilliance's food problem and if she can figure out how to scale up she will be able to solve the world's food problem.

The next day is, alas, also a school day. She bids Brilliance good morning while she brushes out her hair. +Hey you.+

Bella spends much of the flight from Phoenix wishing that she had not been able to convince Lexi to come with her.

Of course it would have been pointless if they didn't both go; the idea is to give Renée freedom of movement, and she'd be nearly as likely to stay home with one daughter as with both. So Bella worked on Lexi, and Lexi agreed, and they presented a united front, and now Bella has to actually move to Forks. At least there's only another year and a half before she can abscond to college and go wherever she wants. (She hopes Lexi will come too, but of course there's no guarantee they'll go to the same college, even though their school grades are about comparable.)

They're in all the same classes here even though they weren't in Phoenix. This is just as well; they naturally divide introduction duties between themselves, explaining each other's nicknames as need be to anyone who refers to the one of them while addressing the other ("No, she goes by Bella." "It's not Alexandra, it's Lexi.") and swap interlocutors when one of them has an interest that matches better up with the other sister. They're going to wind up sharing the same circle of friends, but by the end of the day it's clear that Jessica and Mike are going to be mostly Lexi's, and Angela and Eric are going to be mostly Bella's, and that's assuming they stick to the people who most friendly-like introduced themselves on day one. They aren't allowed to pair up in bio with each other ("you should make friends here!" the teacher encourages), so Bella gets Angela and Lexi gets a random boy who doesn't seem to want to be friends outside of class. In gym, Lexi makes Bella's excuses for her, and Bella is allowed to sit out. Bella wouldn't have wanted to try to explain her issues with gravity and her own limbs without an obviously un-self-interested twin to run interference. She probably would have had to bring in her freaking medical records. Bella spends gym class on a mat stretching and doing bodyweight exercises while Lexi plays basketball. Lexi's not exactly an athlete, but she's not an ambulance ride waiting to happen either.

At the end of class, Bella offers to run both of their paperwork to the office when Lexi says she wants to catch a ride to Jessica's house and get caught up in Government. Bella prefers to work out of the textbook and doesn't want to accompany her; she'll hit the office then drive their shared beat-up old-new station wagon (thanks, Charlie!) home and Lexi can get a ride home in time for dinner from Jessica's mom.

Bella folds up the mat, and a pair of scuffed old playing cards falls out. She picks them up - what, did someone play Go Fish on this mat and never bother collecting their jokers? - pockets them to toss later, and puts away the mat.