Pom Filigrous Tyrox of name registry Blue Piggyback Dentition 18, 4-bodied Staid, 580 years old, bespoke polyp farmer.

Mmondi Tenak Peridity-Chandrus of name registry Yellow Peninsula Sugarbubble 8, 2-bodied Vail, 177 years old, liberal Kumruist officiant and Mother.

Vvonda Tenak Peridity-Chandrus of name registry Peridot Improbable Gumstuck 12, 3-bodied Vail, 16 years old, student.

Vvonda!

Fift blinked. It was Vvonda, all right. They’d never met, but ze was sure ze’d seen that towering figure when ze’d spied on Shria over the feed (never too often, never too long). And how many sixteen-year-old Vails named Vvonda could there be in Foo, anyway? If Shria’s other bodies were still hanging out with Bluey and Vvonda . . .

Vvonda was standing by a food rack, chewing on a stalk of cellroot and laughing loudly at something Foon Pelix Nathandine was saying. Vvonda was big: broad shoulders and a smooth, round belly. Two heads taller than Fift, a head taller than Shria, and on top of that ve had a mane of bright blue hair teased into a complicated pattern, an inferno spiraling into the sky. Ve was wearing an open jacket and closed pants in some slick, impenetrable, shiny yellow material that looked made for fighting; vir large, plump breasts with dewy green nipples were bare under the jacket, and crossed by a bandolier full of daggers, pens, and undersized gardening tools. Vir skin was shaded in a gradient, purple at vir scalp to orange at vir hands and belly. In short, ve looked brash, commanding, and bone-slicingly fashionable, broadcasting vir readiness to fight or fondle you, holding vir own at a party among adults. Sixteen or not, Vvonda had none of the “I’m just practicing, I’ll get this right in a few decades” air that clung to Fift. If ve wasn’t latterborn, Fift was a six-bodied Midwife.

Could ze just send vem a note? Ze sighed, remembering Smistria (who was trying to tell a joke, gesticulating as the logistics coordinators turned away) taunting Frill (who seemed to be enjoying vemself now that the chatterdance was back to its first or second phase) on the way over. Who was ze to get this Vail to take zir call? Ze would have to do this in person.

Making zir way through two crowds at once, ze began to have flashes of vertigo and body-flicker. A red anonybody that had been heaved through the air by its fellows and a flying tray of steaming turnabouts came at zir head in the same moment, and ze almost collapsed and rolled in the wrong body. Maybe that would have been for the best—cutting straight past the anxiety to the abject humiliation.