They'd gone into the basement, and into the basement's basement, and then through some steam tunnels, and then it got pretty Unity horror game for a bit, and then they'd gone down a long ladder and come upwards into this.

"So like, we had an island in the basement," Chimmering said, in her level best at summary.

"I think it's more like your house was this place's basement!" Cheyin offered. "You've been hiding away in the whole haunted-house gimmick for a long time."

"Oh bite me," half of S/V said. "The haunted house was great. I thought we ALL stopped doing island stuff. Like, we ALL went to customized personalized interiors. It was fun! I was a haunted house! You were--uh--"

"You never even visited me after that! It's a garden plateau. Sunshiny hanging gardens, very cottagecore. It would have done numbers on instagram. A million followers, and a sponsorship deal."

"Sounds lawn-gnomey," S/V growled. "It wasn't enough you betrayed us, you went full gnomecore--"

"I don't actually remember why we broke up?" Cheyin asked.

"I think it depends what layer you're asking it on?" S/V asked. "The problem with existing on several interconnected layers simultaneously is cause and effect gets real fucky. It's like, who came first, the chicken or the egg? But on one layer the chicken is laying the egg and on the other layer the egg is laying the chicken and they're both pretty bad at laying so are either of them going to come no matter who's topping? Have you ever fucked an egg?"

"Oh!" Cheyin did a real serious kinda finger-snap into a gun-finger. "They make those now. Eggs you can fuck."

"You could always have fucked an egg if you were brave enough."

"But have they made an egg that can fuck you?"

"Yeah, you know, those little, vibrator things that go up inside you, squirp. Just jam it up in there." S/V pantomimed it unhelpfully.

"Mm, bad idea, too much sugar in jam, you don't want that in you. You'll get an infection."

"Maybe we want an infection! You don't know! This is why we broke up. You never supported us in getting exciting new infections."

"So like," and that was Chimmering interrupting, "are we doing islands again? S'that what this is? S'that why we're up here? Is it islands now? Is that the theme? I wasn't even here for islands when y'all were doing islands."

"Well," Cheyin said, diplomatically, "some of us are getting back into it, if you want to phrase time like that. We think it really helped with the sense of community. Imagine how much fun you could have getting mad at the HOA. I'm just asking give the islands a try now and then."

"Ugh," S/V said, with both heads even. "Ugh, fine, we can sub-instance on this permutation too. Is that what you want? To have us create a dozen more semiotic structures so we're easier to reference so your stuck up friends can kill us? Triangulate our inviolable i-am with expanded reference points to inject destabs? We're already getting so much co-opted form-pressure on our down-layer incarns from you and your pals' mytheochains. We used to be on the same SIDE of that sort of thing. The whole, you know, universe thing."

"You did start considering omnicide seriously."

"Omnicide's a serious topic, should we consider it lightly?" One half of S/V asked. The other added, "The idea of it makes me feel pretty light-hearted, I won't lie." "That's my heart too, don't fuck with it too much." "See, if you want to fuck an ovoid, you fuck a heart, now that's an organ you can do some fun stuff with."

"Look," Cheyin interrupted, "we're inviting you to play islands with us. It's pretty simple. Do you want--"

"Yes! Obviously we want to play islands with you again. God. Duh. Of course we're playing islands with you again."