This has the desired effect: across the clearing, a man shimmies inelegantly out from a tangle of wire and spindly struts of living bone. He ruffles his hair, which was sticking up funny and is now sticking up funny in a slightly different direction, and strides over to join them with a look of deep amusement.

God isn't wearing his own cloak, today. The one now hanging in his wardrobe is filigreed with delicate whorls of bone, ostentatious to a level he'd take as snide commentary if he didn't also like the look. Great to wear when working miracles, but damned inconvenient when he's tinkering with inadvisable portal tech alongside the guy who still calls him Sasha.

"It's always both," he says, and then: "Glad you made it."

There are layers to his tone, to the shape of his eyes: fond, approving, and some great and lingering distance beneath it. Some deep-etched undercurrent of melancholy, some edge of the coolly implacable being Ford met when a boy lost his hand. There is a tension here beyond easy definition.

And yet he tips his head like he's introducing two friends over a pint, and to anyone not really looking, it could be sold as true.

"This is the guy I've mentioned. When it comes to ghosts and otherworlds, you won't find better."

Not unless Cassiopeia climbs out of the water next, and the genuine likelihood of that hangs over them all like a suspended sword. Hard to say who could climb out of the water next, if the squids upstairs keep playing hardball.