Jade, who had been listening from three feet away with the patient intensity of a four-year-old who'd learned that adults said interesting things when they gather up, slithered forward.
"Are we going somewhere?" he asked.
"We're planning," Alex said.
"Planning to go somewhere?"
"Planning to plan."
Jade considered this with the expression of someone who found the concept of meta-planning deeply confusing.
"Uncle Granite says planning is just doing things slowly," he said. "He says you should do the hard thing first so you stop being scared of it."
"Granite said that," Alex repeated.
"He says lots of things when he thinks we're asleep," Ripple added helpfully. "He talks to himself. We hear everything."
"Everything," Siddy confirmed, appearing from nowhere in the way he'd apparently perfected over four years. "He also says Mama has good instincts but bad risk assessment and that's why he might soon get grey fur. Uncle Granite doesn't have grey fur but he says it's coming."
