"Let me know when you want to go. Uh, if you'd like anything from home, I should do that first, so we don't have to make lots of trips."

"Oh - we weren't expecting to have a chance to pack -"

"I mean, I don't know if we're going to be in trouble with your country or anything, but if not I can take you back there and you can pack. Why didn't they - why didn't they let you - if the rule is that people get kids when they contribute and - doctors and counselors are important -"

"It was a - series of complicated - mistakes," he says, "you probably don't want the whole story -"

" - I kind of do but it's really not my business - you're clear on that I'm not going to take this away, right, you're here now and have the right to have your child and nothing can change that..."

Oranges blink at hm.

Mr. Orange says, "She got out of medical school when she was seven and went on an eight year service track with our House to get a permission at fifteen and eligible to re-up and be set for another at nineteen, but shortly before spring four years ago we were audited to see if we'd be fit parents and I'd taken a patient's stash and hadn't turned it in yet and they found it and disqualified her and it took a year and a half to appeal and she was allowed to start over but it was too late for an eight year track to get anywhere, so she switched to an independent clinic with better hours and money but no permissions and we started trying to switch Houses, and we found one with accelerated double tracks for couples and were on one of those but the head of House died and the successor lost some important political mess with the other blues and didn't have as many permissions to hand out and voided our contracts and we've been trying to find anything else and people keep telling me to divorce her and find someone else because I'm younger but -"

"...that's. Not how the law works in other places. Just so you know."

"We know other countries are different. We tried to swap somewhere but no one would take it."

Nod. "Okay. Why don't - why don't we go back so you can pack and I'll check if anyone's sold the house on Afterlife that my family would sort of have a claim to and buy a new one if that one's taken and then you'll be all set."

"Thank you."

He takes them back.

She's scolded for leaving work and making her co-worker finish a procedure by herself and scurries home with her husband rather than talk to anyone from the clinic. They pack.

He checks whether anyone has laid claim to the house in Afterlife that corresponds to the one in Tirion his family vacated in going off to war. No one has. He takes them there. It's in a little town on a bright clear mountain lake. Fifteen thousand people and a cobblestone street and a train station. 

The house is spacious and exquisitely pretty and for some reason not dusty at all even though no one has been here in years.

"Will this do?"

"It's so beautiful," breathes Mrs. Orange.

"Thank you. I - I never lived here exactly but this house was built to replace the one I grew up in, which was destroyed in the war. It's all yours. Oh -" tap tap. "For the language. Afterlife doesn't have many laws, just - be a good neighbor, pretty much - but they censor violent or sexual or distressing content on the internet. It's obnoxious - you won't get in trouble for anything but they might delete, like, crime novels, if you try writing online crime novels. And Elves don't have a nudity taboo but we have a thing about loose hair, we usually braid it."

"...we don't write novels..."

Mr. Orange starts braiding his hair; Mrs. Orange's is very short.

"Then you'll be fine. I just wanted to make sure you knew everything so it's not surprising. And so you don't, like notice how bland all the journalism is and wonder what they're hiding - they're not, this is just a very bland place." Giggle.

"Thank you."

"Is it only fiction, should we - not talk about where we came from -"

"I think you should talk as much as you want about where you came from. Maybe not to children."

Nod.

"I'm going to tell the neighbors you're here and recovering from a stressful time and they will probably arrange to bring you meals while you get your feet under you, is that all right?"

"That would be so lovely - thank you -"

"Of course. I - I'm really glad you asked me."

Mr. Orange smiles tentatively.

Smile. "I'll stop by in a week to make sure you're settled in okay?"