Etty nods slowly. "Makes sense."

Nona shrugs.

"Maybe I should pay close attention to when the sensation changes."

"What for?"

Etty decides to summarize the reason as: "Impatience."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"If it's giving me useful information about what's helping, with the cursebreaking - then I could do more of whatever helps," shrugs Etty. "If it's smart feedback, anyway, it might not be."

"What exactly breaks the curse, anyway? Or do you not know?"

"He said that if someone who has never loved before swears to love me forever, then the curse would be broken."

"...Do they have to mean it?" she wonders.

"He... didn't say. I suppose you could just try reciting a sentence to that effect, to see."

"...The spell doesn't like it," Etty reports.

"So I guess I have to mean it," she says. "...How do I mean it?"

"I don't know. I've never been in love before at all."

"Well, have you ever kept a promise?"

"Yes - of course. Little ones."

"How do they work?"

"Someone asks me to promise something - Carl asks me to promise to be careful walking in the rain, Annika asks me to have a book back in three days - or seems unsure about something I might do - the butcher's not sure I really only left my coinpurse at home and will pay him tomorrow, the neighbor's not sure I'll tell Carl about needing to repair the fence -" She swallows a little when she mentions her father. "And I say I promise, and it means that I will try particularly hard, that as long as it's in my control it will happen and that I think it is in my control."

"I don't think loving you is very much in my control," she says. "And forever's a long time."

"It is a very long time," agrees Etty.

"Didn't work," Etty sighs. "Not as - cold, though."

"I guess that's better?"

"I guess."