I am not quite ready to write off my whole society as having no good people. But. Yeah.

Primly: You can be good and believe that kind of thing, I suppose, just not as good as Idaia.

That I'll give you.

You two are going to give me a swelled head.

You're reckless and crazy, does that help?

Anyway, you can see why Nelyo didn't want to repeat the whole thing but Idaia was great.

Idaia is reckless and crazy but it almost always works out well in the end, and she is definitely great.

You too, for the record. You aren't even in love with me and you're being great about it.

What, you being bisexual? If you ever cheated on Idaia I'd tear your scrotum off and shove it down your throat no matter who it was with, but you're not gonna do that so it even more doesn't matter.

We don't actually have the word 'bisexual', that's kind of interesting.

You don't have a word for it?

We have lots of words for men who sleep with men. None are friendly, none distinguish between, like, exclusively so or 'because that way you can have reckless torrid romances that don't get anyone married'.

What about girls? Not that Idaia or I are, but you specified men and now I'm curious.

It's still illegal. It's less of a big deal, for weird cultural reasons... there are lots of assumptions specific to men - girls get 'oh, you're unsatisfied and just need a marriage arranged right away', which can be much worse as an actual consequence but comes with fewer nasty nicknames. Girls who sleep with girls because no risk of accidental marriage is also very much a thing, I know a bunch of them.

I won't ask after names because it's not actually relevant to my interests and I probably wouldn't accidentally out them but why take the risk. Anyway Idaia and I aren't being 'great' about it because she's in love with you, we're being like we are because this is one area our culture was less toxic about.

I'm glad to hear it. I take it there weren't laws. Was it just not a big deal at all?

It varied. Some people cared about it, some people didn't, some people didn't mind gay people but objected to bisexuals.

People.

Anyway, about the nicest reaction you'll get here is from my family and it's basically 'we love him anyway, can you not bring it up'.

Lovely. Well, I can refrain from bringing it up.

Thanks.

...Is this why they were so okay with 'suddenly, marriage'?

I mean, in both cases they were operating under the rule 'we love Tyelcormo so whatever he does we'll try to avoid making him feel badly about it.' But I doubt they thought 'oh, good, he married a girl, that means no more embarrassing us'. I don't know. I haven't exactly quizzed them about it because I feel like it'd just cause hurt. I like my brothers. I don't want to drive a wedge between us.

...Fair.

Like, Nelyo makes an art form out of being empathetic and supportive towards everybody, and if what he's secretly thinking beneath that is that I'm disgusting and a liability then I think I just - don't want to know.

...I think I wish I'd known more about how the people in my hometown thought about me before push came to shove.