"Yeah? What's she like?"

"Obvious blatant elay. Not remotely gloomy."

"Both of those," Sarelle agrees. "She wears all her enthusiasm on the outside. I do the opposite."

"She sounds fun," says Loel. "Bring her by for a visit sometime if you want. I'm not keen on crowds lately, but it does get lonely being all by myself in this gigantic house day after day."

"You could hire somebody. This place is huge, if nothing else it'll get dusty."

"I have... complicated feelings about that," he says. "Well, not about the dust, but if it gets to be too much for me to handle I can hire somebody to come dust every so often. I don't know, I just feel better about myself when there's nobody else picking up after me."

"I thought having servants around was weird at first when Kiri inherited. She got used to it way quicker."

"I made sure they were all being well-paid and confirmed that there were enough tasks going around to justify them, there didn't seem much point to fretting about it after that beyond making sure I said please and thank you."

Loel shrugs. "If it gets to the point where I can't do all my prime stuff and still wash my own clothes, then maybe I'll hire a servant. But I'd rather not."

"If you persist in not showing up at the palace, and particularly if you're willing to wash your clothes with magic, you can probably manage it a good long time."

"Of course I wash my clothes with magic, what else is magic for?"

—Ekador laughs.

So does Sarelle.

And Aleko.

"I hardly expected otherwise from you, but some primes have considered magic to be more of a special occasions thing."

"Nah. When I'm not busy with anything else I take walks on the bottom of my moat. Magic is too fun to save for special occasions."

"I agree completely."

"As do I," says Sarelle. "Even if it were possible for me to stop using magic all the time, I would not."

"I haven't found that many casual applications for mine, besides making pretty things out of paper, but I'm not opposed to them."

"Yeah, you got the short stick in casual applications. You do make very pretty paper things, though."

"...Impromptu paper tents for garden parties? Can you make it do colors, and if so can you use it to cheat at drawing?"

"Colour," he says. "Interesting. Something to try, certainly."

"Or, you know, not cheat at drawing, if you can draw. Can you draw?"

"Not as well as I'd like."