"Are you usually a terrible grouch when convalescent?"

"Yes. Awful. Be glad you've been spared so far. I apologize in advance if I get moody."

"Why, are you likely to snap at me or just - brood, be somewhat less effusive in your appreciation for all things Linya-related, what?"

"I'm not actually sure. I've never been simultaneously in the dumps and married before. I do snap occasionally, and brood, and moan, and sleep a lot, and have a general difficulty bestirring myself to enjoy things - these are all symptoms of a bad mood, of which convalescence is but one cause. Sometimes they happen by themselves."

"Noted. What's the prescribed treatment if I should observe this to befall you?"

"Er... I don't know, I've never had to deal with me. Ask Mother? Ask Ivan? On second thought, save Ivan for a last resort; I'm not sure I'd be pleased with his suggestions."

"Why, what would he do?"

"Dump a bucket of water over my head, on one memorable occasion."

"...I would think that would tend to make a bad mood worse."

"Yes, I'd think that too. It did at least briefly redirect my attention away from mopery. Opinions may vary on whether or not the cure was worse than the disease."

"Do you tend to come out of these moods on your own if left to your own devices? I have no desire to dump water on your head, but if it proves that civil methods don't render you palatable company..."

"I'm not in one now, so they are demonstrably impermanent. They last a while sometimes, but not for months or anything."

"For all I knew your cousin has been taking other suggestions from the same inspiration that led to excessively hydrating you, once annually for your entire life," she points out.

He laughs. "Thankfully, no."

"Good." She kisses his forehead.

He snuggles up contentedly.

Linya finds a snuggling position that leaves one of her arms free, and does some programming.

They can. Linya mostly loiters around their suite in case he wants to go somewhere and to keep him company, though she gets plenty of her own work done too, and does ask when it's time for her econ lesson if he'd rather she took the call in another room.

"Nah, 'sfine," yawns Miles. "Just as long as you don't get your convalescent husband on the vid, I'm sure I look absolutely pathetic, nobody wants to see that."

"You look tired, mostly," she tells him, kissing the end of his nose. "Which is striking compared to your usual. But all right." And she goes and turns the comcomsole so it doesn't include the bed and calls Tsipis, and they talk about fungibility and the parable of the broken window and the estimated production date for the physical casing of Cordelia's pen, by which time Linya optimistically hopes to have a serviceable software package set up. (There will, of course, be updates later.)

Miles cuddles a pillow and listens and reflects that he is absolutely the luckiest man alive.

The lesson cum status update lasts about an hour, and then Linya hangs up and goes back over to Miles to pet him because he is cute and pettable. "Really," she remarks, "the only thing stopping me from suggesting that we get married over again next week is that I can't ask him to be my Second. I like Cordelia but we don't have nearly as much to talk about, you see, so I've been dithering - and if my Second can't be related to you or something and this wasn't mentioned in the book, I don't know what I'm going to do."

"Technically the Seconds aren't strictly necessary - but it would be nice. Symmetrical. I'd pick Ivan for mine. The origin of the custom does suggest that the bride's Second shouldn't be the groom's mother, but fear not, the practice of the Second serving as substitute spouse in case the principal drops dead before the ceremony has been abandoned for at least a hundred years if I remember right. Um - perhaps you can find an excitable female optics engineer to have regular chats with?"

"The person from the holos company who answered my letter is named 'Jocelyn', which in dialects I have more experience with is unisex, and their gender didn't come up in the discussion of how your complicated nib might be made to work. Does it strongly suggest a gender here?"