"Ah, nothing like a discrete number of political ambitions."

"I certainly could not have an uncountably infinite number of them."

"Not with that attitude."

He giggles. "Does taking over the universe as a benevolent dictator count as uncountably infinite?"

"Dunno, I sort of consider that a single ambition, but maybe that is influenced by the fact that I have that one since I was maybe nine or something."

He grins. "Well it is an infinitely large universe."

Snort. "But it's only one, that can barely hold all of Fenris' hubris."

"Is that so? I cannot comment, not having met all of Fenris' hubris."

"Apparently, it's hubristic to make a personal promise to solve all the problems that can be solved and then spend the rest of the eternity solving the remaining problems anyway."

He giggles. "It is! It is hubristic to do that! Do you have an angle?"

"Sadly, I think my best angle is a complicated one. It would involve convincing Felix that he should stay in the United States raising our sister. Then go to the Stormlands, join the army, fulfill my twelve years obligatory service and then run a political career that gets me enough diplomatic leverage with the Witchlands to smooth the relationship between the two. So we will hopefully finally have a united magical world."

"And I object to this plan because I want Fenris to be the one to stay behind. Also, I think the Witch-Queen that we met might be interested in that and maybe no one will need to spend twelve years in the army."

"Yeah, twelve years is a lot of time. And very—within the system, isn't it."

"You'd think that the skymages would make things easier for themselves."

"The time can reduced if you get married and have eugenically desirable children. And it's only four if all you want is the right to vote. But yes, it's a long time investment in a structure that I would ultimately want to reform."

"It's a somehow straightforward way to get political power, at least if you're a skymage."

"Yeah, I can see myself going for that if I'd been born a skymage." He wrinkles his nose. "But not if my father was a skymage."

"Why not?"

He squeezes Dayo's shoulder.

"He's an asshole and I'm pretty sure counterfactual me would not want to be part of any institution he was a part of."

"I can relate. I would specifically aim for a place where our grandfather didn't have much influence. But our problem with him was never about the institution he was in."

"Do you want a hug?"

"On general principle yes, but not because of this, I haven't lived with him for years."

"Well, the same could have been said about my mom and uncle."

Felix hugs him. Winged hugs are great.

Yes they are.