And are somewhat subdued at breakfast.

"What's wrong?"

"Ana was in Joanna's room this morning just looking like -"

"Oh, does she spring badly?"

"Guess so, yeah."

"If I'm really lucky I'll start reseasoning soon and be able to catch the natural transition into summer. I don't spring all that bad though."

"Hala permasprings here and she's just cuddly with the kids and goes out all the time."

"Lucky her. Well, the mild springs, not the permanency."

"I wonder if, like, Isama has mild springs to match Susanna never ever wanting children and Kantil has mild springs to match Aaron being like 'I guess maybe they'd be fun once they were older?' or if matching doesn't work like that."

"I guess we'll know more when your kids are older but I suppose we could get something out of a chart now."

"If Joanna grows up wanting seven like my parents, or, or fifteen, she can just have them."

"Who wants fifteen children?"

"Joanna doesn't want children at all, since she is two, but Ana springs badly and we wondered if it corresponds."

"Ooooh, that'd be interesting."

"Miranda is moderately indifferent to having children at all but doesn't mind four or five if Minor wants that many, which I think could reasonably correspond to my thinking three would be a fine number unless something amazing like magical hybrid babies becomes available."

"Minor wanted, like, one or two, before Amentans made it clear they approved of that."

"Five sounds nice. Which is the average, and the wizard average is two, so I guess that matches - but your parents must be really on the high end for wizards and I don't think my parents spring terribly badly -"

"Not horribly, no, but stopping at three like we were expecting to have to would have been really rough. Is Timothy planning to have kids?"

"Probably one or two?"

"Aitim waited until seventeen, and they could've afforded it sooner, that's about as mild as you get."

"Which has whatever implication for Kan and Fredrick too."

"Fredrick's not married but he's twenty, lots of people aren't married at twenty. Dunno if he wants kids."

"Blues have milder springs in general, the right reference class might be 'on the low side for a blue' instead of 'a striking outlier for an Amentan'."

"How's that?"

"Blues could afford as many as they wanted before population controls, but if you had ten, they didn't inherit much. Powerful blues who kept their families in line with their assets had grandchildren with a much better life expectancy. And that meant both that ones with rough springs were likelier to get their family killed and that mild springs were an appealing trait in a partner, while no one else was particularly selecting on that when they could have as many as they wanted."