"That's all we wanted to make sure of."

"If his, ah, prisoner-consort would like him squirreled -"

Sigh. "I'd want to talk with him about why he wants that."

"...presumably on account of having been prisoner-consorted?"

"I mean, if the thing he wants is 'to know that powerful people will use magic to protect him any time he asks', that seems useful, if he's like 'then the kingdom will collapse in disarray and it'll be hilarious', then, no, you've got to figure out coping mechanisms that don't cause succession crises."

"Are we also pretending the you isn't a you?"

"I don't know, I haven't met him."

"So are we assuming he's also off model as a useful attitude cultivation exercise, or not."

"Even if he's exactly like me I don't think I have enough information to predict what he'd want. Everybody was fairly vague about the situation."

Sigh. "Okay."

"If he wants to turn the guy into a frog I'm going to do that."

"What a surprise."

"I will try to unfrog him before anyone has a war over it. He could be a part-time frog, lets him keep his day job."

"I have fewer concerns about that."

"Great!"

"Do you actually know how to turn people into frogs?"

"Nah but I can look it up if no one who passed their Transfiguration O.W.L. appreciates the merits of this plan."

"He might not be able to keep his day job if you did it wrong."

"I bet I'd be better at Transfiguration if properly motivated."

"Why don't we wait and talk to the Findekáno and see what he wants. I take it if he is a lot like Kan he will be opposed to frog arrangements."

"Mm-hm. What about the Michael and the Rebeccas, are they weird in some way?"

"None of the Rebeccas were native to that world. Macalaurë feels that morality is stupid but does seem to care that his own prisoner-consorts have a good time, and stopped considering them prisoners once it was safe, so I am not sure there is anyone there on whose behalf a fight should be picked."

"...what exactly does it mean to feel that morality is 'stupid'?"

"That it produces proscriptions which no one who hadn't been mind-altered would reasonably care about, and failed to say anything about the problem they've spent the last two hundred years obsessively focused on, and altogether seems like a bunch of demands about the arrangement of deck chairs on a sinking ship. I think."

"So he cares if his Rebeccas are having fun for... reasons of personal taste?"