"It's very nice," he says, a little shyly. "You have good taste."

"I'm proud of my design."

"Good! Well, shall we go tell your mother you're all right?"

"Mm-hm." To the stairs she carefully carefully goes.

Adarin follows, absently creating little trails of sparkles to maintain his momentum.

She winces, the first time he does it; but doesn't say anything.

"Sorry," he murmurs. "I'd um, stop. But. I'm really sorry."

"No, don't stop, I get it. I remember."

"I mean, I wasn't... really going to stop, but I am sorry that circumstances mean I have to keep," handwave, "in front of you."

"It's all right. I don't want to go the next several years twitching whenever anyone does magic, I'd go insane. I'll fix it."

"Which I assume you know lots about."

"Yeah?"

"I mean, um. Yes, who wouldn't? There are times that I'm annoyed with myself for - stuff that I feel. When it's incorrect or unfair or even inconvenient. And it's - really quite cool that you can correctly identify the right things to do and then, er, go do them. And I don't mean that in a, a - patronizing fashion? I have seen how people don't manage to actually do things and it's impressive that you can just. Tweak yourself, figure out what needs to be done, go do it. It's a nice set of qualities." He shuffles his feet. "But um. My opinion of you should probably be obvious. Aheh."

"Just a little. But the exact breakdown wasn't. One hears repulsive little stories about curses broken by people who were impressed by the cursed person's beauty or something."

"I mean. You are beautiful, but that's - really not why, I couldn't have done it without the book-reading. And uh. I felt like a creep the entire time."

"Rhana wasn't wrong to suggest you read them."

"What I didn't want to happen was to read them, think you were pretty great, and then - not manage to break the curse. That would have been awkward and upsetting."

"Well, I wouldn't have been awake and making it extra awkward."

"Yeah but when you woke up in a hundred years I would feel obligated to let you know that I tried to break the curse and failed. So it would have still been awkward, the awkward would have just been postponed."

"Fair enough."

"It would probably be worse than just getting the awkward all out of the way, actually. I would have had a hundred years to freak out about it first. 'Oh no what if she hates me.'"

"You didn't learn enough to guess that I wouldn't hate you?"

"I mean. There's - reading about a woman who is likely to not hate you, and then seeing her in front of you, not hating you. Sort of. Different things, psychologically. And sometimes I'm stupid."