"That's a very good question. I want to have been less of an idiot yesterday. I need – 

– well, it doesn't matter. Has your staff figured out how far we're behind?"

"Quarter million, but we're optimistic about fixing it quickly. You're the person best equipped to do it, by optimizing your spell usage and getting as many Fabricate castings out as possible. They pointed out that you shouldn't be spending seventh circle spells on plane shifting in and out of the demiplane, we should get you a cleric for it. I think you should probably also hire a secretary capable of keeping your schedule and helping optimize things like that, so you don't have to do all of it yourself. And they want to explore interplanar fabricate trade, and see if we can establish something with the elemental plane of earth."

"There was also some discussion of - your spells refresh when you sleep, so we can make truly enormous amounts of money by giving you extra days here and insistently allocating spells for fabricate. But there are, you know, costs to that one, and we should think about how much we want to deploy it."

"What I should do is give the demiplane an entrance – I've been avoiding that for security reasons – and then I can access it by teleport and we can use the cleric somewhere else. Are there any fifth-circle clerics we can get who we haven't been using? Do you know how much I'd make if I stayed here and fabricated things until the convention resumes?"

"We're going to arrange for at least one fifth-circle cleric of Kofusachi, and make plans to construct a warehouse in Tian Xia dedicated to silk. I expect there are more we could get if we wanted them, really. If you literally did nothing else... around a million, I think, though it's difficult to account for prices continuing to go down."

"A bit over a month for me. That's not so bad. My staff won't be happy, though."

"I imagine not. I'm not necessarily saying you should do it, depending on what else you're doing."

"The teleportation circle team can run without me for a few days, if it has to – and I should step out for updates at least once a sidereal day in any case. For my other projects, it'll probably help. I'm behind on everything because of the convention." 

She looks out the frost-covered window, frowning.

"Yeah, alright. You should probably be out several times tomorrow, I suspect they'll end up needing you for more logistical things. But if you want to take a month in here, you can take a month. You have to bring the children, though. And make the demiplane bigger, because it's too small for them to spend a month in here right now."

"And here I thought we were trying to fix our our horrifying financial shortfall." 

"We are. You'll make more, in the long term - even the quite short term, really - if the demiplane is a place where you can spend extended amounts of time without going insane."

" - no, that's dishonest, and you deserve better. I mean, it's true, and I stand by it, but it's not why I said it, no. I said it because I am worried you are trying to do penance by spending a month of your life being miserable about the riots for no reason, and that sounds not only terrible for you, it sounds terrible for everyone else, too. But you're welcome to argue the point if that's not what you're doing."

"I don't think it's best for the children to keep them cooped up in here for a month with just me and the nurse, even if I do make it bigger. I'd prefer it if they could visit, of course, but I really don't think my sanity is at risk."  

"The children spend the vast majority of their time in the company of servants right now. I don't think it's healthy for them, and I don't see that losing access to the grounds is worse for them than barely spending time with their parents. Really I think we should rework our entire schedule so that we're consistently aging at the same rate as them, and have them in the demiplane probably a good two thirds of the time, but that's a different conversation. Ask them, if you like, whether they want to take a vacation with you for a month in the demiplane, and let them out on your next stop to the fabricate warehouse in Alexandria if they change their minds, but I think they will jump at the chance."

"I don't expect you to lose your hold on reality. I expect you to become tired, and despairing, and sloppy, and to make mistakes you would not have made if you had taken better care of yourself."

I can take care of myself once I've taken care of the rest of the situation I've caused – is what he wants to say, but doesn't seem likely to reassure Naima. The truth is – 

"There is absolutely nothing in the world I want more than to spend a month working on pure magical research without having to think about or speak to anyone involved with the constitutional convention. Which is why I'm not at all sure it's what I ought to be doing." 

"Do you have any reason to think it's not what you should be doing, besides the fact that you want it?"

"...the persistent fear that everything's going to explode again the minute I take my eyes off it?"

"...okay, that makes sense. I don't think it's helpful, but I can understand it."

"I think that to the extent that things might blow up again, that is Catherine's responsibility to deal with, not yours, and everyone else is on the lookout for more problems in the city now, too. Some things, like the legal proceedings involving convention delegates, you ought to have some involvement in, if possible. But you shouldn't spend four days stressing about them and then come back to the convention even more stressed out than you were before."

"The argument I want to make to you is that you matter quite a lot to me, and shouldn't be neglecting yourself and needlessly making this process more rather than less painful, especially when the less painful things are what other people actually need from you. You began this conversation by saying that what you need doesn't matter, and this would be wrong even absolutely nobody else depended on you having what you need. The argument that I think may be more convincing to you is that you will be much worse at running the convention if you run it while neglecting your needs and as stressed out as humanly possible. You will make more mistakes, and be less patient, and less thoughtful, and less wise. I didn't tell you to do this because I wanted you to suffer, I told you to do it because I thought you were the only person in the world who might be able to pull it off. But you only might, Elie. This is the sort of battle that requires one to be at their very best, and therefore it's of vital importance to everyone that you take care of yourself while you do it, insofar as that's possible."

"I'm not trying to punish myself. Besides, I managed to cause the events of the day before yesterday on the a full night's sleep. I'm perfectly pleased to spend a month in the demiplane if that's what everyone needs from me, but this isn't happening because I neglected myself, and I'd like to be very clear: providing for my own comfort won't stop it from happening again." 

"No, you're right, it won't. But I'm afraid your ability to handle it will get worse, if you do nothing else. And anyway, I..."

"...I'm really really glad that you created the demiplane. I don't think I have thanked you enough times for it yet. I don't actually want you to be out of communication for three days, after you have the conversations you need to have tomorrow. But I'll bear it, and I'll visit at night, because it is what everyone else needs, and I think it is what you need, too. But - I do also want to have a conversation about how we should use it going forward. I am worried about the structure of our lives in general, I'm just - only bringing it up now because Ishani said something and I haven't been talking to anyone enough to realize that we should rework our entire schedule to account for the demiplane, and rework the demiplane to make full use of it. I don't have to have that conversation tonight, if it isn't what you need, because I do think that you are doing something extremely important, and I do think that it is hurting you, and I would want to do whatever I could to make it bearable even if didn't, in fact, matter to anyone else. But we should have it at some point."

...He has no idea what he has to say to get this point across.

"The thing that is hurting me has already happened. It is happening now. It is going to keep happening no matter how much time I spend in or out of demiplanes. If you don't want me to spend a month in the demiplane, that matters, and if I am being a neglectful father, that matters, and if a month in time dilation makes me miserable, I agree that that matters, but it is not the problem here or even particularly closely related to it."

" - yes. I understand that the thing that is hurting you is has happened, is continuing to happen, and that things like it are going to continue happening. That's why I think it's important to figure out how to make this awful thing we've all asked of you more sustainable, and every other awful thing we've asked of you more sustainable. I'm not sure if - are you saying that that's impossible, or that the thing you need me to do right now is ignore the problem where you're miserable and focus directly on any problems the convention is causing, or something else?"

"I'm sorry I snapped at you. 

– The thing is, I don't think you've been asking very much of me at all. I was the one who wanted to have a constitutional convention, and I was the one who wanted to have it now. I still stand by that – though I'm less certain than I was – but I know it means that from their perspective everyone else is putting up with a great deal of pain and inconvenience, and my projects that will most directly make the world healthy and rich are all behind schedule, and generally you're all suffering quite a lot so I can play the mad Galtan. I'm not here because anyone made me do anything, and nobody owes me a way out." 

"...it is also true that I wouldn't have asked you to do this for anyone else's sake, yes. If I thought it wasn't important to you, I would not have asked you to do it for anyone else's sake, no. But it is important to you. And - "

"Elie, I have done a lot of things because they were important to you. Not, mostly, because they were the most important things that we could do, although many of them were that. But at least as much because I want to help you with your goals, because I care about you. And I intend to go right on doing that, even when it hurts. But - that is why I am doing this with you. So if it's also hurting you - and I knew it would, I just believed that it was the sort of thing that you had to do for yourself even if it hurt you - then it matters a lot to me, what I can do to support you in it."

"In general, there is a thing that I need from you. I need you to make this place one where we can reasonably and happily live out a large part of our lives, because the world needs us very badly, and I'm willing to help it, but - I intend to have many lives with you, right now, but I will only get this one once. And I do mean to spend a large portion of this one on having a family with you, and the best way I see to do that without neglecting the rest of the world is to make this place one where we can do that, and line our schedules up such that you and I and the children are all aging at the same rate and can live our lives together, as they should be, because I think we can do it without inconveniencing the world all that much, really."

"So I do want to talk about that. But I don't need it today. Today - regardless of whose fault it is or whether you deserve any particular pity for it - you are having an awful day, and need more than usual, and I want to prioritize giving you whatever will be most helpful to you. Then, if you are closer to all right later - maybe on Sunday, when I can plausibly spend eight or nine days with you and the children - we can talk more about what I need. But today I want to know what you need, and give you as much of it as I can."

"....also if you're thinking of adding an entrance and making major security tradeoffs I'd like to ask if I can use this place for remedy research work, which I've been reminded that I'm also neglecting very badly and potentially causing millions of deaths as a result, but that's another complicated discussion and I also don't need to have it right now."

"Of course. ...We're definitely going to need the expansion. I could bring some of my people in, why not. We could do it in shifts." 

"I think we should. I understand why we haven't, and that it'll set us back a bit, but I think it'll make everything else easier. I don't need my people using it imminently, just - I've been neglecting the project pretty badly for a long time."

"...Do you think Catherine was right, and we should have waited another few years?"