Haneo is so excited! She will be really really nice to everyone and they will hopefully definitely not regret letting her visit.

Her parents are not expecting it to be a problem!! Off they go.

Haneo is so small. She's objectively much larger than Kanael but she is also so small. 

"It's OK," she signs, when she sees Imrainai. "I wasn't allowed to talk to people, but I am now. Are you from Savaek too?"

"No, from Earth. From Yahi, before that."

"What's Earth?"

And so Imrainai tells Haneo about Earth, where there's a whole planet of Liars, and they have a lot of problems but they don't have Alteri owners, they haven't for thousands and thousands of years, and there are parks and cities and nobody has a kill switch in them at all.

"That sounds so lovely," says Ettelië, hugging her. 

"It's pretty good!" she agrees, and hugs him back. 

Haneo seems to be thinking about whether to ask something, but she decides she probably shouldn't. So she asks something else. "The baby's really good but she's really small now, can I come visit when she's bigger and can play more?"

"Yes, definitely."

"Can I come visit again before that?"

"Yes," laughs Imrainai, again. "You can just keep visiting."

Her parents look delighted. "We can show you how you got here. Then if you want to go, we can call ahead from home and if it's a good time you can just go over!"

Haneo is also delighted about this! She hugs Imrainai and pats Kanael very gently and thanks them for letting her visit.

Imrainai hugs Ettelië again when she's really sure that Haneo is most of the way back home.

"She had one of the worse houses, I guess."

"Yours was better?"

" - oh, I don't know really. Probably. Most houses wouldn't have cut out her tongue that small, is all. More of them if she was bigger. Kendari was - fine, I guess, as these things go. Tellari is getting docked a bunch of points for the surprise forced impregnation."

Ettelië shudders. "We're going to stop it. All of it."

"Good," she says, decisively.

She's silent for a bit. She should... ask some questions. About things. That is probably actually important.

"So, uh. On an unrelated topic, are we like - what, um, are we. Exactly."

"Oh. Um. You know I don't even know how we'd get married exactly for Elves that's a - chip thing. You can do it one-way, I looked it up, because there's support for people whose spouse is dead, but I don't know what that'd even mean on your end and - 

- we have a baby and we are raising the baby? Is that the answer to your question?"

"That's, uh - I mean - I just, I don't know exactly how Elves organize everything and - at home if you agree to be a baby's father then you just - sort of automatically have some kind of relationship with the baby's mother but you didn't actually say anything about that and it's a totally different situation than normal and I don't want to, like, make assumptions about things?" Ahhh if she keeps hugging him then she doesn't have to look at him and probably that's better, probably you can get away with not looking at someone if you are also hugging him.

" - well I don't think that's any good, people shouldn't get married just because they are parenting, marriage is really important -"

"Yeah! I mean - I think it should be really important, and it makes sense that it'd be really really important if you knew it was going to last for forever and not just until one of you got sold off. But I just - I really like you and I'm really really glad you want to help raise Kanael and I don't want to make that, like, weird. Or wonder about things you didn't intend. Or anything."

"Oh, I definitely wasn't saying that we shouldn't get married. At all. Just that - if we did, it should be because we think we should be married, because we can be good parents either way."

"OK," she says, sounding kind of more obviously relieved than she wants to. But now she has to say the thing. Even though she really really really doesn't want to say it, even though it would be really really easy to just not say it. Because it's important. "You said Elves who are separated from their spouses are just - lonely. Forever."

" - well, we don't remarry. We can...have friends and so on?"

"Yeah. But. Yeah. I mean it's just - if you marry literally anyone else then you'd get to be with them for a lot more of forever."

"I mean, we're all probably going to die."

"That's fair. But even if we get really lucky, then I have maybe sixty years. And I really don't want you to be sitting here in five thousand years wishing that you'd made different choices. But I just - I like you more than anyone I've ever met, more than anyone I'd ever, like, imagined could even exist, and I have no idea how you can possibly like me enough to even consider marrying me, if you are, given, like, everything about me, but - I don't have forever but if I did then I think I'd want to spend it with you. If that, um. Counts for anything."

"I - think that's supposed to be the only thing that matters, actually."

- and she actually can't hear that without crying, apparently. But that's OK, she can just ignore that part.

"Not the only thing. A maximum of half the thing. Do you, um - we shouldn't decide stuff today, but are you, uh. Interested in marrying me."

"Yes. I'd like that."

The 'eeeee' is not internal this time. It's quiet, but it's not internal.

"Well. That works out then. I mean, like, I was going to sit here ineffectually pining for the foreseeable future, but I can be flexible when presented with superior plans."