"Well, yeah, but I usually make my coauthor do that one. Or I pit the hero against circumstances without involving a villain. Like, uh." Pause. ".... Cards on the table, I am now also writing a thread with you and person-I-ship-you-with, and just for the record I was totally right you two are adorable together."

—he cracks up. "How long has it passed on your end between your indecision about that and now?"

"Foooour days? But I started writing it the day of because someone had an idea for how I could have her exist in Tyria without me having to figure out how to stuff her into Kryta."

"Is that so? What was the idea?"

"Have her be from the time period that I knew, then uh." Pause, wince. ".... Throoooow her into the Mists and have her pop out in front of you?" She tries on an apologetic smile? It doesn't fit, oh no, now she feels bad.

He blinks slowly. "How long did she spend in the Mists?"

"I mean time in the Mists is fuzzy, so it's hard to really say how long it was on her—" No that's enough dodging, answer the question. "—uh, 263 years."

"Wow."

"Yeah, sorry. She's fine. It's fine. Meta instance of her consented, and she got to be really aggressively awesome in the Mists, it was very impressive. Um. And it turned out that it was approximately the perfect setup for meeting a version of you? I'm sorry anyway, I felt very mean."

"...perfect setup?"

"She is really primed for having fast paced adventures right out of the gate, does not flinch at seeing weird shit at all anymore, and she's sort of..." she trails off. "There's a part in the narration where I write like, a paragraph of laying in just how unpleasant the Mists really are, and I end it with 'It's just her, alone in the Mists.' Her response the paragraph after was 'Well, all right then,' and coping, and, and—comfortably living with herself. According to Pedro, you thought the whole thing was super hot. And she carries that quality with her once she's out of the Mists."

"...ah. I see."

"So, yeah. Turns out it was the perfect setup and I tripped and faceplanted into it, because someone offered up the idea. Thank you, that someone, if you are in fact reading this thread."

"And you say we're—ah—adorable together?"

"Really, really adorable. You actually work better than we'd thought you would, which. Was honestly kind of impressive, we were expecting you two to get on like a house on fire."

"So do we get on like the Beetlestone Manor on fire, then?" he asks archly.

"Something like that. The two of you have some really great banter."

"Banter."

"Yep. I'm not quite sure how to describe it, except that it's playful and teasing and clearly for the fun of both self-assured participants. A lot of it leads into flirting, but not all of it. It's just... so cute. And frequently clever."

"Do you have... examples?"

"Yeah, I'm just lazy and was dodging looking them up, I'll stop doing that now if you really want them." She peers at the other thread. "... It's kind of hard to give good examples, because you both make clever jokes that you then play later to greater effect. Like, uh, she explains herself to someone with 'He found me in a cave.' Then when you encounter your friends and she thinks they might not accept this explanation, she leaves the explaining to you. You explain her with, 'I found her in a cave.' Which of course they all accept. There are some better ones, but they require even more context."

"I found her in a cave? That... sounds like me, I'll admit."

"You found her in a cave while fighting a monster! And you had your Flesh Golem tackle her immediately out of the way of a dangerous thing, because she went from 'watching invisibly in the Mists' to 'not that' without any warning."

"That also sounds like me. I hope she didn't get hurt."

"Aw. No, she was fine, she even helped out with the fight quite a bit."