There's a glove version, but it's the same spell and I didn't want to go around wearing gloves all the time. She hands over the boot and starts taking off the other one.

That does not make much sense, but all right. If you wear both boots and gloves, are you twice as sure-fingered?

No, they don't stack. You have to get a better set for way more money if you need that much performance. Mine are about enough that I can run if I need to, which I can't do at all without faceplanting in the ground without; that's what my parents could afford. Uh, money is how people on my world allocate scarce things; there aren't so many people who can make boots like this that they can just give them out as presents, and they require scarce things to make, too.

Hmm. She pulls on the boots.

Better?

She picks up the pen again. Huh. Yes. Oh, if I was cured and got a set of these I could probably work twice as fast!

I don't know how to make them, or how to get home to get some there. And they don't make you faster, just nimbler.

I don't mind if you borrow them as long as I don't have to walk anywhere. My handwriting's fine even without them.

She has half-covered the page with dense designs, some of which are draconic alphabet letters. Thank you. This is a very clever idea. Who came up with it?

I think writing's been invented independently several times. This alphabet was designed to write Draconic in, so by dragons or people who were using their language, probably, but I don't know the particular inventor and it's been adapted for lots of other languages including mine, Pax, since then.

It's a clever idea.

One of my favorites. I think best on paper.

I think best when working. Until I was too tired to work I was sort of managing okay.

Nod, nod. Was it sudden?

Not really. First I just thought that pregnancy was draining, because it is, and then that having an infant was draining, because it is. But then I realized - she shakes her head - I realized something was wrong with me and I started to be scared.

How long do pregnancies take for your species?

A year.

After he was born what was the progression like?

I was tired all the time. I didn't - I love him, but I didn't feel happy when I held him, or when he smiled, or when he learned to speak or to walk. I tried to pick my hobbies back up - I'd stopped because he was so demanding of attention - but they were tiring, and didn't make me happy either. So I just pretended. For as long as I could, until I found myself wishing he'd be quiet, and then I felt so guilty and so terrified that I couldn't stop crying, and I told Finwë everything, and he rushed me here. I've been here for four years.

I heard you've said too much strength went into him; do you really think that or did that just seem like an apt metaphor or...?

There's a saying among our people, that children take something out of the mother forever. I thought it was nonsense but - something's certainly missing. And he's an extraordinarily precocious child.

He is. It's actually very impressive that you were able to pretend for that long through what sounds like a really severe depression case.

I'm pretty stubborn.

Can you tell me anything about what coping strategies helped you pretend?