"I'm never going to be grown up, that doesn't really matter."

"I'm only nine, you don't count as really grown up until you're a hundred, and Valian years are very long, much longer than the years when my father grew up, and I can't even imagine being a hundred and I can't wait for that long not doing anything at all."

"Well, maybe when I'm less terrified of your father I can try to give him parenting advice but I'm not sure I'm very credible as a source on that. I suppose it's already been - is it in fact obvious that if he's concerned for your safety if you go out the obvious thing to do is send you with a bodyguard or is that just. Not obvious here."

"What's a bodyguard?"

"Somebody to go with you and protect you if something threatens you. I mean, nothing would happen here, but that doesn't seem to help, so maybe having company who could deal with it if something did happen could help?"

"...I would probably run off because I saw something interesting."

"So it'd have to be somebody who could stop you from doing that, I guess, or you'd have to not run off because then you wouldn't get to go out again."

"I'm not very good at remembering not to look at interesting things just because I'll be punished for it."

"What about remembering to wait for whoever was with you instead of running?"

"They always say 'no'."

He smiles at her. The smile is a little uncertain. "But you won't do it if my father says no."

"No, I'm not going to sneak you out if your father says no. This is Valinor and I don't think you actually need a bodyguard to be safe; it just might help him feel comfortable."

"I would like that a lot. But he'll say no."

"He might. Why do you think he'd do that? Maybe there's ways around all his reasons and maybe he's reasonable enough for that to matter."

"He'll say I'll run away and get lost. I can swear to not do that?"

"Please don't swear anything, that seems like such a bad idea," Bella says. "I can detect people from a ways off, you'd have to run really fast to get lost from me."

"Okay. Uh, he'll probably say that I've been very difficult and should prove that I can be responsible by not running away at all for a week."

"...Do you normally run away every week?"

"I run away all the time, I get sad and stressed at dinner or at events or when my father is trying to play with me and I ask to leave and everyone says 'no' so I run away. I ran away from you."

"Do you mean, like, run away from the palace, or just run away to another room?"

"Just to another room. I don't leave. If I ever did that it'd be really awful. And I wouldn't know where to go. I know where in the palace is safe."

"Asking you to prove that you're responsible by not ever being in a room by yourself is like - is like asking to prove you're not a glutton by not eating anything for a week, it's - ugh."

"I'm allowed to sleep alone, though sometimes he comes in to check on me, I'm just not allowed to go be alone when I'm with people."