"Iiiiiit's complicated. Um. I still have really limited dream content about you, like, it was very choice but there's not much of it and it was all a while ago, but while I am currently abstaining from working out a definitive answer to the question of whether I'm currently in love with you it would probably take a heroic self-hacking effort not to wind up that way inside of a month, two, Aly was crazy about you, so the question is should I put that effort in or - not. Ffffurther complicating this is that while I did not remember you I sort of... uh, the Elves waiting outside, um."

Kib lets out a breath. "Okay. I mean, I - when I remembered I, um, stopped, they came with me anyway in case things worked out in such a way that I'd need company..."

"You don't need to, to - do anything in particular just because I exist. I'm just glad you're alive."

"...Further complicating the entire matter is that I live in Elfland now, 's called Valinor, and Valinor is fucked up about gay people because something something religion Elves breed like animals it's weird? I have no idea if we'd get a pass for my having been Aly when we got married? If we didn't then I couldn't, like, explain you, there, we'd have to live here or go around telling everybody 'oh no this is Aly's friend'."

"... That's good to know, but I don't particularly mind in principle pretending to be 'Aly's friend.' Though I'm an awful liar. I doubt I will be very convincing."

"I'm not super good at being convincing either. It's possible we'd get a pass on the Aly technicality. Iiiiin which case I am very tempted to bring you to Valinor and have a house and go around being as obnoxiously publicly married as physically possible so that no one who has ever met us can continue to think of everybody being straight as an exceptionless rule."

"I don't particularly mind that, either."

"Theeeee Elves are being very nice about their boyfriend waking up one morning suddenly remembering being married and have not been overwhelmingly specific about their other opinions besides that of course I ought to go find you at once. They do have names but you absolutely cannot tell anybody in Valinor that they are gay or involved or anything, I already made statements of moderately public ignorance but they're in very thorough hiding, will this subterfuge get harder if you know more things about them and can react to their names in conversation or anything?"

"We don't have to live in the same city as them?" Kib says. "Keeping it hush-hush is directly correlated with their ability to get divine favors and political whatnots - and also the whole breeding thing means they have these complicated social structures around that and those structures would go haywire with the information and this would also be bad."

"I will take keeping it secret very seriously. But I would have trouble - not putting the pieces together, as it were. I do however do inscrutable well, I'm told. Just not directly lying."

"I haven't had to directly lie to anybody," Kib says, "people don't ask, not unless they already know way too much. Inscrutable should be fine, especially if you are better than I am at restraining the impulse to sarcasm. The redhead is Maitimo, other one's Findekáno. They are both important in Valinor for breeding-related-social-structure reasons and Maitimo in particular also for reasons of overwhelming talent."

"What sort of, breeding related social structures are there? I'm - having trouble picturing them."

"Well, mercifully, unlike animals they only reproduce on purpose. So that's a significant thing, deciding to create a person, and it also comes with responsibility for the new person's upbringing - also it is I think invariably married couples co-creating children because Elves do marriage weirdly - anyway, they have strong slightly confusing social ties between parents and children, and co-children of the same parents, and to difficult-to-track extents with anybody else you can draw a line to on a map of marriages and child-creatings? They're important because they are both the children of different children of the king. It's weird."

"... Very," he agrees. "That sounds like a mess to keep track of."

"I'm getting sort of used to it? But yeah it's complicated as all get out."

"Wonderful. Well. I suppose whether or not I get the chance to get used to it depends on what we decide to do. It sounds like Maitimo and Findekáno should be involved in this conversation? Unless you'd rather they weren't, or...?"

"We can invite them in. Even odds they've actually been able to hear this entire exchange actually, Elves have really good hearing surpassed only by their stupidly good vision. Iiii should have told you that earlier, sorry." Kib goes to lean out the door and motion Elves in.

"We did hear," Maitimo says, "should we not have listened?"