"Well, I think if it were in fact eating the province he wouldn't have stopped to write me a note, and it's not really nearby, he can just teleport. But sure, I can see him doing that if it in fact came up."

"Sounds like a useful sort of cousin to have."

"Sometimes. I don't often have snake related problems, though, this is actually only the third time a snake has caused me the least inconvenience and by far the most troubling."

"What were your previous snake encounters?"

"Viper bit me when I was eighty-five - eighty-six? Thereabouts, anyway - and a water moccasin chased me and one of my friends when I was a hundred eleven."

"How'd you manage to get bitten by a viper?"

"When I was in my mid-eighties I belonged to a charming little group called the Junior Wilderness Rangers. I was fine, one of the other kids was a light."

"And a light is...?"

"Oh, uh, they do this," Aurin cups his hands, "and get a little ball of sparks, which heal anybody who is not themselves a light, if they touch them. Very handy for everybody except the lights, who mostly rely on potions and healing the long way around. They also don't have to eat if they get enough water and sunshine."

"How convenient."

"Yup! Actually, one of the other Junior Wilderness Rangers pushed me at the snake, and later claimed to have been doing it because she thought the snake was going to get the light, who would have been in much worse shape. She was still in trouble for doing it."

"Did this particular Junior Wilderness Ranger have some sort of vendetta against you, or was she just a snake-shoving sort of person, or do you suppose she was telling the truth about her motivations?"

"It's possible she was entirely sincere, but we were not friends after the incident."

"I imagine not."

"...Later I dated her granddaughter! This sort of thing happens when one is a dragon."

"Did the granddaughter know about the viper?"

"I can't remember if I told her, actually. Probably."

"In your place I would have joked about it frequently."

"One accumulates other things to joke about. Besides, I usually don't discover who people's grandmothers are immediately, I probably found out weeks into the relationship at least."

"Really? How do you miss something like that?"

"They didn't have the same last name. And I have met probably tens of thousands of people to roughly the same extent I met Viper Girl, though admittedly not all of them shove me at venomous snakes, so I didn't recognize the limited family resemblance. In my country most people don't live with their grandmothers, so even if I go to my date's house I am unlikely to meet same. But I know there's places where people live with lots of extended family, is this one of them?"

"No. I don't know, I'm not two hundred years old, but it just seems like the sort of thing that would be obvious," he says. "Then again, my standards of obviousness are unusually broad."

"It was not obvious. I'm sure I've completely missed more people I've dated who have ancestry I have previously met in other contexts. I do try to be moderately careful to avoid dating the children of anyone I have previously been involved with, but that's easier than grandkids."

"No doubt."

"How hard is it going to be to turn gold and silver scales into something I can spend, anyway?"