You too. Glad I get to - deal with all these big things - with you.

Better than not.

She conjures a small knife and starts cutting his clothes off him.

Oooooh.

He holds very still except for watching her move, adoringly.

And then she is done with that and she takes his face in both hands and kisses him again.

Mmmmmm.

Hair unbraiding?

What a good idea.

I wonder how things would have happened if I didn't already coincidentally make a habit of keeping my hair braided.

Maitimo'd probably have mentioned it was a thing here.

I wonder how he'd have reacted if I'd fixed it the fast way by cutting my hair off and making new hair already braided.

I am sure he'd have concealed his horror.

That'd be horrific?

In our galactic rights treaties it's listed as a form of torture, cutting peoples' hair...

Huh. Okay. So if I were going to suggest growing my hair to legitimately ridiculous lengths and then cutting most of it off afterwards because I don't actually want to go around with hair that long the latter part would be more unpleasant than the former was sexy?

I wouldn't want to watch, but you can do whatever you want to yourself.

Well, the growing-the-hair-out would be for your benefit in the first place, so...

Maybe give me some time to get used to the idea.

Okay.

Meanwhile, kisses and hairpetting.

And letting them forget the world outside.

I'll meet you at the fourth floor stairwell, he tells the other Maitimo a few hours later.

So, he says to Cam, I told him I'd swear to the things I said over osanwë; going to meet him and do that, I guess. I can try to feel out whether he thinks I can swear to things, but I don't think I'll come away very certain.

Keep me posted.

And he meets him at the stairs. "Can Nechar do anything about your kind of Elf?"

"Yep. It's a good solution, if I can decide on a set of oaths that doesn't either modify his preferences, handicap him, constrain him from doing anything at all to the point where he dies on me in a month, or let him orchestrate overthrowing me with the demons helping - yours would help?"

"Yes. Everyone'll help. Where we're coming from it's not the sort of thing you ever ever overlook."