"So anyway," says Theo to Sadde. "Does the following sound like a good idea? I'll take a photo of you, see if you feel different, then you take a photo of me, we check if it's balanced?"

"But like, it's one thing to understand on a verbal level that it wasn't his fault and it wouldn't be productive to dwell on this fact or spend emotional energy on it, it's a whole 'nother to be actually feeling stuff like 'oh poor thing he's an angel.'" He looks at Theo and nods. "Yeah, sounds reasonable."

Matt frowns then shrugs.

Theo takes a photo of Sadde! The phone has a pretty good camera.

"Well that made it worse."

"… If it's at all easy to quantify, how much worse?"

"It's not at all easy to quantify."

"Okay, so you should probably try taking a photo of me now, like you agreed on before?"

Click.

"...back to the same point it was before either of us had photos."

"… Okay, so, vampire love thing based on photos, sounds kind of specific, it might be a bit more general than that? I haven't been videoed, as far as I know, see if that does something – or me videoing you, since it seems to work that way around."

Sadde records a few seconds of Theo.

Theo looks at Sadde and after a moment says, "I think it's quite a lot stronger."

...delete.

"Thank you," he says. "I'm sorry that the default seems somewhat in my favor, that seems sort of imbalanced and like it makes me even more of a terror. And I don't really actually want to be in magical whatever with anyone, but it might be safer that way on account of the whole person-person-person thing."

"I didn't wanna say that, but upon reflection that was at least partly because of it, yes."

"Go ahead then," he says to Matt, going to delete the photo of Sadde.

"Uh, maybe we should try an audio recording to see if we can get 'some but less than a photo'?"

"Yeah, could try audio I guess?" He deletes Theo's photo, restoring the imbalance. "Whenever you're ready."

"Ready," he says. "Anything in particular I should say or are you already recording and this works?"

"This works, getting weaker" and stronger for Theo "so maybe say a few more things?"

"… It feels like I'm also getting some already, so I don't think there's a zero point."

"...delightful," he says, sighing and turning it off. "Well, at least if we're roughly symmetrical, then?"

"And we shouldn't need to put me up higher than you, necessarily, because the goal is just for me to remember you're a person? So this should hopefully work."

"I hesitate to suggest the sun test again."

"I can probably cope if I'm talking to one of you again, and even if not it should be okay I think since last time I did specifically say 'I will be right back' instead of just skipping away, but it's probably more risk than I should take if we can think of a safer test. Possibly have one of you video me and then I'll at least pay extra attention to you, and then see if the balanced level for the other one keeps me okay?"