"Convince me to like men, essentially. I don't understand it, either, I don't think I'm explaining it very well."

"What do they care? Is there some kind of woman shortage and they are resorting to long-shot... let us generously call it 'creative solutions'... to resolve this?"

"There is no shortage of either sex. Apparently it's against the natural order, or something. As I said, I don't understand it."

"I can offer no help in understanding the mindset, alas. On Asgard you would be somewhere between unremarkable and especially fashionable, depending on how little your circle of friends thought of men in a general sense."

"Fashionable? That's strange. I don't think less of men, I just don't want to join them in bed."

"Then you would probably acquire friends who agreed with you and not be widely thought of as fashionable by same. I think we have established that my culture is not long on this thing called 'making sense'."

"Fair point. I suppose if I'm ever desperate for a partner, I can head to your home and pretend to be magically blind. If I can stand it for any length of time."

"You'd have less trouble being openly magical than I, anyway. Not zero, but it doesn't help that I'm a princess."

"Yes. Not stay away, because if I become a complete nonentity I will have very little chance of one day being queen, but a week in Alfheim will do nobody any harm."

"You'd like to be queen, in order to change it? Or is it something that you want for other reasons?"

"I'd like to be queen in order to do a variety of things, encouraging my culture to make sense being one of them."

"I do hate when cultures make little sense, yes. It's what causes me to run off into the wilderness and practice my art with plants. I wish you the best of luck in becoming queen in order to fix it."

"Even if my sister is favored over me - which looks most likely, as she is the perfect golden representative of all Asgard's feminine virtue - she at least has the advantage of listening to me now and again, which Mother does not."

"That must be frustrating. I don't know what advice to offer you, I'm afraid - but I'm happy to listen to what you have to say."

"My greatest concern is that Thor will be made queen - she will learn that I perform magic - and then she will not listen to me, not even now and again."

Zeviana nods. "How much do you trust her? I had thought my brother would balk at my preferences with how big he is on 'duty' and such, but - he surprised me. I think that living an entire life hiding something important about yourself is a bad idea, though your situation might be different? You might not want to do what I would do."

"My best guess is that Thor would eventually find some way to understand - or at least to act like she does; actual understanding might be too much to ask. But before that happened, well, she's - impulsive."

"And you're afraid she'd proclaim to everyone that you do magic in a rage and get you banished right after she finds out."

"Or something. At a bare minimum I imagine she would say some very hurtful things. So I put it off, even though it probably wouldn't be hard to get her to come with me someplace several days' travel from anyone she could tell to give her time to cool off."

"Hmm. You could bring her here, I could obviously do magic in front of her, and you can see how she reacts to it? It wouldn't be accurate to how she reacts to you but it could open up the idea that it's okay to use magic."

"...You know, I rather like that idea. Although it's possible she will just conclude that the people of Alfheim are different."

"Possibly, but you don't know for sure. I'm fine with trying, if she yells I'll simply throw her out."

"She would be hard to throw."

"Then you can help," she says, amused.