"Okay." Pause. Fuck it, she'll ask, "Can we snuggle, though."

"Yeah, sure, not like you're going to crush me on accident now that we're a bit less tense. Especially with how hard you reacted the first time."

She nods and crawls up to him, very slowly, allowing him to change his mind at any time if he wants to.

Nope, not gonna change his mind, snuggles.

Sadde is a good person who likes him a lot to all evidence and with her speed he'd be dead if she wanted him dead crystal or no crystal so there's no point worrying about the tiny chance this is some kind of extremely elaborate con, why did that even come up as a hypothesis, come on brain.

Since, unlike her Emperor, she lacks the ability to read minds, she does not comment on this.

She snuggles up, and has apparently already gotten some work done in the "do not be super strong" department. That, or she's being very very careful.

She is warm. She loves him. She loves him.

And wing snuggles are very comfy.

Wing snuggles are a bit strange. But comfy, yes.

He voices some of his deep thoughts.

"What would you have done at the university if I was still in Tamberholt, nowhere near?"

Well maybe not philosophically deep.

"Tamberholt? Is that where you're from?—well, I was planning on learning this world's magic and becoming a Fate." Pause. "Still am."

"So am I. So are quite a few people here, I suspect. I suspect need to study for a while more before starting to seriously generate plausible ideas for my Concept. But hey, this university's got a good record for Fates. Five in just a thousand years."

She does not kiss him because everything here is gonna be initiated by him okay? Okay. But she wants to.

"I'm still a bit handicapped in that I don't know much about how magic works here, in the kind of detail one'd get from living here."

"We'll trade lectures. Electronics, runework, physics, potions, computers, golems."

She giggles. "I'd love that." Pause. "I love you. I know we've just met, but. I promised myself I'd be upfront about this if slash when I ever mated, and I still agree with the reasons why."

"I'm probably going to want some time alone tomorrow - if only to convince myself that thinking this is too sudden is not a valid reaction since it doesn't change any of the actual facts. Anyway. Tamberholt's where I'm from, yes, mid-size town dead center in Ambrax province. What're those reasons?"

She goes very still when he mentions time alone tomorrow, for a second, then resumes breathing normally. She will not whine.

"If I'm going to be in eternal love with someone, I want them to know who I am, I want them to know everything they'd be signing up for. I want it to be as informed a decision as they can make, to be with me. I don't wanna be a burden, and I don't want to lie or pretend this is anything other than it is. I am irrevocably and completely in love with you and this will never ever change no matter how long you or I live for."

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. "If you lied or misled me, and I found out... Well. There's two ways of looking at doing good. What you should do, to be fair to others and not do anything personally evil, and what you should do to... Create the most happiness or prosperity or justice or whatever weighted combination your system likes. From the first perspective, I'd probably hate you. From the second perspective, I ought to become a vampire tomorrow."

Okay she was so not prepared for that, she actually physically flinches when he says he'd hate her. "Why—would you hate me?"

"Because extensively misleading and manipulating someone even for their own good is a major major sin in the morality system I grew up in, and you can never quite escape that without exceptional circumstances or a lot of time. But you didn't lie or even try to mislead, you're being extremely considerate, this is another point in favor of the mate magic knowing what the hell it's doing."

"—oh right that was the hypothetical under consideration okay," she says, exhaling in relief. "No I'm not going to mislead you or manipulate you. I will tell you everything I know and you want to know." She smiles a little. "And mate magic definitely knows what it's doing and actually speaking of this it may also be relevant that I am sometimes a boy."

He raises his eyebrows. "How does your vankire magic know I'm bi-leaning-girls?"

"It might not have known you're leaning girls? I am either gender pretty much fifty percent of the time. But erm. I don't know, it just knows these things."

"Hmm... Well, I guess it's no stranger than centaurs. Maybe my Concept can be something to help analyze this stuff."

"What about centaurs?"

"They have occasional precognition which often relies on obscure facts about people or places or things to have their predictions come true in a dramatic way more often than is expected, statistically."

"...huh. We have fiction about this kind of thing where I'm from."

"We have fiction about soulmate magic. How likely do you think these things aren't coincidence?"

"To be fair we have fiction about soulmate magic, too. Magic in my world is secret."