"I don't think you'd need to be human, I actually have no idea what would happen if we used a vankire egg from me and a human sperm from you, the resulting hybrid might be completely different."

"...I mean, there's no way for me to produce human sperm if I am, at the time, a vankire."

"Yeah I know, that's what I'm saying, it's probably better for you to produce vankire sperm and I'll produce a human egg and we'll be fine."

"So no more-human-than-not hybrids, basically, and probably just a fifty-fifty. Got it. Let's talk about something else, we're getting weird looks..."

"Oh, that's what you meant. I'm not sure it's a good idea, we don't yet know what those look like in my world and don't have the social structures meant to accept them here," she shrugs. "But alright, changing subjects. I hope you realise you have a very pretty girlfriend and I will draw looks. Oh! Yes there's also that, when you turn you become prettier."

"I don't mind getting weird looks if we're not talking about something embarrassing at the time. Even more looks if you're giving lectures, pretty and smart is so much rarer than just pretty."

She giggles. "I mean I hope you realise that even without the mate bond speaking here you are very pretty."

"Yeah, right. Never felt like that in high school let me tell you."

"My experience in High School is that personality counts more for these cliques than looks. Being confident—or, maybe, just downright cocky and arrogant—helps, while being introverted or not very sociable hurts. But. You are very pretty."

"I probably did have some confidence issues in high school. And now. If you keep saying that I might end up believing it."

"Oh great, it's good when people believe true things."

"Oh, man, we're going to be the couple everyone's jealous of aren't we? Pretty, human-fair folk which is 'exotic', and smart enough to work on pioneering golemcraft projects. Heh."

"Hey, I'm all for turning whoever wants to be turned, but I'd want to set up some infrastructure for that, and it'd need a lot of magic—the Empress has a precog and someone who can send arbitrary-distance telepathic messages and someone who can teleport and someone who has a personal alternate dimension to keep misbehaving vankires."

"Yeah, I don't really feel like running a gridwide vankire police without a huge infrastructure, or unleashing a species of kind of astonishingly potentially deadly human-hunters without doing that."

"Pretty much. That said, I would have tons of fun developing and running that infrastructure."

"Your Empress Bella would probably find it kind of tricky to extend her policing into this world, I get the impression that we're much bigger than that planet you showed me. Though we do have local precog and long range communication resources. It's a lot to figure out and honestly it does not really enthuse me as a problem set to be solved. I'd rather shoot for prosperity and immortality for all through medicine or possibly a new Concept by becoming Fates."

"Well, yes, that, too, but you can be my head of R&D and we can coordinate with Earth and I can be head of the branch of the Empire here. It enthuses me a lot."

"Endless interesting useful R&D problems does sound more my speed."

"I had an inkling it would," she half-smiles. "I could do that and be happy with it but between that and being co-Empress of—does this world have a name?—I know what I'll pick."

"Well, we have a word that means 'world'. But it might need a new one given that there are multiple."

"Tiles? Or tileworld? That's the most egregious difference."

"It'll work."

Terry has practically inhaled his big plate of food. He stands back up. "All you can eat means seconds or thirds for me, even if you're paying and not me."

She giggles. "Eat as much as you want, love."

When he comes back he asks about a point of economics.

She can tell him all about econ.