I love you too.

Good. Squish.

When I asked you said you weren't planning to have kids, does that mean you are planning to get married?

We might get married but it's not even in planning stages now.

Squeeze. 

We probably should've told you but we weren't sure how you'd react, and we hadn't even thought that you might worry about kids.

I should've guessed, because you're a boy and a girl and grown up and friends, but in the multiverse there's lots of weird stuff.

We were compatible and grown up and friends for a while before there was anything else to it, it hasn't been going on that long.

Okay. Snuggle. 

I think you telling Butterfly'd be okay.

But she shouldn't tell her sister or Matirin or anybody else?

I think the worst-case thing that could happen is that one of those people says to him 'well it was still really dumb of you' and then he is kind of mean to that person writing them off. It'd be really bad if someone accused him of lying about it but as long as they wouldn't do that.

Okay. ...And you are really really sure this is actually what happened.

He didn't bring it up to defend himself at all, we were talking about z-space coordinate distortions. And it - makes more sense, sending people really far away because I couldn't work with them is definitely the kind of thing I'd do and sending them off to death isn't.

Okay.

And she squeezes him and writes Butterfly a note on her crystal ball. He can read it if he likes while she writes it up - Epic's alt told him and Epic told me and said I could tell you, here are the operative constraints on spreading it around, here is how not to make a counterproductive fuss about it -

Thank you.

You're welcome. Thank you for being - good at listening. 

You're welcome.

A sufficiently large batch of Yeerks has been screened and turned up acceptably friendly that some of them who'd rather pair off than sign up for Amicus Terra are assigned a planet which will be nice for Elves to live on. Half of them morph-and-nothlit Flat Elves and the other half all take up passenger space in their friends and there is lots of osanwë flying around everywhere, the Yeerks love osanwë, it's okay that they are not allowed to travel wherever they might like whenever they might care to because they are not alone at all and it is so nice. They get started on building an Elf-instincts-friendly city; when there is a more secure way to hand out Elf morphs and contain those who have them they will have room to accommodate less-well-screened Yeerks too. The planet is called Nest, because the Yeerks are nested in other Yeerks.

When there's enough ambulatory screened Yeerks to go around that Ristrell can send the Space Elves home, she manages to clear some time to visit Shadow again.

Shadow's population was not precisely expecting her but would be happy to help, who does she want to see?

Well, the King would be fine but perhaps he has personnel already dedicated to setting up trade-and-such, those would also do.

He has those! He can also clear some time this evening if that's convenient. 

Works for her.

"Sovereign Ristrell."

"Your Majesty. If you're curious I obtained a diagnosis of the misunderstanding at the end of our last conversation."

"Oh?"

She repeats the conversation she had with Seven about it, eliding over the bit where Midnight is an embarrassment and they all want him dead.