How would it interfere with kissing me? If it was going to be that time-consuming I'd hope they'd fix more drawbacks than just the one.

You know, it's sort of funny how it didn't come up, it used to be so much a part of my life - Elves, when they have sex, form a magical permanent soul bond that involves extended osanwë reach and an emotion-sharing thing - optional - and a bunch of new sensory abilities that are centered around your partner. And it's only between a man and a woman, that that happens. And the rule is that - if you're a young woman, then you find a young man you like and court him and have a year-long engagement and then a wedding party and then a wedding together afterwards and then you have children if you want them and love each other ever after.

And anything else is somewhere between foolish and disgusting - or coercive, a lot of it's assumed to be coercive -

...oh.

So I could beseech the Valar into coming and changing drawbacks, if they could - and they might have been able to - but not if I -

- they wouldn't help totally unrelated humans with problems if the person who was asking them kissed a girl?

They - would need to be presented with the idea really carefully in order to be likelier to help humans than to, well, declare your world now part of their rule and start teaching you their wisdom which includes that particular rule, or something else stupid that they wouldn't understand was stupid, and I would have no legitimacy with which to present them with the idea in a delicate and constructive way if I'd kissed a girl.

Oh.

Parts of my world have that rule - well, something like it, heavier on the disgusting than the coercive - but Noregr's relatively progressive and my mother is especially so and I never ran into any problems about it.

Good. Nothing in the world should ever hurt Annie. It - messed me up kind of a lot. I - wanted very much, back then, for the trust people had in me and the regard they held me in to be warranted, so even if what I was doing was morally neutral, I was living a lie to everyone and a lie that would make them cease to be comfortable with my ruling them and I felt very guilty about that.

Lírnith mentioned you had a secret girlfriend but she didn't say why she was secret.

That was part of the reason.

Part of it?

She's also my cousin. And our family was kind of dysfunctional even before everything turned horrible.

Oh.

It wasn't - I don't know how much you want me to talk about this, it's sort of weird to - yesterday I was in love with her and now -

I'd probably be awkward with her if she were around but it's not weird to hear she exists - are you not anymore, did the artifact take it -?

I...think so? I still care about her as a person, but - I definitely wouldn't want to be romantically involved -

...sorry.

Not your fault at all. We were never going to see each other again anyway - oh, that's the other thing, the god of the dead fixes it if you're attracted to people you shouldn't be - she won't do it without consent but she won't let you come back to life unless she does -

That doesn't sound especially consensual.

No.

You might be unmodifiable - if they can't undo oaths and the artifact can maybe they can't undo the artifact stuff either, and either side of this pair would do it - except I guess if she could tell you weren't modified like she intended she might not let you go -

Oh, I won't be allowed to come back to life either way, mass murder is also definitely disqualifying for reembodiment. I wouldn't let her touch me but I'm not coming back if I die.

Oh.

I mean, that one seems pretty fair. I'm not that worried about it - I was mostly just hoping she could make it like I was always sleeping -

- can't nod must hold still. I guess that wouldn't be too horrifying.