"They have to be beautiful."

"Oh. Yeah, not a lot of that here. Lots of space, though, that's good."

"Yeah this place isn't - for me, and shouldn't be. But I will need to finagle some things if I'm going to spend all my time there."

Nod.

She's confused about a lot of aspects of this house, but she doesn't, like, object to any of them.

Except the bed in their room. Beds are bad.

Well, they can remove it.

Yeah. Maybe the extra room can have two beds and this one can have a blanket nest?

Shoving things down the hallway is oddly frustrating but eventually, yes, that.

Oh good. 

"Thank you. I know it's sort of dumb."

"Mmhmmm."

"I've been thinking a lot about what's important to me about you belonging to me. Instead of just - being friends. Since, you know, it makes everyone so mad and - everything. And - it's kind of complicated and I haven't got all of it figured out but part of it is - everything I'm doing, is because I want to? If it's - weird, or doesn't make sense, or is expensive, or no one else thinks I should be doing it - I've still got that answer: I wanted to. Nothing's any more complicated, and - not any simpler, either."

"I'm not entirely sure how much clearer that makes things? But I'm glad you want to."

"I could try different words but I don't know if they'd help." Snuggle.

Snuggle.

"Where I come from - I have no idea whether anyone here really approves of there, either, but - women belong to their fathers, until they get married, and then they belong to their husbands. And those things are okay? They mean you're in a basically okay situation? And - if you end up belonging to somebody else, then - it mostly means something really bad has happened. So it's - hard to think about. Because I feel like you're really good to me, actually, and I like it here, it's just - not really one of the situations I pictured whenever I thought about what it would mean to be safe and okay, if I ever got to be safe or okay again. I guess."

"I don't think fairies have any relationships that are always basically okay."

Nod.

"I guess they're not always okay. Just - if I was going to be okay, ever, it felt like I mostly knew some of what it'd have to look like. And now I'm - not really sure."

"Want you to be okay. Want you to be mine and okay. Don't want to try to - get you to okay by putting a bunch of other things in between us. 

I think we're supposed to be married, though. They gave me some documents that prove to this court who we are and that's what it says on them."

"Huh.

"Married's a kind of being yours. I think. Though it seems - wrong to say we are just because someone else decided that's what they wanted to tell a foreign government that we were."

"I don't really know anything about what makes people married."

"Different people do it slightly different ways in different places, but - where I grew up the husband was supposed to promise to love and honor and comfort and keep his wife, and the wife was supposed to promise to love and honor and keep and serve and obey her husband, and both of them promised not to have sex with anyone else, and they were supposed to keep their promises as long as they were both alive. And then they'd wear matching rings and live together and raise children.

"I guess a bunch of things about fairies make that kind of a bad idea, though."

"It seems like it'd definitely end with us horribly on fire. I - kind of maybe get the idea though?"

Nodnod.

"We don't - the universe doesn't light slow humans horribly on fire when we break a promise. We just - say them in front of everyone we know, and then if we don't act like we're trying to keep them everyone kind of glares at us until we go back to trying. I think."

"Kind of had enough of everyone glaring at me."

"Yeah." Snuggle. "It doesn't really help if they're not people you respect anyway, I don't think.

"It's just, like.... it matters what you're trying to be. Even if you don't think you'll always really be it. I think."

"I think I'd want to try not having sex for a while before I promised to try to not do it ever again, even if we were sure we weren't going back to fairyland."

Nodnodnodnod.

"Seemed like a kind of unreasonable thing to ask. - less so when I, like, imagined the Emperor might let me marry someone someday, but mostly because I - didn't think they'd care that much about hurting me, so - "