When she thinks she can see him without crying again, she holds her baby close and walks silently back to Rana's.
The room has been replaced with - something else. She has no idea what this means. She has nobody to ask but Rana. Everything she asks places her further in his debt, of course, but it hardly matters now.
She steps inside.
"It's not really important. Lady at church found out I wasn't married and started talking to me about meeting people."
"No. - I mean, in the sense of eventually having friends who don't live in my house, but not in the sense that she meant it."
She despondently hand-washes dishes.
"It'd just be a terrible idea in all respects, really."
"Couldn't consummate any marriages I entered into anyway. Or - could, technically, but it'd probably be a terrible idea - "
" - because, you know, with the not being able to have sex without it being excruciatingly painful? Seems like it'd put a damper on certain things."
"I think I don't really understand what human marriage is aside from having a lot of rules about sex."
"It's - when a man and a woman decide that they want to spend the rest of their lives together, to have and raise children with each other, to leave their parents and form their own household, to love each other as dearly as they love themselves, to share all property that enters into their possession, and - to support and take care of each other, no matter what happens to either of them. I guess. In theory."
"I don't think I can marry you. I have been thinking about it a lot, and I haven't been having sex with anyone so I could test out how that works out, and it's not that it makes me miserable or anything, and I want you to be happy and to feel safe and secure, but -
- I am not a human and I don't actually expect it to work very well, trying to do all the human shaped things without any of the normal human motivations, and just putting in wanting you to be happy wherever they would go."
"But a - thing about being a fairy - is that sometimes the thing you have to do to get what you want is just wait for a very long time. So if you were a fairy I don't think I'd feel very sad and scared right now, because this would just be the part where we wait for a very long time, and then eventually we'd go off and explore the world. But you're a human and I don't - it wouldn't make very much sense for humans to be meant to wait a very long time, since they don't even live a very long time - I don't know if I'm making sense -"
"It makes sense.
"I keep thinking - you know what's incredibly sad, is - marking time through all of your children's childhoods, not really miserable but - feeling like watching them grow up is a chore that you're doing so you can get to the good part of your life? Even though if you'd set your life up in a way that made any sense it would be wonderful and you'd treasure every day of it? And - my life isn't like that. And maybe it's ridiculous to expect it to be like that, I don't really think that very many people are happy with their lives, but - "
"You know what we could do is we could leave. And ask them to pause this world. And - come back once it's not like that."
"Still need to find enough food in our world. And the kids have decided they have a mission here now, and I'm not entirely sure whether anyone will support us in dragging them from here to fairyland."
"No, I mean, without them. They can stay here. We could leave tonight. And we could make breakfast for them tomorrow morning before school - in a hundred years. Once this is the place you most want to be in all the universes."
"They're not wrong that this is a healthier environment for kids than we knew how to provide. But - it's not good for us. We know it's not good for us. We know what's good for us instead. And I know you'll choose them, not us, when you have to choose. But you don't."
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