"Even better! How distressingly prolonged are they?"

"Factor of fifty relative to humans!"

"Ouch. My sympathies."

"It didn't bother me till I was about three hundred and then I was promptly distracted by my very time-consuming spell development process."

"I've heard about that. It sounds like it would drive any member of my family insane," says Inlaith.

"Sigyn never picked it up, the more popular version or mine when I told him about it either."

"Did he say it would drive him insane or was he not interested for other reasons?"

"The insanity thing. I have an alphabet; everybody else works from fragments of whole text that they can't actually read; neither approach would apparently have been kind to his composure."

Inlaith laughs. "Yeah."

"I am simultaneously tempted to ask you for a hug and inclined to not do that because I would inevitably wind up wanting to pick you up and fling you into the air and since this is not something I'm normally inclined towards with Sigyn - who is taller than me - I have no guesses about how you'd appreciate it."

...he giggles.

"You may pick me up and fling me into the air if you like."

Scoop. Hug. Fling!

He is very scoopable and very huggable and very flingable, and lands in an easy crouch as though he does this every day. For a seventeen-year-old baseline human his grace, balance, and reflexes are amazing, but maybe for a seventeen-year-old Aluvai they're normal, like the claws and the fangs and the ears and the tail.

"That was fun!"

Giggle.

"I like you. I'm glad you're my alt's best friend."

"I like you too and I'm glad Sigyn has an alt."

"I should probably go home before I say something atrocious and ruin your opinion of me forever."

"She's best friends with your alt," Elarron points out, "she's probably used to it. Then again, she did say he had social skills..."

"They're kind of weird social skills, though."

"Sounds about right," says Ashras.

"I met Sigyn when he disguised himself as a girl and snuck into a combat practice hall."

"That sounds like exactly the sort of thing I'd do if combat practice halls were commonplace and I had to appear to be a girl to be allowed into one."

"That's how this alts thing tends to work, yes." She conjures up a mini illusion of the scene.

He examines it in fascination, tail swishing delightedly.

The illusion proceeds! There is fighting! And dialogue!