Independence is very excited at the news of impeding Internet.

Raika-seren wakes up in the morning and has breakfast and goes to work. He mentions to Elaneth-imire that it would be nice if he acquired the power to conjure arbitrary objects, and then he spends all day digging into technical problems, and sends Liran-alore to look a few things up in the public ballroom in Warp, and generally has a great time, and comes back to Independence in the evening to report his progress to Maitimo, and then follows the same pattern the next day.

Midmorning of that second day, Elaneth-imire turns up a conjuration power, branched as predicted from his landshaping. He creates an enormous amount of relevant supplies, and Raika-seren gleefully bounces home and starts distributing and installing them. There are a bunch more technical problems, which he solves. The spark at the heart of his soul spends the whole day brightening visibly as he bounces from place to place and explains things to people and configures software and tucks signal equipment into pre-launched satellites. Afternoon shades into evening and he's pretty sure he isn't going to sleep that night, he's having far too much fun. One all-nighter won't hurt him.

It's very endearing.

He does in fact stay up all night installing and tweaking and troubleshooting, and all the next day making final checks and hopping away briefly to get Elaneth-imire to make a few more things, and then it's late evening and he's finished and he eats dinner and flops into bed and his last thought as he falls asleep is maybe I'll take the day off tomorrow...

If he doesn't Midnight is tempted to insist.

He wakes up; he eats breakfast; he considers the relative merits of taking the day off versus going off to do Nuime's internet immediately. On the one hand, doing Nuime's internet will be lots of fun. On the other hand, the extra day isn't going to hurt anyone and he just pulled an all-nighter and shouldn't put himself in a position to end up pulling another one. And he'd so pull another one.

But doing Nuime's internet will be so much fun...

Internet tomorrow, come here.

Okay. I love you.

He goes.

Forever is a very long time, it's not much use burning yourself out in the first week of it.

Oh, come on, I don't burn out that easily. I'd be fine in a week even if I ran myself right into the ground with it.

...but thank you. I appreciate you looking out for me.

Someone has to. Come here.

He smiles, and does that. 'In Maitimo's arms' is his favourite place to be. He loves him so much.

He feels very loved. He gives them both a day off.

He is very loved! So loved. Deeply and wholeheartedly and without expecting anything in return. Whatever he wants to do with his present on their day off, Taliar will be happy with it.

That's good. 

"I swore a long time ago I'd never permit - any arrangement of the kind I had during the war - to exist between any people in my empire."

That's - huh. He isn't sure he understands the full context there.

"If you were worried. Or - not worried, but - contorting around it -"

"Oh."

He contemplates the question of whether he was worried about that. Well, no. And 'contorting around it' isn't quite right either - it's -

"...I'm - actually pretty sure you couldn't keep me as a prisoner against my will? I'm here because I want to be, and I'm not going to stop wanting to be here, that's how having a Taliar works."

When a Taliar decides to love someone undeterrably, he really, really means it. And therefore the question of whether he is being held captive against his will just isn't going to come up, regardless of whether it's also impossible for other reasons.

Kiss.

Kiss.

I love you. I'm happy to be your present, it's the best thing I could be doing with my life.

Yes, it is.

He giggles. Maitimo is so cute, and beautiful and frightening and glorious and perfect, it's wonderful, he makes Taliar so happy.

He frowns and stands up and goes back to work, his fingertips brushing Taliar's soul almost absently.

...well that's unexpected but okay? (The moment of soul contact is still that same love, but half overtaken by confusion.)

Lots to do.