So he teleports in. It is beautiful. He smiles at it.

Raika-seren lands on a balcony and then teleports next to Maitimo so he can hug him. It's a very feathery hug.

"I love you. I'm glad you like my castle."

"This magic system is made for Elves, makes pretty things and makes people prettier..."

"Soulbearers are a little bit the same way but not nearly as much, it's true. I do think this is unusually pretty for a Sphere - the ones in the Suranse maze are generally not this amazing - but every pair of wings I've seen so far has been gorgeous. Although none as gorgeous as mine."

He has no idea why he has the prettiest everything, but he's hardly about to complain.

"And here I was thinking that was just that I was biased."

Awwwww. He grins and hugs him some more. His wings are very soft and cozy.

"No, it's not your imagination, you really do have the prettiest Taliar."

"That's good. Elves're very shallow, you know."

He giggles. "Lucky me, then."

Kiss.

Kiss!

The sheer peace and happiness of the moment makes him half expect that something is going to go disastrously wrong any second. But that is not actually how things work, and they're going to be fine, and constantly fearing another emergency will not make him any better prepared to handle one if it appears. As demonstrated, he is pretty good at handling emergencies even with absolutely no warning at all.

"Hopefully won't be a necessary skill very often."

"Yeah. I hope not. But I'm glad I have it."

It's both satisfying and reassuring to know the depth of his ability to come into focus quickly and completely when he has to. Solving the actual problem - well, he's a Taliar, of course he's confident in his ability to engineer galactic takeovers if a galactic takeover is required. What he didn't know until it came up is just how bad a state he can be in and still be ready to handle invading alien fleets at a moment's notice. He's proud of himself for not wasting time being upset when there was work to be done. It's... again probably objectively crazy, but it's the kind of crazy a Taliar should be.

"That Silmaril time-stop effect would be useful for that if we can get it working."

"Useful for - galactic takeovers, emergencies in general, allowing me to waste time? I'm not actually sure that having time to waste improves my results any."

"Does it improve your sanity any? That's lovely too, being happy, even if it doesn't affect results."

Taliar laughs and hugs him.

"I am happy. I'm incredibly happy. I wasn't - I didn't need to take any time there, I wasn't depriving myself. The crazy thing about it isn't that I bounced back instantly from being tortured because someone needed me for something important. That's just the state of being a Taliar. The crazy thing about it is - you hurt me in a way I trusted you not to, and I didn't take the time to figure out if I was okay with that, because I knew no matter how it came out, at the end of it I'd still want to be right where I was, helping you save your planet from genocidal aliens. And it turns out I am okay with it, but I didn't need to know that to know I still loved you and wanted to help you."

"I was not remotely under the impression you were trying to stop the genocide aliens as a personal favor."

"Oh, genocidal aliens are definitely a problem that needs solving regardless, but - I was working for you, there's a pretty big difference between that and just independently solving the problem that's in front of me."

Nod. "What would have been different?"

"...I guess that depends what exactly you're asking..."

It's hard to build a coherent hypothetical because it's almost inconceivable, there's really no circumstance Raika-seren can imagine in which he'd feel like he couldn't work with Maitimo anymore if there was an emergency and Maitimo wanted his help and didn't seem inclined to get in the way of him giving it.

Maitimo pulls him in and kisses him. 

Well, okay then. Taliar happily kisses him back.

And he's still not in very much of a wing-getting mood but - his people are all alive, and safe, forever, it all worked -

And the feeling of accomplishment grows into something almost solid, almost tangible, and wraps him up in a column of white light - Raika-seren giggles and hugs him - and now he has wings, huge sweeping feathered wings like a hawk's or an eagle's, the feathers a deep warm grey only a few shades up from black, patterned with a red that exactly matches his hair.

"They're gorgeous," says his Taliar, gazing adoringly at him. "You're gorgeous."

He extends them experimentally. "Oh, I like this magic system."