"What I mean is we have to decide whether or not to go through with it before I start making serious efforts on Fatehood."

"Mountain did mention that she knew when she was about to become a Fate before she did, so not necessarily... but we also do have lots of nonmagical ambitions to fill our time, and I am and you will be pretty darn immortal already even without Fatehood."

"I see. Oh, also, I made a golem that reacts to electricity! Like a switch that closes at about two volts. And a voltaic pile to test it with. Think I should see about a golem that produces a current at a steady voltage next, or try to get a golem that can read analog voltage signals?"

"How do you mean, read analog voltage signals?"

"Get numbers other than zero or one from the voltage. Like for the frequency filters and stuff you told me about."

"Oh, right. That's probably a better idea—and also I'm pretty sure alternating currents are better than direct currents so I'm not sure a steady voltage will be super useful, practically, but might be a good first step."

"Electricity is cool. Definitely going to try to be the Mr. Tesla or Edison of this world. If interdimensional plagiarism doesn't count."

"Well I don't exactly know all about electricity so even if interdimensional plagiarism does count we'll soon enough reach the cutting edge of what I know and have to develop new things from scratch. Progress only happens on the shoulder of giants, after all."

"Better get started then?"

"Definitely. I'll swing by the shadow people with pictures of some places I found, they seem to be our best bet now that—" His voice catches, and it's quite strange to hear the catch in the crystalline clarity of his speech, but he's otherwise undisturbed. "—Alec's no longer an option."

"Don't tell me what stuff they ask for. A house and a place to put it are one thing, but I don't feel any particular desire to know the details of their diet or whatever it is they're using you for."

"Oh, is that what this is about?"

"It might be. They don't want me or anyone to know, I'll respect that."

"Yeah, that's fair. They—did say it was acceptable that you and you alone learnt about it, when I explained the mate thing."

"Ah. Then it'll be fine of you tell me but no particular curiosity."

"Really? I'm hopelessly curious about literally all fair folk species, here."

"Call it ten years of 'fair folk? Don't ask don't tell' being common sense."

"Ten?"

"Since I was too little to really absorb social mores. Maybe six or seven teen, thinking about it."

"Fair enough, I guess. I'm not sure if it will ever stop annoying me that they're so secretive about everything."

"There's more valuable stuff to be curious about?"

"You're absolutely correct about this, but I'm curious about pretty much everything and also when people deny me knowledge like that it just grates."

"Hmm." He sounds like he's stopping himself from arguing further. "I'm going to try and build a better DC power source."

"Okay. Were you going to say something else?"

"If you wanted to hide the mate thing or the drinking blood at least until you met me, wouldn't it be intensely irritating to have people just keep asking?"