"I guess! I dunno who they'd've picked out for me, there's nobody obvious."

"I bet I sing better. 

Though he could've, you know, married you, so there's that."

"Yeah. I dunno, the singing better is real good."

"It's not - it shouldn't affect your life that much. At all, really. But I - I don't want to be that man who says 'I don't see why women care about getting married so they're being silly probably' -" shrug -

"Do men not care? I mean I guess most of them do but they've got ways it... affects their life..."

"Men mostly care but, like, because they can't have love and companionship and children otherwise, right? In the north they don't care, I don't think."

"Well you've got, y'know, all the love and companionship and kids you can rescue from a life of crime or receive flute related fan mail from or what-all, so do you not care? Never going to get married at all and save on jewelry?"

"I don't really know."

"You could do the singing contest idea and everything. Though Amina might be offended if it were only singers in particular."

"I think it complicates things, having you all. I wouldn't want you to feel - like, if I take another girl that's fine but if I take a wife I'm saying I care about her more -"

"You're allowed to do that, though? You can care about whatever you care about."

"I can, yeah.

I - 

 - when I think about it I mostly think about everyone else, sad - about you -"

"Well, heck, if I'd just been less stupid I could've shown up whenever you got around to your singing contest, huh."

"That doesn't make it better, that makes it worse! It means you'd be sad for - not even because I liked someone better but because things happened in the wrong order!"

"...the one thing wasn't supposed to happen at all, not just in another order? I did a dumb thing and now my life is only great instead of extra crazy great?"

"Hmm."

She flops her head on his shoulder.

Patpat.

"I dunno. If I were writing a song about it I'd want to - do something with the other girls who - wanted something I didn't see in them -"

"Huh?"

"I'm not sure I'm thinking about this very sensibly at all. 

Hmm, maybe try this one: if you heard a song about a man with four wives who saw another woman in the square and wanted her, in some country that didn't have any rules about insurance, and he took all his savings and got fancy clothes and went to her parents' house and won her and married her, and it was told like a beautiful romance, wouldn't you feel a little annoyed, artistically, on behalf of the other four - like you could've told a different story with different details, he could've been short funds some other reason, but you told this one -"

"I guess I'd kind of wonder if he did that with the first four too, and just made the savings back in between? Or else the song really should say why this one was different."

"Maybe that's it. I don't feel like I have enough of an account of why someone should be different - and therefore a satisfying stopping point -"

"Maybe it'd turn into one of those songs that goes on forever as he adds more and more wives."

"Those're fun but I don't really think they're as good as something with a story."

"Well, I suppose eventually he would die and go wherever you go if you have seven hundred wives."