The angry girl who looks like Cecelia is flopped in the grass again, still hanging out with the others.

"Hey," he says.

"....hi?"

"I think I need your help. - I promise I'm not trying to hurt you and I don't have any reason to expect you'll get hurt and I think this conversation will probably end with me in your debt, if anything, and I'll help you resolve that in whatever way's convenient to you afterwards."

"....okay."

"Cecelia's miserable and I don't understand why. - she wasn't miserable yesterday, she's been really happy the whole last while, it's really not that she's just miserable all the time because of me. But right now she's miserable and she tried to explain why and it didn't make any sense."

"Okay. Why did she say she was miserable."

"She said, uh, she was working with my father and someone happened to mention I was sleeping with someone else. And I said that didn't help me understand the problem at all and she said she thought she was special to me and I said she was and she just started crying more!"

"...well, I'm not an expert on relationships, but I would guess that it's the part where she's in love with you and just learned that you're continuing to sleep with other people and that you don't see why this is a problem."

" - she's in love with me?"

"Yes? Obviously? Or she was, anyway."

"She was in love with me?" he says, sounding even more horrified.

"I mean, she's obviously not completely over you, or she wouldn't be crying, right, it's just, the person you're in love with sleeping with other people when you thought they only wanted you is the sort of thing that starts to knock that stuff loose, sometimes. I think."

"- that's not how fairies - I've never met anyone who cared who anyone else was sleeping with -"

" - okay, this is not a Cheliax thing here, right, does everybody else here think this is very obvious - "

"It seems likely?"

"Super obvious."

"I am kind of unsurprised that a species that works entirely off magical debt bondage hasn't bothered developing the concept of monogamy? But yes, all the peoples I know of have it."

"Well. There you have it. She thinks you don't care about her and she's over there crying about it."

"She didn't - she didn't say that she wanted me to not do that or anything!"

"Has she ever specifically asked you not to hit her? Not to murder her children?"

" - no?  - she would ask me not to murder her children if she was scared I might, I think."

"Okay, well, maybe, but like - there's a combination here of the fact that this is a very obvious thing to want if she loves you, and the fact that asking for it makes it obvious that she's in love with you, which if you're not is a horrible vulnerability to reveal, given the fact that she's your slave, and if she doesn't make you happy then all of her children are going to hell."

"I wouldn't - 

- it wasn't a very obvious thing to want!

And I can't give it to her."

"Okay, well, sorry, she probably thought it was, like we all did. That's very sad for you."