"You're very certain you won't want to leave him?"

"Maybe if he becomes a serial killer or something?"

"Okay then. Marry him."

" - really?"

"Most people shouldn't get married at eighteen. You're not most people. You've taken care of kids and lived with your boyfriend for two years and you're trying to put an end to hell. If marrying the person you're in love with and who you've worked with for years will help you do that, then I think you should do it."

"Huh."

She looks at Hagan.

"Is he competent to get married. Like, can he pull his weight, and also is he going to be upset in a million years that he never tried anything."

"I don't think he's going to be upset? Like, in a million years he might want to go explore other worlds by himself ever, but I think that's fine? As long as he comes back after. And he will. And I think he can pull his weight. Like, pulling his weight is going to look different for him than for most people, because I can make arbitrary material objects and therefore don't really need a lot of material support, but - he's been watching my niece for years. He does half the chores and when we had jobs he brought in almost half the income, and now that I'm trying to be a goddess he has good ideas for things and is really important for - I dunno, emotional regulation. That's part of why waiting feels dumb, right, I know I can run a house and a life with him, I've been doing it. Since I was sixteen."

"Yeah, that seems like a pretty good reason.  I think you should go for it."

"Gosh."

She kind of instinctively looks at Cecelia for the sake of completeness.

"Someone who rules a realm should be married, and nineteen is a perfectly reasonable age to do it. You already trust him more than anyone else. Go marry him."

"Huh. Well. Thanks everybody!"

She flies off towards her house.

She kind of figures that anything that Korva and Hagan and Cecelia all agree on is probably a pretty good idea, but just in case she thinks at Alex anyway.

Hey Alex? I have, uh, a question. If you're not busy talking right this second. Or it can wait until you're not.

What's up?

He's absolutely talking right now but Elves can carry a couple conversations at once.

I really wanna marry Connor, and normally I would say this is dumb and I'm too young and stuff, but also we have been running a household for at least two years, and now I'm trying to be a goddess, and it's not super clear to me what I'd be waiting for other than looking less stupid to everybody else. And I talked to Korva and Hagan and Cecelia and they all thought we should go for it. And I know you're an elf and like thousands of years old and you probably think we're both basically infants, but - I guess I also think you have a reasonable sense of the broader situation and I wanted to ask you, too. And I would ask Asmodia except I already know what Asmodia's going to say.

Does this have to do with Rana leaving?

No. - maybe indirectly. It's been bugging me for the last couple weeks and I was mad today about being incompetent and making mistakes and feeling like whenever I make mistakes it means I'm a dumbass who doesn't know what I'm doing and can't make big decisions, like getting married, so I'd have to wait a long time still, and then Connor said that wasn't true and came up with a plan to tell my parents without them irreparably freaking out about it, and then I thought that we should probably do the plan while Rana's sped up because the plan requires time to be passing in my world anyway. Also because I don't actually want to wait years and years.

It's not about wanting to make sure he won't leave. He's not gonna leave either way.

Okay. My dad got married when he was barely a grownup and I don't think he ever regretted it.

That makes sense. I don't think I'm going to regret marrying Connor.

I might regret doing it under circumstances where if I have an actual wedding everybody might think I'm a dumbass, but 'I don't know how wedding logistics are going to work' seems like a weird and dumb reason to hold off for years.

Elves do weddings privately and have a celebration beforehand where people wish you luck and so on. I don't actually know much of anything about human wedding customs except that Catholics do it in churches.

Obviously it varies by culture and stuff. Where I come from you invite everyone from both of your families and there's a ceremony where the bride wears a fancy white dress and the person officiating asks you to make promises - I should probably rework the wording even though Connor won't actually explode or anything if he breaks a promise as long as he's still entangled with me, for the sake of not being pointlessly careless - and sometimes you have a little girl throw flowers and sometimes you have a little boy bring the rings up, and you exchange matching rings. And I guess at some weddings people give speeches or whatever but I think that's probably optional. And then you have a reception where you give everybody cake.

Maybe I'll have a really small one and not invite anybody awkward. I feel kind of guilty about not inviting my parents but I'd have to explain so many things to them that I super don't want to explain at all.

That makes sense.

Anyway. I just - I didn't a hundred percent mean to make my demiplane a hub of interdimensional rescue operations, and I'm fine with focusing on really important stuff and trying to fix everybody's previously nigh unfixable problems, but I kind of don't want to do things that make everyone think I'm an idiot if they're all going to be counting on me to help them. And I don't really know how much this is something I should or shouldn't be concerned about. Maybe it's a dumb thing to be concerned about at all. Or maybe it matters and I should be thinking about it a lot more than I am.

I think most people can't both do important things and look important at the same time.

Huh.

I guess if I were gonna try to anyway I'd go for a really fancy outfit and flying instead of walking. But I dunno that it's really an important thing to aim for.