"But you'll have killed an evil god."

"Yeah. I guess there's that. I think - eventually I'll have done enough things that it stops mattering very much whether they think I'm being responsible or not. Probably."

Hug. "Doesn't matter to me."

Hug. 

And they can go home and cuddle and telepathy and sleep.

(She keeps occasionally thinking about the fact that she sort of wishes they were married so that they would be allowed to do things that are okay if married people do them, and then trying not to think about this because they shouldn't get married yet and so probably it is not constructive. Even though she's not actually sure whether there are actual reasons for it, given lack of Christianity. Lots of people do seem to have independently come up with the idea that sex should only be between - she should really not be thinking about this.)

His opinion continues to be that she can have him if she wants him. (And it makes him so happy that she wants him.) (And the rules for normal humans don't apply to fairies, or to gods). (And he hasn't had very much practice, he should have had more practice before she got him so he'd know how to make it really nice.) (And that's irrelevant since she wants to wait.) (Well, kind of wants to wait.)

(Aaaa she's going to blush and bury her face in this pillow at the thought of Connor trying to make things nice.)

At this point her worry is more like - nobody can stop her but it might be that all of the people who thought that premarital sex was bad for humans were right about something that she doesn't understand and maybe it'll be bad for her and it would be better if she waited. Or maybe everybody just decided this because they were all really worried about pregnancy and if she had a way to deal with that she would be fine. She really has no way of knowing which it is.

He will make things so nice. Once he knows how. She could let him practice on other people but she probably doesn't want to do that. But it'd be terrible if he was bad at it. 

Humans are weird and lots of things are bad for them that are okay on the whole but usually things aren't bad for them while seeming to be good for them? He doesn't think. Well, there's school. Maybe sex is like school for humans in that they think it hurts in a good way but actually it's just destroying them.

(!!!!) (He shouldn't practice on other people though. She's already an overwhelmed blushing mess at the thought of lots of things that aren't even actually sex, so it would probably be pretty hard to make it disappointing. And as soon as she figures out immortality they'll have forever to get better.)

She thinks probably most people who have sex are not doing it for the kind of difficult self-improvement reasons that school is supposed to be good for? Maybe it would be okay if they tried things and stopped if any of them didn't seem good. Except that that's not really the claim about sex, is it, the claim is mostly that it's very tempting because it feels superficially nice but actually it's harming people in important ways. Like drugs, or something.

How do drugs harm people?

- uh, you take them and they feel really nice but then if you don't take more you feel awful, sometimes, and a bunch of them are different kinds of poisons that destroy different parts of your brain or your internal organs or make your teeth fall out or make you die of cancer or whatever. - she doesn't think that sex is literally like drugs for humans but it still seems possible that premarital sex has bad psychological consequences that are not immediately apparent.

Man it sounds terrifying to be human and have all sorts of normal healthy things maybe actually be secretly bad for you or something.

Proooobably most drugs are not normal healthy things. - at least the modern ones. There's, like, a difference between stuff you find in nature and stuff that's been processed to have the strongest psychological effects possible. - this is not really relevant to sex probably unless you're actually talking about porn in which case there are maybe similarities to the processed drugs thing. 

The point is really mostly that she just - doesn't want to make mistakes that everyone has already told her would be mistakes. Well. Maybe not everyone but lots of people.

Lots of people are pretty against having a slave or being a demigod but actually those were great decisions and he supports them wholeheartedly.

....this is true.

Maybe she should be thinking about the things that are important about marriage and see if those things are already true or could be true or should be true.

If they were married she would know that he was okay staying with her forever because he'd have committed to that. If they were married then he would know that she was committed to him, and that she wouldn't go find someone else to replace him, which he periodically does not seem to know. (She doesn't want him to feel like how good a time she has is going to, like, affect how much she likes him.) And everybody else would know that they were committed to each other, and it wouldn't be surprising or embarrassing or anything that they had reached some particular level of intimacy.

Even if they are married she could leave if she wanted to because she is a god. He is not really thinking of marriage as having any power to affect this, because even if it did the spellbook would probably just give her the power to be unmarried to him.

That's - not how marriage works? Like, she technically could leave, yeah, but it'd be - her making a serious commitment to not. Adding that to her list of basic minimum duties. Like, she could just decide to abandon Zana somewhere, but she's - not going to? Because she's made a commitment to take care of Zana? And this would be making a commitment to stay with him. So she wouldn't leave him except in the sorts of bizarre insane circumstances that might make her consider leaving Zana. Like maybe if he decided to become a serial killer or something, that would still be problematic.

She didn't, like, promise to not leave Zana? She just kind of - started taking care of Zana, and it was important to her. And she doesn't seem any less serious about Zana for not having promised something about it. 

This doesn't quite get at his confusion but it feels related.

She supposes that this is sort of true. What happened with Zana was that her parents died, and so she could have let someone know and made sure someone else would raise Zana, but instead of doing that she decided to do it herself, and she thinks that meant that she had to keep doing it at least until someone else was available to step in. So maybe Zana isn't a great example, maybe Zana is kind of like where she and Connor are right now.

But there are other commitments that people can make that are stronger than that. Like, if you make a baby yourself, you don't get to hand them off to someone else who might want to raise them, if you get tired of doing it. The baby is your responsibility until the baby grows up and can take care of itself. And - this would be her saying that staying with Connor and making sure he's okay is part of her responsibilities no matter what happens. And she kind of thinks that that's probably a stronger assurance than anything else they're going to be able to come up with, because everything else the spellbook can get around, but it can't get around things that she herself has decided on.

And she wants to do that? Just because it bothers her when he supposes she'll find some more people once she's a god?

- partly, yeah? Like - partly because she just has all of these feelings connected to the idea of marriage, maybe like he has lots of feelings connected to being her slave? But also she feels like - if he never worried about her finding other people then maybe she'd figure it would only be a good thing for her, but it seems like the things that he feels about this are always - he wants to be her only slave and he feels like this is unreasonable because in his culture it is. And - it seems like how she really likes having a slave and sometimes feels like this is unreasonable because in her culture it is. But he doesn't think it's an unreasonable thing to give her at all, it seems normal and makes him happy. And - him being her only person like this feels normal to her, too, and it'd make her happy, if he knew that him wanting it was okay and that she wanted him to have it. 

Huh.

It seems kind of ridiculous and convenient that the unreasonable things they want would be actually not unreasonable and they could have them.

It does! And yet.

(She wants him to feel safe and loved like he's hers and not ever have to worry that she's going to ignore him for someone else shinier, and she wants to keep him forever and ever and ever and ever.)

He wants to love her and serve her forever and ever and ever and have her never bother with anyone else because she only wants him because he makes her so happy.

That sounds really really good. She feels all warm and happy and delighted about this idea. 

Then probably at some point they should get married about it? He guesses?