" - okay. Chelish people don't, like, distinguish based on gender, there."

" - huh."

"I guess it doesn't, like, matter, it just means I have no inclination to look for anyone else while I'm - here. Not that I had any before anyway.

" - are you gonna - "

"I don't - I want you to feel important and be happy."

" - okay. I don't - it did not actually occur to me that that would be an ask."

Nodnodnod. "I'm glad we bumped into it now. I don't think it's a very big problem but I want to think about it a little bit before I say we can definitely do the Chelish thing? If we were married I would just say that, of course, but - since we are not."

"Mhmm. I - I dunno if I have a hard line around it but - I'd wanna think about it."

"I think..... sometimes it does really important things for people? And I'd want to think through how I was sure that those really important things would happen otherwise. - and Mahdi will be very annoyed if Fazil and I both marry foreigners with different monogamy norms and drop him at the same time but this is a secondary consideration really."

" - oh wow, are you all - I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh, s'not funny. Uh. I - that makes sense."

Patpat. "'s not - very notable. Adventuring parties spend lots of time out on their own away from the rest of the world -"

"Sure, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. - I am mostly just finding it unbearably funny that I spent some amount of time assuming that I was the sluttiest member of the group on the grounds that I, I dunno, occasionally spoke to people alone."

"I definitely assumed some things that I was wrong about, there."

"My country has a reputation. S'okay."

"I think it was kind of shitty, actually? But - won't do it again. - should maybe give Fazil advice about the new Imrainai, relatedly."

"Oh?"

"We were talking about - what things he would want to work out or think about before he asked her community leaders if they thought he ought to court her. And he said that he wants to check if Abadar can see him in that universe, and what happens to them when they die, because he doesn't want kids who just - stop existing, no matter what they do, and - that given how childbearing happens among their people they don't have any expectations that people not have casual sex, right, and if she did he doesn't think it'd reflect an actual values difference but it still - he still has any feelings about it? And we got interrupted but probably I should point out that reasoning from alts, she has probably never dated anyone in her life."

"Ah. Yeah, that seems likely. We've - some of them have had sex but I don't think any of the ones so far have done it casually. And I don't think I have any evidence that any of them have ever dated someone who wasn't, uh, a you."

"He's not gonna - if something bad happened to her that's completely different -"

"Yeah, sorry, didn't mean to imply he'd - I just can't actually claim that we're all virgins. Nobody so far has had sex they were happy about."

"Sort of - discouraging."

"Yeah, kinda. And the half who've gotten pregnant all seem to have done it under pretty terrible conditions."

Nod.

Snuggle.

"I'm fine. - maybe not in general but on this front."

"I'm glad. Not because it's my business but - I like you, I want bad things to not happen to you. And if I had to go murder a guy Starfarer'd be judgy."

"Hee. Don't need anybody murdered. - except Asmodeus, but I think he might be out of your league."