It would be hard if things were like that and she was sad. He doesn't want her to be sad.

She doesn't want to be sad either. He makes her a lot less sad. Maybe at some point they can think more about how to make all of this stuff sustainable.

He'll be okay. He'd feel more comfortable saying that if Rana hadn't just run off but - Rana belonged to people who he hated and couldn't trust and that's different.

Yeah. Snuggle.

She feels really bad about Rana and Cecelia. She's kind of trying not to think about it because she already has a plan and dwelling on it doesn't seem likely to help anything. But - he gave up all of his ties with his court and he was going to marry her and he's just - gone now. Even if he isn't gone forever. It just seems so horribly unfair.

If he doesn't die he's going to be so so sad forever.

Yeah. 

She kind of figures she can bring back a copy if he does die. But that doesn't really fix it.

He's not totally sure it's the same thing? Kind of a confusing question.

Yeah. Might get a misfortune reset. But would obviously still be really upset with them.

It would've gone better if she'd just enslaved him really but she couldn't have known that.

Maybe so.

They can't actually do anything else about Rana right now, though. Just have to wait. 

Yeah. Probably after it's been hundreds of years she can go look for him if she wants him.

Yeah. She can wait a few months. Not like she's going to run out of things to do.

Snuggle.

Snuggle. 

He's very good. She's so glad she has him. She's really looking forward to being able to touch him however she wants without pangs of conscience but she's kind of still trying not to think very much about that because it'll be awkward probably. Trying to focus on the thing where he's very good.

Why would it be awkward?

She'll think about things and either get very embarrassed or have to roll some kind of will save to avoid doing them? Or maybe both. And it's - kind of not entirely clear where the boundary between thinking about sex acts and doing sex acts is when you're mind melding with someone. Probably.

Well he still thinks she can do whatever she wants with him. If they're definitely getting married soon that's pretty much the same as being married anyway.

Given that marriage is mostly symbolic in this case this is kind of true? But she still feels like she should probably wait. Even though she's very curious about what he likes. Maybe that's okay as long as they don't actually have sex. But maybe it's not. Probably it's not bad to talk about sex at all before you get married? But maybe it is. She's not actually very sure why different things are important but she's trying to err on the conservative side here.

He doesn't think any of this is important. Or, like, it's important to her and that's important but if it weren't important to her it wouldn't matter. It matters that she loves him, a lot, but it wouldn't matter if she had sex with him except that depending what they do he might like it in which case he prefers they do it.

Well they're going to at some point. She's just going to wait until they're married. And then she'll probably still be really embarrassed but she won't feel like she's breaking any rules or making bad decisions and it'll be nice, probably.

(She hopes he likes it. She doesn't have any idea what she's doing but she really really wants to do things he likes and she really really hopes he isn't disappointed and stuff, after all of this.)

Obviously she loves him a lot. So much. He's very good.

He loves her so much. He is confused about the notion he could be disappointed. He is hers. Nothing she wants could possibly be disappointing.

Happy sigh. Hug. He's just so so wonderful and important and she wants to make him so so happy.

She's doing really well at that.

Oh good. Hopefully she keeps doing that. Hopefully forever.

She plays with the toddler for a while and tells him a story and tries to come off as less depressed than she is, and then eventually she drafts Valentine for continued toddler care and heads back to the house to cook stuff. Maybe if she's too upset for that she'll clean something.