"Maybe if it is true I'll marry into a family with lots of empowered couples so it'll be okay if I take time between having children to fly."

"Is that how that works?"

"I think so? I don't think there are specific rules, but I'm supposed to have a lot of kids since only a few will be empowered and since I'll have a much easier time of it than any future non-empowered sister-in-laws I might acquire."

"Personally I'd rather not have empowered children."

"Why?"

"If I were going to have a child I would consider it a pretty high priority to make sure they are not tortured."

"Oh, then yes you shouldn't have children."

"At least empowered ones. Though also just in general I don't plan on it."

"I've never really thought about planning whether to have children or not, but I suppose it makes sense that some men could do that."

"Some women can too. Haven't you got nuns in this country? But it does seem more difficult for the empowered."

"Oh, nuns are a good point... supposedly if rainbows appear over a body of water you can get a second reflected rainbow and I've always wondered what happens if that's combined with a double rainbow - I bet it looks really pretty."

"I bet it does."

"I wish more people painted pictures of rainbows they saw so I could see them second hand."

"Are they not all pretty similar?"

"Some of them are double, or have the banding, or are reflected in lakes, and probably other things I haven't heard of because people don't paint or write down things about all the rainbows they see for me to read."

"I would like nothing more than to be able to whisk you away to a place where everyone who sees a rainbow can immediately render a perfect image of it and put it somewhere conveniently accessible for you," he says with perfect truth.

"That sounds lovely, assuming people actually did it."

"Well, they'd probably forget sometimes. They'd all go look at everyone else's pictures of rainbows and imagine that theirs was nothing special."

"Yes, I don't understand how people could do that, but it certainly sounds like something they would do."

"And if they had the ability to do this with rainbows and clouds and such perhaps they'd spend their time using the same power on cats and what they had for breakfast, even."

"Well, I don't see why they'd do that but people do lots of things for reasons I don't understand so maybe you're right."

"I believe that on occasion there are people who feel about cats the way you do about weather. And it's not even particular to cats. Any number of things can provoke this attitude in the right sort of person."

"I guess Lucette is somewhat similar about other things sometimes, like bridges or irrigation and other boring things."

"Quite so."

"Do you have anything similar?"