"No problem."

"Hopefully we'll get a hit soon. Looks like clear skies today, so anyone above deck might give us enough to work with."

"That's promising. Let's go make Mahdi complain about scrying."

"Ah huh."

On the carpet she flops.

And they can head off towards Sothis.

She seems in a pensive mood.

"Twelve kids is really too many, I think, even if you can afford them. I'd want to stop at - like, eight, at the latest."

"I'd ask my parents what they were thinking but they were eaten."

"Sure."

"I don't want to tolerate even one baby for five years."

"Elves're weird. - not that I am expecting to be doing very much of the baby care."

"Yep, I don't know how the species has limped along to modernity but in the present day drow are solving it with slave labor and surface elves with a gentle extinction. Maybe on our original planet there are drugs that make us like babies or something."

"Or make them grow up faster. It's not five years for us."

"I wouldn't really want to tolerate a baby for a year either but I'd be more confident I could manage it without shaking it to death."

"They're sweet after a couple of months. They pay attention to you and smile and stuff."

"But they don't, like... talk. Like, I don't have anything against stuff that can't talk in full generality but stuff that can't talk and also wakes you up in the middle of the night -"

"I guess. I'm kinda with Fazil, I'd have eight but not twelve. If I had to bear them...I dunno. Sounds really unpleasant."

"I've heard it's bad for humans, yeah."

"Is it not, for drow?"

"I think less? I dunno, I can't actually rule out the possibility that there's a conspiracy among human women to claim it is the tortures of the Abyss to be sharply limited because their husbands won't leave them alone for reasons like 'she wanted him to'."

"Knew someone who didn't like magical healing after childbirth for that reason. 'I get two months off, don't you dare-'"

"Anyway, barring exotic theorizing I'm given to understand that elf pregnancy is gentler and childbirth nothing one can't handle on a bottle of wine."

"Well, that's good."

"Yeah. I can think of unrelated reasons behind every small drow family I know about."