"I don't think Fy's a qualified chaperone! Your reputation!"

"Only need one of those if you're retiring."

"You're never retiring? All right then."

"It's not that it wouldn't be nice. In theory. If the world were completely different. Which I hear you're working on."

"I am and I will be delighted to have your assistance. I will put 'invent Cure Reputational Wounds' on here -" She flips notebook pages.

"Really doesn't matter. I'm not going to show up in Sothis and pick out a girl even if everyone there thinks I'm Aroden reborn. I don't - want to live there."

"Huh. I don't either but for presumably different reasons."

"What do you have against it?"

"Racism, sexism, enormous sky fireball."

"I guess those don't affect me. Or are actively nice for those of us who can't see in the dark and don't eat...mushrooms? Scorpions?"

"Mostly mushrooms. Humans eat mushrooms sometimes!"

"Humans eat all kinds of weird things sometimes, but I wouldn't want 'em as staples."

"Then I guess you won't be a beneficiary of my patch to the giant yellowcap."

"Maybe I'll try it just so I can appreciate what a good god you are."

"It doesn't taste like much, honestly, it's just easy to grow and decently high calorie for a mushroom."

"How are mushrooms grown, on farms in caves? Do they not require any light at all?"

"No light. The slaves need light to work by but the mushrooms have no such requirements. They grow in compost and nightsoil."

"Huh. How does the cost of a meal compare to how much a laborer can make for a day's work -"

"The slaves do not possess currency and drow are almost never doing unskilled labor and if they do it's in some situation where most of their value add is in being a drow instead of a slave. A relatively poor single drow lady who has been between jobs for a while can almost certainly still eat because the ones who'd be between jobs for a while and squander their savings and be on bad terms with their moms do not make it to adulthood. But some relatively poor single drow lady who doesn't own her home, not making much cash in her capacity as an... overseer or restaurateur or something... spends maybe half her after-rent income on food? And with a high mushroom to other ratio."

Nod.

"It's not all mushrooms, they just appear in many foods in high volume like humans' regionally preferred starches do. There's lighted gardens and meat and fish and also theft."

"From the surface? Seems like it'd be such a hassle."

"Humans'll do wacky things for spices. Drow do it for those and also, like, sugar and wheat."

"Well, maybe they'll agree to trade with us for those, then."

"Probably. It'd simplify transport a lot if you dug a shaft and had a way to lower stuff down."