Snuggle.

"I'm a very lucky person."

"Glad you think so. I think I am."

Hug. And then she can actually get up. They'll be able to snuggle more tonight. And the next night. And the next.

She will at some point also want to talk about their understandings of marriage and, like, what they would understand each other to be promising and how their expectations for each other would change if they were to possibly hypothetically do this at some point.

"I guess I mostly - I'd want you to take really good care of our kids. I'm not worried about whether you would do this."

"I would take very very good care of any kids we had. But - there must be other stuff, right? I don't want to give you suggestions yet, but I'm pretty sure married people usually expect several things from one another - "

"Uh, fidelity? Intimacy? I guess those are important to me. Uh, talking about stuff and making sure I know enough to take care of you."

- nod. "You're very sweet. I - should probably ask you to expand on both of those first things because, uh, I think we have learned that people from different places often have very different understandings of what these things are, but - if you don't wanna talk about them now that's fine, I know it's, uh - hard. To talk about stuff. ...I guess maybe I could shoulder some of the awkwardness burden by telling you what I would guess that you mean and then you can correct me if I'm wrong?"

"That sounds good."

"Okay. I - if you weren't Osirian I would assume that fidelity meant avoiding, like, kissing or doing anything past kissing with anyone besides you of either gender, but since you are Osirian I suspect that what you actually want might be, like, never being alone in a room with a man again but it's fine if I kiss girls? I - do not want to promise to never be alone in a room with a man again, that seems really limiting. And I don't care about kissing other people. - Kind of care a lot about you kissing other people but I guess I'd have to think about it to be sure whether that was something I could or couldn't compromise on. And, uh, in terms of intimacy I figure - it's important that you get to have sex, especially if you're foregoing having sex with anyone else? And it's important that you get to have, like, touch, in general, and affection, and signals that I care about you, I think maybe most people need some amount of all of those things in their close relationships. But, like, I would also still assume that if I don't want to do some specific thing or have sex at some specific time then I can tell you no, I'd be, like - taking some level of responsibility for your general needs, but not giving up the right to withdraw consent to something if I need to? If that makes sense?"

"I don't think the not being alone with a man thing matters unless we're in Osirion, which hopefully we never ever will be again. And yeah, you could sleep with women if you wanted to, not my business. I'd - it's really really important to me that you wouldn't sleep with a man. 

Uh, people shouldn't be habitually refusing their spouse - either way round - but obviously if someone says 'I have a headache' or 'I am very tired' you should go 'oh no I hope you feel better' and not pout or make them feel guilty or try to convince them to change their mind."

Snuggle. "I don't want to assume that very many things are obvious."

Snuggle. "Yeah. 's smart. Sorry, I just - wouldn't want you to think I was doing terribly novel moral reasoning, there."

"Fair enough. I think - we will both consider it our responsibility that the other one gets what they need, and we will both tell each other when we need something, whether that's touch or not touch, and hopefully it all works out with a minimum of personal sacrifice either way, but if it doesn't we'll figure something out?"

"Sounds good. - mostly I am feeling excited about how much that sounded like you want to marry me and are just figuring out details."

" - I may be at the point of indulging in fantasies about waking up next to you forever. I am still going to do this right and date you for some number of months and make sure you don't have any particularly insane beliefs that seem relevant."

"That sounds very difficult but I expect I'll survive."

"I will try to vet you for insanity efficiently. - uh, I'm fine never having sex with other men. Really wouldn't want to have sex with anyone while I was married to someone else, I don't think. - is promising never to divorce important to you? Or the Osirian head of the household thing? Or obedience stuff? I have honestly had enough of promising to obey people."

"Promising not to divorce is important to me! None of the other promises are actually promises if you can just decide that actually you're calling off the whole thing. I - don't think I care about any of the rest of it. We're not in Osirion, we're not going back, we can do what the local people do."

"Okay. Solid. ...I think the pessimist in me wants to know what my non-divorce recourses are if you, I don't know, grabbing the most extreme example I can think of, go insane and try to kill all our hypothetical children? What are acceptable non-divorce recourses if keeping things the way they were ended up unsafe? What are acceptable non-divorce recourses if that's not the case but what we're doing is making one of us consistently miserable? I guess - there are ways that I don't think I'd mind being stuck to you forever, but I assume there are some parts of marriage that we're supposed to be trying at and some parts that we'd be promising will remain true no matter what happens to either of us, and I don't think I should assume that I intuitively know which parts you're going to assume are which?"

"Uh, if I try to kill our children I get...arrested? If things are unsafe... I guess you ask Fazil and Mahdi for help? If we're making each other sad we could try - going off on our own for a while, that's not backing out on the whole thing. Legally the only thing that you're committing to under Osirian law is the not sleeping with other men and me to supporting you even if we separated, but, like, if we separated I'd hope that we were working on figuring stuff out so that we could stop?"

"Yeah. That makes sense. Obviously, like - I guess it's not obvious - if I were to marry you then I'd be planning on making stuff work, as well as they could, as long as we were alive. But I'd also want to, like, know what courses of action I'm agreeing to definitively close off for myself in even the very worst situations. You know?

"Anyway. I don't care about promising not to sleep with other people, that seems completely reasonable. And I guess you can support me forever, although I might be kind of unclear on how exactly you plan to do this."

"Yeah. I would've said something sooner if not for -" stump-gesture.

Snuggle. "I have magic now. We'll have money."

"Yeah, but - I'm supposed to provide for you."