"No, I got shown around a bit. I'm just trying to get more of a cultural explanation? I'm taking over from Melody but we only had today and last night to talk and this is my first time visiting, so I don't know a lot of things about your people and I don't want to make any silly blunders. So, for example - how do people end up married to each other? If someone decides they fancy someone else, how do they show that?" 

" - gosh. Well, if you like somebody a great deal and you think you might want to marry them someday, you pine for them."

"Huh? Pine for them how? Is...this something where they're supposed to notice how hard you're pining and find it very romantic?" 

Stef is trying so valiantly hard not to snicker. 

"I mean, it's a little complicated? You want them to have some notice so they have time to think about whether they want you back but you don't want it to be firmly common knowledge because then you might get ahead of yourselves and skip the pining step. But you become friends with them, and spend lots of time around them, and think all the time about how wonderful they are, and maybe tell third parties that you are in love but not with who, and write poems that are ambiguous, and compose songs with them and spend lots of your time singing them, and get them expensive presents. And you should have in mind when you're going to stop pining and say something, like maybe 'in a hundred years' or maybe 'once they're declared a master of silversmithing' or 'once the war is over', if you were lucky enough to start pining for someone right when the war started, pining for the length of a war is respectable even though it didn't turn out to be a long war at all."

Stef exchanges a Look with Jisa. 

Jisa is thinking that it does sound kind of romantic, actually, though also it sounds very very inconvenient. "So the idea is that they sort of know you're pining for them, but you haven't talked about it or anything so it's plausibly deniable, and then once you've done enough pining you go talk to them about it? Is there a usual sort of romantic gesture for when you do that, like making a special present or, I don't know, reciting them a poem that's not ambiguous?" 

"Then you confess your love! Writing a poem that's not ambiguous would work."

"Aww." 

"Is there anything in particular the person being pined for is supposed to do to show that they're interested, before the proper confession time? Or do they just pretend not to notice?" 

"Well if you don't like them you should communicate that, by saying you never plan to marry or confessing that you're looking at someone else or something. But otherwise you should pretend not to notice."

They look at each other again. 

"Do people often announce that they're planning to never marry?" Jisa asks. "Do they actually never marry then? 'Never' is a really long time." For Quendi, anyway.

(Jisa is very jealous about the part where Quendi don't die and she hasn't announced this to anyone yet but if the Quendi aid to Velgarth doesn't result in a solution for humans not dying by the time she's thirty or so, she's going to start solving it herself.) 

"Not very often but sometimes. I think if you declare that and then change your mind centuries later that's all right but you should require a lot of time to change your mind, so as not to be rude."

"Right, that makes sense, it'd be hurtful if it was obviously just an excuse to not marry them." 

"Yeah, exactly. But people understand that maybe centuries later you change your mind about things."

Nod. "Well, thank you for explaining all of that! It sounds very sweet. Is there anything else important to know about, er, this topic?" 

"...I know humans are different," she says, pointedly not looking at Stef, "but for Quendi, women only fall in love with men and men only fall in love with women. It's how we were designed."

"Right, Melody did explain that, but thank you." 

"Then I don't think there are any other differences."

Jisa bobs her head and smiles. "Thank you so much for explaining all that! It's really helpful. Er, we'll let you go on with your day now." 

"All right! Have a lovely day!"

They head back to Jisa's new room. 

"Pining for a hundred years!" Jisa says with a dramatic sigh. "That sounds agonizing." 

"Well, Quendi don't think a hundred years is even very long." 

"Hmm. Where do you think it's at now?"