"That.... that's... that's weirder than the cake thing. How does anyone ever know what anyone else is talking about if... if 'sex' can mean anything?"

"It doesn't, it just means more things than you're used to. The things two women or two men do together aren't usually that different from the things a man and a woman do together. We don't think of it as strange, either - one of my nephews is married to a man and nobody in his town thinks that's strange at all."

"What about the things a person does alone, those too?" Scyelen asks, because it's not like this can get more embarrassing. "And ...isn't the entire point of marriage to ensure patrilineality?"

"Things people do alone aren't usually counted as sex, but different places have different ideas about it sometimes. And - people who get married usually only sleep with the person they're married to, even when it's two men or two women, at least where I'm from, and when they don't it's still polite to assume they are, same as any other marriage. That's part of why it's not thought of as strange, they aren't usually doing anything else unusual."

"Still seems weird and pointless," Scyelen mumbles.

Little squeeze. "Well, some people aren't interested in getting married to someone of the other gender. Or wouldn't mind it, but they fall in love with someone the same one. What do you think they should do?"

"Nothing? Getting married is... for having children. If you can't have children why would getting married even... enter into it? It sounds like in your world if two girls or two boys want to openly admit they're doing lewd things together and call that a relationship, that's the same as if a boy and a girl do the same thing? No one will argue it isn't or say they're obscene for speaking brazenly of such private matters? So... it seems like... falling in love... and, interest in getting married, should have much less correlation, in your world. Not more."

"You have it backwards, actually. Getting married is usually for love, where I'm from - different places do it differently, but that's common. And gay couples - two men or two women - raise children pretty often; they'll either adopt, or get someone to help just with that, or get magical help with it, and the children count as theirs legally just the same as if they were conceived normally."

"That... sounds pretty horrible, actually. I... think... no, I'm... I'm sure you have it backwards, this time," Scyelen shyly insists. "The... the fewer reasons you have to get married, the better, and it sounds like, like instead your society is just... making up as many additional reasons as it possibly can, on purpose. That's just... bad."

"What sounds bad about it?"

"...I don't know how to explain that any better than I just did. Marriage being for more things instead of less things, is bad."

"Hm. Bad like it sounds icky, or bad like you think it'd make something bad happen, or bad like it's happening instead of something better, or something else?"

"Um. All of those?"

"Okay. What do you think it makes happen that's bad?"

Scyelen makes an inarticulate noise. It's just self-evident, what kind of answer does he even want...

"Having to worry about it even if you never want children? No, that's not, not..."

Pet pet pet. "People don't usually have to get married, in my world. They're supposed to before they have children, it's good for children to have parents who've settled down some, but if someone doesn't want to do any of that they can just do something else instead. That's what I did."

"You're still... getting the institution of marriage all over all that other stuff where it isn't necessary, even if it isn't... mandatory?" She's slightly unsure of her word choice. "I think our way actually is better. 'rietta and I. We never could've... shared in our base desires like we did, if those desires were ever the sort of thing... marriage might be for."

"Ah, I think I see what you're getting at. This way there's some kind of - thing I'd call sex - that you can have, that doesn't matter to getting married, and that's important to you. We have that too, a little bit, we just don't do it with gender."

Scyelen lets herself deflate against him with a little sigh, now that she's gotten her point across, even if he went and rephrased it in an awkward way. "Yeah."

"I think gay people end up happier, our way. It makes people pretty miserable to get married to someone they aren't ever going to want to sleep with, usually, especially if they feel like they have to anyway. And I don't think your exception works as well as you think, either, most people aren't interested in people of the same gender."

Scyelen sighs. That didn't last long.

"No, um, it's your way that insists more people get married. Which is bad, for the reasons you just said. Our way means people only have to marry to have children; two people who fall in love can just be together without... anything else intruding on that."

"Why do you think that's bad?"

"You just said why it's bad. It makes people miserable."

Or, wait, is... Scyelen may be losing the thread of her argument, but she isn't sure. Arguing with Raafi is exhausting.

"Mm." Squeeze. "Sweetheart, I think what's going on here is that you shouldn't get married, and you know it's going to make you miserable, and you're assuming it's just like that, for everyone. Most people want to get married, when they're in love."

"Um, well, you're correct that I'd probably be really terrible at raising a child, that much is true, but. That's... a separate issue."