"I hope so." Probably she's right. Leareth thinks he's pretty good at learning his way around new domains, so probably he can do this one too, and - she's not Khemet's level of unusually delightful, at least not yet, but she's clever and she thinks like him, in some ways, and they'll work together closely and...he's sure that sooner or later he'll be able to feel trust and intimacy with her in the same way.

And he wants that. He's just - not sure how to skip ahead from here to there, or if it's even possible for him to do that. 

The next day he asks Parmida if she knows of any good jewellery shops in the city. 

She can recommend him some!

He takes the afternoon off other work, scopes out both and then heads to the one he's less excited about first, so he can ask the proprietor how much one would usually spend on a wedding ring when he asks to see the selection of them, and it'll be less of a loss if the man is set on overcharging him as a result. He still has very little context on what the haggling norms are like here. 

They're at first perfectly polite and want to know what price range he's looking in and then someone recognizes him at which point they're quite off-balance, and a bit scared. They can show him their existing selection but also lots of higher-end buyers want a custom piece made, you can look through a book of designs and figure out which you like best, and they can arrange to have it both made and enchanted here if he wants magic. 

The options for magic rings go to some things that are probably out of even his price range, such as a Ring of Three Wishes.

They seem, going off reading their minds, to be more interested in upselling him than overcharging him. Surely he wants to ensure his beloved's safety with a Ring of Friend Shield, which lets you shield the other person through the ring? Or a Ring of Delayed Doom, which lets you carry on for a minute before a spell's effects hit, more than enough time to respond and get to safety?

Both of those sound very tempting, honestly, especially the Friend Shield, and Leareth doesn't think he minds being upsold. He asks to look through the book of designs, vaguely wishing he knew Carissa better so he could more exactly predict what she would like; she has a cactus familiar but he's not sure if this is at all indicative that she likes plants, versus it was just practical. He notes down the plant-related designs though, and then tells them that he would like to consider it and he'll come back. He is, throughout, polite and tries very hard not to be scary. 

He heads to look at the other jewellery store as well. This entire process is kind of exhausting but it seems worth doing right. 

The other store can also get him a custom piece with whatever enchantments he can pay for, and has their own book of designs that he can look through, and all kinds of advice about what's currently in style.

Leareth thanks them for the advice and makes more notes and then returns to the palace, kind of overwhelmed, and seeks out Parmida.

"I am looking at rings and there are too many decisions involved. Help?" 

"Oh, you're going to hate planning a wedding. I guess you can get her to do it. How much are you willing to spend?"

"I like planning things just fine when I understand all of the tactical considerations! I have no idea how to decide between different designs for a ring though, and I am concerned planning a wedding will be entirely like that." He tells her what he's decided he's willing to spend, and the enchantments he's intrigued by, and shows her his sketches of some of the designs he liked.

"You're doing fine," she says. "Take a night to sleep on it, think which design grabs you in the morning, go with that, ask Aroden about the enchantments because that is partially tactical and he'll have thought about it more than you."

Leareth talks to Aroden about spells. The Ring of Friend Shield isn't actually as flexible as he'd hoped, it doesn't let him cast his kind of Velgarth shield through it, and he suspects Carissa can shield herself or make her own shield-item if she wants, and he's better off giving her a Velgarth-style talisman. He ends up deciding that the Ring of Delayed Doom is a pretty intriguing option. 

He selects a design from the first shop that he likes and finds pretty, that's apparently in style according to the second shop, and that's at least distantly reminiscent of cacti. 

It'll be about six weeks of work (expensive magic items take time and this one needs someone capable of Time Stop, there are very few of those) but they are delighted to have his business and will keep him updated on their progress.

Leareth considers asking Aroden if he has it and can go speed things along, but that might scare the poor jewellery shop people even more.

He thanks them courteously and then, when he makes his way back to the palace, asks Parmida if there's any agreed upon convention for saying you intend to propose when you don't want to wait over a month for the nice magic ring.

She would expect you get a non-magic ring and propose with that and explain. In Osirion she'd tell a girl not to sleep with her fiancé before she has the nice ring in hand, just in case, but Cheliax is more relaxed about that sort of thing and anyway probably since he's Aroden he'll need seven years.

Leareth can't help smiling. It's possible he'll need less than seven years because he's not a former god and thinks he's somewhat less confused about human things than Aroden, but, fair point.

Maybe he'll look for a nonmagical ring in Sothis, which he needs to visit anyway because he wants to ask Khemet for advice. The next morning he asks one of Aroden's staff to do a Sending that he'll stop by in the afternoon if that works for the pharaoh, it's been a little while since they spoke so it's a good time to catch up on official matters as well. Among them, the permanent Gate terminus; the first one contracted is now finished, all the changes to the spell needed to get it to work in Golarion and between planes if necessary are sorted out, and he's ready to send a team of mages over to get started on it. 

Khemet can meet with him that afternoon! He is very excited about his permanent Gate terminus.

Explaining all the decisions to be made takes a while by itself. An important one is security. Leareth and Aroden, working together, managed to design a second-level arcane spell that could be used to activate the Gate, rather than requiring a Velgarth mage specifically; they assume it's possible to get a divine version but that's not Aroden's specialty. The downside is that two wizards' spells aren't distinguishable from each other the way one Velgarth mage's particular magical signature is from another's, so it won't allow them to key specific people to the Gate, though they can only let authorized wizards have the spell in their spellbooks. (But that relies on no corrupt court wizards deciding to sell it on the side...)

Aroden worried a lot about unauthorized use of the Gate network they have planned in Cheliax, and how to prevent it without bottlenecking legitimate use or making it too costly; Leareth isn't sure if Khemet is actually very worried about that for the Gate between Osirion and Axis. 

Another question: does Osirion want to be a node on Cheliax's network? It would, among other things, make it far more convenient for Leareth to visit, requiring only a trickle of mage-energies. 

He would like that! He's not very worried about security on the Sothis-Aktun terminus at all, because if anyone shows up in Aktun who Abadar doesn't want to be there Abadar can do whatever He likes about that. They'll have conventional security around their end mostly just so they're not having anyone go through without paying.

That makes sense. In that case he suggests they set it up so either the wizarding spell or the Velgarth version can activate it; once active it can be kept open as long as they want, from its power source rather than draining a person, though in the meantime it'll still mess with the local nodes and ley-lines and thus weather (albeit less so than an ordinary Gate.) They could, however, keep it up twelve hours a day and have a couple of mages on standby to prevent it from dragging in storms.

If it links to the Gate on the outskirts of Egorian - convenient enough for Leareth but not a threat to the palace itself - then he's satisfied with that level of security on the Osirion end. It'll need two different spells to access Aktun versus Cheliax, since interplanar version is different; it's taken a lot of work to get the same kind of Gate-terminus able to hold both, rather than needing to inconveniently duplicate the infrastructure.

He's so thrilled. 

How are things going for Leareth otherwise? Caught any more spies?

No new ones, but the first one is finally back from her research into Iomedae's character as a goddess. And she's interested in marrying him! Which it turns out is a lot more stressful than he had been expecting! He feels like he's trying to ad-lib all the steps to a dance he's never learned, and other people's explanations only half make sense, and also he's spent like six hours looking at rings in the past two days and he's still not DONE because now he needs to get her a non-magical placeholder one for their date. Which he also hasn't even started planning, aside from still thinking that he wants to take her to Aktun, but he should put more thought into what she would like and find romantic rather than just doing literally all the same things he did there with Khemet. 

Help? 

Awww, poor Leareth, he should get snuggles. 

Khemet's advice here is going to have the obvious flaw that none of it worked for Khemet. Iomedae said that this was because of a difference between them, because Khemet has some fundamental incapacity Leareth doesn't, so giving generally sensible advice is still good, but he can't be sure it'll work because he cannot, personally, get any of it to work. 

Does he still like her? He seemed to, the day they met her.

He thinks so? Or, well, he definitely likes her in a normal way; she's clever and interesting and he wants to spend time around her, and he also keeps having an urge to offer her hugs, which is perhaps a higher bar of liking than he hits with most people. He's pretty sure that he wants to marry her and work with her.

He doesn't think he wants to kiss her or sleep with her, right now? When he imagines it, it mostly feels like he wouldn't be relaxed enough; there's the way he can relax almost entirely around Khemet, right, that was true before they did anything else, it started with the time Khemet held him while he cried, and - for the first time in decades if not centuries he wasn't trying to track his environment for threats. He thinks maybe he needs that to be capable of actually enjoying physical intimacy the way people are supposed to, and he doesn't quite have it with her yet, though it seems plausible they would get there. According to Parmida it took Aroden seven years with her. 

Seven years would be a little unfortunate? In Khemet's experience unless you filtered your selection of women really hard for not liking sex, they get really miserable if their husband doesn't want them even if it's only for, uh, five years so far.

Leareth should not try to force it if he doesn't enjoy it and doesn't feel safe doing it, though, because then you end up feeling constant creeping dread and this impossible-to-dislodge conviction that your body doesn't belong to you and is this miserable thing you have to puppet through your life while you watch it from a great distance, underreacting to almost everything and occasionally overreacting to completely random things, and - anyway probably not worth it. Khemet has looked into magic that can fix the side effects and not found anything yet.

Oh no that sounds terrible. Leareth hugs Khemet.

"I - think I could do it if she did not mind my not liking it especially - if it were just to have children, say - but, I have a sense it would almost entirely defeat the point of the thing she wants. Which is for me to want her. She is on board with marrying me either way, for - all the rest I can offer - but I wish I could give her a solid prediction that in six months I will want her that way, instead of being so unsure about it."