"Lunch now?" Leareth says outside, taking her hand. "The restaurant I had planned is a longish walk so I might just do a short-range Gate. It is very nice not having to worry how many times I Gate in a day because I have four each of Lesser Restoration and Recharge Innate Magic." 

"Sure!"

Leareth pauses and does an unscaffolded Gate in midair. His short-range Gates are really fast. Maybe ten seconds later they're arriving at the restaurant he had picked out for lunch, this one close to all the good magic shops that Parmida recommended. 

That's really neat. 

She enjoys lunch and spends it gawking at additional people and magic things.

Leareth is glad she seems to be having a good time, and is feeling a bit less like he's trying and not quite succeeding at following the script she expects of him.

He tells her the plan is to visit some magic shops that were recommended to him, and he'll buy her inks and materials for working on spells with Aroden, and maybe replace some of her magic items if she's desperately missing them. 

"- This is the main shop where Aroden used to sell magic items, a long time ago," he says when they arrive at the first one. 

"Wow!" The things she had before were a +2 headband and a ring of sustenance but she is going to stare in fascination at everything in the shop if they look rich enough to not get kicked out for doing that. She wants to see how similar amulets of nondetection look to the hatpin of it she made.

Leareth isn't sure if they look rich enough, but he brought a very substantial budget for this and if the staff start looking annoyed with them, he'll buy her whatever she's decided she wants and see if that helps. She should definitely have a Ring of Sustenance again, if only to save on the awkwardness of different bedtimes.

He looks at things with mage-sight and can try to tell her what the amulets of Nondetection look like to him, though he can only study the hatpin to compare if it's not currently Nondetection-ing. 

She doesn't have an effect up concealing it right now and they can compare. 

Eventually she gets self-conscious about how much money they're spending even though it's mostly on magic supplies which are a perfectly reasonable thing to spend money on. Her thoughts are all quite loud and defensive about how lots of the paladins had fancy enhanced armor.

"Thank you," she says. "I think probably that is more than enough to keep me busy for the next year."

"It is a reasonable start, anyway." Leareth isn't sure how to help her feel less defensive about extremely reasonable expenditures, which are so far just replacing all the things she gave up to come here - gods, he would be so frustrated if he had to sell his headband at this point, he's gotten so used to it. 

Maybe he should just say it rather than hinting around it, that's always what he ends up wanting her to do. "Aroden will probably want you to have twenty more magic items as soon as he thinks of it. The entire week before the war he kept just handing me powerful magic items I had barely heard of and saying they would be essential to getting things done effectively, and he was absolutely right about it." 

- nod. "I - understand the logic. I just - haven't thought it through at all, how much money to spend on improving myself compared to on Cheliax - I guess if he has then that's probably good enough." She does look very very tempted, in there with the looking conflicted.

"He has thought about it a great deal. You could talk to him about his thoughts, there, if it would help?" 

"He's Aroden. He's very scary. I can brave it for the magic but I don't know if I have it in me if it's just for important strategic informat- I guess I will try."

Leareth squeezes her hand. "I think being able to have normal conversations with Aroden is going to be important for your role, here. I know it is hard." He frowns. "...I am not sure I actually understand it, since people being very scary generally means I want to talk to them more rather than less, but I do know most people are not like that. Maybe you can give him advice on how to be less scary? He does not mean to be, and it seems inconvenient if it means people do not want to talk to him for important strategic information." 

"I think it's mostly the thing where he is a legend from our history books who came back from the dead and fought Asmodeus and conquered the country in two days. Also both of you just have something about you that is very - if you notice a threat and you're always looking you'll destroy it without blinking - and with you I can sublimate that into sexual attraction but Aroden's old. Looking.

The illusion shows will help. We can show him and Parmida bantering."

"That makes sense." 

Aaaaaand now for the part that should probably not be nearly this terrifying AND YET. "I - had one more stop planned for today. In Sothis. I can Gate us there - and then back to Cheliax afterward, obviously." 

"Oh. Sure." She looks curious but unconcerned. 

Leareth takes a deep breath, reminds himself that being nervous about this isn't going to help achieve any of his goals and that Carissa likes him and wants to marry him, and - Gates them to right outside Trilliant, Ismat's jewellery shop. 

"I want to marry you," he says to her, seriously. "Apparently Cheliax under Asmodeus did not take marriage nearly as seriously as Osirion, so possibly all of the advice I got from Parmida and Zahra is going to be confusing to you, but they said I should propose to you with a ring. I am separately going to get you a very magic ring because I am very paranoid and also people in fact keep trying to murder me and it would be unfair of me to drag you into that without protecting you to the same absurd extent I protect myself. But - anyway, I do not have it yet, and Ismat said I could not buy a normal ring without bringing you in to see if you liked it, so - here we are...?" 

"Oh! No, we still do rings, we just also do divorce. Not that I'm going to - I'm sorry." She looks flustered. 

"I would love to marry you. Thank you. We can - pick out a nice ring.

- uh - 

- this year or next -"

"...To actually get married? I - had not exactly picked a date. What are the considerations for it?" 

"Most Chelish weddings happen on Signing Day. It's - considered auspicious, and it's a big national festival, all your friends who are getting married hold wedding parties and you kind of just - float around, maybe with a date, go to four or five of them and congratulate people. People do get married on other days but - the most Chelish thing to do is to get married on Signing Day, it'd be a bit of a foreigner thing not to. Imperial marriages always were on Signing Day.

The problem is, it's in two weeks. Or, uh, a year and two weeks."

Leareth nods, thinks for a minute. 

"...Honestly my first thought is that getting married in two weeks will put a hard cap on how much time we have to spend wedding planning. Parmida thinks I will dislike it. I like planning things in general but - I suppose not when I am mostly interacting with elements I do not understand and am not sure which ones are critical versus discretionary. I do worry that an important part of the purpose of state weddings is everyone knowing it is happening, which would be hard to accomplish in two weeks. Also I would feel a little bad about overshadowing everyone else's weddings. But - you are the one who will better understand the various pieces and justifications here, I think." 

"People should know it's happening but it might be all right if they find out from the fireworks display, at least if we're talking about common people, I am pretty out of my depth guessing what the nobles would expect to know except they'll be annoyed you didn't pick one of their own. Probably we've got to make sure they all know in advance which maybe can't be done in two weeks - that's easier with Gates everywhere, I guess. It's stupidly little time to plan anything in, the staff'll be stressed. .

..I don't know how long we have before Aroden"  -she glances around, decides not to get into it - "but it'd be much better to be married by then, I think...

If it were a month I'd say we should just go ahead, it's just that two weeks is so tight. I don't suppose Aroden has a time dilation demiplane he can loan his staff."

"Aroden absolutely has a time dilation demiplane, he took a number of us there immediately after he did the turning-people-to-stone at the Worldwound, since he needed a day to rest and prepare his spells again. I think it can do longer than a day if one is using it for fewer people. In terms of making announcements, we do still have Taver helping coordinate - he seemed not especially attached to returning to Valdemar, I suppose they are likely already in line to receive a new reincarnated Groveborn and also the situation with his former Chosen is awkward. He has the ability to broadsend Mindspeech to everyone within fifty miles, and we can transport him around by Gate." 

"Well, it'd be a little silly but we could probably pull it off. I would rather be married well before you have to be King."

"That makes sense. I suppose we should go back and run it by Aroden tonight - after you pick a ring, that is what we came here for - but I think we could manage it."