"People... name soup... where you're from?"

"I mean, not always? Sometimes it's just whatever was in the pantry and it's not a recipe exactly. But lots of recipes have names, or titles." 

"It's called 'this is what the market stall I like was selling cheap'," shrugs Maurabel. "I'm sorry Daline scared you earlier, by the way. I've told her you're going to move out soon."

"Mmm. I wasn't that scared, it was mostly just awkward and I worried she'd, I don't know, steal your things or something. Anyway, how was the rest of your day?" 

"Pretty ordinary. I'm - of mixed opinions on coming back to school next term, actually."

"Oh. Um, is that related to me being here now or a different thing?" 

"Sort of both? It gives me something else to be doing. I haven't learned all known magic but I'm getting there and can probably figure out a lot on my own, and they take a bunch of my money, and it might be more valuable for me to be working on smuggling elementals to your world and trying to integrate them there."

"That makes sense. And - it doesn't seem like the university is a great place for you to be trying to recruit other people who also want to free and smuggle out elementals?" 

"Yeah, it's terrible for that. I mean, no place is actually good for it but school has, y'know, people who are accustomed to using elementals all the time."

"You know, I'm a lot more impressed now, that you ended up deciding it's not okay to enslave elementals even though literally everyone else you know thinks it's fine. I - think it's a lot easier to see that sort of thing from the outside, I'm sure there are all sorts of things in my world that you'd think were terrible that I didn't manage to notice." 

"Well, I could go check."

"You should come, once I know how to get back and forth more easily! I would really like to introduce you to people I know, too. Trev would think you're great." 

"And he's already lifebonded so I won't have to be paranoid about it! There's something I already don't care for about your world."

"Fair. I guess you could meet my parents, and my Uncle Van and his, um, boyfriend, and they're all lifebonded already so it wouldn't be a risk." She realizes halfway in that she has no idea how Maurabel's world feels about shaych people, but it's too awkward to elide at that point. 

"His - huh. Okay."

"Do, er, people in your world ever fall in love with other people who're the same sex as them?" 

"I did not know it to be a thing between humans."

"Well, I don't know about humans in your world but it's a thing in my world - I actually know another lifebonded couple who're both men, they're the ones who taught me the weather barrier spell." 

"You sure know a lot of people this has happened to."

"Right! It's kind of weird, it's not representative at all - I think I might know most if not literally all of the lifebonded people in Valdemar. I guess there's sort of a thing where - my friends are more likely to be the sort of people where the gods are meddling in their lives?" 

"That doesn't make me feel very reassured about the odds of it happening to me."

"...I guess you might have a point, although I still think it'd be harder if our gods didn't know you existed until I found your world by accident. But it's true I'm not sure what They do and don't know." 

Maurabel gives a little shiver. "Well. If I help you commit grand theft I should probably not be nearby after that regardless of the romantic hazards in your world."

"Mmm, that makes sense." 

"And we can nip back and make further raids once they're out of harm's way."