It takes him a couple of seconds to respond, and then he nods. "Yes, that seems like a good idea." He follows her. 

She sits down on her bed. "We met Urtho. And mostly talked about magic."

"Oh?" Ma'ar is not sure what she's expecting him to say to that. 

"I think for Urtho in particular it was valuable diplomacy," Mhalir adds. "He was very impressed and curious and I expect he has quite fond feelings about Carissa now. And will be very motivated by the prospect of staying on friendly terms with Golarion so he can learn more magic. Also he - has a better sense now that we are very powerful and could enforce ending the war, I think, even if either of you tried to restart it." 

"Right, that - makes sense."

It's odd how he's been navigating discussions of various kinds all day and now it feels like all of a sudden he's forgotten how to make sentences. Or maybe that he's used up all the sentences. It's odd, feeling safe again at the end of a day that felt incredibly fraught and delicate and like he couldn't afford a single misstep. He doesn't know what to do with the feeling that, instead, Mhalir effortlessly understands what he means even if he says it very badly. 

<I want him to relax but I am not sure how to persuade him to do that> Mhalir complains to Carissa. 

I hear you could seduce him.

<...I can try. It does seem like it might help. ...Perhaps I will start with persuading him to get a little drunk with us first, that should be relaxing even if it turns out he is not amenable to seduction.>

And he puts his hand on Ma’ar’s arm. “I think you ought not be required again tonight. I can have my second-in-command answer your communicator, he is briefed on the full situation. And you would benefit  from a break in juggling all of it.”

This gets a blank-neutral look from Ma’ar, but after a moment he nods. It’s tempting, to not think about the war for just a couple of candlemarks, now that powerful aliens have the situation roughly under control, and Mhalir is him, he would know. 

Mhalir tugs him out of Carissa’s room and over to the small dining-room, where they can obtain arbitrary alcohol. Ma’ar can tell them what he prefers, or Mhalir can pick their favorites for him?

Mhalir can pick. (Ma’ar has made enough decisions already today, and this one doesn’t seem very important.)

Surprise cocktails!

Carissa is in favor of this, because she is fifth-circle now, and also because it has been a really long week. "We will have to take Ma'ar home to meet Aroden."

“We will! You will like him, Ma’ar. - although you two will end up talking about magic for fourteen hours straight. You three, I suppose, Carissa also will only talk about that with him. Did you know, he let her copy whichever of his spells she liked, and he knows so many...”

“How generous. I am still quite curious to know more of your magic, it seems similar in some ways but then you do things like turning into an earth elemental, which I do not think is possible with our magic even in theory!”

Has Carissa had enough of explaining Golarion arcane magic to Velgarth mages, or is she up for telling Ma’ar about it too?

(Mhalir somehow doubts she’s had enough of talking about MAGIC.)

Maybe on a normal day she would've had enough talking about magic because that was like ten straight hours of talking about magic but Carissa is a fifth circle wizard today!!!!

Ma’ar listens attentively, if a little distantly at first. He gets less distant over the course of the next few drinks, and more animated in his questions. He smiles more often, though still not objectively a huge amount.

Urtho has already gotten to a lot of the interesting insights about how their magic systems are different, so she can skip through lots of back and forth pinning that down. She suspects mages would make good wizards, the ability to see and manipulate the flow of magic is a good place to be starting from. She's so jealous of mage-sight and Aroden will be even more jealous, based on her impression of him. 

At fifth circle - once she's better at it than she is today - she'll have Polymorph and Baleful Polymorph and Wall of Force and Permanency. She is bouncing gleefully about this.

Ma'ar smiles vaguely at her bouncing, nods along, agrees that mage-sight is probably very useful for studying arcane magic, although being a Velgarth mage might also make wizardry frustrating, Velgarth magic is much more...accessible, in a way, your total power is Gated on the strength of potential and not on having practiced for years and then gotten into tons of fights. 

(Although he has, in fact, been in very many fights and he wonders if that would transfer to whatever makes Golarion wizards gain spell-circles.) 

Carissa is adorable when she's so excited about magic, but Ma'ar still isn't relaxed, and seems like he's only half present in the conversation, and this is frustrating. Mhalir feels like it should be more obvious to him than it is what Ma'ar needs to feel safe, and like he can let down his guard. Reading Carissa's mind, before, seemed to help but also confuse him, and confusion seems like not-the-thing right now.

Well, the nice thing about being the bartender while Carissa and Ma'ar are absorbed in discussing magic, or at least Carissa is and Ma'ar half is and is half somewhere else in his own head, is that he can totally make Ma'ar's next drink, like, twice as alcoholic without this being obvious. (He is trying to get Carissa slightly less drunk than Ma'ar because he wants to be able to cast spells.) 

...Honestly he feels like being the same person as Ma'ar doesn't give him much advantage at all to seducing him, given the part where they're different species and Yeerks in their native form don't even have sex at all, but he can at least draw on all of Carissa's procedural knowledge for this even if she's not up for being involved. 

Over the course of the next set of drinks, he shifts his chair closer to Ma'ar's and, when Ma'ar doesn't object, leans against him a bit and starts running Carissa's hand through Ma'ar's hair, like Carissa did before. 

Huh. Ma'ar thinks vaguely that this is nice, and it's nice to talk to someone who's so clever and enthusiastic about magic and has such a clear crisp grasp on it. He still keeps having the feeling that this isn't entirely real; there are too many sudden changes, too many surreal discoveries about the nature of reality in too short a time, his hindbrain can't keep up.

Right now he's not very distressed about it, though. He feels less like he needs to constantly hold himself braced and vigilant - or maybe he just feels less like he can - the world feels softer and warmer than it did before...

Carissa will keep talking about Gifts! It would be really interesting if it worked out that mages made high-level wizards as soon as they could get the stabilization down but she expects not because a Golarion sorcerer who picks up wizardry can't cast higher-circle spells than any other beginner. Though no Golarion sorcerers have anything as powerful and flexible as Gifts. Probably all the mages in Velgarth can make a lot of money offering Gifted children in Golarion if they want to do that, though of course she is aware he wants them in Predain too. Based on what Urtho said, Gifts might breed truer here than most bloodlines do at home?

There is something vaguely thrilling about having Mhalir move her hands closer to Ma'ar though she's still not sure he's not gay.

Well, Mhalir certainly doesn't know how to tell from looking! Ma'ar seems less tense and miserable than before, somewhat, but that could have any number of explanations. 

He takes Ma'ar's hand under the table.  

This is what's happening, sure. Ma'ar is only half tracking the room and his body at this point; he has his mage-sight open like always and part of him on alert for threats, and the rest of him focused on the fascinating conversation with Carissa, with one slim thread of thought remembering once in a while that he should try to be maximally charming to the alien diplomats with starships, and there isn't a lot of bandwidth left over after that.