Headshake!

"Okay! Money is - well, it's metal, I guess I didn't list it as an example of a metal thing - but it's metal of specific quantity, shaped in a way that verifies that it is that quantity, a certain weight of a specific metal. Metal's useful for lots of practical things, but that's not what people do with money, generally - they use it to trade with. If the farmer wants shoes and the cobbler wants nails and the blacksmith wants food, they don't all have to meet up in the same place at the same time to make this happen in some kind of mutually conditional fashion, instead the farmer sells the food to the blacksmith, for money, and then the farmer has money and buys shoes with it, and then the cobbler has money and buys nails with it - only it's many many more than three people and three things they want, it's most things people want outside of their own families most of the time."

She has to chew on that for a while.

Am I in this way your family or am I just not a most things person?

"You're our guest, which is sort of like you being - economically part of our family for now, if we get married that's permanent."

Should I sell to some people lights and pillows or is that gauche as well?

"It's gauche, it's a commoner thing to do. It's inconvenient but people will see it as vulgar if a princess is retailing stuff to customers. On occasion I give Kerem something on the assumption that he'll sell it and then get me a really nice present but that's as close as I get, generally."

Nod.  So maybe it's not important that she understands it very thoroughly right away. 

If everything goes the most well it can, how long do you think it would be until we married?

"...well, if I make a lot of assumptions about how well things could go, we could get engaged in a week or so, married in another month or two - royal weddings are big and complicated, they take a while to put together - but that's assuming things like that I figure out how to uncurse you while sitting here today and your uncle has extremely reassuring things to say about politics when we meet him."

But he won't be here for almost a month and you will not be able to talk to him when he does.

"Which is one of the reasons it'd help if I could uncurse you. Maybe I'm mistaken about whether you could get in touch with him sooner if you had your voice."

If you could fix my voice it would let me talk to him when he came here!  I don't think of that as a curse, though.  It might or might not let me get him sooner.

"Okay. I don't see it happening without any further contact with any other sea people, unfortunately."

Will it take one or two months from the engagement whenever that is?

"Yeah, there are if nothing else lots of people who expect an invitation to my wedding and need time to receive the news and travel here."

It is not as long as I feared.  If the first part is not too long.

"I do think that we should only get engaged if you are pretty generically willing to trust me pretty far, it's a pretty high-trust relationship especially in that direction as practiced among humans."

If it seems like what you think is true, I will then trust you much more than other people.  But I have to learn for myself first because so many other people don't think so.  Is this bad for a marriage with you?

"...that might depend on what you mean, can you elaborate?"

I want to read the things you said made you come to know this.  Then I will either also come to know that, and trust you more, or I will think you are wrong against everyone and it may be we should not marry. 

From what I have learned so far I think I'll think you're right, which is why I still like the idea of marrying you.

"That makes sense, but - if something we aren't predicting now, comes up in the future, do you think your conclusion about this one thing will carry over such that you can also follow my lead in other cases?"

She's going to take a minute to compose something by herself on paper.  She lets go of his hand to do it.

My father wants of my mother that if he is wrong, she also will be.

I know so little about the world above the sea, and almost all of it comes from people.  I want to know true things, and you know much more than me, but this is also true of all humans here.

When people disagree, I have to learn another way to tell what is true.  The first time is hardest because people who are right about some things will be right about more.

If you want me in the future to say, "Cymbeline has helped me so much, has been right about many things, and is good at telling me how things work, so probably he is right," I can do this.  If you want me to be wrong, always, when you are wrong, not just to other people but to me, then I think I should go out of Loegria.

"- I mean almost exclusively in a 'to other people' way. You can argue with me! If I make some kind of mistake I do prefer people catch me at it. But - privately. Occasionally my mother and father will have some kind of disagreement, and my mother defers, and then later my father comes out with a change of mind that I'm nearly positive came from her - but I don't see them do it and nobody else does either and that's important for - mostly reputational reasons, I can think of cases where it'd matter for other reasons too but mostly those."

Oh that's so relieving.  She's so relieved.

I thought you meant the bad thing because I never thought you would not want the real thing you want.  A royal family seeming to have one voice is almost more important than what real power they have, I knew already very well.

"Yes, seeming to have one voice is a good way to put it, thank you, that's what I mean. And because of gender and inheritance stuff that voice is my voice, but you can always ask questions or make arguments when we're by ourselves."

Nod nod nod.

And you will never have a different voice from the king?