"That - helps, yeah."

"Helps who?"

"You and by extension her - because being a source of pain to you will be worse for her than meeting any particular expectation of yours would be -"

"Well, I was sort of manifesting the patience by having negligible expectations of her but apparently I should stop that."

"Probably, yeah - mind, she's going to be all right either way, it's more for you-"

"Well, being very patient doesn't actually come naturally."

"Yeah. So - expect more of her, it's good for her and she loves you and one of the only things she's figured out how to want is that you're happy."

"She did get me an empire. It's a marvelous empire."

"You should tell her so, if it hasn't come up."

"I did say it was wonderful but in context it may not have been a sufficiently effusive compliment."

"Mine wanted to be King again. I think expecting a lot of them is - easier for them somehow - but they do need more than usual amounts of reassurance that they're doing it right -"

"...and like eighty percent of the errands I send her on are counterfactual..."

"Very strategic but possibly not as conducive to feeling essential, yeah."

"It does matter the extent to which I can rely on her to run errands efficiently with the constraints that let me see the results, I can draw attention to that."

"One assumes she'd think of it, but yeah, possibly... what's my alt doing, it is possible that it'd be stabilizing for her to have a friend around -"

"...don't actually know what she's up to these days, we don't talk a lot by default and I have been advised that I should not apologize for counterfactually stealing her girlfriend. She used to sort of manage the eclipsed kids we'd imported but then three left and the rest were murdered, so."

"You should probably not apologize for counterfactually stealing her girlfriend but you could definitely let her know how her counterfactual girlfriend is doing."

"Sure. You want to come?"

" - sure, if that'd be easier -"

"'Hi, Findekánë, this is an alt of you who was in the neighborhood' is a better conversation starter than 'hi, Findekánë, I'm dropping in on you randomly'."

"Then by all means I would be delighted to serve as conversation-starter."

- is Findekánë free now if they drop in -

She's in a meeting with Ingwë but it ends a few minutes later.

"She'll be out of her meeting in a few minutes."

"I have another hour. ...this planet I've been working at is a really frustrating one - two major ethnoreligious groups which hate each other and have separate United Nations-ish thingies which refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of not just all of the other side's countries but also the existing of the other sides's United Nations-ish thing, and both of which separately applied to Vanda Nossëo for membership on the condition that the other one, not being a real planetary government, be denied membership -"