"My pleasure. If it helps there can be a bunch of them."

"She makes it hard to tell if things help or not, but good to know."

"- oh, because - fuck. Uh, at a guess, state dinners and so forth help."

"That'd be my guess too."

"Thank you for saving her. No one could possibly have worked themselves harder to do it."

Sigh. "You're welcome."

She looks uncertainly at Pterodactyl.

Don't think we can be much comfort there.

Okay. "- I have another meeting -"

"We'll get out of your way. See you."

"See you."

I should head home too - let me know if there's anything else -

Will do.

Pop.

Isabella goes home to her empire and runs six versions of a conversation with Maitimë about adding her to the list of people from whom to solicit hugs, looking for the least discouraging result.

Blink. "I wasn't sure what you wanted -"

Blink. - "Sorry, of course. How frequently?"

Blink. "I - yes, all right -"

Blink. "You're busy - I'm sorry -"

Blink. "Can I register an ongoing solicitation for hugs?"

Blink. "Uh, okay -"

- and Isabella promotes the second-to-last to reality and hugs her.

Hug. "Love you - missed you - wasn't sure what you wanted - I asked Island about getting married but I wasn't - we're not -"

"- we're not what?" (Hug hug hug.)

"I think even the try-hard-and-believe-in-yourself kind of marriage requires more contact than we've had."

"Sure it does with an attitude like that." Beat. "In all seriousness the limited contact is entirely me being timid about my inability to read you, cheating with precognition only helps if I ever get something to go on, I'm not a diviner and it would be really not okay with me if I made a wrong turn somewhere and you were too cagey to safeword and too good an actor to flinch. If you want to try getting married we can do that, though."

"I know you wouldn't want that, I wouldn't let you do that by accident, I love you. I - don't know if I want to get married, we should - talk about it sometime, though -"

Snuggle. "I love you. Don't know if you want to get married even for diagnostic purposes or don't know if you'd want to stay that way afterwards or something else?"

"There's a lot of things we should work out before we think about a not diagnostic marriage - are you even okay, it has been not at all clear to me -"

"...I'm fine and didn't think I was being confusing about that?"