He sighs. "Anyway, Michael, to Elves the highest romantic narrative would be 'he hears someone singing and falls in love before he even sees her face, and vice versa, then something stops them from actually meeting, and they spend the next thousand years writing sad songs about the one to who their heart is truly given, and then they see each other again and marry that very day. So that's what Macalaurë will do, or, rather, what he trusts me to orchestrate once I meet the right person for him."

"...I'm the most dramatic person I know and that is a bit much."

"Are you actually going to orchestrate that. That's ridiculous."

"If I meet someone who will make my brother very happy I will tell her that story without saying who it is I know who wants that, and because she is the person who will make my brother very happy she will probably say 'oh, oh, that'd be perfect' and then I will arrange it for them. If there are no people in all the worlds ridiculous enough to find that appealing, then I suppose he will be unattached forever."

"This level of self-awareness about ridiculousness is actually weirder to me than the ridiculousness itself. I'd sort of expect it to dissolve on inspection, possibly because I happen not to like being ridiculous."

"I think Macalaurë would say that he is - exacting, not ridiculous, and that if you are going to have billions of years together it makes sense to get the introduction right. I am entitled to call him ridiculous because I am his big brother."

"- and were apparently also ridiculous about a girl, Cam said."

"Did he. Ridiculous-because-of-being-in-pain is different than ridiculous-by-aethetic preference, but it would in fact be fair for people to call me ridiculous too, if they'd like."

Miranda coughs, this not being the time for pedantic corrections.

"Maybe you can find an alternate universe version of her who doesn't hate you."

"He just said they're going to spend a century moping."

"Oh, right. I'm really glad I'm not an Elf."

...Cam coughs.

"Hmmm?"

"Alternate universe versions don't always match closely. It turns out I am a Miranda, for one thing."

"- huh. Did you invent an alphabet for a language when you were eleven, Miranda invented an alphabet for Igbo and I looked up the one in Revelation and hers is better."

"As it happens when I was eleven I was a monolingual English speaker. I'm not surprised she could improve on 'force this language into the Roman alphabet at all costs' though."

He settles back, content that Miranda is the best of the alternate universe versions of Miranda.

"But he did tell everybody in Revelation about daeva and end material scarcity so there's that. He doesn't usually tell people that."

"- cool! Why don't you tell people?"

"I didn't think it was safe, at first, which turned out to be correct because somebody found out anyway and murdered me, and then there was no reason to."

"Someone murdered you?"

"Walked into the classroom where I was teaching and shot me in the head."

"We should summon him and dump him in the lake."