"...I think Miranda's exchange rate here is gonna be different."

"I will give her lots of opportunities to rack up amazing accomplishments she need not feel at all complicated about."

"Thank you."

"I'm really glad there are several of you."

"We're enjoying it too."

And he returns to reading.

Cam's tail swishes once and then he does too.

Approximately the next subjective day he has hundreds of catalogues from hundreds of worlds and is flipping through them to check for things that might make them a bad idea to offer to demons. (Uterine replicators: no! Sentient locals who hatch from eggs: no!)

Artificial intelligence: no! Stun weapons: ...maybe!

"Put everyone who wants to muck up the Hell-Heaven concordance to sleep and see if you can invent something better?"

"That was my thought, but it'd destabilize other detentes."

"Yes, suppose it might. Ones that knock a daeva out for thirty seconds have less potential for abuse than ones that'll do half an hour, if there are any of those..."

Probable no to this extremely addictive drug which modifies your personality permanently! No to another egg species - "that's multiple sets of hatching humanoids, weird -"

"It wouldn't be hard to set up automatic firing for brief stuns and someone could engineer an improvement."

"Is Revelation all that far off from developing something like that anyway? You'd think they'd be motivated to get it working on daeva specifically..."

"They try sometimes, nothing too promising yet."

Nod. "...the other thing I want to check is whether you can in fact take chips back with you, it affects what we need to tell people about being careful. Do you know anyone you'd trust to test that?"

"...not to quite the necessary standard. To test it sure, to not let on they had a secret..."

"They wouldn't need to know the bit where we can make them, but if you think the idea might otherwise not be getting around and we'd be risking introducing it..."

"It'll occur to someone but I'd rather it not occur to someone who might notice I was involved in experimenting with it."

Nod. "Could also test it with an angel, they presumably have fewer avenues to do anything malicious with it even if they wanted to."

"Yeah, that'd be safer. I am less able to make personal recommendations."

"Timothy has a bunch of friends, I'll ask him. 

Had any success at stringing together a sentence?"

"No. I'm increasingly tempted to skip it and go with 'drop book, flee' but that seems like a bad plan."

"Suboptimal plan, maybe. How do people do this in Hell, 'let's sing a duet' is presumably not the answer."

"It depends on what they're trying to do and what they're trying to do is never 'date a wizard from 1802'!"

"Yes, I'm sure, but 'so if we were in Hell and I wanted such-and-such I would issue an invitation to this-or-that what is your cultural equivalent' is a perfectly good opener."

"Hell is also not an internal cultural monolith but I take your point."

"When I have more free time I'm going to be fascinated by daeva cultures. But anyway. If you like him, say so, he's very confused about what more he is supposed to do at this point and mildly worried humans just aren't pretty enough for people with enough Elf exposure."

"I had to start aggressively ignoring Elf prettiness on day one because it's just kind of stupidly everywhere, I have not been ruined for the company of other species - I didn't mean to confuse him."

"I know. That's why I thought I'd say something. That and that you two'd be cute together."

"Thank you."

"Ooooh, look, this species doesn't hatch from eggs, they hatch from pods. Bother. And they had such good music and literature, too."

"How much music and literature are you pausing to take in per world?"

"Read a couple works, listen to a couple songs - I still have the attentional capacity needed to run an empire, and there are fewer than a hundred people here, so I've been spinning my wheels, if in fascinating directions..."

Cam nods.

And finishes sorting his pile of catalogues and goes looking for Timothy.

He's very reluctantly studying for his N.E.W.T.S. His books fly away. "Oh, Cam!"

"...did I scare your books?"

"Terrified them. They're very shy. It takes me hours to coax them off the shelves. I suppose there's no point in trying to get any more studying done today."

...Cam laughs and sits down.

"I didn't mean to confuse you."

"I didn't think so. I - want you to have time, if you need it."

"I... need a lot of things but I don't think any of them are currently 'keeping my distance from you'."

Well in that case he will stand up and walk over and kiss him. 

A bit clumsily.

Kissing technique cannot be competently taught in books anyway. It's a practice thing.

Kiss.

"...'I want to give you the world' was more satisfying to say to people when I thought there was only the one."

"People? Several of them? They'd have to share?"

"Oh, I never said it, just imagined it. When I was optimistic about not needing to get married to take over the world."

"About that, I tend not to kiss married people."

"Oh, if I couldn't get absolutely everything I want with no compromises with this much magic I'd have no business ruling anything bigger than an elephant herd. I'm not going to pretend anymore."

"You keep coming back to the elephants. I promise elephants don't devote this much thought to you."

"I find it deeply reassuring that when people are safe and their lives are good they choose to care about more things. The elephants make me very happy."

"That's cute."

Kiss. "So - what do you need -"

"The obvious, pretty much. Put back Elves, figure out something about the Maiar, maybe take out Melkor oath notwithstanding if that's doable without activating the self-defense clause."

Nod. "If the Killing Curse works on him I have a feeling I could muster the relevant sentiment."

Nod.

Squeeze. 

Wings: useful for putting around wizards from 1802.

Wizards from 1802 have yet to do anything irregular or obviously 1802! Maybe they had romance novels to read.

"So is my guess about why you wanted the romance novels about right..."

"Wanted an idea of how to avoid hilarious misunderstandings, yes. I know not to take them seriously but they're usually - suggestive - of the expectations of the societies that produce them."

"I should probably also provide you with a sex ed book before it becomes relevant because the alternative is probably a really weird conversation. Or the top ten curated erotica list, but that'd be even more misleading than the romances."

"Sex ed? How 2179. I would be delighted to have a book."

"This actually occurred to me a while ago so I narrowed it down but the one I could find that assumed the least background from a highly sexually open culture is actually aimed at twelve year olds, would you rather have that one or do some guesswork in the context gaps."

"I would rather bask in delight that this was a question you gave a great deal of consideration over the last few weeks. Uh, maybe not something aimed at twelve-year-olds -

- uh, if it'd be culturally considered misleading not to mention, or something, I was - when I was learning to throw off the Imperius -"

"...that was not an obligatory disclosure but I will hug you if you want."

"You're already hugging me," he points out, nonplussed.

"Yes, I will also hug you if you want when you have not just said that sort of thing. I will in general hug you if you want, deal with it."

"I expect that to be totally straightforward to deal with, somehow?" Kiss. 

Kiss!

"I expect my family to take it okay but in case I am wrong should I avoid telling them in a way that says anything about you?"

"I'm pretty sure I have already casually indicated that I'm bisexual in front of your dad and Minor, although if it's not an accessible concept maybe they brushed it off and your dad may not have been listening. - But have a care for Miranda if the implications could hurt her, she doesn't even know yet."

" - oh, yeah, good point - does everyone match so far -"

"I haven't been quizzing them all. Miranda and I might easily not, we're much less closely paired than your family is with your alts. Like, if I weren't bi I wouldn't even know whether to expect her to match in label or in target."

Nod. "I'll ask Maitimo about whether various other people match - or maybe Bar'd know and if it's not a tendency we can spread that around, if it is - I think I'll ask Miranda what she wants. It could hurt her, but things are going to be changing very fast."

"Yeah, she'll know more about what she'll be navigating than I would."

"Yeah, I caught that from the romance novels."

"Oh, did the top ten list include a heartwarming coming out story or something?"

"It was a secondary plot, actually, and clearly very self-congratulatory about the fact it was present, so you could tell it was a recent thing...people are so delightful, I really did enjoy the books."

"Yeah, it was new enough around then that I was mildly nervous about telling my dad. Not my mom, she was obviously going to be fine. He turned out to be fine too."

"...I think under non-Milliways circumstances my mother would have said 'I love you and you're going to have to make some hard choices about who you want to be' and my father would have said 'I always thought you were too good for politics, now you'll have to do something worthwhile with your life' and it would have been - much better than it could have been but not helpful. For Muggles it's a religion thing?"

"By and large, yes, at least the way the political coalitions lined up. That and a generic disgust reaction I guess, I think religion wasn't too deeply into it before it was meaningfully controversial?"

Nod. "Limbo must be a culturally fascinating place. - are Miranda's parents alternate universe versions of yours?"

"- yes."

...nod.

"Different grandparents though."

"We're the same up through my grandparents but different great-grandparents. That might be because you kind of need my grandfather's situation to produce my father. Does being a different race affect your personality at all, the way being a different species seems to, or is it pretty much superficial -"

"It's hard to sort out '1802', 'black', and 'British'. And 'female'. And 'witch'. But given that all those things are in play they added up to surprisingly little once we started talking."

"I'm surprised I didn't think of it. I did notice how many quirks you had in common - are you less clumsy because there's a 2179 fix for it, or is it just practice -"

"It's actually the wings and tail. Probably practice too, but mostly the wings and tail."

"The wings and tail are really really cute."

"Made 'em myself. Albeit after picking 'em out of a catalog."

"It's more how you move them. I really like seeing you happy."

Wag.

Kiss.

Kiss! "Uh, keep me up to date on display of affection protocols if you need to break it gently to somebody before they notice."

"I should have that conversation with Miranda."

Nod. Unwingwrap.

And a while later, with a conversational privacy spell, "hey, Miranda?"