It's so important!!! And Terel doesn't need to be wearing his shirt does he—

Well, neither does Sadde. And their socks and shoes can go away and they can go onto the bed because isn't that most of the point of a hotel.

That is so much the point of a hotel!

She believes trousers should go away, too. So unnecessary.

Maybe not quite yet. But soon, very soon...

Now the trousers can go away.

Good yes bye trousers, hers can go, too.

It's much the same thing they've been doing for a while now, but more... Tender? Terel's not in a huge hurry here.

He mutters "I love you," into Sadde's neck.

Oh my god oh my god this is way too overwhelming—

"I love you. So much. I want you forever, I want you to be the happiest person in all worlds, I want to make all your dreams come true and give you interesting challenges and new things to learn and new places to discover and new magic to invent, I love you."

"We're going to have forever."

She's not going to question that now, nope, she is going to kiss him and snuggle him and be with him for as long as he'll have her.

Well. He'll have to go be human for a while eventually. Food, shower and the rest, sleep. But he puts it off as long as possible.

And she'll be just as delighted to accompany him while he humans as she is to do anything else around him.

The next day they schedule a trip to the World Pillars. "Thinking about going to shelling point from here makes me nervous, as if we're going to be locked up again. We'll get around to it."

"It's alright, love, it can wait. We have—" Pause. "Did you mean that? When you said we have forever?"

"Well, I don't have any reason to expect the world to end. And I don't have any reason to expect to prefer dying of old age to turning. It's just - not yet."

She nods vigorously. "Okay. Good. I love you."

"I love you, too."

And eventually they go to visit the World Pillars.

The ship that brings them there is a slow, ponderous thing that isn't really very shiplike at all. It's designed more like a floating town. There are a lot of sports equipment shops, since most people headed to the World Pillars could probably use sports equipment. Terel chats with shopowners about how-to-outdoors.

Sadde half-pays attention—which is of course much more attention than a human could ever pay—since she won't really be needing most kinds of equipment, and half looks around at the place and the people and, well, Terel. There's always a part of her brain focused on Terel.

Terel has less attention to distribute, but it follows the same general pattern.

The place really is a floating town. It's easily the size of a large Earth cruise ship, including parks and bars and stores and a hospital and a bank and so on. It doesn't have engines, and floats along at five or ten tiles per hour (slow, but they're in no hurry), inviting a consistent breeze through the streets. There are gardens and greenhouses behind and above most buildings.

The biggest fractions of people on board in descending order are passengers or visitors, locals (shopkeepers, cooks, hoteliers, and so on), and tour guides or sports instructors. People here are more cheerful and relaxed than average. It's nice. A wandering tourist town.

Sadde wants to do things! Does Terel want to do things?

"A little dependent on the things, but sure!"

"Wanna waste money on a casino?"

He snort-giggles in surprise. "Sure! Not too much though, even if we're not exactly pressed for cash it'd be weird."

"Yeah, we're probably not gonna win anything but," shrug.