"Speaking of!  It looks like Verona has a huge fund for the purpose of, very approximately, bribing unforeseen powerful entities into not smiting them."

"...it seems dishonest to take that bribe when I wasn't planning to smite anyone anyway."

"Very approximately.  It's . . . I still have very mixed opinions on them; let me think of how to phrase this - autumn solquinoxes are very cooperative, in their own way.  And they would still count themselves relevantly smote - the phrasing there is mine - if you peacefully drugged unconscious all of the individuals who'd been doing things you considered morally abhorrent and moved them to some luxurious facility carved out of the side of the cylinder where they could live out their days without harming anyone else.  The fund isn't a bribe to let them keep on doing the morally abhorrent things; I'm sure they'll mostly stop now that there's someone to stop them although there is enough variance that not literally all of them will.  But there are reasons they haven't been birthday-aimed or massacred or whatnot out of existence, and most of those are that they make themselves very useful to anyone who would have the opportunity."

"Birthday-aimed?"

"When people attempt to have or not have babies on certain days.  In this case, at scale.  Usually one omits the 'birthday-' and relies on context."

"Oh. Ellie mentioned her parents had her a day earlier than planned to avoid it..."

"Well, that doesn't happen nearly frequently enough that they've ever dipped very far below even rates."

"Huh. Do I want to know what morally abhorrent things I will be stopping them from doing?"

"I don't think I have enough information about your preferences to say!  One of me belonged to one of them if you're curious, though.  And of course others of me interacted with them in various capacities."

"Belonged to them. Well, I suppose they're not unique in practicing slavery."

"They indeed are not.  Although legally we were actually considered married."

"In a way that made it better or a way that made it worse, I could see that going either way."

"My component considered himself relatively content and well-off during his lifetime.  With the benefit of increased perspective, less so."

"Well, I guess that's better than considering yourself wretched and miserable only to then realize how good you had it. How should I go about collecting my bribe?"

". . . . Plausibly we should first test your invulnerability against various forms of local magic, it occurs to me."

"...'kay. What's a good way to aim some destructive magic at something replaceable, like a wing?"

"Probably dripping some disresonant essential oils on it.  Though in fact I was mostly thinking about drugs; have you tried to come down early from any of your omnilol highs?"

"Not especially, no."

"I would advise testing that before attempting to collect this sum.  There's a myth that omnilol was created to cater to the interests of the four solquinoxes: the ability to temporarily become more than mortal for winter; the opening of circular mortal communication for spring; the standardization of communication between the living and the dead for summer; and for autumn, well.  They like to be around people who are impaired in that sort of way."

"How... charming. I'll try that now unless there's some reason to wait? If I can throw it off it'll take no time at all."

"I would like some more pie first, please; otherwise no, go ahead."

More pie! And off he goes to try to not trip.

He has an easier time of it than when walking.

In that case it will take no time at all; he pops right out again. "I can no-sell omnilol."

"Heartening!  I'll start drafting an email to get you a meeting with a Veronan representative although we should probably wait to send it until you've tested the essential oils too.  - Or, let me ask Ellie something; it might be possible to make an array that only targets part of the body, which would be faster to obtain the materials for."