"He's helpful," Cam remarks to Felicity, loading up more mausoleum objects onto his wagon.

"They're all like that, when it involves something they want."

"Do you find it inhibits your ability to go into meeting new people with an open mind to have that kind of advance knowledge?"

"Not in this case.  I do believe we mostly can and mostly should give him the things he wants, and I think it's fine for him to want them, but it's better to know what's behind it rather than thinking he's just inclined that way.  Especially because he's unlikely to set any boundaries that he thinks might stand in his way; I'd rather have an idea of what to watch out for."

"Boundaries like, uh, not signing up for lethal experiments, or...?"

"I'm not sure he would actually mind that one given handy resurrection, though the side effects hadn't come up so I don't imagine those were being factored in - he seems to legitimately enjoy this work but it would be possible to extract quite a lot of labor he didn't if that were a condition for staying here - I think other, less conscientious people in our positions could receive basically arbitrary numbers of sexual favors in return for letting him touch the wings or extra arms, again some of which would have him as an enthusiastic participant and others of which he would - endure - "

"Wow, let's not. I'm not good at judging ages but he looks like a teenager to me."

"Yes.  He - fairly restrainedly, to be honest - indicated interest while you were building the city; I pled married-to-myself-twice on my part and said I'd be uncomfortable acting as a go-between for flirting on yours and if he wanted to try he'd have to work out his own translation method."

"I will leave that as a problem for Future Me, I guess. Is that entire birthday going to go nuts if there's ever commercial wing-adding services available?"

"Yeah.  - If you put them on resurrectees for free and don't offer a comparable opportunity to living folks we're probably going to get a lot of suicides."

"...oh dear. Have you found flying difficult? I know it's normally hard for humans and I don't know how much having worse lungs would affect that."

"I haven't tried it yet."

"It might be good to have data on that. Do you need a learn-to-fly video tutorial?"

"I'd accept a link if you had one in mind.  Does it work in places as flat as the campground?  I suppose I could use most of me to hoist my wingèd selves on top of the Felicityper and try to glide off it if not."

"I can take off from a standing start but it's harder when you're starting out." He sends her a document path.

"Thanks.  . . . How much crashing did you do to start with?"

"Uh, there's sort of a blurry line between 'awkward landing' and 'crash' and all my awkward landings were crashes because I have really bad balance, but also yeah."

"I almost wonder if it might be safer to try it out there - " she gestures with a spare hand towards the mouth of the cave, "since at least there isn't much to hit.  Presuming the existence of a way to retrieve me if I just start falling."

"The shuttle can exceed terminal velocity, though it wouldn't be a walk in the park. Do parachutes work here?"

"Those would probably help.  And I might manage to land on the side of the cylinder or in a lower cavern, just.  As long as there was a way back up in general.  I wouldn't want to try it while you were otherwise occupied."

"Reasonable. I could set up a big net somewhere, maybe."

"Ideal!"

"It wouldn't even have to be out here, I could put it over a lake or something."

"That does sound less nerve-wracking."

"And a shorter commute."