"I mean, we've been - talking - we get along and everything -"

"It takes a good deal more to make a lasting partnership. I don't know how compatible we are, as romantic partners or lair-mates, and I don't know how to find out, when trying things to see if they work is effectively forbidden." 

"Trying - things."

"Yes. For example, dragons frequently, though not always, lair together before agreeing to an egg-bond. If they start wanting to bite each others' tails off within the first month, well, they go their separate ways. And where I'm from, individuals of many cultures and species, humans included, often have sexual relationships with several different partners before settling into anything long-term. For that matter, a large chunk of the humans in London seem to do something similar, they just feel terribly conflicted about it and cloak the whole matter in pretense."

"I don't really see how we would live together even if we did get married. You can't turn into a human for very long at a time and I work on a series of boats."

"Oh, that might work for a living option if we don't care about raising young together. But if we did, we'd presumably have to pick a location for at least a little while, and I would strongly prefer it not be a boat, that just doesn't feel safe."

"It's not unusual for fathers to be gone a lot of the time if they're sailors or something and leave the kids home with their mother."

He shudders a bit. "Dragons do not do that. Well, I suppose some dragon might, but we have a very strong instinct that eggs must be guarded and protected personally if at all possible. We don't have quite the same feelings about wyrmlings, they can fend for themselves early on if they must, but in my case I'm confident the protective instinct would extend to anything as apparently helpless as a human child." 

"Well, that's not a bad thing or anything, but - I don't really see what the problem would be, if you didn't like how I kept the house you could just tell me?"

"Ideally, if we couldn't try living together first, we would discuss our own ideas of lair-keeping in great depth before settling on a compromise acceptable to both, and only then figure out disagreements we didn't anticipate. It seems like an extremely difficult but surmountable challenge, given sufficient communication. I'm less sure of how to determine sexual compatibility just by talking about it." 

"It seems... at least kind of hard to do without sinning and maybe also with it!"

"I remain extremely skeptical of the Catholic claim that sex outside marriage is Evil. My ability to discern the Evil in souls still seems to be working fine on Earth humans, and prostitutes, for example, aren't discernibly more likely to register as Evil than the average Londoner. But if I take that assumption as given, yes, it is a difficult problem for a relationship." 

"They probably mostly go to confession and get it handled. I think Anglicans still do that."

"That being an option at all is still baffling to me, by the way, and I'm not sure it works as advertised. One assumes the corrupt bishop confessed sometimes, he was still a shining beacon of Evil, and there have been a few similar cases. Also, I have in fact spoken with non-Evil prostitutes who've not visited a church in years. I suppose they could all be lying, but why..." He shakes his head. 

"They could've repented in their hearts? Or your spell just isn't checking for states of mortal sin."

"If it isn't checking for that then the spell may as well not exist, at least as I understand the term. But it at least seems to? Murder counts, murderers register Evil at a very high rate...I suppose I don't have a different way to check for inner repentance, at the moment, I just find it hard to imagine that alone providing absolution while one is still doing the thing. And there still doesn't seem to be a reason for it to be Evil, it doesn't seem harmful in any other way. I confess I'm still very confused on this tenet." 

"- for prostitutes to be? They spread diseases and they encourage men to cheat on their wives and they have bastards!"

"Yes, in the catalogue of sins I'm familiar with, spreading disease could count, causing betrayal would as well, though if the men are looking for prostitutes in the first place, less so. Having children would usually not, though treating them badly would.

"Mind you, all of these are perfectly valid reasons to avoid sexual relations. They explain the prohibition. But they don't explain why the act itself would be Evil, why one should still avoid it if none of these concerns apply. None of the religious figures I've spoken with have had a satisfactory answer to that."

"Well, if you do stuff you're not supposed to because you don't think anything bad will happen you could be wrong."

"Sure, but that argument works just as well against ever doing anything that someone says you're not supposed to do. Sometimes they are wrong. At some point it comes down to your personal judgment and risk tolerance." 

"Have I given offense?"

"I don't want to be, um, too sensitive, or anything."

"If I have hurt you in error, to offer me correction would be a welcome kindness."

"Well, uh, I did stuff I was not supposed to do, and it turned out this was stupid and bad things happened."