"I find it hard to imagine a meaningful sense in which they aren't! They're certainly natural for people who are naturally inclined that way. Including, it would seem, magical girls.

"At any rate, there are a great many things in Nature which are not in accord with the Good, and a great many Good things which are not themselves of Nature."

"Well I'm not naturally inclined that way though, I wasn't before."

"One's nature can change, or new facets to it be discovered. It would be generally inadvisable for, say, a man who is not attracted to men to attempt a romantic relationship with one. Self-deceit and pretense are a poor foundation for love. But if he were to discover in himself a desire for one man in particular — as does sometimes happen! — that advice would not apply. Perhaps that is the sense intended in the teaching, and it has lost important nuance over time?" (He's seen this happen rather a lot. The loss of nuance, that is. The specific attraction thing he's seen, like, twice.) 

"...maybe you should ask a priest. I am pretty sure the rule is not to do it."

"Frankly, Rebecca, that does not sound to me like the teaching of an all-Good and all-loving deity. I begin to suspect Someone's will has been gravely misrepresented somewhere along the way." Or worse, that it hasn't. "But I will, as you say, consult a priest on the matter." 

"I think God wants what's best for us and that's not doing sins!"

"Where I am from, it is possible to look directly at a soul and know its state, know the afterlife it will find if it takes no further actions before death. There are," the word sin has too many meanings to be properly used here, "some actions which visibly push souls towards Evil and towards afterlives of suffering. Murders of the innocent. Acts of spite and torment. Betrayals of trust. The common thread among them is that the acts themselves cause suffering, usually in a direct and predictable way.

"Where I am from, no mutually consensual sex act qualifies." (He has checked this rather more thoroughly than was strictly necessary. For science, of course.) "If any did, clerics would literally see the soul having fallen, after." 

He lets out a long sigh. "I am sorry to have pressed you on this. Perhaps it is different here. I genuinely do not know. But it worries me."

"Oh it's not that I'm worried about, I just go to confession when I can and say my act of contrition and everything, but like, I do mean to be trying to do right."

"A worthy aspiration, and one I share," he agrees. 

"Before this digression, you were describing how magical girls are...differently oriented, yet it seems to be the 'magic' part and not the 'girl' part that matters? Was there more you wanted to say, on that?" 

"Well, I - noticed, that...? I don't know that anybody's every noticed anything like it before - all the regular magic people are girls, or at least used to be even if they're phoenixes or something now -"

"How very curious. This may be an awkward question, but is anyone attracted to the phoenixes and such?" 

"Mm-hm."

"Well then."

Ipaxalon now faces a genuine moral conundrum of a sort he's quite possibly never faced before. On the one claw, he's fairly damn sure all this business about sex prohibition is in fact either mortal foolishness or the narrow special interests of a god that's at least not entirely about joyful flourishing. But on the other claw, it's a strange place he finds himself, he isn't as sure as he could be, and he very much does not want to be the vehicle of a mortal's eternal suffering, however unlikely that may be. 

Ultimately, he falls back on one of the the most foundational heuristics in his ethical framework: Grown Adults Shall Be Afforded the Respect to Make Their Own Choices. 

"You never did answer my original question," he adds. "How would you prefer me to proceed from here?" 

"Oh - uh - well I don't rightly know."

"Second one it is." At least until he's talked to a priest and had a chance to reevaluate things. "So I'm curious, how did it come to pass that the King of England also heads the Church of England, and also the Church of England happens to permit divorce...?" And he will, as promised, attempt to steer future conversation in less blatantly flirtatious directions.

He can have a Catholic's guide to why the Church of England exists.

He is coming to suspect his source is somewhat biased when it comes to theology and Church intrigues. He likes her anyway.

Time passes; he catches a large fish and some naps. He reads more of the Bible and boggles at it. (The New Testament is...better, in many ways. He remains very confused.) Talks with the crew about their lives, places they've been, what they know of the world. Flies and talks with Rebecca. 

There's a bit of a squall. It rains on the ship, but the winds remain conveniently modest in the Shotley's immediate vicinity despite raging outside, like a weird inverted tornado. 

He has the crew's gratitude, conveyed to him on the wing by the only person who can do that.

"It is a genuine pleasure to be of help." 

"What other kindsa spells do you have?"

"Mostly combat spells," he admits. "The wind and fog ones are innate to my species, it's why I've been so free with them...there's also a general sense-for-evil, a magic to slow falling, and a handful of minor spells called 'cantrips' that light, move, color, or clean objects, detect or decipher magic, weakly shield people, and other small effects. I breathe supernatural cold, also not exactly a spell but it does work well against the monsters. 

"For proper spells, there's several kinds of protection and shielding, some multi-target boosts that affect allies, a weak but mostly reliable binary divination, an area calming effect, the language spell I'm using now, several healing and restorative effects, a dispelling effect, a long-range teleport, a burst of flame, and an ace in the hole or two that I'm keeping in reserve.

"There's also a few that are harder to summarize. True seeing overcomes most magical concealment and shows me the true form of shapeshifters; I want to try it out on a monster when I'm no longer rationing spells. Freedom of movement prevents restraint by most forms of magical or mundane obstacles, including being grabbed."

"Whoa, that's so many things it kind of makes up for not being able to do them as much as you want. I'm not sure monsters have true forms... Are you learning English for real or just using the spell forever?"

"I've been picking up what I can from chatting, including some entertaining pantomimes with the sailors, but I suspect it will be some time before I can do without the spell. English is...odd." 

"There is one more spell." He will not conceal this last spell from her. It might be painful, given her loss, but it would likely be worse if she learned he had kept it from her on purpose to spare her feelings. "A spell with steep prerequisites — an expensive diamond, consumed in the casting, and a body whose soul has been departed for less than a fortnight — which extends a bridge to the afterlife and invites that soul to return from the dead."

"Has to be a diamond, you can't - substitute a pearl -"