"My being-attracted-to-people meter is probably weird anyway."

"How so?"

"Mmm... I'm not sure there's a meaningful sense in which I don't want to make out with someone, my bar for that seems to be 'has a face.' But when I say Edie's hot I mean a different thing."

"She likes compliments, she'll be flattered if you elaborate."

"Allie."

"Am I wrong?"

"That's completely beside the point!"

She giggles. "It's hard to describe! She's—strong, of will and personality, she might've said those were her mom's opinions but I have the feeling she wouldn't have said them if she hadn't thought them through and agreed with them and that's really hot—"

"Well, you're not wrong about any of that."

She shrugs. "I have a bunch of vague intuitions about the sort of person Edie is and they're based on very little interaction so I'm gonna figure out with time but they imply something extremely attractive."

"Well, I think the things you find attractive about me imply something attractive about you."

Well she'll have to grin and lower her eyes at that. "Thank you."

"Also, you're very cute. In both forms."

She beams. "Guilty as charged. I might've had a hand in designing them."

"Clever biokinetic."

"You're going the biokinesis route too?"

"Yeah, already have gendershifting and can heal a bunch of things on myself, but nothing more than bruises on other people."

"Oh, I'm starting external, I can do a couple things with flowers so far."

"What things?"

"I can recolor stuff and do some neat things with pollination."

"Cool! And what are you planning long-term?"

"Well, I'll go for de-aging once I've reached an appropriate point, with generalizing from plants to animals, of course, but what I really want to do is mess around with genetics and stuff."

"Oh? Any special reason?"

Shrug. "Does 'it sounds really fun' count?"

"It does, but then I'll ask why it sounds really fun," she grins.