"Maybe."

Head tilt.

"Did you embarrass yourself with your other guest?"

He laughs. "Maybe!"

"Would I find her a more open source of answer besides the word 'maybe'?" wonders Tysathra, lightly.

"You know, I really couldn't say."

"Oh? Are her potential actions so mysterious to you?"

"I haven't known her for very long!"

"No, I suppose not." She considers. "But is she at all involved?"

She suspects yes.

Cheerfully: "Maybe."

That's a yes. A yes he let her see, but she'll take it.

"Ah. In that case, what's she like?"

"Sensible, straightforward, clever, attractive."

Head tilt.

"Is that fondness, I hear?"

"Definitely."

She considers.

"Do you find the prospect of falling in love embarrassing?"

He has to pause his construction to have a gigglefit. A half-completed archway teeters and crumbles.

She watches, amused. She can wait for him to recover.

The giggles subside. He vanishes the crumbled archway and builds it again, properly this time.

"No, I don't," he says. "I would have once."

"That sounds like it would be uncomfortable."

"It was! I was a mess when I was your age!"

"With or without the omnipotence?"

"The omnipotence came later. Oh, I haven't told you this story at all, have I."

"No, you haven't. Would you like to correct this fact now?"

"My father was the Last Emperor, I tried to usurp him when I was young and stupid and didn't know myself very well, I managed to destroy the Ansati Empire along with all but one of the things in the world I had ever cared about, and then I realized that I would've hated being Emperor anyway and all I really wanted from life was to be an all-powerful sorcerer living in a beautiful castle surrounded by every luxury I could dream of."

"... I think the word 'mess' does not do your younger self credit. A mess is a collapsed roof, an upturned cart, an unwanted pregnancy, a disheveled estate. Upturning an empire - upturning the empire - in a fit of adolescent angst is another thing altogether."

"I was a little older than you when I made my grand mistake. You're what, nineteen, twenty? I was twenty-six. A little old for adolescent angst."