Edarial waits until they're alone in a room together to scoop Iobel up into a hug and giggle like he's twelve.

Iobel giggles too. "What?"

"We got - every lost chart that we know of, and - and a generator and he can make literally anything and it's really cool! I'm happy - sorry, should I have warned you before the hug? I wasn't thinking...

"You're allowed to hug me, you're just - very, very excited. You're usually not this excited."

"It's exciting! Also clever, and useful, and I'm - actually happy."

Iobel smiles. "Good."

"Yeah," he agrees, still snuggling her. Snuggle snuggle. He has the urge to twirl her around, but he's sort of worried that would not go over well.

Snuggle! "I want to see how much of what we got up to today is noticed before inviting him out for more of the infrastructural fiddling. And he says he's going to look up - advanced - seeds? Which have been more domesticated for longer periods of time and will be easier to grow or tastier or more nutritious or something. And he'll come back and give us some of those."

"Yes, you are."

Predictably, Iobel is picked up and twirled, and then put back down and giggled on some more.

Eeeeee.

"We'll pretend to invent electricity. It'll be fantastic."

"Absolutely wonderful! We still need to manage an immortality hex, though, to explain why we're properly immortal in, oh, fifty years. Also, to outdo Ice and Cypress."

"Does that count as outdoing them?" she wonders. "Or just tying?"

"Hmm. Tying. We still need the robot army, recall."

"Does it count if Cam makes us one?"

"... I'm willing to count it. Just once. If Cam makes our robot army superior in some way."

"Well then, I'll see about designing something good for him to set us up with." Pause. "Also, I want to work on a hex to restore the mages' mana, because they're a huge limiting factor in finding cool things."

"That - is a fantastic idea, can I help?"

"Probably."

He snickers. "Will you allow me?"

"If you want to help."

Iobel snorts and squeezes him.

"And you're never petty?"

"Nope. Never."

"That sounds exhausting, never being petty."

"Pff -" She holds him up with effort. "Shall I haul you to bed?"

"Oh, can you? I feel faint, not allowing any sort of pettiness - it's getting to me!"

"Maybe you should do something just a little petty. I'm not sure I can lift you."

"What petty thing is possible, when I'm in such a state?"

"Oh, I don't know. Insult Cypress's dress sense."

"Hmmm. His crown looks prickly and uncomfortable and I bet it's hard for people to take him seriously in it. There, do you think that was enough?"

"Are you feeling more awake?"

".... Yeeees. Somewhat."

"Then maybe it will do. But you may collapse again at any moment and I'm short on ideas for further pettiness, so perhaps you'd best flop somewhere."

"Yes, that's wise. And later, when I have recuperated my energy, I will resume my usual, non-petty existence."

"But at what cost?"

"I cannot say. Alas. It may be too high a price."

"What will be left of you if you are without your noble stand against pettiness?" she asks, ushering him in the direction of his bedroom.

"Bones, nice clothes, pretty hair."

She ruffles his pretty hair. "You'll be a very well-turned-out skeleton."

Edarial snickers. "Thank you, my dear. I try."

"Are your non-skeletal parts all made of antipettiness? How does this dovetail with you being weak and listless when you refrain?"

"Oh, fine," he snorts. "My body will be totally fine, it's my mind you have to worry about."

"And how is that holding up?"

"Well, I have not devolved into thinking my father's a wonderful person, or that I should enact revenge on all those who oppose me, or that orange is definitely my color. So, I think I'm all right."

"I think you could pull off orange if you really wanted to, it would just be harder than using a quieter color."

"I doubt it would work, but, by all means, tempt my psyche's fragility. I'll end up being petty all the time."

"Oh no. You'd be insufferable."

"So insufferable! 'Edarial, why is my room on fire?' 'You didn't smile at me at dinner! Burn!'"

"I had not imagined such staggering pettiness. Clearly my imagination needs work."

"Yes. That's what I'm protecting you from with my sacrifice. Staggering levels of pettiness."

"Thank you for not setting my room on fire," she remarks dryly.

"You're very welcome," he says, affectionately.

"Goodness knows one of my favorite things about my room is that it isn't on fire."

"It's my favorite thing about a lot of things. That they aren't on fire."

"I'm not on fire," she says helpfully.

"Are you sure? Have you checked, recently? It might have changed."

"I'm totally not on fire," she promises. "Even a little."

"Oh, well, in that case..." He leans over, and kisses her forehead. "Thank you, for not being on fire."

"Is it," she inquires, "your favorite thing about me?"

"No. But thank you for not being on fire, regardless."

"You're welcome, for that and for whatever is your favorite thing."

"Mhm. Thank you for wanting to better the world and then going and working to do it."

"If that's your favorite thing, then I have already welcomed you for it."

"Yup. But I hadn't thanked you for it, so I didn't want the welcome to feel left out."

"It might have violated causality."

"And we can't have that, now can we?"

"It would be terrible. Things might become on fire without reason to do so!"

"And we both know how much we like things to not be on fire."

"If everything were on fire, where would we sleep? In canals that are also on fire?"

"No, silly, we'd drown. In beds, that were on fire."

"Oh, of course, the only sane option," he snickers, and he scoots over and opens his arms in an offer of cuddles.

Flomp!

"Is that bad?" she wonders.

"No, just - surprising. I'm not going to do anything with the anger, it just hasn't gone away simply because he's locked away and I never have to speak to him again."

"Why's it surprising?"

"I'd expected to continue to dislike him as a person, and never want to have anything to do with him, but otherwise not care about him in the slightest. But, alas. I do, in that I am still angry with him."

"Yeah, I mean - why did you expect that?"

"Because I - usually don't hold grudges. Not very well, anyway."

"But he's been worse to you than anyone else, hasn't he?"

"I can argue that technically my mother put me in a worse position, and without her influence we would have never been in a situation where my father could interfere, but - yes."

"So it makes more sense than holding a grudge against someone who rips you off when you buy a sandwich."

"Yes. It's - less surprising when you say it like that."

Nuzzle.

"I didn't take it particularly as a complaint. Just a - comment."

"Oh, good. I - should probably shut up and go back to snuggling, hmm? I'm overthinking things again."

"You can talk. I don't mind. It's compatible with snuggling."

"Okay." Snuggle, snuggle. "We should probably tell our alts that we're looking for something to give us more working memory so we can cram bigger spells into our heads. One of them might have a magical solution."

"Maybe. I don't think daeva magic lends itself to that, but maybe a new alt will have such a thing."

"Possibly. Ice's witchery might have a solution, but obviously she doesn't have it now, or she'd have offered it."

"Yeah. Pity they didn't come with perfect solutions to all our problems. Although I suppose if we didn't have to do anything I would not have much ability to improve my number."

Edarial tilts his head. "Your - oh. The number I gave you. That makes sense."

"It does? I thought I might have to explain."

"Yes. Though I do hope you're not going to get into a competition with other Bells over it?"

"They're refraining because they expect it would hurt my feelings and Spring couldn't play."

"... Huh. I foresee that going badly with my alts. If they decide to start."

"Why? Why would it go badly, why them and not you?"

"Well, because it would be putting an aspect of their head up on the spot for - competition purposes, which it wasn't really meant for. Mine, too, but - I think I understand the 'why' better than they would, and informed you of it because you were distressed about having a poor number."

"I don't think I understand why the numbers oughtn't be repurposed."

"Well, it also introduces a sort of - bias to our internal system, as well. Because rather than being honest about the number, we might be slightly more inclined to force it higher than it would be normally in order to make our partners happy. Or feel guilty, if we don't."

"But that would make it worse for competing about, we wouldn't want you to do that."

"Yes. But - I also want to make you happy, and if an option to do that is 'poke the number until it is slightly friendlier'..." He shrugs, a little.

"But that's not an option, I don't want you to do that. It would make the number useless for the repurposing."

"Right, but - technically it already is, it's hardly an objective measurement."

"The point isn't that it's objective, it's that we have these convenient matching evaluations that seem to use the same scale and measure some of the things we're inclined to compete about."

"That - makes sense. I still don't see it going well with my alts, though. I can see them being fine with comparing numbers if it's for a specific goal in mind, especially a helpful one, but if it's just pure competition, I don't see them - er, getting it. Cypress is of the opinion that we are all working together towards a mutual goal we all want, and who cares who does the most to get there as long as it's done, Max is likely of a similar opinion, and I don't know Adana well enough to guess. But Max and Cypress would have trouble seeing why a competition is going on at all. Prime would be annoyed at the entire affair no matter what happens."

"I'll discreetly tell the other Bells before it comes up, I guess?"

"Sure. Thanks." Nuzzle, nuzzle. "I'm - actually kind of glad this came up. If you're curious, I'm pretty sure my alts would be okay with helping with some other matching evaluation item that's not attached to the inside of our math problem heads. Just not the one that is the part of the system we're using to silently judge everyone."

"I doubt that this will be nearly as tempting."

"Alas. There are other ways to judge competition, at least?"

"Nothing good comes to mind. I think we'd probably do without direct comparison if there weren't the enticing Adarin-numbers."

"Enticing Adarin-numbers. I - am flattered? I think?"

"If you like. They're just so comparable, is the thing."

"Ha. Do I need to set up an Adarin support group to make wonderfully comparable numbers that are not attached to the inside of someone's head?"

"I'm not sure. What's the particular relevance of it being attached to the inside of your head...?"

"It being attached to the inside of my head means that it feels somewhat - personal, when it's brought up. If it weren't, if it were just a number that I was helping to maintain for the sake of you and the other Bells, it's not quite so personal. I and my alts wouldn't feel put on the spot for our head contents."

"I still don't get it. If Bells did numbers and were inclined to disclose them about our Adarins we wouldn't mind a bit if you compared them."

"I - am not sure how to explain it, then. I'm sorry."

She shrugs, just a little, too cuddled for particularly expressive body language.

That's okay. Edarial will just kiss her forehead, because she is there.

Aww.

And then, back to contented snuggling. Unless Iobel desires otherwise.

Well, what if she desires kisses?

Then she can have them! Kisses!

Yay!

They've gotten a lot done today, so they're entirely free to keep this up for a while. Kisses, kisses, kisses.

Yaaaaaaay.

And there is Edarial, currently branching out from 'monarch' to a side-job in 'pillow.' A very snuggly pillow.

And, eventually, the pillow stirs and blinks blearily at her, confused about his new side-job.

Yawn. "Morning."

"G'morning," mumbles a very drowsy Edarial. He doesn't pull away, but he does still seem vaguely confused.

"We fell asleep," she explains.

"Fi'ured," he murmurs, and nuzzles her affectionately, apparently fine with cuddles now that this confusion has been cleared up.

Snugs. Yaaaay.

"Yeah."

"I'll be right back, actually," she murmurs, and she gets up to nip into the bathroom and then flop down again.

And Edarial snuggles her upon return! Snuggle, snuggle.

"Whee." Snuggle.

"There... could be?"

"Do you want there to be...?"

"Do you?"

"Haven't decided, brain still not working. It's - nice, though."

"It is."

Snuggle, snuggle.

Yaaaaay.