"I've thought about that and I don't mind. The things you talk about are usually interesting. Besides, I've gotten quite good at tuning out – " 

"....I didn't mean it that way."

She giggles. "All right then. As long as you've thought about it and are aware of the risks."

"But also, what is the plan if it does bother you a lot. I assume we dispel it, but we should probably discuss at all at what point we would decide we'd tried it and it was time to go ahead with the dispelling."

"After the baby comes? If we can get through that without wanting to kill each other I'd think we could get through anything." 

"They're not that bad. Slumber helps. - oh, unless you mean the - I guess that's a pretty good stress test, isn't it. If we get it now and have it up during the delivery."

"And is it something you want? Would it make it easier for you?"

"Well, it's hard to be sure of that ahead of time. But my snap guess is - yeah, I think it'd make things easier, with the understanding that you might totally want to kill me sometime in the middle there and if we expect that to happen you should probably be moderately confident in your ability to shut up over the telepathic bond, because I will absolutely not be able to. I mean, at that exact moment. Not in general. I mean, maybe in general, but normally I'll stand a chance."

"It might be easier this time, you weren't a seventh-circle witch when Rahim was born – there's a thought. We can't just make everyone adventurers, but your hospital could have belts of mighty constitution on hand for women in childbirth, if it reduces injuries that's less risk of infection later."  

"Oh man, I wonder if it would - I think it's probably too expensive to scale, even loaning them like that, but I'm incredibly curious what results you'd get. Of course, we do have clerics on the island, our women don't die of blood loss or anything. But some amount of injury is unavoidable, before it gets healed, and childbirth is, uh, not the most clean thing anybody ever does, so -

" - um, I was sort of planning not to do anything about the pain, in particular. For me, this time. I thought about the options, but delaying it with magic would make it impossible to sleep for Nethys knows how many hours afterward, and given how long it took last time I really don't want to end up in that position. Is that - I dunno, I sort of feel like if I'm going to be screaming at you the entire time then maybe I ought to ask your opinion about that. I'm not sure whether that impulse makes a lot of sense, but it's there, and asking's free."

"I rather imagined you'd be screaming at me the entire time anyway."

"Yeah, that would be nice, honestly? But without the telepathic bond you could, you know, leave and take a break. At some point."

"You couldn't." 

"Well, yeah. That is kind of how it is. But we are talking, you know, potentially many hours of extreme stress. I think it's a particular kind of stress that women are better at, though. ....although I suppose there's really not very much way to compare."

"I'm certain it would be more stressful for me not to be there. ....Let's cast the spell before we talk ourselves out of it." 

"Okay. If you're sure. If we waste twelve thousand gold it's not going to have any incredible consequences on us, but I'm pretty opposed to it on principle."

But she can cast her telepathic bond. It's not a new experience; they've been putting them up between practically all members of their adventuring party since she hit fifth circle. But this time, if he wants to, he can permanency it.

That's one of the reasons they're doing this, actually – Naima's telepathic bond can get the whole party less one. A permanent bond between the two of them means no more last-minute calculations about who has to be left out. And if there are other reasons are more personal, well, they can afford it. 

He casts Permanency. 

Okay, now that we're stuck like this, to be clear, I am really really excited about this.

We'll see how you feel when I've had the chance to bother you during your work day. I promise I won't interrupt you above fifty or a hundred times.

But that's the best part! You have no idea how dull my workdays are. They make spinning look riveting by comparison.

I wouldn't know, I've never – oh, 'll have to learn to spin, won't I? When my Fabricate spell is finished. 

You will! But it's not that hard, and you'll have an excellent teacher.

It's very boring. To be clear. But you can generally hold conversations while you do it, which is harder to do when you're tapping a roomful of sick people with hexes.

When I've figured out how to make hexes obsolete, you'll be able to converse as much as you want.

And it will be glorious. Until everyone gets sick of talking to me again. You, however, are stuck with me.

I believe I made a promise to that effect, yes.