"I have no intention of doing any such thing. If a promise is your price, that seems...inelegant, but not ineffective."

"You could form such intention later," she points out, "or have temporarily altered your own preferences about it, or be able to do it in the future, or have arranged for someone else to do it..."

He rolls his eyes. "That's the point of a promise. I can guarantee otherwise, if you convince me it's preferable to not having asked first."

"You could also accidentally or deliberately fail to form an accurate model of what I'd regret," she continues, "or word the promise with a loophole I won't notice due to aforementioned lack of experience."

"I could. You can suggest a phrasing if you like. Point stands; my alternative is to not ask and operate under the assumption you've already told everyone you thought to."

"What would you do in my position, using your best current model of me and the information I'm working under?"

"If I were in your position, I'd try to misrepresent myself to the handsome and devastatingly intelligent faerie to see if I can get him to act out of character.

You won't, but if I'm to use both my model of you and of what you know then I don't see how that differs from a prediction."

"I don't have a good enough model of you to guess what would be out of character beyond some obvious generalities that probably won't happen here.

"Have you heard of my Seal?"

"From the capitalization I assume you don't mean you have a pet?"

"I do not mean that."

"Then please, carry on." He looks genuinely delighted at the prospect of exposition.

"So it seems I am more secretive than you think. Did you know I spent my very loose definition of holidays in the forties?"

Exposition does not seem to be happening.

"Impressive. And what did you spend the loosely defined holidays on? The longest I've ever been in the forties is a few years at a time, myself."

"Now that would be telling. How old are you, Padraic?"

"Hundreds of years, perhaps into the thousands. I never did like counting dates."

"And you've never broken a promise in all those years?"

"I'm still here. It's no accomplishment to only make promises I can keep; that is a bare minimum."

"That was not an answer."

"Yes it was. Or if not, the fact that I said it was is."

"There is, then, perhaps a promise you can make that would convince me, inelegant as you may find this method."

"I'll consider it."

"First, no shenanigans with your beliefs about me or your own intentions regarding this. You should not change your model of me in any way you expect to make it less accurate nor change your expectations to cause the same outcome, and if you do change your model of me it should be by methods you expect will make it more accurate. And then there's the Seal which I'm under..." And she describes it, the most complicated version of it. "Though I would eventually prefer everyone to be under this as opposed to Solomon's, you won't really act like me unless you have that constraint in mind while you do."

His smile stays fixed at "half-", but he practically radiates enjoyment at the complex harebrained plot.

"Well, that certainly has implications.
I accept your terms about lack of shenanigans, and will attempt to act consistently with that goal of yours whenever I'm wearing your likeness. If you think that's fair, of course."

"The 'no shenanigans' term was actually just an example; if you can think of ways I would have phrased that term had I more information and were I smarter, of course that's how I would act and revise my own restrictions, so the term I'd actually want you to agree to there is the strongest version of it you can make it that keeps the spirit of it alive. As for the Seal... it would be kind of fun to try to trick other fae into accepting it, wouldn't it? Anyway, some information you may or may not have: if I don't wear these glasses, given to me by the Duchamps, I can only see the spirit world, and the Behaims were the ones who sent me back to the present. Do keep these debts in mind. If you accept this strengthened version of the no shenanigans clause and to act under the Seal while wearing my likeness and only do things I would approve of were I fully informed then, according to everything we've discussed about self-alterations and models... you have my permission."

"Deal.

I am not exactly on speaking terms with the fae, and they are adept at recognizing others through glamour. Lesser opponents, perhaps."