Aaaaaahhhhhh.

"It'll be okay! My mother had eight."

"I think we're on track for significantly more than that!!!"

"Well, I suppose she might have had more since."

"Why would God care."

"It has to do with what sex is designed for, like, if you have sex without the possibility of a baby then you're doing it wrong."

"How would we know that, did God say? And, like, if you use owls for mail are you doing that wrong since it's not what owls're for, if you use wood to light a fire are you doing it wrong because that's not what wood's for, can things be for different purposes..."

"I think it was a Pope. And it matters more for sex than owls."

"Why?"

"I don't know, I wasn't a real nun."

Sigh. "I love you."

"I love you!"

Aaron starts working full time on his spice trade. Fawley comes over to Miranda's for the last few weeks of the holidays.

September rolls around and Minor and Miranda and Karen go back for their seventh year.

Miranda's mum is a pleasant hostess for Fawley.

The sixth years pick up pet firsties! All the firsties are accounted for, with one sixth year not getting one. Miranda is proud.

The firsties are pleased to be so divvied. Helps with the transition. 

Miranda turns seventeen. Minor borrows from Timothy in having a very dramatic graceful owl swooping in and out of the Great Hall all month, capturing everyone's attention, and on Miranda's birthday he asks her to marry him.

And she kisses him and says yes.

"I love you," he says in Chinese. Seventh year classes are small enough they usually all have them together. Minor spends large shares of them staring adoringly at Miranda and looking very pleased with himself.

This is better for Miranda's ego than for Minor's grades.

Karen pays a lot of attention to her schoolwork.

Her boyfriend doesn't propose yet, though they see each other on weekends. 

It's nice, in its way. They go nice places. It's distracting.

It's really really not a substitute for having someone. As he knows, what with now having someone. But they can go lots of nice places. 

Translvania approves a Statute rollback. Penelope Gamp, who Timothy didn't even know had any liberal sentiments, mentions to him that she thinks Britain should consider moving in accord with 'the rest of the world' on this. 

He can work with that. He works with that. 

Some Swedes meet to discuss the issue, too.

Their entire meeting hall, everyone in it, and several acres of surrounding Swedish countryside disappear. The landscape pinches closed around it; the only trace is some strangely bent trees and some cut-off rocks and a few furrows in the ground where the pinching wrinkled it.

He doesn't go to investigate. He is not particularly advantaged at investigating. 

He does write Elio. "I'm sure you've heard the news; it's frightening. I imagine you've anticipated the potential for violent resistance; do you know what other meeting halls might do to keep themselves a little safer?"

Elio recommends not convening at all, if possible. Disappeared owls are less of a hazard. He has no idea who could have done this or how, but it seems perhaps telling that it didn't happen to anyone in a city and the method doesn't look like it would take well to one.