Nod. "Or because they felt undeserving of better, or because they thought there had to be something wrong with them for wanting anything else -"

"...I suppose. I can't call to mind examples that I think were that but I can imagine it."

Cuddle. "The way we guard against that kind of thing is by finding it - suspect - for someone to hold so much power over another. Which is clearly not the best way."

"...how does that help?"

"...well, if you don't have power over someone you can't abuse it."

"...but how does finding it suspect help. Does it just make people so uncomfortable they avoid each other instead?"

"I think it just wouldn't work at all in a population of people from Eclipse, but with Elves it just exerts pressure to have relationships be equal, which is not a harmful thing because Elves can mostly be very happy in equal relationships. You can't, so exerting pressure in that direction would be awfully unhelpful."

"I'm not even sure how it would work. I suppose it must somehow."

Giggle. "It works fine. But so does this. But with children - we shouldn't have a baby without both giving thought to - at what moment we will be best equipped to give them a good life - and I need an answer to that from you. If I decided it pleased me to announce we were having one right now, that might be all right by you but it wouldn't be all right by the baby."

"Wouldn't it? I don't think I have ever met anyone who dwelled on wishing they were born later."

"- wished their parents had more time for them or more money so they weren't hungry? Not that money's a problem for us -"

"Sure, those, but money's not a problem and - time is trading off getting to have siblings close to their age, isn't it -"

"Yeah, the best time might very well be soon, it might be that it's better to have them all fairly close together - 'picking the right time' doesn't necessarily mean delaying -"

"I just don't see how there's a clear enough answer that it matters very much if I have an opinion on it? I would find a way to object if - if I were sick and couldn't be pregnant safely, or something -"

" - okay. Or if I thought forty years was the right moment? Michael said he was worried I'd think forty years was the right moment."

"...if it took that long I'd probably assume you didn't want any, if you didn't say anything."

"And that wouldn't bother you?"

"I liked having a lot of siblings but maybe you didn't? I don't want to be a nag, if you didn't want kids then you wouldn't want kids and I wouldn't want to whine about it -"

" - raising a concern or a wish or a question isn't nagging. I suppose doing it hundreds of times might be. I am entirely capable of directing you to drop a subject."

Giggle. "Yes sir."

"Do you want a Joanna?"

"It might not turn out to be one, right, even if we have a baby? Even if we time it like Michael and his me? I don't like to get attached to things that might not happen..."

"It seems to work that way but we don't know for sure. If it mattered very much we could pay a long-range precog."

"Even a not a Joanna would be nice! I just don't want to say, 'oh, I want a Joanna' and then get a - a some other baby and be disappointed, when I could just say 'I want a baby' and get a baby and be happy about that - and if you might not want a baby I'd rather say 'whatever you want is fine' and get that for sure."

"I want a baby. I would be naturally inclined to wait but it seems like Catherines like having babies around quite a lot."