Ramona makes a quick additional note on the C-->B edge.

"I don't know if that matters either! But probably not at this stage, when I'm just looking at the system!"

"Give me just a moment to look at this before I ask another question."

"Okay. So. I see here that you're wishing for more from Altarrin, but you mostly understand why it's not on offer right now. And you're doing a lot of pretending with Bastran. Those things are all potential problems, but might be working exactly as intended and not distressing at all."

"The thing you said a few minutes ago was... I'm trying to remember. Something about... something had been working well, and then there was a 'hiccup,' and now it's not really working anymore? What's that?"

" - so, Bastran and I had just started dating, and it was going really well! He was very into me, and I was planning to fall in love with him and get him to marry me, and this seemed straightforwardly attainable and like it'd probably be great. And then there was an attempt on Altarrin's life and I was blamed for it and had to go on the run and then have a lot of tense negotiations with Bastran about surrendering to his secret police and it was really stressful and bad for our relationship and things changed enough that it no longer made a ton of sense to plan on marrying him and becoming Empress as a life path, and I think my new life path is actually better but it's definitely worse for our relationship."

"You sure have a lot going on, by local standards! Maybe that is a normal amount to have going on, where you're from!"

"I guess I'll just mention here that there is probably a conversation we could have about whether you are doing enough to maintain your own resiliency with all that stress! We're not going to talk about that now, because I'm still just trying to get my head around the overall problem."

"So... you had your sights set on marrying Bastran and you were pretty much expecting that to work and go well and you thought you were going to enjoy it. So it's a loss and a disappointment to let that vision go, even though apparently you have already built a new plan that you're pretty happy with."

"Do you know what you want the Bastran/Carissa relationship to look like now that you're not planning on marrying him?"

"This is actually less than I had going on before I became Altarrin's prisoner but I think more than is typical where I'm from.

- so, for my relationship with Bastran, I want to be politically independent and immortal and too scary for him to defy me, and I want him to be really happy about it, like, I think he will actually feel more secure and whole in some ways once he could no longer in fact order me killed, because it's the one thing he can't otherwise have. I really like being the one thing someone can't otherwise have. And I want him to - I dunno - let Altarrin go, stop being so burdened by duty, maybe stop running his empire off mind control but I'm not really all that far towards having political convictions, I've kind of been too busy - and I want to have back the feeling where he is endlessly surprised by me and impressed by me and curious about me and I get to decide how much he gets to find out, from our first few dates, because that feeling was amazing."

"You want a lot of things! Some of those are things you have control over, at least to some degree, and some of them are not! Like the ones about how you want other people to feel... you can do your best to set up a situation that you think might lead to those feelings, but in the end it's not totally up to you."

"I assume."

"Wait."

"You do seem to have a lot of different rules where you come from. You mentioned mind control. Can you... just make people feel the way you want them to feel? And is that how you want to achieve your goals in this case? Because if you can do that I need to rapidly rewrite the way I usually think and talk about this stuff."

"That is a thing magic can do but not the kind I'm good at, and - not really the thing I want? I guess I haven't tried mind controlling people to have the right attitudes about me and maybe I'd like it more than I anticipate. But when it's been done to me it's always only worked by disrupting metacognition - hey, your world has a word for that, that's so cool, Baseline is the only other language I've encountered with a word for that -

- anyway, people are broadly less interesting and able to accomplish cool stuff if you take enough of their metacognition out to force them to feel the right way about you, so my guess would be that I won't enjoy it much if I do try it at some point."

"Okay. I think I have the general gist here. To summarize:"

"You've got a very messed up situation with two important people. You've all hurt each other, or gone to great lengths to avoid hurting each other, in every direction. You are trying to find a new, stable, configuration -- and not just any stable configuration. You have a very specific one in mind."

"You want to be much more powerful than before. And you think that if you can pull that off, it's going to help your relationship with Bastran. You'll be more like equals, and you predict that when that's true, he'll settle down and actually believe that what you're offering him is genuine rather than compelled by his greater power."

"... even though some of it is not actually genuine... but that's probably just a fine point that we can leave for now...."

"And you hope it'll help the Bastran/Altarrin relationship too. I'm a little fuzzy about how those things are connected but we can let that go for now too."

"And finally, you're hoping to get that First Date Feeling back despite the months of imprisonment and other relationship injuries."

"Do I have it?"

"Seems about right! Though really everything is negotiable except for becoming immortal. I - won't trade that off against very many other things."

"Okay. So I have just a couple more questions for right now."

"First: sometimes I work with individuals and sometimes with dyads or larger systems. Let's think about our options. Like, should I be helping just you? Or should you and Bastran come in together, or even all three of you?"

"Things to consider: who would be willing to come, who is able to come, whether I already know too many of your secrets to serve the larger system equitably, and so on. Do you have thoughts on this?"

"I'm not clear on what your objectives are here but I assume they're not the same as mine and it seems like a kind of obvious failure mode if you sell my secrets to the Emperor for unrivaled magical power."

"Yeah, no, I will absolutely not sell your secrets to the Emperor. You can pay me in a variety of local currencies and if you don't have any of those I can direct you to a local exchange. I am not in the market for unrivaled magical power at this time. I like my job and my planet and don't particularly wish to embark on a completely different magical lifestyle. It sounds... really stressful!"

"If you and Bastran both came in, I would also talk to him and find out his take on what's going on and what he wants, and we would see if you two had any joint goals that you were willing to have be common knowledge. Like maybe he also really enjoyed the first few dates and maybe he also wants to get back on a better footing with you. Maybe you're right that he wants to feel more secure with you... though he might have a different plan for how to achieve that."

"I can keep some of your secrets from him. Like, if he doesn't know that you don't always present as male, I don't know any reason right now why I would need to reveal that. And if I ran into some other problem later, where I felt like I was having to secretly serve one of you more than the other, I would not solve that problem by revealing secret information, I would solve it by withdrawing from the case."

"It is definitely more complicated."

"The advantage to working with both of you is that I stand a far greater chance of actually helping your relationship become more functional. When it's just you and me in the room, we stand basically no chance of changing Bastran. With Bastran also in the room, I can talk directly to him and possibly show him that changing his mind or his behavior in some particular way might help him achieve his own goals... and yours."

"That does make sense. - I would probably want to magically verify your claim about not selling him my secrets, and I'm not sure if he'd trust me to plane shift him to another planet. I guess I could bring you back to my tower? But if we can work out the details it'd probably be helpful for you to talk to him as well. I'm not very good at understanding Good people, I misunderstood Altarrin pretty badly when we were first acquainted."

"Magical verification about confidentiality is probably fine, though I'm curious if you would be scanning my past or monitoring my present behavior or compelling me not to tell or how it would work. If you are scanning the past then I need to know that you're not going to dig into prior cases not involving you, though I admit I am probably powerless to stop you. So, um, please don't do that."

"I am willing to do sessions in a private, secure location of your choice if you provide the transportation and assure me of my safety and well-being. There's a surcharge."

Ramona manages to say the latter with a straight face. She hasn't been off-planet yet and had rather expected to go in a spaceship, not in a... plane shift... spell... whatever that is. She would absolutely do this for free just for the thrill of it but there is no reason to say that out loud.

"Was that... Good with a capital G? Can you say more about that? I might need to add a few more labels to my diagram. Who's Good and who's... Bad? And what does that mean?"

"The gods, uh, very-powerful-very-smart-aliens, on my world of origin use a categorization schema that has the concepts of Good and Evil. Good is, uh, altruistic? It's Good to feed the poor and tend the sick and protect the vulnerable and so on. Evil is, you know, conquest and slavery and so on. I'm Evil, and probably according to the sorting scheme Altarrin and Bastran are too because of the mind control Empire, but - they're temperamentally Good, even if they wouldn't be judged that way? 

I was going to give examples but I can't actually think of any offhand. But, like, I used to work for an Evil torture god, and they wouldn't do that, they are against Evil torture gods. Though I am too, actually, it turns out, which is why it's not a good example."

Ramona is going to have to make a lot of diagrams and take a lot of notes.

Still, at least all these concepts do sort of slot together in her mind and make some kind of coherent sense? It's not like that one time with those three Criuqi. That one never got past the consultation stage. She could barely get them to leave the office because their concept of space and time was so different that they didn't understand that she wanted them to JUST GO because no actual communication was occurring and she needed her office!

And the couch was really never quite the same after that. She had to get a new one.

"I am glad that none of you are in the Evil torture business right now. I'm pretty sure that's helpful!"

"The last question I wanted to ask you was about timing. As I understand it, you have this big plan to become more powerful and you're expecting a lot of things to shift in your relationship with Bastran once you've sorted that out."

"So... should we be talking now? Or... do you want to go get that power and then meet after that and see how it's going? I am not sure how long-term a project you expect this to be?"

"Oh, I expect it to take years, conceivably a decade. I probably want relationship advice now. It'll really be less essential once I am astoundingly powerful, the worst case scenario at that point is that I am immortal and have alienated everyone who ever cared about me and have to sulk alone in a demiplane until they're all dead, and that's a pretty great worst case scenario."

Ramona is taken aback by the scale of the problems here but is familiar with the shape of them!

"Yes, it's common for people to worry that they have to choose between their individual goals and their desire to be loved and connected with others. It sounds like you know how those priorities stack up for you and it's great that you have clarity about that!"

"So yes, if this is a multi-year project then we might as well go ahead and get started. And I'll just note right now that we're probably going to have to come up with a new plan for getting the warmth and excitement of the early dates back, if it can't all hinge on your increase in power!"

"I do think I might be able to help you. Despite how high-stakes all of your problems are, I have worked on other cases that had the same general outlines and had some good results. If you want to hire me, then I'm in."

"The next step is for the three of us to meet together, and then after that I will also want to spend some time talking to Bastran without you. We also need to make sure we have shared understanding about how confidentiality works and how you -- both of you -- can be sure information won't leak incorrectly. We can talk about that at our next meeting, probably first thing after we all get together."

"That works for me!

I don't have local currency, I do have gold and silver and spellsilver and diamonds if any of those are valuable here?"

"Gold, silver, and diamonds are all valuable here. I don't know what spellsilver is."

Ramona hands Carissa a leaflet with information about her fee schedule and how to find a local currency exchange. She feels a bit sheepish sending this obviously Very Important Client out to exchange her own currency. If she's starting to attract this class of client, obviously the right thing to do is to jack up her rates and use some of the money to hire a receptionist... and get currency exchange sorted out on her own end.

Small business ownership is complicated!

"Does this format of information exchange work for you? I can provide it in a few other digital formats if that's easier for you, but I think lower tech probably works best for our communications based on the vibe I'm getting so far."

"I don't know exactly what a digital format is," she agrees cheerfully. "If it is advanced 'tech' Velgarth doesn't have any of that because the local gods hate technological progress. I am familiar with it through an acquaintance with another person from a world that has advanced 'tech' and it seems pretty great but I don't want to motivate the local gods to try even harder to kill me until I am immortal so I am not going to adopt it immediately."

"Paper it is, then! You seem to be able to decipher my written language!"

"I look forward to our next meeting! I will leave it to you to get in touch with me about that, as I have no way whatsoever of contacting you from my end! I would appreciate a little bit of notice so I can make sure that matters here are attended to before I vanish and go meet with you and Bastran."

"I will either come in person or do a Sending to let you know a time convenient for Bastran and I!" And she will head out with her leaflet in hand, and go exchange gold for local currency and try some local food even though she doesn't need to eat and buy some local books (hopefully if she doesn't yet read them and is firmly committed to not doing so until she has been immortal for a while, the Velgarth gods won't perceive a particular increase in threat just from her possessing them.)

And then she'll pull out the fairly complicated magical artifice (a joint project with Altarrin) she uses for casting spells she has no business casting, and go home.