"Which sounds fixable. Or we just get the Valar in here specifically for animals, they're good at that and not understanding coercion or complex preferences isn't likely to trip them up too much."

"You don't think they'd get distracted by human stuff? Or be like, 'well, clearly we need to change humans so they have empathy for chickens' -"

"I don't expect many humans would go for that? And they're very singleminded, typically."

"Humans would mostly not go for that."

"So then it wouldn't happen. You'd have more of a problem with, like, correcting homosexuality or something where lots of humans would go for it but some maybe for bad reasons."

"Uh. Yeah. Do they let parents decide for their kids -"

"I don't know, it hasn't ever come up, I don't think Elves even have that and if one did they'd, like, want it fixed because they'd be the only one."

"I suppose there is a practical argument to be made. Uh, how do you know they can - fix - that if Elves don't come in gay -"

"Thy do attraction-altering stuff sometimes. And, like, once there was someone who wanted to be another gender and the Valar helped them with that which I think also involved arranging for that bit to line up?"

"So trans people are fine. It's like Iran."

"I mean, maybe if it actually existed it'd be acceptable? - I also don't know to what extent Elves are really different than humans with respect to sex and to what extent no one was telling a kid things."

"I do not know enough about Elf cultural mores to guess."

"Nobody would tell a kid things but also I suspect we're pretty different. Enough so that inviting the intervention of the Valar is a bad idea."

"Don't have to tell me twice."

"So we'll do it ourselves." He goes back to his notes.

Lorica busies herself elsewise. Rete brings them Mexican.

It is tasty. He sings to himself. He shivers occasionally. He looks at maps of Baltimore. He works.

Rete helps him find a pretty hotel.

This means he works more productively. 

They finally let Lorica graduate in early April. She declines to enroll in the Protectorate. She takes out a loan.

"Rocky Mountains?"

He's made a little bit of progress on something that could tackle the Endbringers but not very much; it's a hard problem and he's not even at the stage where Tinkers can hasten progress. "Yeah."

She finds a spot in the Rocky Mountains and gets a design from his architect and borrows some heavy carrying drones from Dragon and Rete builds them a bunker with a spire on top.

It's pretty. He hugs her. "Thank you."

"You're welcome!"

She moves in a little later after she's had time to pack all her things.

She hands a bot a box and steps in past the threshold and shakes off her armor and pulls her helmet off.

(She's got her hair in a ponytail but not braided.)

Blink blink. "Oh no, will the costumes norm weather this unthinkable erosion?" She's pretty but if feels weird having opinions about someone being pretty when their hair is loose.