"Funnily enough the Shakers were actually pretty against marriage or, uh, sex. I think. If I'm remembering my history right. There was a group of wizards once."

"You know, if a group of wizards decides 'no sex, no marriage, no babies,' that's... kind of valid of them honestly?"

"Yeah, probably better for everyone if wizards die out and the starving mals all eat each other until all that's left is one big mega-mal that chews its way through the planet and kills everything."

"I mean on the margin, not overall."

"I guess it's valid to be against human extinction."

"Who cares about human extinction? I just don't want the super-mal, in chewing through everything, to get the kangaroos." 

"I care about human extinction!" Scorpius pipes up. "There are as many as four people I care about."

"Four? Yikes. Who has time for that shit?"

"It's actually pretty efficient when one of them can keep up with you on the mal-killing front when you supply them with mana!"

"Can El do that? How do you get her to do that?"

"El can do that! She killed a maw-mouth! The school gave her the Golden Stone sutras for it!"

??????????????????

"Wow!"

She brandishes her Sanskrit textbook. "I originally picked up Sanskrit because I wanted mortal flame, but the Sutras are in it too--after graduation, El and I are going to travel the world and put up Golden enclaves." She hugs the book, twirls around once, and flops on a convenient couch. You cannot literally see hearts floating over her head, but Scorpius at least has the social awareness to perceive them anyway. 

He sure does. "Yvette got them, too. They're beautiful."

"It's going to save so many more people than just killing mals would have."

(Eyerollllll.)

Snort. "You can be as cynical as you want, but the dead will still be dead and the living will still be living." She gives her textbook an extra squeeze. It is not the Golden Sutras but it is an acceptable surrogate. 

"I don't think we have any specific plans like that, ourselves; if nothing else our mutual boyfriend—caveat lector—is neither a weapon of mal destruction nor someone who continually refuses to be a dark sorceress of dread power and I don't know how okay either of us would be if. Uh. You know."

"Iiiii'm going to guess the thing that 'you know' refers to is 'he dies' but if there's a more specific way he dies implied I don't actually know if it's mal attack or assassination." 

"Yes I did mean he dies I just don't like thinking or talking about my maybe-boyfriend dying," he sighs.

"Sorry, I'm just bad at subtext, it doesn't fall under murder or altruism and none of my friends use it much either so it hasn't come under the heading of friendship yet."

You know, Scorpius used to think he was a bit much but he is starting to reevaluate that.

"I wonder if it would be fun to have the Els and, uh, Yvette, meet. ...if they're, like, kind of the same person, that'd be freaky, actually. At least the Els. I can't imagine what people would think if they met an alternate universe version of themselves, as opposed to whatever us shinies are to each other."

"An alternate universe version of me would be a breath of fresh air right now," Atalanta mutters.

"...I'm not sure what would happen if the Els met except that it would probably involve sarcasm so weapons-grade it would kill a quattria."