Kiss. "I expect some Elves will get taken advantage of but at least they will have gotten a safety lesson warning against it and a broken heart is probably more easily mended than the realization you were accidentally exploiting someone."

"I think it'd usually be more ambiguous how much people were being exploited, if they were? Like, even someone who really needs help won't pick an Elf at random - I interviewed you a little first and I knew I could love you pretty much no matter what -"

"If I'd been a jerk would you have tried to talk to my entourage? Or the fairy?"

"Probably would have depended on what exactly you did."

Snuggle. "Fair enough. I am more worried about things like 'someone lies to an Elf about taking Seedlessness regularly' or 'someone lies to an Elf about being married', those would be - clear-cut, upsetting, not implausible -"

"Does Seedlessness not work on Elves? It's unisex. We usually take it redundantly and even if we don't expect it to come up, it's not that expensive."

"Haven't checked and it's anyway quite plausible we're not relevantly intercompatible species, but that'd help."

"Bar'd know, she knows drug things."

He makes a note to ask. 

"Do you think you'd want kids someday?"

"I'd like it but it's probably better if I don't because I'd have to touch them and I'm trying not to do too much of that. Maybe one."

Nod. Squeeze. 

" - so," he says to the president of Mars the next time he's there, "I met a demon with a long-standing dream to terraform Mars, I don't suppose there's any way you could indulge him?"

"What a curious thing for a demon to want to do," says the president of Mars. "I'm afraid all our terraforming negotiations have been tied up in safety concerns, and historical and areological preservation interests, for a long time now..."

"I thought that might be the case. Hazel has a Mars, I'll point him there."

"Why does he want to terraform Mars?"

"I think because it's an interesting engineering project that would benefit lots of people."

"How did this even come up?"

"Some of my colleagues have been doing a lot of recruiting for demons interested in humanitarian work in the preindustrial worlds we've found - supplying vaccination clinics, laying down infrastructure, building a power grid, that kind of thing - and I observed a few of the interviews when I most recently visited home. And somebody asked if we wanted a planet terraformed because he had an abiding ambition to terraform Mars but would at least enjoy terraforming somewhere."

"Can't they do that in Hell?"

"Sure, and they do, but in Hell no one really benefits. I'm sure you feel the draw of public service, of improving the lives of others..."

"Well, sure, just seems funny for a demon to have that."

"There're billions of them. I'm sure plenty of them have zero interest in helping mortals, and obviously some of them enjoy hurting them, but enough of them see the appeal of helping that we've had no trouble staffing every clinic in Godspring and no adverse incidents unless you count the demon who freed a bunch of slaves ahead of schedule."

"...what did it do with them?"

"She sought out a exiled leader of a slave rebellion and supplied him and then supplied the refugees once he got them out."

"...huh."