"Probably. We're all very sensible. Barrayar, I get him holidays and weekends, and will consent to lend him out in emergencies."

He giggles and kisses her.

She could get used to morning kisses with Miles. She kisses him back, of course.

Mm. Cozy kisses.

And then—

"Chrysalis!" he exclaims.

She looks at him, confused and amused.

"... This sort of thing paints a telling picture of our future intimacy, doesn't it."

"Yes, it does - sorry, it just occurred to me - as a name for your fleet," he explains. "Um, do you have butterflies in your galaxy?"

"Ah... my translator's translating the word as 'insect with a thin elongated body and proportionally large wings,' and offering a few potential available options - I can get holos of the species that look similar?"

"Butterflies are pretty little things, symbolically associated with life, hope, change, the soul - and they're pupating insects, and the pupa is called a chrysalis - etymologically related to χρυσός, gold, because they're often bright golden in colour. And... part of the trouble, I think, with naming your fleet, is that it's hard to say what it's going to be once things settle down. You were one thing and you're going to be another, but right now you're in transition, and even afterward... the transition is still going to be an important part of your history. It reminds me of the colonization of Barrayar in a way. Except you don't have to spend six hundred years reinventing the social and mechanical technologies of your ancestors from scratch."

"Huh," she says. "Maybe not the direct word itself, but I might look up some etymology or an equivalent in one of our languages, and toss it to the people that are in charge of the poll. I mostly just want to keep it from being named as if I were a more traditional Sith Lord and they were my cultists."

"Traditional Sith Lords have cultists?"

"Often, when traditional Sith Lords grow tired of Sith politics and aren't powerful enough to murder their problems away, they take a group of loyal people - or, well, people that aren't in any position to decline - and run off to some isolated moon in some bizarre corner of the galaxy with them. There, they have them build a magnificent and impressive temple, showing to all that would find the place how powerful they were. Then in five to thirty years they die alone in it after having squandered everyone that followed them in some way or another, and it becomes their magnificent and impressive tomb. If they were any good, they have one or two followers that are still loyal to their memory, and will dress the place up a bit and put them in a nice coffin before running far away and moving on with their lives."

"God, the Sith are depressing."

"Yes. It's terrible. But on the bright side, Occlus and I would eventually find and explore the tomb and ransack it for everything useful that the Sith ever made. So. Not entirely useless, sometimes they made breakthroughs in one thing or another."

He laughs and hugs her. "My favourite graverobber."

She laughs, a little.

"Do you know other graverobbers? Should I meet up with them, exchange tips?"

"You know, I bet if I thought about it I could come up with at least one or two. Not off the top of my head, though, no."

"Alas. So the categories I'm your favorite in are, respectively - one where I am the only one you've met, and one where I am probably one out of perhaps three, but you can't remember the others right now." Pause. "I'm moving up in the world! Soon I'll be the favorite of a category that encompasses perhaps half a dozen people!"

...he cracks up.

"Tell me Miles, do you know many librarians?"

"I've met a few!"

"I believe I have my next profession to gain favor in, then!"

He smiles at her.

Well when he smiles at her like that she just has to kiss him.

Good! It's so nice when that happens!

It is! So very nice.

....

"One moment," she murmurs, and she gently unkisses and floats over her datapad to figure out the answer to a very important question. What time is it?