He kind of also is.

Mmmmmmmm.

Mmm.

"I was right, this is much less boring than more crypto."

He laughs. "And you haven't even opened a book!"

"It's true, I haven't! Maybe I should. Do you have any recommendations?"

"Well, if you can read Ansati, I do have a favourite poem..."

"I can as of last week! What's your favorite poem like?"

"It's an old epic about a warrior queen slaughtering her enemies. It's got heaps and heaps of literary merit, I think they still study it nowadays and the language hasn't been spoken in two thousand years. I like the gory parts, of course."

Giggle. "Of course."

"Do you want me to fly you to the bottom floor or would you rather risk the stairs—"

"Let's go with flying."

"All right."

Whoosh. Now they are on the bottom floor, surrounded by comfy chairs and little couches, directly beneath the skylight eight floors above.

"Where would you like to sit?"

"I like the look of those couches," she says, and temporarily breaks the hug to do a happy little twirl--

trips on the hem of her dress in such a way that causes it to tear at the top--

and smacks into the floor hard enough to knock the wind out of her and leave some serious bruises on a great deal of now-exposed flesh.

—he sighs, and offers his hand to help her up.

She takes his hand a little shakily and hauls herself up. "Ow."

He hands her a bottle of healing water.

"I'm tempted to taunt your curse for not trying hard enough, but I'm not sure to what extent it actually understands things and has opinions and to what extent that's just a convenient way to talk about it," he says, pulling a bit of power as he speaks. Her dress repairs itself neatly. "And I don't want to get in the habit of saying things like that if it's going to hear me and escalate."

"I'm pretty sure the curse isn't actually a person," she says a little wryly, accepting the bottle and drinking. "But I appreciate not encouraging it to escalate."

The healing water is wonderfully effective.

"Well. Sitting on a couch reading poetry still sound like fun?"

"Yeah, I'm way harder to deter than that."

He laughs and sits down and materializes a book in his hands.

She sits down beside him and leans her head on his shoulder.

He tucks his arm around her shoulders and reads.

It's a pretty good poem, and he's pretty good at reading it.

She listens raptly.