"Yes, see, for the last several thousand years I refused him any breaks but now that I've you he can occasionally have the night off."

Cor laughs and kisses him.

Kisses are lovely!!

And Cor gets back into his clothes. Breakfast. Work.

Governor in the evenings! Maitimo in the evenings! Maitimo sometimes with exaggerated reluctance gives him breaks.

It's so cute.

"You're amazing."

"What've I done now?"

"Existed!!"

"As opposed to the rest of the time, when I've gotten too deeply into my work or something..."

"Maybe I am jealous of your flirtations with nonexistence."

"I've been assuming that if nonexistence winks at me I can wink back, only fair, yeah?"

"It would be terribly unprincipled of me to object but I might still get jealous and wish to remind you all of the ways in which I'm a better companion."

"For example, you exist!" Kiss.

Kiss kiss. "I do! And I compliment you."

"I noticed. Nonexistence never does, except implicitly by obligingly doing my destructive bidding."

"I will also do your destructive bidding, presuming good reasons!"

"Nonexistence never questions my reasons! Only occasionally my metaphors."

"I'll take your metaphors for what they're worth but I have to tell the troops something, 'he's so pretty and I want to impress him' doesn't really cut it."

"Fair enough."

"I know you were just dying to leverage your newfound political power for unexplained wanton destruction!"

"That's me, yep, you can tell from the ominous chanting."

"It really is pretty ominous!!"

"I know, right? We get kind of used to it but it's objectively pretty spooky."

"Blood and ash and chanting, I feel like if we tell people from more worlds 'also this magic eats planets' they will be like 'you don't say'."