Hug. Kiss. "Good morning. Did you sleep well?"

"Mm-hm. Is it actually morning? Does everyone just keep time to match the surface?"

"Yes, it's convenient to match time outside the front gate because dwarves still have to sleep and we trade with the surface a lot." Pause. "Most dwarves still have to sleep."

"Lucky," she remarks. "So how complicated are the potential logistics of me poking everyone in a suitably-devoid-of-music hospital?"

"Well, for one thing, there aren't quite hospitals as such... we can arrange something but it'll take some arranging. I'll put it on today's agenda."

"Okay. Why don't you have hospitals...?"

"Why do you have hospitals?"

"So that everybody who needs medical attention knows where there will be doctors and nurses around to look after them."

"That's a pretty good reason, but it's fulfilled nearly as well by having every individual healer put a sign on their door. I don't actually know why Orzammar doesn't have hospitals - I suspect something like it might spring up if our population got high enough - but I know that among humans on the surface, they're a religious institution, and dwarves don't really have religious institutions the same way."

"Oh. There are some religious hospitals back in my world but it's not all of them. I guess a low population might explain it... some of the point of a hospital is that you can have doctors specialized in really rare things, and enough people come through that they have something to do all day, but you need a big city for that. And the people in the big city can't have to walk everywhere, either."

"Yeah... anyway. I can get the news out that you're available as a healer who can potentially cure the taint. How would you feel about giving a lot of people the darkspawn-destroying power? A substantial fraction of the army might be interested - I'm thinking of the Legion of the Dead particularly..."

"I can't see any reason not to. There aren't any darkspawn I'm interested in protecting from disintegration. Or spiders I desperately wanted to leave unfileted."

He laughs. "Yeah. So that'll be what I set up today. ...Also, in preparation for you actually meeting any other dwarves, I should make this explicit: The official story Bhelen and I are sticking to is that he thought I killed Trian and I thought he set me up, but when I came back we had a heart-to-heart and realized it must have been someone else's fault and now we are figuring out who."

"Okay. In similar preparation, before and after announcing our betrothal what's the decorous level of public display of affection?"

"None, and holding hands or kissing, respectively."

"Okay. Is there any reason not to just tell people exactly where I came from and how I came to have weird magic powers?"

"They might think we've all gone insane. I say delay that revelation until the Legion of the Dead have been disintegrating darkspawn for at least a week."

"What do I say if pressed in the meanwhile?"

"Since we met you in the Deep Roads, it's perfectly plausible for you not to want to talk about how you got there or what happened while we were all being chased by darkspawn. You can just say you don't prefer to discuss it once anyone wants more information than that."

"Okay."

Smile. Hug.

"I haven't caught you saying anything I'd consider especially rude... some people might be rude to you, I'm not sure what to do about that."

"Should I avoid being rude back? I have this habit of getting really quite sarcastic with people who behave contemptibly."

"If you want to indulge, feel free. If I'm present at the time I can also get sarcastic on your behalf. Well, I guess I should qualify that - please don't get sarcastic with Bhelen, and if you don't know who somebody is and suspect that they might be important, consider refraining. But I think I can recover from nearly any social disaster caused by you being rude to someone who was rude to you first."