"I don't feel strongly about having kids in and of itself and having an heir to the throne is much less urgent now that my husband and I are immortal."

"That makes sense."

"Cam has been comparing Amentan babies to desserts. It really is very funny looking from the outside."

"It doesn't surprise me at all that no one else has a caste system, and it wouldn't be very startling if they didn't have eyes or music or something, but it really is very hard to imagine not wanting children."

"Plenty of humans do want children. My planet doesn't have widespread birth control, though - there's a spell for it but most people can't learn it and we only get six spells a day -"

She nods. "You can presumably import the technological solution now?"

"Yes, among other things."

"How are you planning to handle international diplomacy? You'll be indescribably far ahead of everyone."

"We're working that out and not letting much time pass back home."

"Do you have a tentative plan or are you still entertaining several?"

"We could just smarten up Marlatia and then generously export and be careful not to throw our weight around. Everyone would catch up sooner or later if we're going to add things in such a way that we can maintain them ourselves anyway. It may depend on whether Amentans can become daeva, since if they do we could employ some non-negligible rate of summoning."

"I'm sure we'll learn sooner or later - but hopefully not too soon."

"Yeah. We're immortal now, we can stay here and pause time at home if it seems like that's the best option."

"If we turn out to daevafy I'm going to make the case for letting Revelation get a few decades ahead of Amenta."

"That seems reasonable enough to me."

"Should we be addressing you as 'your majesty' -"

"I don't stand on ceremony."

The baby tries grabbing for Iobel's hair and is thwarted and cooed at.

"She's adorable."

"Thank you! It's such a delight to be raising her in a world where she needn't have a single miserable spring."

"It's that bad a quality of life issue, huh?"

"If you know you'll get there eventually it's - tolerable, usually."

"What's it like?"

 "Have you ever just - gone somewhere perfectly lovely or pleasant, but you're in a mood that day or dwelling on something and all you can do is - abstractly notice - that it's beautiful and you ought to be enjoying it -"

"- that doesn't happen to me personally but I'm acquainted with the phenomenon."