" - uh. Maybe some local priest would officiate that? There's not a provision for it - most of the point of marriage is clarity about paternity -"

"Didn't you just say you were more interested in having children than humans, anyway -"

"My husband and I are planning to arrange something with two married women of our acquaintance and raise the children together. Amentans who could go either way typically end up in a relationship that can get them children, yes."

"Huh."

"I'm not sure what your point is."

"I was curious whether in your case effecting political change would be as straightforward as 'change the law that says these people can't get married'."

" - I think it might be kind of like stating that by law the color purple was henceforth to be called violet. People'd humor me, but..."

"I'm not sure that it would have any consequences, legally speaking. People assume things like 'you want your spouse to inherit your stuff' but that isn't a law, that's just how whoever's managing your affairs will guess if you don't have a will - ideally your affairs will be managed by people who would know if you had a sweetheart who warranted consideration -"

"Yes, exactly."

"You don't have laws about who inherits one's stuff when they die?"

" - you designate an heir, and if you failed to do that there's squabbling which can be taken to a local magistrate who can try to figure out what you probably wanted."

"Trying to centrally enforce that would be a nightmare, it'd tie up so many people, all of whom would have to be paid and none of whom would have ever met the deceased."

" - huh."

"How do you handle that at home?"

"It is in fact all centrally administered by people who get paid and have never met the deceased. Most people fill something out online to describe what they'd want, and there are rules to resolve things in the absence of that or if their assets are forfeit because they committed a crime or something."

"Online is the - sharing writing thing -"

"Yep. We're also all literate, that probably affects it."

"I would like to copy that. Insofar as is possible, the familiars probably wouldn't catch on in quantity."

"The Internet is great."

"I mean, probably literacy is a prerequisite, we don't have great rates on that, is what I meant. Familiars might like the internet fine if there are ways to interact with it without sharing a language."

"Maybe they'll like some multiplayer online games. Literacy we also do with central authority you have to pay, I'm not sure how to pull it off without that."

"Well, how do you do it?"

"Regions pay for everyone to go to school from one-and-a-half through three-and-a-half - for some castes longer. There are a couple schools near everyone and they can choose which to attend; schools get in trouble if students are doing poorer than expected or if all the parents are choosing to send their children elsewhere for some reason. Schools have to publish a few key statistics - how many of their students get jobs when they're done, how often they have to discipline students, how many of their students retake classes - so people can try to evaluate themselves, but it's not perfect, there are ways to make those numbers look better. If a region is lagging the national government, which helps with the money, might make them change something they're doing that's making their schools worse."

"Hard to know what adequate performance looks like when some schools have problems like 'the kids have to work to support their family' and some have problems like 'dysentery outbreak' or 'bandits on the road; can't get any books'."

"It's really really important to get rid of bandits on your roads. Can't be emphatic enough about that - safe trade will make your people much much richer -"