"But - I'm not going to marry a 21-year-old human - who on earth would ever possibly think -"

"Who said anything about marriage?"

"You did!!"

"No, I said sex! People have extramarital sex sometimes! The human gestation period is nine months and my sister and I were born only six months after our parents' wedding!"

"Ah." He says. "For us those are the same thing. If I were to have sex with a human woman I would be married to her for all eternity. This would be a profoundly stupid thing to do, so I was surprised anyone would take precautionary methods to prevent it. Your explanation makes more sense."

"What, really? That's...very strange, on a wide variety of levels."

"Your way strikes me as equally puzzling. So - the fear is that if unsupervised, Men won't be able to get any work done and will fall to having sex that does not result in marriage, and then marrying while already with child?"

"The fear is that women will have extramarital sex and thereafter be considered morally defiled. It's not shameful for the men."

She's smiling. It's not a nice smile.

"Then why would they do it?" he asks, flexing the new hand and then waving it around the room in confusion. "Why would you need to specifically stop them, if it's considered dishonorable anyway? Are people going to think you did something dishonorable?"

"Because it's considered dishonorable for stupid reasons, so not everyone agrees, and because there are people who are perfectly happy to do dishonorable things that feel nice if they think they won't get caught."

He shakes his head. "Well. I will not comment on the customs of Men, and our resources remain at your disposal as interests you, and I am not personally inclined to care what assumptions the Men in my employ make for obscure cultural reasons if you aren't."

"Genosha--The Free City of Genosha, where I'm from--has pretty much gotten over this, but there are enough places in the world where that's the custom that it's easy to recognize. It's annoying, but going out of my way to avoid having people think that would be even more annoying."

He's smiling slightly to himself. "All right. There's a guest room across the hall, someone will take you there. I need to compose the letters explaining the situation."

"Thank you."

And someone knocks on the door to show her to the room. He pulls out parchment and a quill and an inkwell, still using the hand he'd been accustomed to. "Should I have them bring you food as well?"

"Oh," she says, surprised. "Yes, thank you. I forget about hunger, sometimes, when I spend a while on a workng."

"Anything in particular?"

"I'm not picky."

"Noted. Good night, ah -"

"Odette" Given name, the name of her mother's mother "Zavier" Fathername

"Maedhros. Just the one name." Another bitter smile. "Good night, Odette Zavier."

"Good night, Maedhros."

Her room is very small, but clean, and contains only a bed. A short time later someone brings up some kind of stew and bread.

The fact that they have food so similar to what she's familiar with probably shouldn't even register as strange, compared to everything else, but it does.

It's nowhere near the time she would normally go to bed, back home, but luckily for her plans to adjust her sleep cycle it's been an exhausting day, and she's out like a light as soon as her head hits the pillow.

In the morning there is hot stew and bread placed on the table, apparently recently but by someone who did not wake her.