"Might have to have a different timing algorithm for a world with long natural lifespans. How long do elves and stuff live?"

"About a thousand years. Unicorns sometimes a little longer. Dragons and demons - forever, unless killed, but the death of a Bonded kills - if my dragon died it would kill me and my demon; the other way around does not necessarily kill if there are two non-dragons in the Bond. Centaurs and so on - I do not have memorized."

"You cannot die again," Rose tells Sarion.

"That's been gotten out of the way. It was one of the first things we tried, to get you free of the mindreading. It worked only until we woke you again."

Elspeth snaps her fingers and conjures a copy of the standard informational pamphlet on being dead and hands it to Sarion, who takes it in mild puzzlement.

"She was practically dead already, being mindread is bad stuff for us," says Juliet. "And two and a half of us were already dead. I got murdered, Pattern got hit by a car, Shell Bell got assassinated. We're all fine now. Angela took her Downside and did it quick and painless and clean and then woke her again and look, she's fine."

"I'm the half," Shell Bell says, taking pity on No Questions Elf. "My girlfriend resurrected me after I died, but then instead of removing me from the afterlife it just made there be two of me, one in and one out. After this was discovered I glued myself back together again."

"It's surprising," says Liselen, twitching his tail. "I'm surprised. And I have a suggestion," he adds, with unaccustomed diffidence.

"What's the suggestion?" Cam asks, still petting the pretty unicorn.

"I think if you're going to keep doing impossible things like bringing back the dead and changing Dragonbonds and stuff, you should make sure to check with me before you do them, in case the Wild Magic has something to say about it."

"You wanna be our Thilanushinyel Has Weird Stuff In It consultant?"

"I guess!" says Liselen.

"It is curious that the Wild Magic should be able to speak to you but that anything we might do to make it able to speak to us directly is apparently perilous."

"You're not unicorns," Liselen explains. "And I bet you wouldn't like being unicorns even if you could turn into them, which I'm not sure if you can or not, but it seems likely because you can do lots of impossible things. I like being a unicorn, but I've been one all my life. You haven't."

"I wonder if Petaal or Ivy could be unicorns," muses Amariah. "I'm so tempted to interrupt my sweeties and suggest that they try it. Although unless the virgin problem was patched in advance, there could be a problem. Although since I'm sure they'd quite enjoy feeling as though they were melting perhaps not so much."

Aegis snorts. "Who counts as a virgin, anyway, what pops one's cherry as far as unicorns are concerned?"

...Liselen shifts uncomfortably.

"Oh, come on, you decided to announce Golden's lack of childbearing history in front of everybody including a near-stranger, you didn't know that the child she did not bear was going to be right with you in the indiscretion department," says Pattern, "now you won't even explain how this sense you currently have trained on all of us even works?"

"Well," says Elspeth helpfully, and all the Bells turns in her direction because that helpful voice means she's about to pull information from nowhere (and Sarion's following along), "it is a function of both physical history and mindset, neither feature discriminates by gender, sex, orientation or specific act, and consent is contributory towards the mindset part sliding in the non-virgin direction but many forms of related trauma and the resulting attitudes can do the same thing and on average it shakes out about the same. While your opacities are interfering a little bit here and now, in the paradigmatic case a unicorn can discern approximate sex drive and get a fuzzy coarse-grained feel for attitude towards the subject too; the paradigmatic case of a virgin isn't someone who's simply never had sex, especially if it's for lack of opportunity, but rather someone who doesn't think about it at all, like a small child. Somebody who was completely ace like Addy would probably also be relatively comfortable for a unicorn to be around even though she doesn't absolutely physically qualify. And unicorns themselves don't count and neither do nonsapient animals."

Liselen looks slightly alarmed as Elspeth begins speaking, but once she has finished, he settles down again.

"Thank you, Elspeth."

"Is something wrong?" Shell Bell asks Liselen.

He shakes his head. "No, no, everything's fine, I don't think I'm going to get in trouble for that at all."