"Being able to feel pain doesn't make you a good healer," says Liselen. "I sense things, but I don't really have context for them; before one of you fixed me, I couldn't even be as close to you as I am right now without feeling like there were bugs under my skin."

"I'm perfectly unicorn safe," says Lexi smugly.

"Yes, Lexi, sometime you can visit Thilanushinyel and see if any herds of unicorns want you to frolic amongst them and be fitted for flower garlands. Meanwhile, um. Okay. So, a majority of people - at least humans - are only interested in having sex with people who are not their same gender. Some people don't care either way, some people are only interested in people who are their same gender, some people don't want to have sex with anyone even after they grow up, and this is all complicated by the fact that gender is only usually a one-or-the-other thing."

"Wow," says Liselen, blinking at her. "How do you sort it all out?"

"Look," says Aurora, "this is weird, where do little unicorns come from if unicorns can't be anywhere near nonvirgins unless they're patched like you?"

He sidles uncomfortably away from her.

Aurora shrugs. "Never mind, then. I'm going to go talk to Angela."

"Okay," says Liselen.

Angela's not hard to find. There she is! She gets the same explanation.

[Love, have you met Aurora yet? She's trying to figure out how Bell-Joker relationships tend to work,] Angela tells her husband.

[I haven't! I was distracted,] he says merrily. [Should I come and help?]

[If now's a good time.]

[Just a moment,] he says, and there is a pause, and then Micaiah appears and gives his wife a hug and a kiss.

He gets these back in equal measure, and a wing wrapped around him. "Specifically, Aurora doesn't seem to understand how I'm so calm about you sleeping with other people."

"And I pretty much expect at this point to hear, 'But I don't know how much help I'll be, because I had a special circumstance that isn't like anyone else's special circumstance yet still made it particularly natural for me to fall into that pattern'," says Aurora, sighing.

"Well, that's not exactly what I was going to say, but I did start out particularly motivated and with a general understanding of Edori habits. Though I believe many Edori are faithful to single lovers while they have them, it's not the norm, and they don't generally marry."

"Motivated because of the god thing?"

"Yes - not only did I expect that Micaiah had been chosen for me by someone smarter and better than myself," Angela snorts ruefully, "I also found that he'd be my requisite partner if I ever wanted to be Archangel. I later learned differently, but not before I was thoroughly attached by other means."

"I love you," sighs Micaiah, snuggling his angel.

"And I you."

"You are just preposterously cute. But - like, alts are one thing, putting Jokers in a room together is apparently like putting magnets in close proximity - but other people?"

"There was that time with Phebe... that was a problem," murmurs Angela.

He presses his face into her shoulder and sighs unhappily.

"Phebe is another angel at the Eyrie who doesn't like me," Angela explains to Aurora, settling her wing more snugly around Micaiah. "She interpreted Micaiah's - availability - as an opportunity to hurt me. And for political reasons I can't just announce to everyone that it isn't. Angels are often inconstant, but associated mortals, not so much. She believes that I forgave him for a betrayal, and her too, and I managed to present this in a way that so far doesn't have her telling the tale far and wide."

"My question is more about why it isn't a betrayal. I mean, maybe he never promised not to, that takes care of the technical sense of betrayal, but - you guys are married, you're going to have a baby, and you're not - keeping yourselves to yourselves. I don't completely get it."