"Did we ever even talk about it at all? I don't think we did," he says. "I don't know what you'd think of me... I don't know... carving the moon into one of those lacy balls with more lacy balls inside them by hand, either. I can guess that you might not mind it because it doesn't really affect anything important, or you might mind it because everyone is going to be weirded out that the moon rattles now, but I don't actually know, you've never said anything either way about anything that's even enough like that for me to tell."

"It'd fuck up tides if you carved away ninety percent of the moon. If you fixed that, don't care. If you didn't fix that, then I'd come home and I would have to deal with a lot of fucked up tides. And if you have a kid, I come home and I have to deal with you having a kid - it's close enough to me and my life, through you, that I do have to deal with it. A perfectly innocent kid who seems nice enough and was not complicit in her own mistimed conception, so it is in fact much less fixable than the lacy ball moon problem, although she's probably destroyed fewer coastal cities."

"None, last I checked," he says with a quirk of a smile.

"Then she has an excellent record on the subject of destroying coastal cities, I suppose."

"She's awesome. I love her."

"Mmm."

"Because it's going to hurt? Sure it is. But it hurts already," he says. "If we actually understood each other, it might stop hurting."

"I - that's not what I'm worried about. People resent negative feelings about their children, people don't like people who produce negative feelings about their children."

"But... you're you," he says, utterly at a loss. "And you feel how you feel. I can't resent you for being you, it would be like - like resenting Petaal for not settling, you couldn't be any other way, something would be wrong if you weren't who you are, I don't know everything about you but I know that finding out more things isn't going to make me love you any less. Probably cry. Never love you any less."

He sighs and hugs her.

"I mean, at least I didn't already have plans in place to have a little Dominique - Yseult donated the name to the template since she's not using it - at least I hadn't formed expectations that specific - although if we'd talked about it maybe you'd have called her something I like more than 'Helen' - I'm getting used to it but I wouldn't have named her that, Ianthe is fine and Kalavar is fine but -" She sighs.

"Helen of Troy," he murmurs. "That's why I picked it."

"Sure. It's not terrible, just - another thing I missed."

Kas snuggles her.

Snuggles.

Snuggles.

"I mean," says Isabella tentatively, "she - seems nice, I don't know, maybe we'll get along great."

"I hope so," says Kas. "...Do you not think you will?"

"...Guardedly optimistic."