"Your world is refreshingly sensible about letting women do things."

"It's kind of historically recent, so there's some reason to hope yours'll follow suit with more technological and social development."

"What caused it?"

"...contraception was probably big? And moving toward democracy in general - I know the names of some people who were important in pushing for it but I'm not sure which background conditions were necessary for them to succeed, unfortunately."

"What's contraception?"

"Medical interventions that let people have sex without getting pregnant."

"Ah... I didn't know that was an option."

"I don't know how to do it. ...I would give myself tolerable odds of figuring out a copper intrauterine device but only because I think those words are themselves most of what you'd need to know, I'd definitely need to test on animals first."

"Uh, you aren't accustomed to the taboos of my society which is really quite nice but I should probably note that I've made an intentional effort to avoid learning what sex is since it's my understanding that such foreknowledge is considered undesirable in a potential spouse and I'm bad at lying. Though uh, probably I should reconsider this if it seems like something like contraception could be important to figure out."

"I can probably just ask for uninformative materials to test things on... dogs or something with without having to tell you too much."

"I think if it's worth your time it's also worth me learning what sex is."

"I don't actually see how that follows."

"My learning about such matters isn't a very large cost and I'd l really like to be able to contribute to projects that will... actually matter. It's just that prior to now almost all such projects would run through my future husband, and you change that."

"...I guess that I can... try to... reproduce my sex ed class from high school..."

"Oh, um. I can probably derive it from books?"

"It seems plausible that your books are not very informative but you could maybe start there and... ask... questions...?"

"That sounds reasonable."

It sounds excruciating but if it's what Lucette wants. Annie nods.

It sounds terribly awkward, but Lucette doesn't actually have any better ideas. And learning about sex on her wedding night never sounded all that appealing either.

She can go and read through the books she has thus far scrupulously avoided.

Annie will distract herself as best she can with other books until such time as Lucette has questions.

"You were right about the books not being very informative."

"In a society where it's attractive to arrive at your wedding completely ignorant and where contraception hasn't been invented that seemed like a safe guess."

"The animal husbandry books aren't aimed at women but they assumed basic knowledge I don't actually have. The various bits of poetry I've previously avoided were even less helpful."

"Yeah, I bet the poetry's - either euphemistic or dysphemistic, depending."

"Euphemistic, largely."