Huh.

“I think that could be a story in dath ilan,” Merrin says thoughtfully. “But I am a strange character to use to tell it. Would Mariona want to #enslave# you?”

"If you know how to get her to try that, tell me.  It would be good for her."

Merrin bursts out laughing. 

(She doesn't try to suppress it. It seems fine? She is on the other side of worrying about whether it's weird or awkward, and 'amusement' is a way to feel about this conversation that makes it not-draining to have.) 

"Maybe!" she says. "...And maybe the two stories would go together, even. There could be a story where I #enslave# you and also I say, I don't want my person I #enslave# to be in #Hell#."

She shakes her head slightly. "I still think this must not be that story, because it would make me sad to #enslave# you, but maybe I am wrong! Maybe the story is, you tell me why this would be fun, and then I am not sad." 

"There are other things men and women can do together, but they're boring -- too simple, not fun -- if nobody is trying to enslave anybody."

"Hmmmmm." 

It’s probably way too early in their - whatever they’re doing - for it to be at all strategic to say out loud that, while many dath ilanis wouldn’t disagree on “romance with no other plot is boring”, there is the alternate plot of “teaming up to defeat Asmodeus”.

It’s soooooooo tempting though.

It’s so tempting! Esta might even make a facial expression about it! 

…Merrin has self-control, though, even when she’s decided to simply Get Over all of her silly neuroses and social awkwardness feelings.

“I’ve never felt too bored before,” she says lightly. “…I mean, I would without masochism - pain - things, probably? But in dath ilan you can do that without anyone #enslaving# anyone else.”

Shrug. “Also I wasn’t on another planet with only one person. Maybe I will think it’s boring after a while.”

"You're not even slightly tempted.  I can tell."

"-- 'tempted', moved closer to wanting to do a thing, especially a fun bad thing."

“I’m not!” Merrin agrees cheerfully. (And repeats the new vocabulary word to herself a few times, it may or may not appear in her unreviewed corpus of language data but she in fact hadn’t recognized it.) “Are you #tempted# to enslave me? Maybe you can explain why it would be fun for you.”

She’s pretty sure that normally it would seem agonizingly stressful to her! Because what a way to introduce conflict that wasn’t strictly speaking necessary to have! …That part of Merrin’s social inhibitions seems to also be down, still, she’s not particularly flinching at the concept of arguing with Esta rather than avoiding that, but there’s still really no positive appeal to forcing Esta to do what she says all the time??? …Except for arguably the part where she could force him to not be horrible, hypothetically, but - that doesn’t really feel like the way anything works? 

"You were already my slave.  I was trying to get you to reach higher, to see you could be more."

"-- not quite like this."

There is an odd jar and stumble when he imagines trying to force this version of Mariona to obedience.  Something like not really knowing her well enough, which is strange, because he has tormented or forced into obedience many women he knew hardly at all.

(Well, obviously. He doesn't know about the Laeirthe or the Kalorm who live in her head. He only partly understands dath ilan, and the way that growing up there changes someone. There are a lot of pieces inside Merrin that Mariona never had a chance to grow.) 

Since Merrin cannot actually read Esta's thoughts, her first thought is 'did Mariona like that', before she remembers that they are not, in fact, talking about a hypothetical infohazard-gated genre of dath ilani romance fiction, but about events that actually happened in the horrible doomworld doomcountry.

Mariona almost certainly did not like it. 

...And now Merrin isn't feeling nearly so amused. She considers, for a moment, feeling angry, and...concludes that it won't achieve any of her goals. It's not a mystery to Esta that this new dath ilani version of his...#slave#, apparently...is pretty unimpressed with the Evil. And being angry every time he mentions being Evil will make this conversation exhausting again.

She can just not do that! It's her brain! 

"Mariona was," she says quietly. "I don't know if I used to be her in a - real - way, or if all this is something else. I'm not her now. And we aren't in Cheliax, and you don't have #cleric# specialabilities. A lot of things are different." 

"As you say."

"The thought of my trying to enslave this you feels like --"  Stupid impoverished vocabulary.  "-- trying to step on air without Air Walk.  I am not bothered by the thought of someone else doing it, so it is not good feelings toward you."  Not that he could admit it to himself, even now, if there were any feelings there.  "It's that I don't think you would have any fun shapes in your own mind.  Words missing."

"For you to try to enslave me is not the way of dath ilan, I think.  It is not the way of Mariona.  Is it your way?"  He doesn't seem visibly bothered by the thought, but then it wouldn't be visible either way.

"I don't know," Merrin says, and it's more or less the honest truth. "It's not my thing now. But a lot of things weren't my thing before, and then that changed, I learned to have new things. If that is how the #Outer God# wants this game to end, then we'll have to see how much more they can make me learn." 

Pause.

"- But what I want is for you to work with me on keeping you out of Hell." And bigger things than that. "It would be easier than doing it with just me. You're good at things. More things than just #cleric spells#." 

Merrin doesn't feel like this can possibly be new information for him, but she still wanted it to be said. Maybe he didn't follow the incredibly obvious minimal-steps reasoning process that would make it obvious, because he isn't doing very much actual thinking for some reason. 

The words set into motion a part of him that, as if distant from itself, manages to invoke its cached skills on the situation.

What is he good at?  Management.

What do his manager skills say about this situation?  That's obvious.

They aren't words that would leave his lips to Mariona.  But there is in him a twisting tension that wants to force him to go on saying things to Merrin, and an absence of reasons for or aganist doing anything more planned than that.

"I am good at management.  Looking with manager eyes, your problem is that Esta is not doing the work you want him to do.  It would be simpler if you could inflict pain on Esta to force him to do things.  But I do not think you can and will inflict enough pain to make me obey for real."