She looks up. "I hadn't actually given much thought to where I'd be staying during my visit. If you want to give me a house - and this isn't a woeful misallocation of resources, given that I will be perfectly comfortable hammocking under my cloud-pine in midair on the nightside of the planet every night - then sure."

"I mostly just want to, if I'm perfectly honest," he says a little sheepishly. "And you wouldn't be able to stay there during your first visit, they take time to be built. But I thought it might be nice."

"It's reasonable to anticipate that I'll be in and out often enough that it'd see use, anyway. Where did you have in mind for the first visit? Crashing on your couch? The hammock thing?"

"Whichever you prefer. I do have a few spare rooms, but if the hammock's more comfy I won't make faces at you for ignoring the perfectly functional extra beds."

"Well, I do have a fondness for not being hailed on, even if the cold per se is untroubling."

"Not being hailed on, you say? Well, that just ruins all of my plans."

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry to disappoint. I really should have said earlier."

"It's alright, you'll just have to sleep in the shed, or something. Do I have a shed? I don't have a shed. Touch luck, I suppose."

"If you actually want to stash me in a shed, I won't complain much, you know. But building one just to put me there would probably be silly."

He snickers. "Nonsense! It wouldn't be silly at all. I would label it, 'Isabella's shed, beware of good sense.' Everyone would leave you alone."

"Good sense is that terrifying in New Kystle? You must part crowds of screaming pedestrians wherever you go."

The snickering turns to giggles. "I also get mothers who hide their children for fear that it'll spread like a plague. Don't forget that, that's my favorite part."

"Oh gosh, are you contagious, that would be great, come wander around densely populated cities with me for a year."

"I wish I were, but unfortunately, no. To my everlasting shame."

"Alas."

"Indeed. Sensible people everywhere will mark this day as a day of shame. The day when it was learned good sense isn't contagious."

"Somehow, as a collective, we will find a way to move on from this tragic discovery."

"Somehow! If we harden our hearts and give out sensible brochures giving detailed information on how great being sensible is."

"...I am now imagining sense missionaries."

Adarin tries to formulate some kind of response, but then he's overcome by laughter and can't manage it. Vern is looking at him with amusement.

Isabella laughs too.

"Would - would they have hymns?" he manages, between giggles. "Long preaches about - about the heroes of good sense, doing the smart thing and not being stupid?"

"Hymns and -" (giggle) "churches and dry scriptures that read like instruction manuals or logic textbooks, and extremely sober holidays."

Adarin's lost to the laughter, again. There might be no saving him. He's just doomed to laugh forever, now.

He will have company!