Adarin is sleepily woken. He blinks at her, bleary-eyed, but smiles when he sees her. "G'morning," he mumbles.

Okay, this works too. Kiss! "Morning."

Kiss! "You talk in your sleep," he says, groggily. "'scute."

"I do? What do I say?"

"Huh. Okay. Thanks for saying." She kisses him again and gets up for a stretch.

Isabella (still completely naked, and seeing no reason to change this) fixes breakfast, and while it's cooking, gets her mother on the phone asking about when it would be convenient to visit and bring someone.

"Morning! Ranata expects to be in the vicinity of my hometown all day, we can show up whenever and meet both parents in one go."

"Sure, that works for me. Would you like to fly there, or shall I teleport us?"

"It's a few hours from here flying... Ranata doesn't know exactly where I was when I called, so teleportation doesn't leak any particularly interesting magical secrets that she'd have hard time keeping, though."

"So that's a yes to teleportation? All right. I'll need a bit to scry so I get the location right, but that's faster than flying."

"Probably a good idea to land somewhere on my clan lands where nobody's looking rather than, say, in Charlie's house."

"I actually mention it in large part because my clan lands are warded against, among other things, scrying, and while I don't know if it'll interfere with your offworld magic, it's possible. If you can't see into the clan lands to pick a spot to teleport to, there's a nearby beach that will do."

"All right," he says. "I'll have to look, then. I've never tested to see if witch wards work against my magic or not."

"Ranata's warded Charlie's house, too, but it's just the one layer. Everybody in the clan puts a new layer on the lands, so over time, they get to be very heavy-duty wards."

"Ooo. That's clever. I approve."

"I haven't done mine yet. Usually it's saved till a little later in life where they're sure of your loyalties."

"Oh? If you weren't loyal is there something bad you could do, instead?"

"Yes. I mean, technically there's nothing stopping me from cursing the place or weakening the wards now, but in principle."

"No need to stay long; we can just take off and fly to Charlie's house right away. If you do loiter on clan lands, then yes, eventually you're going to see the queen or one of my distant cousins or some five-year-old girl getting her dagger lessons, running around starclad."

"Behaving oddly around starclad witches is actually fairly common behavior among mortals who visit. Though blindfolding is not."

"I like to be thorough," he says dryly.

"I've never really gotten why it's such a big deal. I mean, sure, in mortal culture, being clothed is the default, because you get cold, and then if someone is being non-default, that has its connotations, but why is it so hard to shuck those connotations when you're dealing with people who have a different default? It seems kind of like someone who's obviously not speaking English must mean whatever it would sound like they're saying if they were."

"Hmmm. Well, personally my defaults are hard to change easily. When we'd first met, when I made dinner and you asked how I'd feel if you went starclad... For me it was a young, beautiful woman that wants to get naked and that is rather hard to ignore even if it's not a big deal for you. To be fair, I did honestly try, but uh - not so good at it."

"Should I warn my mother? Within the confines of Charlie's house, she is not always appropriate for mortal supervision. She's good about it in public places, but would probably forget completely to account for you indoors."

"It will not be as distracting for your mother to be naked as it would have been with you in the earlier example of when you offered. Since you'd kind of caught my eye with the 'I want to make people immortal' bit and I was paying more attention, then. But it might be awkward because she's your mother, at the same time."

"I'll call her again. Oh, and I just told her I was bringing 'someone', because you weren't awake enough to ask, what are your feelings on relationship terminology?"

"Boyfriend it is. I'm not willing to get caught lying to anybody who'd be impressed by a story about me backing you up against a wall and threatening your bodily integrity, but thanks for the option." She chews her lip a little bit, then, adds, "This is unlikely - I don't have a target painted on me, for one thing, and nobody knows who you are here, but if somebody starts acting like she would like to claim you at daggerpoint, first of all, I will back your right to self-defense if you have to resort to magical violence but don't recommend trying to bring a fist to a knife fight against any witch who isn't as clumsy as I am; and second of all, if you'd rather not set her on fire or whatever, you can tell her you're very flattered but you're spoken for, and show her your protective tattoos."

"They don't specify that we're dating. They just serve as evidence for it - they mean that there's a witch who wants you safe. You'd have a set if you were a witch's son, too, maybe even if you were her brother-in-law or friend from school."

Well, now she just has to kiss him.

Adarin is totally supportive of this choice! Kiss.

Gosh, it's kind of hard to stop kissing him once she's gone and started.

He should be! Isabella is prepared to make a very strong case that he should be ecstatic about it. Possibly right here in this kitchen.

Well it's her kitchen, if she wants to make a case for something in particular, that one's up to her. If not, well, he can just carry her to somewhere more appropriate for this kind of situation. They could go before the jury of pillow peers, and everything.

"It's very charming when you carry me."

Yay, kisses! Onto the couch they go. There, now they can kiss in comfort.

He has probably noticed by now that the back of Isabella's neck is the very best place to put kisses if he wants a puddle of whimpery Isabella squirming in his lap. These results persist with a strong effect significance when the sample size is increased to two.

He's noticed. This bears more testing. He has to be sure of the results, what if his sample size was extremely unlucky and contained only outliers? Adarin has to be sure. He takes this sort of thing very seriously.

Isabella most thoroughly appreciates his commitment to the spirit of empirical testing.

Well, whatever method Isabella deems best. Adarin will support it wholeheartedly.

"How specific do you have to be?"

"Huh. Now I'm curious, try Charlie's house? It's warded but less so."

"Huh. Five points out of a possible ten from the New Kystle judge for Ranata Ekamma. So I guess we're going to the beach. Can you find it on that little information or should I be more detailed?"

"Detail helps!" he informs her brightly.

"Okay... the border of clan land goes over this beach. The part I want to go to is south of the border, it's got some big driftwood around most of the time, it may technically be part of the Quileute reservation but I'm not sure. It's usually empty. Except for seagulls."

"For the beach, not necessarily, we could always nip over the border into clothing-optional land. For the flight to Charlie's house, yes."

Snuggle. "How inconvenient. Here I thought you were this amazing magician with talents beyond any mere Earth witch, and you can't even get dressed while snuggling me."

There's more snickering. "Sorry to disappoint. Unfortunately I can't do everything with magic. Yet."

"I'm truly crushed, why can't you meet my expectations for super offworld magic visitors, Adarin?" But she sits up to let him get at his clothes, and starts hunting for all the pieces of her silks.

He goes to retrieve clothes, giggling a little. "Forgive me, my dear Isabella, I hope you can hope to get by with just portals, extra planar transportation, teleportation, thingamajigs, scrying, illusions, shielding, stone-shaping, and general gadgetry. Somehow."

"I will just have to struggle on, won't I." She has now located all the pieces of her silks except one. She starts looking in the couch cushions.

"Yes, indeed you will. I will offer emotional support if you require it, in various forms."

"Oooh, various forms, whatever could you be implying?" There's her missing strip of silk. She sets about tying everything back where it goes in her usual pattern.

"Maybe I do and maybe I don't."

"I suppose I'll have to show you, eventually. Later. When we're not about to visit your parents."

"Yeah." She's pretty quick and practiced about getting her silks on. She starts fussing with a tangle in her hair, gives up, and combs it all out with a brief spell (it's not in English, but translates roughly to "flying ruins smoothness; fix my hair"). Then she gets her phone and dials her mother again.

Adarin is amused by useful magic! He thinks it's adorable. He's still getting shoes on while she calls her mother, but is otherwise presentable.

"Hi, Mom!" Isabella says into the phone. "Yeah me again - we'll be there really soon. I forgot to tell you that my boyfriend is, obviously, not a witch, so if you could be in silks the whole time I'm sure he'd prefer it. Yes I did. Yep. Adarin. Mm-hm. She's a kagu. You'll get to meet him really soon, Mom."

"Not as far as I know - Adarin, are you allergic to anything?"

"None that I know of."

"Not as far as he knows either. Mm-hm. We're not in the air right now, Mom. No, Mom. I can fly, Mom."

More stifled snickering. Teleportation spell is worked out, and he goes over it a few times in his head to make sure he'll get it right.

"Mm-hm. We'll be there in just a few minutes. Dad's home today, right? Great. Of course we will help him get rid of fish from last Sunday. Love you too. See you soon."

When Isabella's done with the call, Adarin tells her, "Your mother sounds adorable."

"She kind of is!"

"Good, then I judged correctly." He looks through his spell again, then says absently, "I'm not sure what our explanation should be of where I'm from and why I sound vaguely foreign. Or why my hair is a strange color, though that's less problematic."

"Ranata will assume you bleach it," Isabella says. "She will, however, probably try and fail to place the accent and ask where you're from... I mean, we could just tell them. It'll be slightly injurious to a project of secrecy but not a fatal blow."

"That is up to you. I'll admit, I don't like the idea of asking you to lie to your parents for me, so I will not be heartbroken if we're honest with them both."

"I think I'll be vague and see if she tries to pin me down. Maybe I'll get her to guess and that'll keep her occupied." She collects her bag of things, drops her phone into it with the alethimeter, her notebook, the thingamajigs, and herb kit, and says, "We ready to go?"

"I am," he replies. He's bringing his book of magical cheat sheets, but not much else. "Vern and Path will have to stop cuddling for us to pick them up. Unfortunately."

"Awww," complains Path. He nuzzles Vern, and then goes to Isabella, who also collects her cloud-pine.

"Ready."

Then they're there. Adarin fidgets, a little, fixing his hair a bit from the flight and trying to look nice for Isabella's parents. He's pretty sure that they won't eviscerate him for slightly tangled hair, but he wants to make a good impression anyway.

"Aww," says Isabella. She gives him a little peck of a kiss, then opens the unlocked door. "Dad? Mom? I'm home!"

"Hi there, Bells," says her father, entering the front room. He gives Adarin an assessing look.

At that, Charlie actually smiles. "Well, nobody ever said she didn't have good taste," he says.

"Where did Mom run off to?"

"I'm curious what this tangent would consist of, though, save it for later, maybe," suggests Isabella. "Feed my ego until it exceeds the size of the sun and swallows up the world."

"Oh, probably not, but maybe we should put Mars on the to-do list."

Isabella giggles and hugs Adarin. "So they'd need water, and crops, and if we went with bubbles that could complicate waste disposal, maybe they'd need fancy reclamation..."

"Reading the bulletin board in the grocery store in case there's anything fun to do. He'll be along in a bit," says Ranata brightly, sidling carefully past the assembled daemons to put her purchase in the kitchen.

"Likewise! Ooh, an accent, where are you from?"

"Guess," suggests Isabella.

"Is this a trick question, is he really from Seattle and he's putting it on for fun?"

"Is that your guess?"

"Ha! Okay, let me have a while to mull it over and hear more samples. Tell me about yourself, Adarin."

Adarin snickers. "I'm not from Seattle, is the first thing that comes to mind," he says, clearly amused. "But more seriously, I like learning things, then using those things to do useful things - oh, and I think magic is the best thing ever. Before Isabella and I started dating I got her to show me all of the various goddess' effects on a light spell, that was fun."

"Oh, I can definitely see why she'd like you, she's got this - this vaguely nerdy focus on magic... sorry, Isabella..."

"Nerdy hasn't been much of an insult for a while, Mom."

"And I think a vaguely nerdy focus on magic is adorable," replies Adarin. "So it works out."

Hug.

"Well, this is completely adorable. I'll go fix the fish and rice."

"What's your full name?" Ranata inquires from the kitchen. Kesathi, with Path still sitting on her, gets up and meanders to the couch, with Charlie following her.

"Well, I still can't place your accent and your name's no help either. It's pretty, though. I'll figure you out eventually."

Kesathi looks between Vern and Adarin, then back. "...Are you...?"

"Sporting of you. Mmmm... do I have to guess country or language or can I narrow it down from continent?"

"Why?" asks Kesathi.

"Don't want to talk about it?" surmises Kesathi.

"Drat, you caught me - oh, how spicy do you like things? I know what Charlie and Isabella eat already."

"All right then. So Charlie's the limiting factor on the pepper, sounds like."

Path says, "You realize that makes it sound like you spent the last while in the CIA or something." To Kesathi he adds, "I think actual CIA agents probably pretend better not to be separated."

"Nah, I don't like things that spicy either, I'm just more tolerant of it than Dad," Isabella says. "And Mom will eat anything."

"Birds, everywhere," snorts Kesathi good-naturedly.

"Fair enough," snorts Kesathi. She noses Castarilan affectionately.

"Regional delicacy of Sardinia. Don't ask me to explain the ostensible appeal."

"It's called casu marzu! Or formaggio marcio!" says Ranata. "It was strong, I don't know if I'd want to eat it every Tuesday, but it was worth trying."

"I'll take your word for it and never try it myself. Other things, certainly, but I draw the line at maggots."

"Some people remove them before they eat the cheese. Isabella wouldn't even try that version."

Adarin looks between Ranata and Isabella. "As her boyfriend, I feel it is my sworn and sacred duty to back her up in situations that seem appropriate. Isabella, I support your decision to not eat maggot cheese," Adarin says gravely.

"Isabella, you picked a good one!" hoots Ranata.

"Don't I know it."

He laughs, looking flustered and pleased. Hugs?

Hugs!

"Aww," murmurs Kesathi.

Vern affectionately noses Path. "We are glad you approve."

Ranata emerges from the kitchen. "Fish in the oven. Now, I'm pretty sure this isn't any native English speaker accent - you're not from America or Canada and you're not non-rhotic - so unless that's a red herring for some reason... Did you just travel a lot as a child?"

"I'm sorry."

"Maybe after we figure out immortality we'll figure out resurrection," sighs Path.

"Hmm. Maybe somewhere in Europe where you would have been able to pick up a lot of languages that would all influence your accent in English? Switzerland?"

"When did you learn English, anyway?"

"We know. You're wonderful that way." Nuzzle.

"English isn't his native language, he picked it up as an adult," explains Isabella. "Pretty recently. While in Canada, actually."

"Hmmmmmmmm. I'll get you eventually."

Adarin snickers, a little. Message received, he'll try and avoid telling them about magic. "It was fun," he says, brightly.

"Don't give me too many hints now. I don't think you sound Chinese, but maybe there's a dialect I've never heard before that would leave this kind of accent?"

"Aren't you a regular polyglot."

"I do appreciate it."

"You're very welcome!"

"But apart from things that could give me too many clues I want to know all about my little girl's young man! Go on, tell me everything."

"Hmm. I have a twin sister," he provides.

"Oh, I didn't realize you were twins, I don't think you ever specified."

"What's her name?"

"Zeviana. And - yes, we're twins, but not the stereotypical - look the same just with different genders. Her hair color's different, for example."

"You are the only person in this house with a sibling!" remarks Ranata. "Well, technically I had a half-brother who died of old age before I was born, but I don't usually count him."

"Am I really? Huh. That's interesting."

"I am the only child of only children. Helps that I'm all introverted."

He snickers. "Well now I feel unique!"

"Before you ask, Mom, I have not met the sister in question yet, but I am told she might hug me."

"More people should hug you, if you ask me."

"I hug her," informs Adarin. Look, he'll even demonstrate!

"Yes you do. Do go on, it's adorable."

"Eeeee."

He laughs, softly, looking pleased. Hugs!

Something in the oven beeps; Ranata goes to attend to it. Castarilan remains in the living room, zipping around without landing hither and thither.

"What is it you do with your time?" Charlie wants to know. "When you're not meeting your girlfriend's parents."

"Hobby-wise, or profession wise? Hobby wise, I'm an utter nerd, studying and reading things - magic in particular, Isabella helps me with that. I might take up learning some more languages now that I think about it, as well, they're fun. Profession wise, I actually just quit my last job, so I'm now between them."

"What was it?"

"Dealing with politics and trying to placate stupid people. I just got sick of it and a thing happened that tipped me over the edge."

"Hmm."

"In other news, I formally ended my apprenticeship the other day and I found a place in the middle of nowhere to hang out and do independent research."

"Ooh? Your immortality project?" inquires Castarilan on Ranata's behalf, since she's still fussing with food.

"Among other things. I'll test it on Dad when I'm ready if he doesn't object."

"Long as you're sure it won't backfire horribly, Bells."

"I hope it works," says Adarin with a smile. "I wouldn't mind being immortal."

"Seems to go over pretty well with the immortal types. Though I suppose they aren't proper immortal depending on how you look at it."

"I'd like to make a dent in that, too, but people have put a lot of concerted work into protection spells in general already, so I might have less novelty to contribute."

"And if you get immortality down then you have the rest of forever to work out all of the other problems."

"Exactly! Here's hoping the Olympics don't get into a war or something before I manage it."

"Oh, sweetie, I really doubt that'll happen," says Castarilan.

"We're not an aggressive clan and no one has a fight they're interested in picking with us," Castarilan says.

He smiles, a little. "That's also good. She's an all-powerful witch, I know, but I do like seeing her safe."

Snuggle. "The problem with clan wars is that by and large there are witches on both sides. But Castarilan's not wrong, we're probably in good shape."

Snuggle! "Yeah. I'm extremely glad. Who would I talk about colonizing Mars with if you were in a war?" he teases.

"Yes, that would certainly be the first concern on your mind, I'm sure."

Adarin snickers. "Yup. Huge, dramatic war between witches going on, magic flying around at all sides - and I'm like, 'Darn, I have no one to talk to about Mars anymore.'"

"Wars actually contain a lot of archery and dagger combat," says Castarilan. "It's too easy to sneak up on someone who's casting, and the most effective combat spells take a long time. More efficient to bless all the arrows ahead of time from the safety of clan lands and then shoot at each other."

"Ah, I see. In that case." He pokes Isabella's nose. "No wars, especially. You are only not a clan embarrassment with a dagger."

Isabella laughs. "I'm a reasonable shot. But not a champion at that either, I'll grant."

"Fine, fine. No dagger combat, then," he says primly.

"I will do my best to avoid it."

He smiles brightly. "Good!"

"Food!" announces Ranata from the kitchen. "Everybody get your butts in here!"

Isabella laughs again, gives Adarin a swift little kiss, and heads into the kitchen.

No maggots, cheesy or otherwise, are in evidence! It's seasoned fish and rice with spices in it, all served with lemon wedges. Isabella, who has been known to decline maggot cheese, digs in enthusiastically.

"I don't make food that horrifies my child," Ranata tells him. "I just try it when I'm traveling and it's available."

He snickers. "I had to be sure!"

"Ranata's a really good cook. In a kitchen or with a fire, either way. I'm sorry if the conversation about the cheese misled you."

"The maggot cheese is not from this country, it's from Italy. Ranata took me on a trip around the world when Path settled and we separated and that was one of the places we stopped."

"Aha. I see. I'll be careful if I end up travelling there, then."

"Most Italian food is perfectly palatable to the American palate. So I guess you aren't from Italy, are you, Adarin."

"I am not from Italy," he agrees, with a smile.

"He doesn't sound remotely Italian. I mean, I know his accent's hard to place, but Italian is less plausible than - I don't know, Scottish, which he also isn't."

Adarin snickers. "That might be falling under too many hints, Isabella."

"Whoops!" Isabella covers her mouth with her fingertips and looks guilty.

"I wasn't going to guess Scottish, anyway," says Ranata.

"No? Oh, well. I guess you're all right then." Hand pat, then back to food.

"Awwww."

"We're adorable," Isabella stage-whispers to Adarin.

"Goodness, are we? I hadn't realized," he stage-whispers back. "Do you think we should stop before they start saying we should hug again?"

"Only if you don't wanna hug me again."

"Hmmmmm." He pretends to deeply consider this, but there's a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "I don't know. We might have to hug again to see how I like it."

"Oh, good, it would be a terrible pity if you stopped now."

He snickers. "We wouldn't hug! It would be horrible."

"I would pine."

"We can't have that. Hugs whenever you wish."

"Yaaaaay! You are an obliging hug dispenser."

"You're perfectly welcome."

"Thanks for helping clear the freezer space. For more fish."

Adarin laughs. "Happy to help."

"If nobody in the house eats fish for too long he has to stop going fishing, and nobody wants that."

"He could always catch and release, if he liked."

"Not very satisfying. I throw back the little ones, sometimes I don't catch anything all day, but if I catch food I bring it home."

"Ah, I see. Makes sense."

"It's a good thing most people like fish."

He snickers. "Yeah, but if not I suppose you could set up a business selling to people who do like fish, that way he could still fish."

"Oh, I don't catch enough to do that. And you probably need a license."

"Oh, well. Casual fishing for supplemental food works out well, then."

"Believe it or not, I stopped for a picnic in Nowhere, Canada, and he stumbled across me by pure accident. I gave him a lift since he needed to be someplace a little less nowhere for a shopping trip, we got to talking..."

"... Then she mentioned her project about immortality and I was kind of hooked," says Adarin, with a smile. "Also, systematic magical testing. That is the way to get to my heart."

"But we weren't officially dating for a while. An uncharitable person might describe him as shy."

He snickers. "I wanted to treat you like the lady you are and not tackle you and kiss you immediately," he replies primly. "Also, yeah. Shy."

"Where in the world did you get the idea that witches are ladylike?" inquires Ranata archly.

(Charlie snorts.)

"Not from witches in particular, but I was raised to treat a woman I'm interested in like a lady."

"What is even implicated in that rule besides the shyness? What should I be expecting here?"

"Presents," he says brightly. "I've thought of two already. One I'm pretty sure you've guessed already, but the other I think you'll definitely like. Also, opening doors for you, not being a jerk, the obvious things."

"Oooh, presents."

"Some people would say it's not very feminist to be opening doors for her just because she's a 'lady', you know."

"Your confidence in my project is inspiring."

"That's not quite the point I was making, Adarin."

He snickers. "Yeah, but do you see mine?"

"When you learned the word 'feminism' what did you learn it meant?" Isabella inquires of Adarin.

"That... It was about women equaling men in power?" he says, confused. "Did I get an incorrect translation? Or am I missing something?"

"Missing a large political movement. I don't know that much about it because it was primarily a mortals thing, but yeah. There's some subtleties."

"Ah. Then I might have missed the subtleties. If so, whoops."

"I guess you know where to start your next Wikipedia trawl."

"Okay, I'm stumped - what places don't have so much as an inkling of feminism as a political movement?"

"I did, but I'm so confused now!"

"I could just have not been exposed to it, with my family," he says, amused. "As far as I know, none of them were members. Or my education was lacking, either one."

"...You will want to read Wikipedia on this one. It's not so much a thing with a formal membership. At least not in recent years."

"Oh? All right. I'm missing a lot of subtext, aren't I?"

"Lots and lots and lots. Figure that out, Mom."

"No, I think I give up, just tell me. Unless you're certain I'm about to get it any second now."

"...Well, I don't think that, but..." Isabella sighs, glances at Adarin.

"I don't mind," says Adarin.

"Mom, Dad, my boyfriend is literally a magical extraplanar visitor."

"...Beg pardon?"

"He is not from Earth, where he's from men can have magic and he does which is how he got here, he came looking for chamomile and things kind of snowballed from there."

Isabella bursts out laughing. "You're so cute."

"...I was expecting it to turn out that you were from a bizarre Esperanto-speaking intentional community on a remote island, or something, goodness me."

Adarin giggles. "Thanks. I'm sorry for not telling you immediately, but uh - we kind of don't want everyone to find out there's now a new brand of magic running around and freak out accordingly. I'm a nice extraplanar visitor. I would like to keep all of my insides where they belong."

"Oh, sweetie, you couldn't think we were going to hurt you -"

"No, no, Mom, it's just - keeping secrets can be hard. I'm probably going to be taking credit for all the offworld magic for a while."

"Right, no, I didn't mean to make you think I was accusing you of freaking out and hurting me. You are both lovely people. But - yeah, Isabella's taking credit for off world magic. Because we have capitalistic plans to make lots of money off of it."

"Don't tell Grandmother," says Isabella.

"W-well. All right, dear," says Ranata, laughing a little shakily.

"Sorry for startling you with this all, ma'am. If there's any questions you or your husband have, I'll be happy to answer them, or if you don't believe me I can do something more showy?"

"Oh, sweetie, you can call me Ranata," says Ranata. "And I'm pretty sure I believe you."

"Doubt very much I can help with any of this magic business, and Isabella didn't get much of her curiosity from me," snorts Charlie.

"All right, Ranata. Thanks. And the offer's open for just about anything, now, I won't be cagey about things if you're curious."

"It is... I suppose the best way to explain it is that rather than circles or saying things, we have to think and remember all of what needs to happen. Not just what the spell will do, but what we are doing in order to have what we want happen. Sounds simple at first, but it's really not when you do things that are larger-scale than a little light. We tend to specialize in a type of thing that we know really well, and do that because it's hard to remember all of the details to every spell ever on the fly."

"They also have 'mana', like in a fantasy book," says Isabella. "Adarin has more of it than most magic people."

"Did the whistling have much to do with it?"

Adarin nods to Isabella's explanation! "Whistling has absolutely nothing to do with it, I was just trying to think of something that would work. I mean, I suppose it could if I used whistling as a memory aid, but I usually just talk to myself or take obsessive notes instead."

"Obsessive notes. You are really perfect for each other."

"I'm glad you like him. I also like him." Armhugs.

He laughs, looking at her with absolute affection. "I like you, too. I'm happy here, it's nice. Other things about my magic... We are good at scrys, and also transportation." Adarin grins and adds, "We didn't fly all the way here."

"But he can't scry onto clan lands, and he gets a headache if he tries the house, I was curious. We landed on the beach just south of the border."

"Oh, wow!"

"Wow. You'll put the airlines out of business, you do enough of those!"

"That's the plan. Slowly, so the market has time to adjust."

"Yeah, I don't want to... Completely break the economy. That would be bad."

"Yeah. But there's lots of hurdles to jump over, and you won't have a portal to every major city overnight even once those are handled, and a single portal can handle a lot of volume - maybe even as much as there currently is in plane form going between any two cities - but it can't necessarily handle all the volume that there would be if getting on a plane was as painless as walking through a portal, so there will need to be several before we can drop the price point and accommodate ideal demand, so for a while planes might be able to beat us on price just because we have to reduce customer volume even though our costs per passenger will be less."

"I think I understood maybe a third of that."

As Isabella's talking, Adarin gets the most goofy 'In love' look on his face and just looks at her with a sort of adoration. He has a smart girlfriend. Such a smart, smart girlfriend.