Kalars writes back; she has his utmost sympathy, but if she doesn't want a visit he doesn't need to be there for his own sake.
Raney doesn't write back; she just turns up the next day, dwarf caiman familiar tucked under her arm.
She wants to meet her son-in-law.
"Eh, maybe it's growing up with Berathyme being all - 'I am a royal familiar, I don't give a damn about anyone or anything, leave me' and then having her spout out curse words."
"Well, he appreciates it, even if I don't especially. He likes to know what what he's saying means and makes me explain it every time he has a new phrase."
"That would assuredly be the worst consequence of my death. Perhaps one day I will complete my immortality hex and you will be spared this awful fate."
"All my work will be justified if you can live a life void of having faces made at you. Hurray."
"I know, right? Keep up the good work, Iobel, the least amount of disappointed Edarial faces, the better."
"It's been on her to-do list practically her whole life," confides Raney. "I think she's worried she won't get everything else in if she doesn't have literally forever."
"Lot of groundwork for that last one, and I'm not sure how I'd test it ethically if I were the least bit uncertain about it, but yeah."
"Oh yes. If I actually finish charting workable teleportation, let alone immortality, that's my next project if I don't prove able to load them all up at once."
He nods. "Makes sense. I've thought about a few solutions to give a memory boost, but... Nothing concrete."
"My preliminary idea is layers of working memory. Either a sort of reservoir to drop lost fragments of spell into, or the ability to nest the parts - have the top-level abstract shape of it in normal processing but memorize the other things on other levels."