"Well, he is cute. There was a little conversation in between episodes of the mythical feat, and - I like the way he talks and I like the way he looks at me and I like the way he reacts to things, and one of the things he reacted to was my disinterest in marrying a ghem-lord. Up until the business with the mythical feat I was fairly marginal as haut go because I am disinclined to ornamental wheel-spinning in between small increments of progress on an enormous gradual committee-handled project that they'd never have let me touch anyway unless I pretended to be other than I am - I'm only eighteen, I would have had a solid decade of further grace period in my constellation before I would have been even subtly nudged towards the exit, but I am not patient, and that was part of the problem. If I was going to go I wanted to go; I was beginning to investigate routes besides 'marry some ghem-lord' by the time I was eight.

"After the business with the mythical feat I was in fairly good favor with the haut Lisbet who is now the Empress, and probably could have reversed course, stayed put, and worked for her, but it would still have been on a gradual committee-handled project. I preferred to take my ticket off planet and immediately get to work on other things. I'm probably going to begin with a consumer version of this." She taps her pen.