"I can't ask you for what I need most. I'm not gonna harvest your Glamour, not when it unavoidably breaches your privacy." Erin hangs her head, but she's smiling. It's fragile, but it's there. "...The offer means a lot. I know we'll talk again after I can sleep and eat and maybe get a bar fight and cuddle Ylva and...all that, but if I don't say this now I'll forget, and I can't be having that. So. Before I start, this is a matter of...strategy, and dignity, not of our frequent debates. I'm not asking you to believe anything different."

It still takes her a bit to work up to it, stretching with audible Popping Sounds and faint groans of both pain and relief.

(We've got to try.)

Yeah. I know.

"...We've taken a job," Erin murmurs. "With a pretty good paycheck. To live again, that's a big ask, and more importantly, we can leave. I remember that part of the deal, and it's not something we could do on the ship. If the work doesn't seem worth the payment, we can die, really die. Everything we ever argued about, I never disagreed about the right to die."

"But the people we've been hired to help, they don't have that choice. They can't leave, and they can't die. They're prisoners in their own home, maybe the only home they've ever known. They can't work hard and save up their money to hop a ship to another city, they can't be safe in their own houses, they can't import new technologies or even new ideas." Her fingers curl into a loose fist; her arm is shaking. "All they have left is their dignity, their idea of doing right by others, their idea of being good people. This potluck is part of that. A housewarming gift can be part of that...if they couldn't take care of each other, if they couldn't show hospitality, well, then they'd really be wretched. Things would really be bad."

"Please tell me I'm making human sense."