just a user

He did a wonderful job, but as he was returning my plant to my custody, he explained "I watered her every other day, I gave her new dirt, moved her into the sunshine, prayed the rosary-"

"What?"

He looked at me, confused. "Isn't she a plant you pray with?"

"No," I said slowly. "She's a prayer plant. That's the... colloquial name of the plant."

Upon seeing his stricken face, I realized something went wrong. Turns out, this entire time, he's been including my plant in on his prayers and leaving her near icons.

"Okay, I got you."

*Removes the B from the BREAD sign*

Because at some point, possibly unjustly, I started expecting the awkwardness of not knowing things to feel awkward or embarrassing in any story that was a variant of "stranger in a strange place "

And there's none of that because Anequs is just, so self assured and refuses to be embarrassed for not knowing things she has no reason to know. I love it. She's confident, willing to explain things, and entirely unwilling to take shit.

I didnt realize I was expecting that till I read this and it wasn't there, and again maybe its an unfair expectation cause I'm not certain when I picked it up. But I love the confidence.

And I love the lack of romantic conflict, because I'm so used to that in stories. I kept expecting Theod to take things worse because I'm so used to characters reacting badly to say "I'm challenging how you grew up", I definitely didn't expect him to react well to Anequs wanting to court both him and Liberty and its just.

Two people do not decide that they are "courting". One person decides to "court" someone else. It's an action, not a stage in the relationship. A man decides to court a woman because he wants to encourage her to have romantic interest in him. He's trying to win her favor. It's not an exclusive relationship--a woman could be courted by multiple men at once. She'll spend time getting to know the guy who's interested in her, but they won't officially define their relationship as one where they only show romantic interest in each other. If they reach a point where they want it to be exclusive, that's when you propose.

bizarrely, America has in many ways gotten more conservative about dating since World War II.