[There is so much to look into with Julie's pragmatism combined with the ice-cold reality that she washes them both in. He listens, without interruption, looking out into the vineyard with its simple, coiling vines, the sun hanging lower in the sky. The breeze, the cooled air with the warm sunlight.

Statistics and cancer are beyond his ken, but he gets what she's coming around to. Men will abandon women who get in the way. It happens on her sphere, it happens on his. They suffer in the wars, the plagues. The aftereffects of both. Working on farms, raising children. Using sex for power, to get what they want, because it's what they have.

Trading their womanly faculties for it. For power.

He sighs, drinking a heavy swallow this time. He almost wishes to go back to the exploding drink bottle.]

You know, if that ever happens, I highly suggest throwing some coin at the closest person with a sword and making sure he dies with you. S'what I would do. [He fills up her glass in case she needs it. Funny that spheres can be infinitely separate, but some things are universal.] Wait, lightning? Did he get struck by it?

[Sorry, he's a little drunk now.] Serves him right if he broke your heart. You know, after several heartbreaks of my own, I sometimes wonder if it truly is just easier to fuck and then get out of there. Take the fun before there's nothing less to take.

[And yet. And yet, he still has that fear, even after all of these years. Dying a brokenhearted man.]