[Laedo's a little late to the game, not because he was left with a bad impression of Serene, but because of the abject obviousness of the question. He'd been lapping water at the time when the voice piped up and nearly spat all of it back into the lake.

Humans! Of all the creatures to cause so many unexpected headaches to those with morals so stringent as to cause existential wedgies...

It's not until she's had several conversations already that he finally weighs in.]

Good goddesses, why would you want to submit yourself to the crapshoot of herbal essences when you could keep a talisman? They were as common as sin among human women from my world, I had assumed that all of you had something more or less like them.

[Just as Serene has learned to enjoy a video-free networking experience, now Laedo is thanking that feature as he pulls a sour face. The horrific idea that perhaps the other women around here are sneaking around trying to get with children is dawning on him and he doesn't know how to process it, so a dull silence fills the space as he hangs his mouth open, so many objections clustering on the tip of his tongue that he's been rendered speechless. Mostly, it's about the fact that this temporary shard of reality is so fragile that nobody can hope for the stability that such a sneaky child would even require, but also his quandary stems from the absolute snarl of sexual politics that comes from being in a world with humans and with askans that can take human form. Halfbreeds of any kind are asking for trouble.]