He blinked, curiously. "Send me? Like, presents and that?" He turned the idea over. "Gold gifts mean you're faithful; silver means you want him to dream of you; wood means you feel warmly toward him. Gems depends on the gem. Red is for passion, blue is for fidelity, white is for longing, green is for . . . I forget green. You can embroider things with a color and it means the same thing. You never anything with an edge for a gift because that means you want to cut things off with him. And you never give live things, not an animal or a plant, unless it's a trade, or else it will die. Poems are good. Poems always work."

"I can...I can write down poems. I'm not very good at my own," Goneril said. "Or my own embroidery. I don't know that I could afford gold or gems," she said. "And aren't those a bit...well...serious?"

"They're a bit nobby," he agreed. "It's just that most gifts have some meaning. I can't remember all of them. And it's yellow you don't give; yellow means 'I reject you.'"

"Right," Goneril said, nodding. "No yellow, then. I gave him a lock of my hair," she offered, reaching up to run her fingers through the place where she'd cut a strand out. "He seemed to like that well enough."

"Never give body parts," he said swiftly; "it means he can make a changeling that looks exactly like you and have his lascivious way with it."

Goneril burst out laughing. "What?" she asked. "Why would anyone do that, anyhow? He's quite aware that he can have his lascivious way with me...for the most part."

"Maybe he wants one so he can have the other part." Starling wrinkled his nose cheerfully at her. "Look, be honest, if it was El sent me a gift, I wouldn't care what it was, I'd still sleep with it under my pillow. Unless it was food."

"I wouldn't send him food," Goneril replied. "I'd be afraid it wouldn't last. Are there things you'd want to hear? In a letter? I'm...I've never written love letters before. I feel like I keep writing the same things over and over."

"Just . . . things, I suppose," he said. "I . . . it would be really hard to hear El say over and over that she missed me or that she was miserable if I knew we wouldn't see each other for a month. I suppose I'd rather just think about what we would do when we were together again. Mostly I'd just want to know what she was doing and how she was feeling, so it would feel more like she was there."

Goneril flushed a little, and then nodded. "I'm a little scared to say I'm miserable over and over again to him, because...well. Again. The age difference. He's had a lot of other lovers and I'm scared he won't think it's so bad as I do. Which...is fine. I don't want him to. But me talking about it would remind him how young I am. The how I'm feeling, what I'm doing...I suppose I can do that," she said. "That's not too hard. It might be a little boring. But it's easy enough."