The word relationshipnegotiation sure is echoing in his mind, in Tongues, and in Cultural Adaptation.
Mariona's dreamworld has what sort of custom. Why. Is the concept here that you do a bunch of Lawful logistics and paperwork before anyone is allowed to have sex with you. Why wouldn't sex just not exist... well, if she'd gotten Dark-Tapestry-inverted into enjoying it, only, she hasn't been inverted around fantasizing about nonmagical medicine and this is Esta's first time properly noticing the degree to which his two main hypotheses are directly and oppositely colliding -- which is somehow a kind of thought that dath ilan Cultural Adaptation also seems to believe Esta ought to be thinking and maybe saying something about, and why would that be a fantasy or inversion of Mariona's, that whole part seems like something that would come out of the Dark Tapestry rather than her --