It could be too much if only because you make me want to outmatch you somehow.

[An actual unserious jest from the Emerald Witch herself...]

... But thank you, Gale. I mean it.

[She had been smiling at him and turns her head up to look at the stars and the aurora in the sky.]

You're working so hard on this already.

[She doesn't have a proper sense of what's normal and what's not when it comes to intimate relationships. Books were her only reference for the longest time, and then her strange but heart wrenching bond with Briar, dalliances in college, Michael...

In all of those, she had put herself down. With Gale, she doesn't want that to happen. ]

Actually, could I make one little contribution?