"I see." But she frowns, as though this only raises more questions. Caranthir is free to eat a few bites in silence as she thinks.

"But do you then know beforehand?" she asks finally, still frowning. "It is obvious when a couple has thus been bound, you say, but is that only after the...the physical act of binding...has taken place? It would seem a hard thing to me to make such a choice only to have it last for centuries, when you may be mistaken, and then not free to bind yourself to any other. And yet to know beforehand seems to be having the choice taken from you, and that idea I little like either. It all sounds cumbersome."

Someone clearly does not have much experience of being in love, by any standards.