White box

Forever

"Is there a rule for aliens being beautiful, or--?" Jerry asked and Stephanie too turned her eyes over to Purple. It did not look like Marcus planned to join in any conversations at all

"Maybe we can give them a room?" Stephanie asked and Purple flicked his fingers causing the two to disappear.

Jerry and Lydia did not look surprised one bit, even if her parents did look startled by the two just poofing.

"Magic, right?" Jerry shrugged, looking over at Dad, who could only nod to it.

"Right, pleased to meet you," Jerry said, reaching out his hand. "Jerry."

And so everyone exchanged introductions and then Stephanie learned why Bill's parents were so casual about this all - they had been in this place for two days already, while some programmed wisps were doing a camping trip while posting pictures of it on Lydia's social media, which-- was apparently followed by everyone who might try to call them with captions complaining of spotty net/zone - aka. calls won't reach.

But that said, all Jerry and Lydia knew were that their son was dating an alien prince from another dimension and things might be a bit dangerous, so please cooperate. And they did cooperate.

Bill's parents and Bill had also interacted with all kinds of Purple's guests - the guests were the ones approaching - and had broadly learned some stuff during causal conversations about food, work and whatever kind of stuff. And, they noticed a pattern - mythical beasts and aheals were too fucking beautiful, the 'normal' people were all humans.

Jerry ended up repeating the question and Purple replied - "No, most aliens wouldn't appeal to human aesthetics at all, it just so happens that some parallel dimensions to Earth have similar looking life-forms. Aheals, Hadeans, Soleans, and Terreans look beautiful to humans because they are thicker in aether, so their forms are more symmetric or 'perfected' and a lot of them look young, which happen to be biological markers for health and fertility to humans."

"You don't look beautiful to each other?" Lydia asked, catching the nuance of 'to humans'.

Purple smiled. "Our likes and preferences usually have nothing to do with symmetry or youthful appearance."

"So you'd like me even if I was a 90yo granny with huge hook nose and a wart on top?" Stephanie asked.

"If that was the only thing different, then of course," Purple said with a charming smile. And Stephanie felt both warm and regretful that she might turn into that with time--

She wouldn't mind staying like she was forever. Writing songs, making love, drinking matcha lattes. Her fingers had entwined with his without them knowing.

Jerry looked over at Dad. "How about we leave those two behind and go have something stronger to drink."

Stephanie blushed at the implication and Purple looked no better.

Lydia got up with a smile, it looked like all parents agreed to have a drinking event without the 'kids'. Two kids were already missing as it was. And they let them leave and with a flick, the two appeared in the room with the piano.

"Didn't we kind of-- need to fill them in about stuff?" Stephanie asked.

"I have a feeling that rather than the technical details, they care about their kids being happy," Purple said.

Stephanie had the same feeling as she put her hands on the keyboard.

"In five days," Purple started. "Let's have a concert together."

Stephanie's eyes sparkled up. But-- "I don't have too many new songs yet."

"If you can, make some more, if not - can you color mine up?" Purple asked with a smile.