Vagary has actually kept working on this. He's done every bit of study that Calliope has demanded. He's not good at this stuff, so his progress is nowhere near as fast as she'd like, and he's better at memorizing a list of things to do or avoid than at extrapolating proper behavior from a set of principles. But he is learning.

Catch is, Calliope barks at him almost every time he says anything. At first he was making a point of letting her know when he finished stuff, but he seems to be doing less of that due to her snappishness. So Vagary doesn't tell her much. Most of when he talks about it is in therapy. At least twice now, he's gone into a bubbly opening spiel -- only to collapse as soon as something reminds him of Calliope and their mangled relationship. That limits the amount of emphasis that can be put on this, unless someone pries it out of him. Vagary isn't quite hiding his efforts, but it's getting close to that.

It would be interesting to explore more of this, though. I thought about trying to track him down at any of the classes or group therapy sessions, but he's trying so hard to respect boundaries he has trouble even seeing, I'm not sure how much he'd actually say about their relationships. Any other ideas?