Since Sarion doesn't mind Wellspring magic being used in her world, Aether is experimenting with boosting subtle arts telekinesis with Wellspring telekinesis. They don't work together all that well, at least not yet.

[Hey you,] says Celo. [Got a minute?]

[Sure, what's up?]

[People have been giving me various amounts of shit about not wearing clothes and it's kind of getting to me and I want to do something about it but I'm not coming up with any good ideas,] he says.

[...Well, I don't really have any good ideas either, but you could come hug me and I could - be accustomed to the fact that you go around naked?]

[Are you around anybody who's not?]

[Nah. This little room doesn't have a door but I'm in it by myself.]

She hugs him back. "I'm sorry people have been freaking out about you. I mean, I did it too, but at least I understood what 'I'm a nymph' meant."

"Yeah. And it's just 'well why can't you wear clothes' over and over again, and I get really fucking tired of explaining."

Aether pets his hair. "The Bells all know, I explained - I guess they didn't propagate it to their people too thoroughly."

"Guess not," he agrees with a sigh. "Fuck. I don't know, would changing my censoring help?"

"Maybe? You're sort of very - technically censored, right now."

He snorts. "Yeah. I could just be a silhouette with a nametag until people decide they want to see more of me. But then it'd probably be 'Why do you look like somebody painted over you?' 'Because I'm naked' and back to the same old conversation."

Pet, pet. "I guess people who don't have nymphs pretty much just - react like you're a naked human."

"Yep." Snuggle.

"You've probably thought of all the standard cartoonish not-technically-clothes solutions like wearing a barrel and rejected them, I imagine."

"Yeah. If it's wearing something, it counts. Illusions like Jellybean's censor bars are okay. Illusions of clothes would be - kind of borderline? Better than actual clothes but I still wouldn't be happy."

"Also if someone hugged you while you had on illusion clothes they might be unpleasantly surprised."

He snorts. "Yeah. Maybe I should try enchanting something. Might be more flexible. So people get something closer to their individual comfort levels than black box or no black box."

"Yeah, why?"

"People are reacting to you like you're a human. Telling a nymph you want to see him naked means almost less than nothing. Telling a human that you want to see him naked is something else again. I don't think the censor bar is gonna be a good long-term solution."

"...If somebody doesn't want me to know they're looking at me naked, I think I can live with them not," he says. "And I don't see a better long-term solution anywhere. Than illusory censorship in general, I mean, I still want to find a better way to do it than what I've got now."

Scritch scritch. "Okay. I was figuring between the sign that's apparently up on Joker-occupied orgy chambers and what were apparently unwarranted assumptions that you wouldn't mind if people were sneaking peeks without wanting to advertise it."

"Well - I wouldn't mind exactly? But if I'm talking to them I'd rather know." Snuggle. "This whole thing is so weird."

Hugs. "People are kinda weird."

"...How do you explain nymphs to people who don't have nymphs?" he wonders.

"To the other Bells? The wording of the explanation was nothing special, we kind of lean a lot on the fact that we're alts and therefore don't have to sanity-check each other nearly as much as we would want to with other people. I said you're a semi-spontaneously-generated race with divine magic and certain divine strictures, of which not covering up your divine selves is one. I also told them that at home you can not only go naked in public without being arrested, but also you and people with you can do anything else that might otherwise get one arrested for indecency, no problem - I think that made more of an impression, they're calibrated to suppose that if you're just going around naked that's relatively considerate of you, I guess."

He giggles and hugs her some more. "Yeah, there's that, I guess. But I'm not sure everybody else will be so impressed."

"Yeah, doesn't seem like it. I'm sorry."

"Have you really had no other conversations today?"

"I can remember some that ended up at another subject, but I can't remember any that didn't start with the naked thing. I mean, not that starting with the naked thing is necessarily bad," he grins, "but it is when they disapprove, y'know?"

"Did anybody approve?"

"Yeah, and she was really cute, too."

"Congratulations."

He giggles.

"So yeah, a bigger censor bar with more - wraparound - might help. You'd probably also get less shit about it if you weren't shaped humanoid? You could turn into something, I don't know how you'd feel about that."

He makes a face. "I could, sure, but I don't want to. I like my body. It's a nice body."

"I think so too," says Aether.

Celo grins. "I know," he says, and hugs her again.

"But not everyone is interested in enjoying it, and the ones who are can be ushered into private and the ones who don't are kind of ruining your party."

"Yep," he sighs. "So - I mean, I don't just want to give myself a bigger censor bar, because maybe there's somebody who'd be okay with what I've got but doesn't want to see me without it, right? I want it to have levels. And just settle at where everybody wants it. And maybe be less obviously censor-y than a big black square. Little cloud of magic fog, maybe?"

"I'm not sure if fog would be an improvement for anybody, but it probably wouldn't make anything worse."

He shrugs. "I think it'd be an improvement for me."

"Then that seems like an obvious win."

"Yeah." Snuggle. "Now I guess I just have to figure it out and then cast it. It'll probably be too big to cast by myself, especially since we don't know if fucking up an enchantment could actually kill me."

"I could do it, or you could channel it through some other Joker."

"Mm... another Joker, I think," he says. "Jellybean made me the censor bar; I wanna make this one myself."

"Okay then."

But first, apparently, more hugs.

Hugs.