"But what if you don't want to talk about it? Or want to think about it first and not blurt out the first thing that comes to mind? I'm not gonna - make you promise things or anything, but-"

"I want to be able to not panic and bury my immediate reactions beneath a frustratingly impenetrable mask.  Ask whatever it is you want to ask me and if I have a second thought I'll tell you that too, okay?"

"I - said I wanted to get over myself some and prove that sex can't hurt me but. It turns out maybe it can after all, in the feelings. Are we, coworkers? Friends? Lovers? Just... Kitsunes being kitsunes? I don't know."

"Ooooohboy this'll get pretty complicated.

"I think that I think that to make that decision when we're just starting to explore the possibilities of sex is rushing it about as badly as we rushed the compactor, and that we shouldn't decide right now.

"What I can tell you, though, is that I think you're pretty neat.  And that I like you as a person."

"I am growing attached to you. I like making you make nice noises. There are some flaws you might have, but that's true of any person. I like you, too. I think... I'm not sure if it's a crush, or love, or what. The poetic descriptions there always seemed so alien to me. But, internally, there's a significant difference between interesting fellow kitsune to talk about magic with, and interesting fellow kitsune to talk about magic with who I've fucked. I want to keep doing so mind you, cuddle you, play with you... It's fun and good to make you orgasm, almost entirely separate from my own? It's an entirely separate drive than the diamonds thing, which is also wicked cool. Is that just lust, or what? It's just... And here I am torpedoing the mood with anxieties."

Hmmm.

Hug.

"Life pro tip: It is actually okay to be horny!  Even the Earthling me would have said that.  And it's also, in fact, perfectly okay to be going 'romantic interest what is that can you eat it', if I'm reading what you said right.

"And the other thing I want to have you think about, is that all of those things you just said except maybe 'kitsunes being kitsunes', those aren't mutually exclusive relationships, y'know?"

"...I suppose." Head-shake. "I wouldn't say no to more, ah, burning off the miscast right now. And in a bit we can go back to the cave and try to properly figure out what went wrong with the spell?"

"That sounds like a very good plan."

She punctuates this with a firm and fervent kiss.

-Oh! Okay, yes, this was the predictable result. Uh. They should be hugging and squishing certain bits together, too.

Why yes they should.

~Several Hours Later~

"-It would have been here at this rebound where things started falling apart, because the lines were supposed to start converging. The spray pattern we saw looks like they were all still parallel-ish... I think. Does that seem right to you?"

"Yeah, that's what I saw, too."

"So... Retrace our thoughts. Why did we think they would converge..."

"And was it a math or engineering error?"

"Or a casting error. That's always an option unless you use pure rune-carved channels."

"...Sorry, come again?  But yes, user error, too, can't forget that..."

"The- Here."

She brings out her magic lantern. "If you channel will into this it holds onto it for a few hours, that's the quartz doing it. But carved into the metal casing and the quartz crystal very faintly- Look. Runes and lines. This sort of magic crafting is something I've only looked into a bit, it's got very different constraints than drawing out spell circles because it's 3D... I'm going to work at it a lot more, later."

"...Oh what fresh hell is this.  Well, if we're going to do this, we're going to need to learn about however this works, alright!"

"But the thing I was trying to articulate was 'Was this never going to work or did we just implement it wrong and-or sloppily'."

"Right. That... I'm not sure. We'll have to work out all the rune influences at this point... I wish I had a bigger blackboard..."

Well. They can get on that careful mathing, then. And more time can pass as they figure things out, and try something else, and realize the first way they tried was stupid and so is the new one, and try something else, and so on.

She contributes her notes app to the cause.

After a long while of staring at the numbers, she declares Dinner Time and gets to going through more of the food supplies.

"...One step at a time, I guess. Ahh, brain's kind of melting... I wanna talk about something else. Uh... I've been thinking about how we don't really need-need to eat. Or at least I don't? I dunno about you. But it seems to help me, energy-wise, and food is yummy, so I'm loathe to give it up."

"I think I don't require food either.  But food is nice."

Here, have a sausage from her fork~