"That's bizarre and seems unlikely, but you seem to be some kind of undiscovered genius who just fell through the roof of some shop we were in, which is its own, overshadowing, kind of implausible."

She would really rather snuggle than interrogate right now. She's really tired, even if not quite full. Aren't they going to liberate Hell anyway? Fuck it, nothing matters.

"Sarenrae and Desna are—I thought, at least—primarily candidates for other reasons, reasons I haven't told you about yet. But that's true."

Having reached the bed, she lies back and shifts so Katie is sort of half on top of her.

"Gods, you're squishy. I would say I'm excited to be able to return the favor, but having the weight of a similarly-sized person on top of me might be painful even with the extra padding. Do you know from experience if it is?"

"Not from experience.

It feels like it shouldn't be. That would be outrageous of the universe."

"Someone's eager to sink into my soft expanse of flesh." Thigh squeeze.

Wiggle! Carefully, so as not to disturb the eggs.

"So, the day/night cycle thing. 

There's a pattern to how They act through it. We haven't been able to figure it all out yet. The whole thing is generally strongest in the very ill as well as those with unusually high mental abilities. Usually it's correlated with how your mood changes over the day/night cycle. I'd heard there were also people who experienced all the same mood signs but with no apparent correlation to the sky at all, and I didn't believe them, but now that I say this I realize that you didn't talk like you habitually sleep eight hours at night, and you were no-handed."

"Does that count as 'very ill'? I'd think I'd at least need to have, like, leprosy or something."

"Hm? No, I don't think you're one of the ill ones. You know magic, how dumb could you think you are?"

"Oh, yeah, sure, just, why is that relevant then?" She nibbles tepidly at the eggs. She's still not the biggest fan but if she wants to actually get big she's gonna need all the calories she can get.

"You don't have to finish those, I know you said you liked fresh meat and sweets, and Ran has all of that to unpack tomorrow." Snuggle.

"People it affects in unusual ways tend more than most to be left-handed or taste colors or some other weird thing."

"Does 'some other weird thing' include being a tribad?"

"A what?"

"Slightly fancier term for dyke." Nuzzles her to illustrate dykehood.

Oh my god that's so cute!

She's sleepy.

"Maybe? I think that's just called being a woman and not turning your brain into a cage," she says thoughtfully.

"Has anyone told you you're the coolest and sexiest person on the planet?"

"No? Generally when I say that they look at me like I'm compost. I'd been starting to wonder if it was true."

—Oh, balls. Of course she doesn't know what this means, but it can't be good.

"No one else gets it. It's like, men get to be strong and in charge and stuff, but they waste it by being ugly. Women get to be beautiful, but they waste it by being subservient livestock. I get to be free mentally, but waste it by being a pathetic stick bug with neither muscles nor curves. But you? You've got it all." She grabs Taz's belly with one hand and her bicep with another to illustrate. "I envy that."

She likes being objectified! Happy noise.

Squiiiiirm.

"I must say, you hardly seem pathetic." Hold. "But I'm probably too sleepy to convince you that your 'mere' mental liberation is anything special now."

She sets Katie down on the cushion beside her, on the wall side of the bed, with her arm underneath, setting the egg plate on the floor.

"Are you OK like that? Not too warm or anything?"

"I'm perfect. It feels good to be able to lie down and rest with a big, strong, squishy barrier in between me and the world."

She runs her hands down the front of Katie's abdomen.

"I think they would love you in Cheliax. They'd be fools to, of course."

Tazich's relationship with the foreigner who fell through the roof on them is quickly turning from an exploitable loophole into a first-class national security crisis.

She would be thinking things, but she doesn't even know what to think.

If this is all part of Mendev's grand plan, then what is she even useful for? She feels like she's reading one of those terrible novels the Queen started throwing money at, where the entire point is to be confused by hypothetical puppeteers and nobody ever just takes an action, until the very end when everything demurely explodes and it's like, what was all that hand-wringing for, then?

Blush. Wiggle. "Wait, why?"

"You're submersible. Er, subservient. You fawn. You're a flatterer. I'm not explaining it right. They have a thing for natural slaves. You know?"

"You just said I wasn't pathetic."

"Well, I said they'd be fools to think of you like that. And they don't like pathetic slaves, at all, see. They like . . . steely ones. Of course slaves still can't have any creativity. Except, they insist, sometimes, but it's not really clear to me when. Wish Tiar was awake . . . she understands Asmodeanism better than me."