Pete digs through his jacket pockets, finds her cell phone, turns it on, and hands it to her.

Dave texts Kevin:

She has an IV bag and a catheter so she won't need a food break any time soon - I can point this out to her once Epione suppresses her backlash, but I'm not sure it would get past her backlash and she finds that experience really frustrating.

"I'm not hungry," she murmurs, taking her phone. 

She tries to shift around a bit to free both her arms, practicing moving slowly and carefully, to avoid disturbing Epione.

"Good," says Epione, "that would have been fine."

Epione's effects on different backlashes varies. She's better at ones that are acutely bothersome, like pain or nausea or itching, than ones that leave people confused. But she can give it a shot and try to give Kani some space from it.

, and the backlash is a separate thing, not really touching Kani, just a thing -

The first thing she actually notices is that the guiding feels a lot better suddenly?

The second thing she notices is that there's an IV needle in her and she's hooked up to a catheter? Why is she -

Oh.

She put herself in a coma. For weeks. She could have died!

She tries not to make any noise as she opens a group text with her fathers. (She's very glad she's facing away from Epione and doesn't have to worry about being loud with her face.)

sorry 😭 😭

They spend some time reassuring her via text, and then Pete makes a group text for the four of them in it.

Pete: Now that the conversation will make sense to Kani, I wanted to discuss options for getting her backlash burnt off.

Pete: Kevin, if Kani was able and willing to come back with you to Toronto for a few days, would Epione have space in her schedule for guiding?

What they could do would be sleep in the same bed overnight; Epione lives alone and I go home to my wife. We'd need to set up some kind of silo rather than Epione's home but that's not hard to arrange.

Kani, would you be up for that? I'm not sure if you could follow the conversation before, but you still have a lot of backlash - Epione is just suppressing the effects right now.

is she "up" for... sharing a bed with a nice-smelling and soft esper who can fix the very stupid problem she gave herself with magical cuddles? And she doesn't have to do anything besides... be careful and considerate? 

that seems doable, yes.

👍

Are you going to have trouble remembering why you're there? She can't keep this up on top of a full workday.

...I don't know. I was able to remember my awakening and broken arm before Epione used her power on me, but I haven't really done any testing. We could.. come up with another reason for me to be there? 

Will having Kani there be useful for Epione's backlash management as well?

It will certainly help Epione, she'll probably be able to go in to work at zero every morning while this is going on. If that will suffice as an explanation then that's fine.

She rotates that around in her head. She's visiting Toronto to help guide Epione, the healing esper who woke her out of her coma... No wait, the backlash might not like that. (ugh...) 

She's visiting Toronto to help guide Epione, a healing esper. They're compatible, and they want to see if Kani can avoid triggering her backlash, because it would let Epione do more Valuable Esper Things (and maybe let Kani do some esper work, in the future?)

 That seems reasonable.

I'm pretty sure that will work?

Okay. I can let Epione's agent know you two need a silo. What do you need in a silo?

She suppresses the urge to shrug.

...I don't really know? I can't think of anything unusual...

She likes it when beds have a good variety of pillow sizes/thicknesses.

Daaaad.........

...if it's not any trouble? But it's really not a big deal.

They'll have heard stranger requests, believe me.

...okay. Then yeah, lots of pillows. And maybe a bedside table with lots of space, if I'm trying to disturb Epione as little as possible.

(She comes up with a few more similarly-mundane asks after giving it a bit more thought.)

Okay. I'm gonna see how Epione's backlash is doing, and I'll want her to come down from it before I explain the plan so she can think about it. Anything you need the symptom-calming for to think through right now?

I don't think so. It's fine for her to stop.

She's not looking forward to the backlash coming back, but she can prepare for it.

She's visiting Toronto to help guide Epione because they're compatible (in an esper sense) and want to see if they're compatible (in a logistics and personality sense) so Epione can do more healing. She's visiting Toronto to help guide Epione because they're compatible (in an esper sense) and want to see if they're compatible (in a logistics and personality sense) so Epione can do more healing. She's visiting Toronto to help guide Epione...

Kevin puts his hand on the back of Epione's neck, hmms thoughtfully, and says, "It's all right to stop now, Epi."