Her fathers take her to the hospital the next morning, worried about how faint her pulse is and the fact that she hasn't woken up. (They let her keep Ms Weiner. They want her to have something comforting and familiar there, if when she wakes up).
A coma. She's in a coma. They suspect backlash is involved, but don't really have a way of telling, without an esper to help. Dave starts posting on esper sites, as many as he can find, with his best description of her backlash.
I bet she would have been compat with Chaos but too late :(
Can't literally any esper guide any other even if they don't all find it all as sexually gratifying? Why is there so much focus on which pairings are pleasurable?
You should really be in touch with an agency about this, they know non-public backlashes.
...he thanks the third one for their suggestion, and emails a few different agencies to explain the situation. (He's so tired).
The agencies are interested in helping out with this! Suspected awakenings you can't get anybody out to a hospital to poke but a documented color change, that's official enough to be precious. They will need to sign some forms about not sharing anything they learn about private backlashes and they can start sending guesses.
The first guess flinches when he touches Kani's hand and shakes it like she gave him a static shock, which, well, at least that means she's an esper.
The second one takes her hand, shrugs, and has an incompatible blood type and another appointment soon.
The third one is teleported in all the way from Toronto. She comes with her own preexisting partner, and she waits in the cab while the partner comes out to give them a briefing. He wants to see the copies of the forms they signed about private backlashes please?
Epione's partner examines them in detail.
Then he looks up and makes very serious eye contact. "My partner's backlash is that she loses coping skills," he says. "In principle, if absolutely everything is going perfectly, she'll be fine even at high levels, at least till it's enough to hurt directly. In practice she'll eventually get an itch or hear a noise she doesn't like. Her power is symptom management - she does things like suppress nausea in patients so that their doctors can use drugs that cause it and get their conditions treated more aggressively, or do anesthesia without the side effects. She might be able to use this on your daughter's backlash directly, but then she'll be backlashed and if either of you or your daughter triggers her then I'm going to haul her back into the cab and leave. But it would be faster, both by making the guiding faster and by hopefully making it possible for your daughter to tell us what's going on while still at a high level. Do you want her to try this, or just go in at what little she's carrying now?"
They look at each other, and then back to him.
Dave breaks the silence. "We of course will be quiet and still when you need us to be, but we can't really promise that our daughter will do the same when she wakes up from her multi week coma in an unfamiliar place. If her crying out would result in you leaving, I don't think we want your partner to use her power?"
Pete nods.
"All right, I'll tell her not to until she can negotiate directly with her. Anything else we need to know in light of this? You have a pushy nurse who's in to adjust things every twenty minutes? Phone in there that might ring? IV that keeps kinking and making the machine beep? Loud radiator? I can't usually get her to zero outside of long weekends."
Dave looks at Pete, who closes his eyes to think.
"Never heard a phone ring, the IV bag has been well-behaved, the HVAC is a heat pump and I haven't heard any coil whine from it. Not remembering other noises... Dave, can you message Dr Ixi about a Do Not Disturb sign for the do-"
"Already on it," he replies, not looking up from his phone.
Pete opens his eyes. "Anything else before we get started? Would you like some coffee?"
(Dr. Ixi writes "DO NOT DISTURB!! SENSITIVE TREATMENT IN PROCESS - IXI" in big letters on a sheet of paper and tapes it to the door)
And when her partner has checked over the room, and the path between there and the taxi, then he goes and gets Epione.
She's dressed in scrubs and a labcoat, but the cuffs of the coat are turned to halfway up her forearm and she doesn't have a badge or lanyard, just her codename embroidered on her coat pocket. She walks with a slow, thoughtful gait while her partner holds her right hand in both of his at once. Sometimes she closes her eyes and stops suddenly and then moves on after a moment. But she gets there eventually.
The girl on the bed is unconscious and breathing softly. She's got an IV line on her right hand and a stuffed weiner dog on her chest, which she's giving a one-handed hug. She doesn't stir when Epione enters the room.
Epione uses her free hand to, first, gently brush her fingertip against the back of the kid's hand.
Epione nods to her partner. She sits on the edge of the bed, shrugs off her labcoat, and slowly, carefully, pausing every now and then to check in with herself, gets her whole arm lined up with Kani's.
She has a lot of backlash that needs draining, but she's not going anywhere.
Epione settles in, gradually, and closes her eyes, and her partner eventually puts on a podcast about whales and guards the door, and everything is calm.
After several minutes, Kani stirs. Her eyes don't open, but her grip on Ms Weiner tightens, and then -
Oh dear.
We don't know what her power is, so I'm not sure how to make her to stop. I will do some research, but if you have any ideas...
She's not doing it constantly so it's not purely passive. Has she woken up and then fallen unconscious again before?
I have seen her shift around a few times, but her eyes never opened and she didn't respond to being talked to or touched, so I was never sure that I hadn't imagined it.
He starts researching accidental esper power usage (and ignores the nagging fear that it isn't accidental....)
Epione can try to get the guiding rate up faster to get ahead of it, but if she's not using her own power that's going to involve more skin contact. Is that OK/medically safe?
In that case Epione takes off her scrub top - she's got a stupidly high tech bra on under there because sweat drips and staircase jiggles are one of the five hundred thousand things that are worth engineering away if she can, that stays on - and starts carefully slowly removing Kani's top too. The stuffed animal is cute and everything but it's getting in the way of the maximally guiding position here; she passes it to Kevin and he sets it on a side table.
Under the hospital gown (which can be unbuttoned and pulled aside), Kani is wearing a bralette that was clearly purchased before her esper awakening. Her hand grips the stuffed animal, but not with enough force to actually stop them from removing it.
The backlash spike from before was pretty substantial - even with this increased skin contact, it's going to take a while to get that back down.
Yeah. The podcast about whales is rewound to the last part Epione heard clearly and she settles in again.
And after an hour or so of higher-bandwidth guiding, Kani starts to wake again, shifting under Epione.
Something feels... really nice...
Epione, for her part, is very nearly zeroed out, so she doesn't panic and flee the room.
"Kani?" she says.
That's her name... she should reply... "Wuh?"
With some effort, she opens her eyes.
And then her entire body tenses up, because suddenly she's in the hospital with no shirt on and there is a stranger holding her from behind???
"You've been doing that every time you start to wake up and you've been in a coma for weeks," Kevin adds.
Kani is kind of freaking out, but she does manage to hear "[??¿¿] for weeks", and now she's differently freaked out, which suffices to stop her from trying to break free.
She whimpers in confusion. (At least the stranger feels absurdly nice to touch. (Is this guiding? She's an esper now, and she's never felt anything like this...))
"I'm compatible with you and I'm here to guide you," Epione says. "But now that you're awake, if you won't use your power, we can put our shirts back on and you can talk to your parents. Would you prefer that?"
She tries to think.
It's weirdly hard to think. There's a stranger holding her and that's weird and embarrassing but the guiding feels really good and she - didn't realize how much she missed being held - but it's not the same, this isn't Mags or Thrana, it's just some esper and her brain is TRICKING her into making it feel nice anyways (but it does feel nice...).
She doesn't understand why she's in the hospital again! It was supposed to be over!
"...I want to talk to my fathers." She doesn't manage to verbalize an opinion about the shirts, but she does shift around to increase the skin contact between them.
"'m Kani." she pauses.
"...the guiding feels really nice, but I don't... understand why you are here. Or why I'm here."
"Your fathers got in touch with - probably a lot of people but in particular our agency, which knows things like private backlashes, trying to match you up with someone to pull you out of it," says Kevin. "You were apparently - reflexively? - using your power every time the backlash ticked over to chronic enough that you could wake up."
Ah, of course, [??¿¿]. (There was some other information there, but she's too tired and annoyed to try and figure it out.)
Epione's question... "I can - touch something, and then - see its past, when someone was touching it, and what they were feeling. I was - I used it on Ms Weiner -"
"...ah. So maybe it helped that when I repositioned you, you weren't holding her any more... Kevin, are her dads coming?"
She's awake and you can come in and see her.
Be right there.
They come in, trying to balance "hurrying to the side of their daughter they've been horribly worried about" and "avoid making noises that might startle the professional esper helping her" and doing a decent job.
Their daughter is: awake, being held by Epione under the hospital sheet, and crying! She sees them and sniffles.
"She said she was using her power on the stuffed animal," is that an animal, well, close enough, "and when we put it aside and she woke up again, she couldn't do that."
He catches the flicker of confusion as she hears Kevin's explanation, and decides to take point.
"Oh, Kanikins..." He kneels and gently strokes her hair. "I know it's confusing and scary. I promise to explain it all to you as soon as I can, but for now, you need to rest. And it's really, really important that you don't use your power, okay?"
-she gives a hesitant nod. She doesn't like not knowing what's going on, but - she trusts her fathers, and they look so worried about her, and she hates that.
He sighs in relief, then turns to Kevin. "Thanks, that's good to know. Do you or Epione need anything?"
"There's a lot of this. I don't think I can get it all today. Maybe not this week, and we don't have that much leave from the hospital."
"We can stay overnight, but we need to head back to Toronto when the Ablinger marble is open for business again in the morning," says Kevin.
...they look at each other worriedly.
Pete speaks up. "Epione, would you be willing to use your power? We can explain the backlash, now that Kani's awake..."
"I still won't get through all this tonight, but I can do that. Kani, do you think you could read and sign a confidentiality form about my backlash?"
She thinks for a bit and then nods.
(Presumably this will make sense at some point, but she's not holding her breath. At least it feels nice.)
It's full of very Scary and Official language, but she doesn't want to tell anyone about this woman's backlash anyways, so, whatever.
She disentangles an arm from Epione and signs the form.
"My backlash is that I lose distress tolerance," says Epione. "It gets very easy to set me off to the point of tears and I can't get myself back under control without a lot of help at that point. It's important that if I'm going to be backlashed around you, you're very sure to move slowly and carefully so I don't get pinched or elbowed or my hair pulled, that you never ever raise your voice or project negative emotions at me, and that anything even slightly frustrating or complicated goes through Kevin, ideally by text so I don't overhear. I'm in the middle of a podcast about whales, but if you'd rather a different topic or music instead, we can do that, but we should pick something now before I'm backlashed. There's not absolutely zero wiggle room in how much I can take when I'm backlashed but the amount of it I am willing to have in my life is fully taken up by my normal job at the hospital. Understand?"
Kani does her best to think through all the implications of this. (She tries not to think about what it reminds of her of, mostly-successfully.)
It sounds like she needs to - be really careful, move as little as possible, and communicate via text instead of by talking. None of that is hard for her, these days.
"I understand. Whales are fine."
She looks up at her fathers. "Do you have my phone? If we're doing this now" (which it sounded like Papa wanted, for some reason? She doesn't really know what Epione's power is, or why they want it, but whatever) "I should get into a position where I can use it without disturbing Epione beforehand, right?"
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.
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.
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?
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?
She suppresses the urge to shrug.
...I don't really know? I can't think of anything unusual...
Daaaad.........
...if it's not any trouble? But it's really not a big deal.
...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."
...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 an logistics and personality sense) so Epione can do more healing.
That's fine. It's not like she has anything better to be doing, at the moment.
...and the snuggling is nice, too.
👍
That would be good, yes.
He confers digitally with Pete - he'll go home and pack Kani an away bag before his morning shift. Pete will stay here overnight, and he can bring her things back and swap in the morning.
Great. That's sorted then.
Kevin will hang around another couple hours while Epione's coming down but then he is going to go sleep in a hotel.
Kani listens to the whale podcast and browses the internet aimlessly, reading hurt/comfort fanfic and catching up on the web serial updates she missed (there's a lot of them?? weird.)
She's a bit confused about the whole situation, but the guiding feels nice, and she's glad she can help Epione with her backlash.
She hugs both her fathers goodbye, promises to stay in touch and not to use her powers without their permission, and heroically endures being told that she's so brave and that they're so proud of her. (Papa cries a bit.)
Then she's in the taxi, sitting next to Epione. She... doesn't know how to talk to her, or her partner, but she's vaguely hoping they will start a conversation eventually?
She shrugs. "I... have a lot of experience missing school. I think it'll be okay."
She thinks about the conversational advice Mags had excitedly shared from her new online friend, the last time they'd really caught up, and then brightens when she comes up with something.
"Did you keep studying after you awakened?"
She nods. "If I can find a decent way to make money with my power, I don't think I'll stay in school. It... hasn't been very good, this year, and there isn't anything I was interested in majoring in."
"You'll get a professional partner rate for this week, at least. You don't need to use your power to make money as an esper. Mine's lousy."
She can earn money just by guiding???
"Oh," her brain offers up lamely, and then adds an "I had no idea" just in case anyone in the car still harbored any doubts re: her lameness.
"We don't get as much press as the flashy ones, but like half of espers don't have dungeoneering powers or anything amazing for civilian stuff like Epi."
"I'm not a real healer," Epione clarifies. "I just make space for modern medicine to do what it does. In your typical intensive care unit you'll have people on something to kill their pain which drops their blood pressure and something else to keep their blood pressure up which makes them nauseous and something to control the nausea that makes them sleepy and then you've got nurses keeping them alert by deliberately applying pain stimuli and it all complicates whatever they need actually fixed, so I step in and break that loop, but I don't solve any underlying problems."
Kani has spent enough time with visiting one of her best friends in the hospital to be familiar with symptom management and the complications it poses during treatment!
"How long have you been working with this hospital?" she asks, because that feels safer than mentioning... anything to do with Thrana.
Her eyes widen a bit. She knew Epione was older than her, but she'd been thinking, like, 24, 25?
"Huh!" Great one, Kani!
"I'm told I look younger than I am but it turns out if you're an esper and sometimes remember to moisturize you can look like this when you're 32."
She gives a small nervous laugh at the joke.
...Wait, right, espers are supposed to get hotter, and she hasn't looked actually looked at herself in a mirror yet!
She puts her phone camera in selfie mode and 'ooo's softly at her eye color.
"Think your hair will change?" Epione has a plausibly-natural auburn but Kevin's hair is forest green.
"Oooh, maybe - I used to dye it." It's bleached a dirty blonde about a third of the way down, but any dye has long since faded out.
(If either Epione or Kevin look closely, they'll see that her roots are a pale blue - it's been weeks since she finished awakening, after all.)
Oh! "Blue would make sense," she says, nodding.
She's curious about other body changes, but she really doesn't want to get caught checking herself out. Maybe later.
The taxi comes to a stop at the teleport point. "Everybody out, you don't wanna land in a sitting position without your seat," Kevin says.
Oh! Right! Teleporting!
It doesn't feel real, somehow. She follows Epione's lead, clutching her packed bag tight.
And when he punches in the request there is a thirty-second wait, and then there they are, standing in a completely different lot in Toronto.
"Gotta love those marbles, huh?" he says, hailing another cab.
"Are you okay? It doesn't feel like anything but it's pretty startling the first time, isn't it."
"The entire continent's nonemergency teleport services are based around this one esper, a Ms. Ablinger who has a really efficient but godawfully specific power," Kevin says, pocketing his phone once a taxi is pulling up for them. In they get. "She can reflect things from one side of herself to the other. Great distance, but if you don't happen to want to be exactly the same distance from wherever she's standing in the other direction, not that useful. There's marbles, now, reverse-engineered dungeon materials, that she can imprint and spend a few days counting as her. So there's a marble between most pairs of major cities, now, swapped out now and again, and when I ordered the teleport it told Ms. Ablinger to put the three of us on the other side of a specific marble, which drops us here."
"Yeah! I thought I was ready but I really wasn't expecting it to be so... sudden," she replies.
She pauses, digesting Kevin's explanation. "Oh! That's so cool."
She pulls out her phone, trying to figure out where the marble between Toronto and Seattle is.
Into the taxi they all get, Epione in the middle. "We can check if you and I are compatible at some point, it's not impossible, but it's not how I'd bet," Kevin remarks.
Boop. "- not as bad as I thought it'd be, I guess we don't have to carefully avoid bumping into each other, but not good."
"One time at a mixer I shook someone's hand and he looked like he wanted to throw up, though as far as I know he didn't actually?"
"Wow." She shudders.
...the contact reminded her of guiding and now she wants to touch Epione again. Does she have a non awkward way to make that happen...
(Thrana makes a soft humming noise as Kani leans into them, and Kani smiles sleepily...)
Her eyes squeeze shut, and she freezes up a bit.
"...Sorry," she whispers.
(Automatically, she relaxes her hand, so Epione can let go of her easily if she wants.)
No, handholding is fine and good. "Do you maybe want to call your dads, let them know we've teleported safely?"
Well a phone call sounds kind of impossible! But she'll text them with her free hand, and the resulting conversation distracts her successfully.
(After a minute or so, she tentatively attempts to lean into Epione again).
Well, the guiding doesn't, but it does really help to reassure the overwhelmed teenager.
"You don't have your own agent yet so I asked Epione's to send someone over to help you get set up," Kevin says. "Order groceries, connect to the wifi, whatever you need, and he'll be there till she's off work and I bring her here for the night, making sure that nothing in the apartment will set her off. Okay? He can give you space, of course."
Oh! Right, of course, Epione has her Important Job (and Kani needs to be Ready To Be Good when she gets back.)
Kani nods. "Thanks. And... if I have questions he can't answer, is it okay if I text you?"
Nodnod. "Got it."
She lets go of Epione's hand with a bit of reluctance, grabs her bag, and heads inside the silo, waving goodbye.
Kevin shows her the door code in. "Guy'll be here any -" A knock. "There he is." He lets in the guy.
Oh! Here already. "Nice to meet you." (It's actually, a bit overwhelming on account of Another New Person, which is not exactly hidden in her body language.)
She looks around the place awkwardly. Does it have a kitchen? Couch? TV?
It has a kitchen, couch, and TV. Gary takes up a spot in the corner of the living room couch and seems content to be ignored if she doesn't want to deal with him right now.
Kani will brave social interaction long enough to get the wifi info!
Once she has it, she gets some nice mellow instrumental music playing, and then goes to see what kinds of pots, pans, burners and such the kitchen has. She... kinda misses cooking, actually? Certainly it sounds like a better (and less embarrassing!) way to spend the time waiting for Epione doing than curling up somewhere and hiding from Gary. And maybe it can be useful to the others, too.
It's got an electric range with four burners. There's a big steel frying pan and a little nonstick one, and a big soup pot and a medium saucepan, and a few knives and a wooden spoon and other miscellaneous cooking utensils, and a set of uninspiring cutlery. The fridge has an empty plastic pitcher in it.
Good enough for her purposes! She hums happily and heads back towards the living room.
"Do you know if Kevin or Epione like chili? I was thinking of making some."
(Possibly she could have just texted Kevin about this, but she said she'd only do that if she had questions Gary couldn't answer, so she's going to ask Gary first.)
"I wouldn't make Epione anything spicy, I don't know if she normally likes it but she'll be coming off a work shift. No idea about Kevin."
"I'm used to making very mild chili and setting out spices for people to add on their own, so that's fine." She pauses, trying to think through how her backlash might interact with eating. "Do you know if she has any flavors or textures she can't stand?"
"I think she doesn't like pineapple? - To be extra clear I do know her backlash and it's okay to talk about it with me, but that's the kind of thing you should be in the habit of checking, I don't know if Kevin told you."
aaaaa
"...oh, he'd said you'd be here to make sure nothing would set her off, so I just assumed..." she trails off lamely.
She nods hurriedly, and then retreats into the kitchen.
Once she's there, she realizes that she can't start cooking because there aren't any groceries! She's too embarrassed to head back to the living room right away, so she makes a list on her phone of groceries she'll want while taking a spice inventory.
She'll also text Kevin to ask him if he likes chili and would want some for dinner.
I eat at home with my family, but thank you. Chili's not a good choice for Epione, though, she's going to have backlash when I hand her over to you.
For spice reasons, or is there a different concern? What does she usually eat while backlashed?
For spice reasons. If she's at a low level (it'll depend on what comes into the ER today) she can eat zero spice (ZERO, not even black pepper) foods that also aren't bitter or sour, but at medium and high levels she eats things cold or room temp, out of packages, that are always the same. Gary's going to get her usual staples sent to the silo and can throw whatever you want in there too.
I usually make totally unspiced chili and adding the hot sauce to my portions - it comes out salty, but not spicy or sour. I can make a batch of that and let you decide if it's worth trying or not?
Thanks!
She finishes writing up her grocery list (various veggies fresh and canned, some fake meats, and spices for the chili - hot sauce, fruits, poptarts, noodles, tortillas and other burrito supplies for her) and then heads back into the living room to give it to Gary, presumably via text message or fancy local sharing protocol.
Gary can't find all her usual brands for the fake meat but everything else is doable.
Kani can try strange Canadian fake meats! She thanks him for the help, then goes to investigate the sleeping area and bathroom. Is there a good place for her to unpack her clothes? What's the bath/shower situation like?
The bathroom's very nice, with a tub and a shower. There is one bedroom with a queen bed and a dresser.
Hmmm. She doesn't know how Epione likes to have a room arranged, so she will leave her bag packed and out of the way. But a really nice shower sounds great, so she's going to go take one of those, fishing out a spare change of clothes and the toiletries she likes.
She checks herself out in the mirror. It feels weird to have changed so much in what felt like so little time, but... she's certainly not complaining about the changes. She looks like the implausibly hot version of herself she'd draw for their RP games...
She will take a pretty long shower, assuming nothing stops her.
Nothing stops her, at least assuming she is making person-moving-around noises and not screaming noises or fell-on-the-floor-unconscious-and-left-the-shower-on noises.
She doesn't make any screaming or falling noises! On account of not doing any screaming. Or falling.
This shower is soooooooo niiiiiiiiice. Her shower at home takes a while to heat up, and the water pressure is decidedly meh. Kani had forgotten how nice a Good Shower feels. She stays in it a while, whistling to herself and thinking about the implications of "professional partner". ("Hey Mags. I'm dropping out of school because I found out I can earn absurd amounts of money weekly by cuddling with a woman almost twice my age in Toronto. How've you been?")
Oh! Food activities! Kani wiiilllll - not try and help, as she realizes:
1. It's possible Epione has Opinions about where things should be in the kitchen?
2. She's hungry.
3. There's poptarts.
Sheeeee going to eat some of her fruits and like 4 poptarts with the table manners of a teenager who hasn't been able to eat with both hands for close to a month and hasn't eaten a meal with a non-father since - since before.
When she's finished (and has dispensed of the evidence crumbs) she will put on some good Background Video Entertainment and then start the Chili Process by heating up the pot, inspecting the fake meats, and chopping up all the veggies.
Gary finishes putting the groceries away and then sets about some kind of inscrutable apartment inspection that involves running all the faucets, trying the windows, investigating the bed, wiggling all the doors on their hinges, and turning over all the couch cushions.
She'll actually pause the cooking (turning the heat on the pot way down so nothing bad happens) to watch this process; it seems important to understand the basics if she's going to be a professional cuddler. (Is she going to be a professional cuddler? It does seem... easy. simple.)
Occasionally she asks questions about things (what's up with the couch cushions?) and also asks if there are things she should know about e.g. where she should put her spare clothes and toiletries.
"My job description is silo prep. Epione usually just lives in her own house, but lots of espers have requirements for their silos that aren't necessarily met by a random AirBnb and it's my job to make sure they meet them. I'm just making sure the cushions don't have anything stuck behind them that might poke her or anything if she sits down. You can have the left half of the bathroom counter, and put anything slidey or tall in back where it's less likely to get knocked over."
She nods and goes to set up her stuff in the bathroom. (She doesn't have much stuff, it fits tidily in the left corner.)
Then it's back to cooking! This will take her an hour or so.
It's only after she finishes that she remembers to look around for some kind of leftover container to store it in.
Ooops. Yeah, she'll do that after doing a taste test (no spicy that she can notice, just salty) and then spicing up a small bowl for herself.
Does Gary want some?
Oooh, yay! See, she's approximately an adult, she's helpful in situations...
Gary sticks around all day even when he's clearly out of silo prep to do (though he'll do the dishes, knife first but he'll stop after that if she insists).
In the evening, Kevin drops off Epione. She's got big soft headphones on, and watches her feet when she walks.
Kani is 100% fine with someone else doing the dishes. (Dad usually does it in their house, at least when she cooks).
When Epione arrives, she does her best to stay out of the way and also take cues from Kevin on... what to do... (Possibly she should have asked for advice in advance here? Oh no...)
"Hey. She's right-handed, just park at her left and hold hands once she's served herself something for dinner and sat down. If something happens and she freaks out, give her a minute to catch her breath before getting in there with the guiding hugs, since you're in private and not in front of a patient and their entire family and sometimes touching her when she's already agitated makes it worse. She'll want to go to bed pretty much right after dinner so you'll want to squeeze in a trip to the bathroom soon. She might not take the chili, don't be offended."
Instructions!! Kani nods gratefully.
She puts on some nice gentle wordless music in her left earbud only (low volume), and then unobtrusively makes herself visible to the left of Epione, hand available for holding. (She's using some of her stored behaviors for "how to not freak out a startled wild animal", which feels vaguely rude to point at a real human person who is also 14 years older than her and hot?? but also it's the closest thing she has in her head for this??)
Epione smiles at her and gets a packaged turkey wrap out of the fridge, and a cup of yogurt, and a little chocolate mousse thing that comes in a glass jar, and a bottle of herbal iced tea, and cllects a spoon and sits down and opens all the packaging and then holds Kani's hand while she gets underway on eating dinner.
A smile! She'll smile back, and then settle in poke her phone with her off hand once Epione starts to eat her dinner.
And then Epione pats her hand, whisks her garbage into the trash can, and disappears behind the bathroom door to emerge in a camisole and shorts for the night.
She will also change into bedclothes! Hers are less optimized for guiding (old very thin tshirt and shorts) since she hasn't gone shopping for that yet. Hopefully this is okay.
How does Epione want to snuggle?
A professional little spoon she can be! (ohhhh it feels niiiceee).
Huh. This is her first day of work, technically. That's kinda funny. She isn't sure what she was expecting, but it wasn't this.
Epione pulls her headphones off after a bit and her phone from the nightstand resumes the podcast (this one is about tropical fish).
...the tropical fish podcast was not something she'd mentally accounted for, and it will take her a very long while (around 2 hours) to get to the point where she can tune it out and actually fall asleep.
However, that time is spent receiving magically-nice-feeling cuddles and learning things about fish, and she's getting paid for it, so it's, like, fine.
(About an hour after she falls asleep, Kani has what another person might describe as a nightmare. She doesn't wake up or cry out, but her body does tense up more than a bit.)
The podcast actually fades out before that; it switches to soothing music after the current episode concludes.
Fortunately for at least some of the participants the nightmare does not wake Epione.
(The soothing music is much nicer! Kani can fall asleep to that.)
Waking up Epione with a bad dream would have been really embarrassing! This is preferrable.
She's going to be eepy in the morning, but she'll wake up if an alarm happens. (She's a snuggly sleeper!)
Then Epione will wake up before Kani does! With a sleepy girl snuggled against her, smiling slightly.
Epione wakes up completely without backlash (she often wakes up without any acute, but not without any), and hops up to make eggs and English muffins with marmalade for breakfast.
Yeah, but she wants to ?hang out? while she's allowed to make noise...
She stumbles into the kitchen a few minutes later, yawning.
"G'mornin'.."
"Oh! Yes please." She grabs a hot sauce bottle with lots of flames and peppers on it from the fridge.
Hmmm, maybe today she should make some bread... She should also maybe figure out how she's getting paid? But she can ask Kevin that later.
She doesn't really remember which one that is but she doesn't wanna be annoying!! Probably it's fine? She has hot sauce...
"Yeah."
Thumbs up. The toaster pops. She marmalades her English muffins and flips the eggs and pours herself a glass of milk. "If you weren't lactose tolerant before you are now," she mentions, pulling out a second plate for Kani.
"Huh, that's convenient. ...I was kinda allergic to cats and had the non-scary kind of bee allergy, are those gone now too?"
She pours herself a glass of milk and applies copious amounts of hot sauce to her eggs before eating them. Looks like over easy just means the yolk is runny, which isn't exactly her favorite but it's no big deal.
"Yup, those are gone too!" Om nom nom humming to herself. "Gary's going to be over again today too," she mentions, scrolling on her phone.
...huh. Wasn't he just supposed to be here to help set the place up and make sure it was okay? Why's he coming back? She tilts her head in confusion, but her mouth is full of hot sauce and eggs, so she doesn't say anything.
(Kani has seated herself on Epione's left, again, just in case there's any hand-holding desired. By Epione, obviously. Surely it isn't Kani who wants her hand held.)
Epione will hold her hand. Kani might notice that Epione doesn't have any backlash, if she's paying attention, though.
Oh! That means she's doing a good job at professional cuddling, she thinks?
(Guiding feels nice! That's probably why Epione wants to hold her hand even without backlash to drain.)
She finishes her mouthful of food and building up the courage to ask "What's Gary doing today? And is there anything you want me to be taking care of while you're out?"
"Gary's going to do the dishes and make sure all my food is okay at the end of the day - it was all fine yesterday but it's never impossible for mold to get into something - and clean and stuff like that. He'll be here every day."
"Ah, okay." She was kind of hoping to have the place to herself or some kind of task to do? But that's ok! It's not Epione's job to keep Kani entertained.
She busies herself with her food; she's not supposed to be broadcasting negative emotions at Epione, and even though there isn't any backlash now it's a good thing to practice (be small, be unobtrusive, be easy to talk to...)
Epione finishes her breakfast, leaves her dishes in the sink, and gets into her scrubs for the day and waves goodbye.
Kani can put on a nice cheery smile to wave goodbye! (It helps that she is genuinely impressed with Epione - her backlash takes so much work to manage, and she still uses her power every day to help people! Kani is pretty sure she couldn't do that. It reminds her of - of...)
When Gary arrives, Kani is curled up on the bed. She doesn't respond to the noise of him entering.
Gary arrives ten minutes after Epione leaves so this is really exasperating. Does she move if he shakes her?
She'll look up at him when she hears him approaching the bed; no need to shake her. She doesn't say anything.
(Her face is wet with tears.)
"Okay. You let me know if you need anything, okay?"
And he will go do the dishes and stuff.
She needs her best friend to not be dead, can he do that she nods minutely before he leaves the room.
(Eventually she passes out for a 3 hour nap).
Then Gary will have a pretty lowkey day of babysitting the esper with one of the most inconvenient blind spots of all time.
After spending several hours asleep and/or in a depressive funk, Kani manages to slink into the bathroom, freshen up, put on some (not-very-well-fitting) clothes, and make her way into the kitchen to have a bowl of chili. Eventually she builds up the courage to ask Gary the thing that's on her mind. (...via text message, of course)
...Do you know who I should ask about, um, payment and stuff?
aaaa new person aaa
thanks
fretfretfretbluhghhhhhhhh
about 45 minutes later, she manages to compose and send
Hi Jennifer, this is Kanikau Plava.
Gary gave me your number and said I should ask you about payment information?
That's right! What I've done is open an account on your behalf that you can claim either under your normal name or your codename should you adopt one, whichever you like (the account is a special kind meant to enable this but once you pick one it'll be hard to change later), or close and transfer the contents to your existing accounts if you prefer, and it's got the money in it for each day, deposited every morning. If you need some spending money for something Gary's not sure his budget covers, I can pay you some of tomorrow's into another format, just let me know what processor you prefer.
aagh, details...
Sheeee doesn't know if she wants a codename. Start with that.
If I don't know if I want a codename, can I move the money to my personal account and then make an account under a codename later? or is that something I should figure out now?
If you want to be paid into a normal account I can close this one and move the funds for you once I know the details of where it's going. You're the expert on how long you need to decide about a codename!
Kani is not the expert on that because she doesn't understand the ramifications of banking under a name that isn't hers!
She groans into a pillow and takes a deep breath.
With some fretting and a bit of conferring with her fathers to make sure there's no super big and obvious mistake being made here, she manages to send Jennifer her bank account routing info and express a preference to just be paid there for now. And also an apology for the trouble.
No problem! That should be transferred across by EOD and I've set up future per diems to land there. If you want the itemization I can send it to your email and of course whenever you've got your own agent I can link up with them.
Sheeee would like the itemization (so she can know how much is reasonable for her to spend on some clothes that fit her better), please and thanks.
The itemization comes and has lines like this, divided into what they're paying her and what's been deducted:
Credits:
Per diem guiding services
Per diem emergency guiding availability
Debits:
Teleport (1 fare, Ablinger, Seattle -> Toronto)
1/2 silo rental
1/10 silo prep services
....Additional hours for silo prep personnel for failover backlash support
....Groceries
Taxi
Tax withholding forms attached
Gratis:
Borrowed agent services, Jennifer Mendoza
Reciprocal guiding, Epione
Huh. Kani gives it a read-through.
...Additional hours of silo prep personnel for failover backlash support? That's Gary, but why...
Ohhhhh. Gary is here today (and stayed all day yesterday) because they want to make sure she doesn't knock herself into a coma again. It's not really about Epione's powers. And they didn't tell her because - it wasn't clear to anyone involved how backlashed she was, maybe?
Ugggghhhhh yeah that makes sense (And also she hates her backlash! And also being babysat! Maybe tomorrow morning she can talk to Epione about this....)
....whatever. Does she have enough incoming money to be able to get some new clothes?
Awesome.
She texts Gary.
I want to go out for a few hours, mostly to go clothes shopping but probably to get some other things too.
I don't think I'm at risk of using my power on accident and I don't think my backlash is going to cause problems, if you don't want to tag along.
If you can think about your backlash you're probably right, but can you turn location sharing on for the duration just in case?
!! Freedom !! She really wasn't expecting that!
She will happily turn on location sharing, and then open up her maps app to find a thrift store.
Then to the Value Village Kani will go!
It takes her a while, but she's able to find herself 2 different sports bras that both fit decently well (she'll want to buy new bras eventually but for now this is fine), some soft skimpy tank tops that should be better for guiding surface area while asleep, and a few cute short-sleeved blouses, one with blue flowers.
She is sorely tempted to use her power on the clothes, just to see what the prior owners were like, but... she promised she wouldn't, and if she collapses and needs rescuing from Gary right after telling him she didn't need it, she's never going to live it down.
Her skirts still fit fine, so she doesn't bother searching for new ones, at least for now.
She asks the cashier how donations work, and also if she can change into the clothes she bought after buying them.
Awesome! She changes into her ✨ new clothes ✨ and checks herself out in the mirror again.
Then she opens her phone to see if she can find an electronics store and/or something to eat?
She'd love some boba if it's an option?
She's not picky about electronics, and will go for that first. She's looking for a nicer pair of headphones than her $15 multi-year-old pair of earbuds.
There's a tea place that has boba, though not a dedicated boba shop with many boba choices. Headphones are easily acquired.
She splurges on headphones, getting something far more expensive than she usually would (the shiny new version of what Mags had), because she just bought used clothes and she listens to music all the time and she's just seen how much money she's making daily and it's like. months plural of allowance(??for cuddling??).
She's unpleasantly surprised when they TALK TO HERwhen she turns them on - luckily, it turns out to be possible to disable this. When she walks back out onto the street, the she hears nothing but her music at a frankly startling fidelity.
She'll go to the tea shop and get a sugary boba milk tea (mmmm!) and a nice pastry, then wanders back.
She has exasperated teenager feelings about this obviously visible relief! She said she'd be fine!!
But she doesn't make a Big Deal about it, because that would be kinda mortifying (he is Just Doing His Job, she hears Thrana say gently about the nurse that Kani is upset with on their behalf)
...bleh. She'll go flop on the bed, music a bit louder in her ears than it probably should be.
...how long till Epione gets home?
Epione works pretty long hours (with lots of breaks during the day). She gets back to the silo at around 9pm and collects a yogurt cup and a tub of pasta salad and some ham cubes and an ice cream sandwich and unwraps everything and starts working through them, hand out for Kani to hold.
Her professional hand-holder (now with shorter sleeves for better guiding) is ready to do her job!
Oh good, then -
- Epione will get through the first half of her supper before she closes her mouth on a spoonful of her strawberry yogurt and her eyes go very wide -
Perhaps unfortunately, Kani is not watching Epione eat, because That Would Be Weird (she's not supposed to stare at hot people) and is instead scrolling her phone.
Then she will be surprised, probably, when Epione wrenches her hand out of her grip and collapses out of her chair onto the floor, bawling like a toddler to begin with and getting worse when she hits the ground, curling up into the fetal position, and presently weeping tears and running snot?
aaaa yes she will be!!!
Kevin help she's having a breakdown what should I do???
oh no, she's going to get a bad grade in professional hand-holder,
Give her a minute to catch her breath - if she doesn't do it voluntarily eventually her autonomic reflexes will do it for her. Once she's breathing more regularly get in there and touch her, gently but firmly. Gary can help if you have more questions, I'm off work.
Okay thanks sorry!
Concerned teenager floating nearby (but not too close! too close could be bad!) and (wait, don't project emotions, that's bad!) pretending to look at her phone while listening intently to Epione's breathing!
Okay, okay, that's Her Cue.
She puts her phone on the floor and moves in to attempt a hug, slowly and within line-of-sight so Epione is not surprised by this. (She's here to help. There's no need to be afraid of her.)
That's fine. She's helping just by being here - she can feel the backlash ticking away. She shifts slightly, increasing their contact area, and doesn't make any noises.
("I want my mom..." Thrana had sobbed, and before Kani could process this, they'd added "w-w-which is fucked up, my mom is mean! b-but this hurts so bad," and then she'd gone back to wailing wordlessly in Kani's arms, a feeling of horrid emptiness filling her heart as she struggled with how hopeless she felt against the force of her best friends' life-rending misery)
She keeps her eyes closed, trying to focus on the guiding and let the memory flow past her without getting lost in it.
Eventually Epione manages to take a deep breath on purpose, and then a couple of them in a row.
Kani mirrors this, only half-consciously at first (she could use some intentional breathing herself, honestly) and then fully intentionally, hoping to provide an anchor for poor Epione. (She thinks again of frightened wildlife, how intentional and calm and safe you have to be when approaching them, the lessons she'd picked up from Papa when she was much younger...)
With a few false starts, Epione manages to rise, get back into her chair, think better of it, and shuffle into the bathroom to down a couple ibuprofen. Then she comes out and psychs herself up with more handholding before she resumes eating her food.
Kani continues to make herself available for handholding for that entire process! Maybe she's not going to get a bad grade after all? Unclear...
"I bit my tongue," Epione eventually croaks, having interrupted dinner to go blow her nose again.
Phew, ok, it wasnt anything she did not the important thing right now!
"Oh, I hate it when that happens," she says softly, and gives Epione's hand a very gentle squeeze.
Oh no - waitdontfreezeupshe'llnotice -
Kani, with an absurd amount of effort, doesn't move or let her breathing cycle change noticably. She is a perfectly normal and calm source of guiding who no longer is going to make the mistake of saying words out loud unprompted for the rest of the evening.
(Inside her head it's much worse, obviously, but that's fine.)
Epione doesn't end up eating her ice cream sandwich. She just goes to bed without saying anything to cry a little into her pillow and, presumably, be snuggled.
Kani quickly changes into her new (better for guiding!) bedclothes and is there to be snuggled as penance for her crimes is literally her job.
(In her inner turmoil, she forgets to use the bathroom or get her phone in reach before settling into bed.)
Then it's good that Epione doesn't take all that long to go to sleep and is not a particularly unsound sleeper on this little backlash.
Yep!
...once Kani is sure based on the change and breathing patterns that apone is asleep, she'll let herself cry, silently, as the emergency-terror removes its chokehold on her brain. (she has to keep breathing intentionally. she'd be hyperventilating otherwise. but that's not important, that happens to her a lot, ever since -)
Eventually, the breathing becomes repetitive enough to lull her to sleep.
In the morning Epione is fine, and apologetic. "I'm sorry you had to see that." She is making a big smoothie with yogurt and strawberries and a banana and frozen blueberries.
"It's okay!" (she smiles. It doesn't quite reach her eyes.)
"...in the future, should I not say anything?"
"Probably." Sigh. "It's really, really hard to hit a note that doesn't have any way I could possibly take it wrong, and if I can, I'm gonna. Kevin can do it sometimes but he still doesn't usually try."
Oh. That does make her feel better (though it also makes something inside her shrivel up a bit??) - she didn't fail something obvious, it was just really hard.
She'll do better next time. She nods. "Got it."
Handholding?
Okay! Yay.
(...Kani seems to be a bit quieter this morning, if Epione is tracking these things.)
Valid to be quiet, but. "If you do have anything to say I can handle it now, you're zeroing me out overnight."
Kani opens her mouth, shrugs, and then closes it, clearly thinking hard.
"...the relevant thing seems like a lot to just dump on you?" she manages to venture, after a long pause. "Sometimes I get reminded of" what it felt like to fail my best friend so badly she killed herself "the worst week of my life, and then the rest of the day is bad. It's not a big deal." She takes in a shaky deep breath. Her grip on Epione's hand is tighter than usual, though not painfully so.
She shrugs helplessly, not really sure how to say I think I would prefer you knowing but I don't know how to tell you in a way that won't be kinda terrible? and so opting not to say it at all. (She can always say it later! Maybe when things feel less fraught?)
Handholding! Handholding is nice and safe and simple and feels really good.
!! Smoothie !! She grins and drinks up, getting a bit on her face. "This is really good!"
"I've never really done smoothies! I'm really proud of my chili and I am pretty good at baking, but that's about it." Do you want me to bake you something? I would be happy to bake you something she vaguely attempts to beam telepathically instead of saying out loud because she is a literal child, apparently,
"Baking I've never gotten into. I tried to make a box mix cake when I was, hm, thirteen? The oven heated unevenly and it came out goopy on one side and black on the other, which wasn't really my fault but kind of turned me off the idea."
"Ooof. Yeah, baking can be so unforgiving with things like that. I remember when -" she stops, sighs, and then continues "- I ruined my best friend's birthday cake because I didn't realize her oven ran hot and didn't think to check it while cooking, it was horrible."
"...Do you like fresh bread? I can make some while you're at work today."
"Anything crusty can sometimes hurt the roof of my mouth. If you have a soft recipe that you - and maybe also Gary - taste first, then sure, that would be lovely."
"Hmm...." She tilts her head, thinking. "I could do a soft banana bread?"
"I can time that. And have Gary do a taste test. And also if you'd rather eat safer food I won't be offended!"
"Oh good. It's always trouble when I feel rude if I avoid a thing that might not be safe, because feeling rude is, also, an unpleasant experience."
She winces sympathetically and nods. "I do enjoy baking for people, but I also really like eating my own baking. It'll be nice making stuff that you can eat if you want to, but if you don't, it's more for me."
"That's a nice equanimous attitude, good." She finishes her smoothie and collects her English muffin out of the toaster to butter and marmalade.
Kani smiles (she's getting a good grade in attitude!) and continues nomming on her bowl of high-sugar cereal.
Bye Epione!
Kani takes a shower to clean herself off and then, on a whim, decides it is Bath Time! She hums happily and fills the tub up with Very Hot Water.
"Make sure you're not turning red or anything and not noticing!" Gary calls through the door when he detects how steamy it is.
Make sure she doesn't [¿¿??]?
...Maybe she just didn't hear him correctly. (Why is he yelling at her through the bathroom door? Weird behavior!!)
"What?" She yells in response, not really trying to hide her annoyance.
"Uhhhhh there's a thermometer on the counter on Epione's side, can you borrow that and tell me how hot your water is?"
...okay well that is like. Literally comprehensible?? Still absurdly confusing, but maybe it's important for Epione for some confusing reason?
"...41.7C. Why?"
?? Whatever
She stays in the bath a while. The water cools down, slowly.
Huh... she's got raisin fingers. It's been forever since she got raisin fingers. She's been in here a while, huh.
Oh, that's what he was asking.
This backlash is so fucking stupid.
She dries off and gets charged and nods neutrally at Gary, who is just doing his job and probably doesn't enjoy the confusion any more than she does.
Okay. Today she is going to... do laundry, go grocery shopping, make banana bread, and take her old clothes to be donated.
Is the laundry set up in the silo straightforward?
Yay.
She starts her laundry, and while she waits for it to cycle she has a long call with her fathers, where they tell her how proud they are and how much they miss her and make her recount her last 48 hours (perhaps predictably, she elides her emotional turmoils, but she does let herself complain about her backlash.)
Then she tells Gary she wants to go do some grocery shopping and is pretty sure her backlash has settled. (She turns location sharing on preemptively.)
She shakes her head. "I like grocery stores." And she has a lot of time to kill.
heeeeee issssss just doing his job, just doing his job, just doing his job...
She nods in affirmation (location sharing is already on) and heads doorwards.
Grocery time!
...this grocery store is Different. (Kani is not Canadian and has honestly not spent much time away from the west coast of the US, so her standards for Different are not super high.)
...she's got plenty of time, though, so maybe it's just... not a big deal?
She wanders the aisles for a whiles, taking in the sights and marveling a bit about how isolating her headphones are.
Then she grabs a cart and gets supplies to make banana bread, some weird candies she's never seen before, some frozen potato products for snacking on, some seasonings to improve her burrito fillings, and some ice cream.
It ends up being more groceries than she could have carried comfortably before awakening, but it turns out that in addition to a power nobody wants her to use and the world's stupidest fucking backlash ever, she did also get body upgrades, so there's that.
...awww, he couchsleeps like Dad does. (She valiantly resists the urge to prank him about this).
She is going to make her banana bread quietly as possible (though she can't stop the oven from beeping when it finishes preheating), because she wants to see his reaction when he realizes he slept through a sizeable chunk of babysitting time.
The beep gets him and he sits up groggily. "Oh, you're back," he says. "Find everything you needed?"
Awww, darn. She gives him an awkward thumbs up and puts her first tin of banana bread into the oven.
In about an hour or so she'll offer him some banana bread to taste-test. (It's pretty good.)
Yay! She likes it too.
She'll leave some out to cool for Epione and then read stuff online and listen to music for a while.
Epione gets back at the same time as yesterday, again watching her feet carefully and generally watchful and cautious. She inspects the banana bread in detail - visually on both sides of the slice and also sniffing it - but then eventually gives it a bite.
