"Yeah. It's - using my backlash for stuff like that is pretty neat, conceptually." (Genuine backlash upsides like this aren't very common! She should be LOL. LMAO.)

"The memory side effect is neat at least in principle, I wonder if it'd also work on things like facts if you were told to remember them. Memory is normally really lossy, I write things down a lot."

Never forget how much I love you.

 "...it works on facts, at least sometimes," some part of her has the sense to say.

...it’s none of his business.

She buries her face in his shoulder. "I -" aaaaaaaa "- have a lot of baggage around my backlash, sorry." Really useful observation to verbalize, Cara! I'm sure he hadn't noticed!

"I think most of us do but you've got a real doozy."

Cara nods tightly and tries not to cry  to cry silently  to not sob loudly.

Squeeze.

Cara considers saying I'm usually more fun than this! but that's not really true, at least recently, so she clings to him and tries to think of something better to say. 

(She notices, distantly, that her jaw hurts from clenching it.)

She doesn't have to think of anything to say at all. He's not backlashed.

Well, yes, she doesn't have to do anything that she hasn't been instructed to do while at least moderately backlashed. But she wants to be more fun than this, even if she's worse at it than she used to be!

...don't say that, he already knows that.

   He might not and he's not going to mind if he has.

How would he not???

   It's deeply unclear he's ever co-slept with someone who'd share the observation! Most of his guiding is from someone who he only touches feet with. It might have never come up!

Cricket would have told him.

   ...quite possibly but not certainly! Cricket is weird! And - the actual important thing is that he's not going to mind.

...

"Did you know that when you talk in your sleep, it's always individual nouns?"

"Almost, but not invariably! Cricket caught a 'spectate' once, and if I were ever doing other parts of speech in French he wouldn't catch those."

"Huh! I haven't caught any of those yet - admittedly I don't speak Tagalog." 

"It took me a while to have French show up often, I think I have to know a language better than just conversationally. Tagalog's probably still a lot rarer than English or French."

"Yeah, I've only caught a couple words of it! But they might have been verbs." 

"If you remember what they are I can tell you?"

She can rattle off the few she remembers, yeah.

""House' and 'surfboard' and 'circle'."

Cara nods like she's being imparted a great wisdom. "House, surfboard, circle."

(She wonders how long it took him to learn Tagalog. ...she could ask. ...she's too tired to ask.)

"About time to get ready for bed, d'you think?"

She pretends to think about it for a moment (presumably it's good to be legible about not being mind controlled in situations where it's very low cost to do so) and then nods. "Sleep sounds good." 

"Among the most popular activities." Toothbrushing and such ensue.

And then they can curl up in bed together, and she can be warm and snuggly and sleepy.