At first it's just an ordinary morning in the Cursed Valley. The ominous conifers shade her from the ascending sun, but enough light filters through the canopy to illuminate the path ahead. She can hear the quiet sound of water and the distant songs of morning birds. A stream crosses the path as soon as she needs one; an abandoned squirrel cache provides assorted nuts for a midmorning snack. The ominous conifers thin out in favour of more cheerful trees as she gets farther into the valley.

And then, although she's still headed directly downslope, there's a break in the trees ahead. Not a clearing or a waterway; an actual edge, an end to the forest. That's new.

Hmm. She doesn't really want to leave the Valley, but this might not be that, and if it is she can just come right back in. Okay, time to investigate.

This isn't the edge of the Cursed Valley; it's the middle.

Straight ahead, a ways down the gentle slope of the valley, an arched gateway covered in flowering vines leads into a tidy hedge maze which in turn rings the vast grounds of a city-sized palace. The space in between the maze and the outbuildings is filled with grass and flowers and sparkling streams; beautiful waterfalls intertwine with the architecture, flowing down marble walls and between elaborate stained glass windows. All together it is kind of unfairly gorgeous.

--Oh.

Well.

That's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen. And the Valley's never steered her wrong before.

She heads down to the gateway.

At her approach, the hedges in the maze shuffle back and forth until they form a perfectly straight corridor from outer gate to inner.

Well.

This probably has some kind of purpose other than "keep Annisetimara safe and happy."

But that doesn't mean its purpose is incompatible with that, and the Valley's never steered her wrong before.

She walks through.

When she passes the inner gate, the hedges reshuffle into a more mazelike configuration.

The walk from the inner gate of the maze to the outermost gardens of the palace proper is reasonably short and exceptionally lovely. The gardens, when she gets there, are prettier still.

Oooh!

She wanders around the gardens for a while.

Some of them are neat and orderly; some are artistically wild. There are familiar flowers and ones she's never heard of. It is all lovely.

So lovely!

...Are any of the gardens the kind with edible plants, because she's getting kind of hungry.

Doesn't look like it -

But the valley always provides. There is a gazebo in the middle of this garden; when she reaches it, she finds a table, several chairs, and a picnic basket sitting on the table with wings of woven straw folded neatly to its sides.

Oooh!

This is such a good Valley. Not having to live on miscellaneous edible plants for the rest of her life, yay. What's in the basket?

Bread and cheese and butter and jam and clotted cream and assorted fruits!

Holy crap, this is the most delicious stuff she's ever eaten.

It's not ostentatiously fancy, but it's very good and some of the fruit and cheese is fairly exotic. The Valley apparently plans to take good care of her.

It is such a good Valley.

She eats until she isn't hungry anymore and then keeps exploring.

The city-sized palace and its gorgeous gardens continue to be all-around stunning. And very grand - the doors and walkways seem sized for giants.

As she nears the middle, buildings get taller and gardens less frequent, but there's always something green in sight. Sometimes it's an orchard, sometimes a garden, sometimes a tree growing in a patch of grass encircled by a decorative retaining wall right in the middle of the street.

So pretty!

She's probably here for a reason, but she's in no particular hurry to learn what it is. She'll find out in due time, presumably, and meanwhile everything is lovely.

Lovely archways, lovely colonnades, lovely orchards and aqueducts, lovely gardens, lovely waterfalls, lovely glass-walled tower rising up in the very center of everything and curtained in falling water so that all she can see of the interior is refracted glimpses, fragments of colour, red and green and black and silver and gold...

Ooh, what's in the tower?

Inside the tower is a rose the size of a border-pine.

Its stem rises up trunklike from the center of an intricate tangle of lesser rosebushes. The floor is completely covered in scarlet petals. The branches twining up the trunk and arching around its base bear roses of merely ordinary size, but the big one could swallow up her house with room to spare. The walls are clear glass, framed by iron wrought in the shapes of thorny vines. Along with the water falling outside, they catch the midday sun and pour it into the tower to drench the roses in light.

Wow.

She's just gonna sit here a minute and admire that.

...Not forever, though. Eventually she gets hungry again and goes looking for another gazebo or something.

A flying picnic basket descends from the sky on its woven-straw wings and alights on a bench near the edge of the next garden she passes.

Eeee.

She eats dinner. She explores the gardens some more.

...It gets late. She looks for somewhere to sleep.

One of the buildings opens its doors as she passes. Lamps light themselves in the foyer.

Ooh, what kind of building?

A particularly palace-y one!

If she follows the self-lighting lamps, she will find her way to a lovely cozy room with a view of the western fields. If everything here were not blatantly magic and therefore in a sense priceless, it would probably be the case that she could buy her entire village for the price of that bed.

Heh.

She takes off her shoes, flops on the cozy bed, and goes immediately to sleep.

She can sleep as long as she likes in the morning; the sun won't reach her window for a while.

She wakes up fairly early out of habit and then goes back to sleep until sunshine because why not.

It's a lovely morning.

When she gets out of bed, a wooden tray on delicate wrought-iron legs tiptoes into the room laden with delicious breakfast.

Ooh, breakfast. She eats breakfast.

...She looks around for fresh clothes.

There's a wardrobe! It has fairly simple but outrageously high-quality things that fit her perfectly.

Oh, gosh, such high quality.

...She takes a moment to remind herself that she isn't going back and her guardians can't punish her for being out so long.

Okay, time to change into the nice clean clothes.

They are so nice and clean!

What would she like to do today? There's still most of a palace to explore.

She will continue exploring.

The indoor parts are as beautiful as the gardens, if she cares to investigate them. There's a great big library full of books, towers with balconies overlooking various beautiful things...

...

That is a lot of books.

So many!

Annisetimara had no idea this many books even existed! What are they even about?

Things! Poetry, folk tales, adventure, romance, herbalism, metalworking, animal husbandry...

So many things!

She picks out an interesting-looking historical romance, after some dithering, puts it in a pocket, and continues exploring.

Towers, corridors, ballrooms, sitting rooms, dining rooms, beautiful balconies with carved stone parapets, long halls lined with stained glass windows -

- and then she steps through an open door onto an indoor balcony overlooking what seems to be an art studio, where a twelve-foot-tall humanoid figure is painting a sunset in vivid watercolour, leaning over an enormous table with a paintbrush in his huge clawed hand.

His skin appears to be covered in iridescent scales, dark blue or purple or black with an overlay of green-blue-orange-red-gold that shifts when he moves. His hair is very long and dark, falling in a loose braid down his back. He has a long lizardlike tail that sweeps out behind him for balance when he shifts his weight. He is wearing short trousers in a dark blue that looks very nice against his scales. He looks like the answer to the question, 'What is the most beautiful yet terrifying way to combine a dragon with a gorilla?'

She gasps softly.

He spins and stares up at her with brilliant green-gold eyes.

She stares back.

After a minute, she says, "My name's Annisetimara, what's yours?"

"Tarakova."

He carefully puts down his paintbrush.

"I like your painting."

"...thanks," he says, sounding deeply puzzled. "How... what..."

"...I'm here now?" she offers. "...The Valley's been letting me in and out since I was six, but it's never let me this far in before."

"I never... saw you," he says.

"Well, if you were in here and I was in the forest, that makes sense."

He nods slowly.

"Why...?"

"Why what?"

"Why did you come here?"

"My parents died when I was six and I went to live with my mother's cousin and her husband but they didn't like me. So I got away when I could. Now they want me to marry the baker's son, and he hits his girlfriends, so I'm not going back."

...he nods slowly.

"I was all set to be a forest hermit but this is much nicer."

He laughs.

The sound of it is very human; the sight... much less so. He has fangs.

It's a nice laugh! Annisetimara doesn't mind the fangs; the monsters she's learned to fear are the ones that look completely human.

"Do you know why the Valley likes me?"

...he shakes his head.

"It's never - I've never known it to do this before."

"I've never heard of it either so I figured it wanted me for something and wasn't just friendly," she shrugs. "But I don't really mind as long as it keeps being friendly."

"It's been... very nice to me, except that I can't leave."

"I don't want to leave, but if you do and can't I'm sorry."

He shrugs. "I'm used to it."

"How long have you been here?"

"Two thousand years."

"That's a really long time."

"Yes," he agrees, looking away.

"I'm sorry," she offers, tentatively.

He snorts.

"I more or less deserved it."

Flinch.

"What?"

"They used to say I deserved it."

"I assume you aren't the Emperor of Artelindaion," he says dryly.

"...I don't...actually know what that means."

He sighs.

"The reason I'm here is because I used to rule the world and I was very bad at it and mostly spent my time drinking wine and torturing people to death. Someone decided to get rid of me. I expect they wanted me straightforwardly dead, but their magic didn't entirely agree. I won't claim I'm happy with the outcome but I'm hardly about to say they shouldn't have done it."

"Ah.

...I assume the Valley didn't bring me here for you to torture to death."

"I very much doubt it."

"Okay, good," she says. "If the Valley brought a bunch more people here would you torture any of them to death?"

Shrug. "It doesn't seem like it would be a very good idea."

"Then I guess I still don't get why you have to be alone."

"Transforming me into a twelve-foot-tall monster was also a bit excessive," he says, shrugging.

"Oh, I guess you would have looked different before too. Turning you twelve feet tall and scaled and so on was a bit silly."

"It's not all bad, but I do miss being human."

"What do you miss about it?" she asks sympathetically.

He tries to come up with a coherent verbal answer for a few seconds, then shrugs and shakes his head.

"Okay.

I'd probably be more scared of you if you were human."

He blinks up at her in puzzlement.

"Everyone who's ever hurt me has been human," she explains. "I've never met a dragonperson before."

"...well, I guess I can't fault the logic..."

"And the Valley's never steered me wrong before."

Snort. "It's a very nice Valley, in its way."

"I am sorry it's keeping you trapped."

Shrug. "...Thank you."

"You're welcome.

I don't really believe in people deserving things."

"Me neither, not really, but -"

A moment searching for words.

"...it matters that it wasn't just random cruelty, that putting me here accomplished something worthwhile even if keeping me here doesn't so much."

"...That's true," she acknowledges.

Shrug.

"...Well, I'm here. You're not alone for now."

"That's..."

He trails off, pauses, and then just smiles instead of finishing the sentence.

She smiles back.

Aww, that's nice.

"...have you seen the viewing pool?" he wonders.

"I don't think so. What is it?"

"It's..." He shakes his head. "I can't explain, but I can show you."

He walks toward a wall, and by the time he reaches it, there is a Tarakova-sized door waiting for him. (Maybe that's why all the architecture around here is so big...)

That would explain it. She descends the staircase down to his floor and follows him through the door.

And on the other side of the door, there is a big round room with a very large round stone table in the centre, and the top of the table has a very large shallow indentation, making the whole thing into a kind of giant dish or bowl; the bowl is full of water, and the water is covered in shifting reflections.

"Huh. What's it do, exactly?" Presumably something to do with viewing, but that's awfully non-specific.

"It shows things. Any part of the world I want to see. Or I'd still be speaking Telindi," he explains.

"Oh, I guess the language would have changed over two thousand years," she agrees. "What kinds of things do you look at?"

"Landscapes. Towns. It only shows public places, but there are plenty of those."

"How do you work it?"

"Tell it what you want to see."

She hesitates, and then says, "Show me my guardians."

...Her guardians are apparently looking for her! In non-Valley forest, mind, but still. She shivers.

Tarakova watches the image in the water thoughtfully.

"...I shouldn't have done that. How do I make it go away?"

On 'go away', it goes back to being strangely reflective water without any pictures in it.

"Oh, good."

She is still trembling a little.

...he looks at her. His tail sweeps back and forth.

"I know they can't actually get in here and find me--but they'll be so mad, if they ever got their hands on me again--"

"They won't."

She nods but she still shrinks in on herself. "Making them mad isn't--wasn't--safe."

"I want - I would - protect you," he says, sounding a little surprised about it.

She looks at him.

She looks at all the things about him that are, looked at from a certain point of view, scary.

"Thank you."

He smiles down at her.

She beams back up at him.

He grins.

She looks at his scales and so on assessingly.

"Can I hug you?"

He blinks. His tail goes still.

"I'm not sure I - I still break paintbrushes sometimes," he says.

"...Ah.

That sounds like a logistical challenge but not an insurmountable one if we really want to."

"...well, I guess," he says, hesitantly.

"If you stay really still and I do the hugging that should be safe."

"All right."

She--hugs him around the leg, because that's what she can reach.

He stays very still.

He's warm; the scales apparently don't make him cold-blooded.

Mm.

She lets go after a few minutes.

He smiles down at her again.

"That was nice! You're really warm."

He laughs. "Am I?"

"Yeah. The scales made me wonder if you would be cold like a lizard but you're really not."

"It's true, I am not a lizard," he agrees.

"Lizards' scales aren't as pretty as yours."

"Suppose not."

"I could hug more than just your leg if you sat down."

"...that is true," he agrees.

He sits down, hugging his knees to his chest and curling his tail around himself. It makes a full circle on the floor.

She hugs him.

She can hug approximately one shoulder or arm at a time. He is large.

The scales vary in size and texture: tiny and more like a lizard's pebbled skin at the joints or other places where the skin needs to be flexible, broad and hard over the tops of his shoulders. The edges are never sharp, though they sometimes look it. His hair, if she touches that, is very soft.

Ooh. Soft.

After another few minutes she lets go again and smiles at him.

He smiles back.

"It'd be nice if you could hug back but the paintbrush thing is a fair point," she sighs.

"I'll - try to learn to be more careful, but..." Shrug.

"Mhm. No rush."

Slight smile.

She smiles at him, and looks back at the viewing pool.

"What is there to see?" she wonders. "I've never been very far from the village before..."

"Show me... Karaille," he says to the pool.

The reflections clear, and the pool shows an aerial view of a tiny sparkling city surrounded by huge, perfectly clear glaciers that gleam blue and green in the sunlight. All the buildings are made of ice and snow, some of them sculpted very elaborately. It's stunning.

"Oh, wow," she breathes. "Is this a real place?"

"Yes. They call it the Frozen City. It's only livable because of magic; someone went there once and decided it was so beautiful that he dedicated his life to building a city there."

"That seems like a worthwhile pursuit," she murmurs.

He smiles. "Yes."

"What does the magic do?"

"Makes plants grow that wouldn't otherwise, and food appear in places where food is stored, and things like that. And keeps the glaciers clear, because that's what makes the place so beautiful."

"Yeah." She gazes raptly into the pool for a few more moments, then says, "what else is there?"

"Show me Akatirei," he says.

A volcanic island, its slopes green with life, perched in an emerald ocean. A busy port city sprawls across one sandy shore. Ships in a variety of styles sail to and from its docks.

"Wow," she breathes. "That's so much water!"

He giggles. "Never seen an ocean before?"

"I've never seen anything but my village, the forest, and the edge of the Valley before!"

"Well then! Tell me when you're done with Akatirei and I'll show you something else."

She grins and stares at Akatirei a little longer and then she tells him she's done.

He - does not hug her because he might crush her by accident -

"Sinthavaraina," he says next. This turns out to be a vast area of almost perfectly flat land, with an occasional dip or rise and even more occasional tree, but mostly just scrubby grass and flatness. It's not exactly beautiful, but it's a little awe-inspiring.

Awe: is inspired.

Tarakova giggles again.

"There are so many things!"

"Want to see another one?" he asks, swishing his tail happily.

"Yes!"

Rainforest, desert, tundra, savannah, taiga. Huge towering mountains. Bustling cities. Waterfalls pouring like curtains three miles across.

She is absolutely stunned by the waterfalls.

"Waterfalls are one of my favourite things. It's why this palace has so many."

"That makes sense. They're not that big though."

"That's the biggest one in the world."

"Wow. That makes sense, it's really big."

Nod nod.

"The library's really big too, I didn't know there were that many books in the world."

"The world has a lot more books in it than my library."

"Gosh."

He laughs delightedly.

"I'd seen less than ten before in my whole life."

"Well, now you've seen more."

"Yeah!"

Smile.

"Can I hug you again?"

...he smiles. "All right."

She does this.

He holds still to be hugged. He is very warm and - solid. Lots of muscle.

That is nice. Annisetimara doesn't have a whole lot of experience hugging people to compare to, so the solidity goes uncommented upon.

He smiles down at her.

She steps away after a little while and goes back to oohing and aahing over the viewing pool.

The viewing pool has not yet run out of new things to view. It is a big world and has lots of things in it.

Annisetimara can look at them for hours.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwww. It is so good. She is so happy and it's the best thing.

There will be more hugs before she is done.

He holds very still for them! And has warmth and scales and soft hair!

His hair is soooo soft. Annisetimara resists the urge to outright ask to pet it.

Then he will be oblivious to her hair-petting urges.

Eventually: "If you wanted to be able to touch--part of me--without risking it breaking, we could, like, comb my hair out over a flat surface and you could pet it without any bones under to give way if you're not careful enough."

...he giggles. "That would be silly. And - not what I want."

"Okay. What do you want?"

"I want... to hug you, properly," he says. "And I'm afraid if I do it I'll break you."

"That is a problem," she nods. "I can't really think of any better options than just practicing not breaking stuff."

"Yeah. I can - do that."

Aaaaand she loses the battle to temptation. "Meanwhile can I pet your hair? It's super soft."

He laughs.

"Yes, all right."

Hairpets! Soft soft soft soft soft.

So soft. He closes his eyes and smiles.

"This is nice," she says. "It's been kind of a long time since I've been able to hug someone."

"Yes, same with me," he says wryly.

"Yeah," she sighs. "Two thousand years is a lot more than twelve."

"Yes."

Slightly sad, pensive hug.

Holding-still-for-hug.

Eventually she lets go and returns to the viewing pool.

It still has so many things!

Such things!

...Eventually her stomach decides to remind her that she hasn't eaten since breakfast.

...Tarakova laughs.

He goes to the wall and opens a door that wasn't there a moment ago; it leads to a dining hall, where the palace has already seen fit to provide lunch.

She beams at him and walks through. ...Is everything him-scaled, that seems like possibly a logistical challenge...

Nope, the doors and walking spaces are but the seats at the table are her-scaled. ...which means he kind of can't sit down to lunch with her.

"I...guess you're not also hungry?" she hazards, given the general convenience of the place.

"...I... would have trouble eating with you, I think," he says.

"Oh?"

Uncomfortable shrug.

"...Okay. Well, we don't always have to be in the same place."

He nods.

"Enjoy your lunch," he says, and he walks out another suddenly appearing door.

She definitely does enjoy her lunch. Her lunch is delicious. And then she takes out the book she borrowed from the library and--hm, she can probably find somewhere cozier to sit and read it than the chairs at the lunch table if she looks.

There are many cozy places available! How about this big squashy chair by a window at the end of a hall?

Perfect. She sits down in the Chair of Squashiness and reads.

...There's something distinctly weird about reading a book that isn't one of the same ten she's known her whole life, but...good weird. Like not being afraid of someone at all, which is also something she hadn't done much of before today.

Unless something else happens between now and then she'll pretty much just sit here and read until dinnertime.

A dinner tray climbs in the window.

...That's adorable. How is it not spilling the dinner, it can't be perfectly horizontal while climbing, can it?

It is a remarkably acrobatic tray! The tray part stays perfectly level while the legs do the climbing.

So adorable. And, presumably, delicious.

Yep.

Mmmm.

She finishes her dinner, reads for a while longer, and then decides to see if she can find Tarakova again.

The valley doesn't immediately offer her a convenient spontaneous door. Perhaps it can't immediately guess what she's after. The palace is still lovely, though.

Oh well. She will find another convenient reading spot and keep reading her book, then.

It's a good book.

Yeah.

When it gets late enough, can she find the room she slept in last night?

Spontaneous door!

Spontaneous door! Maybe the fact that it's giving her one now but didn't earlier means Tarakova didn't want to be interrupted at something. She...actually, no, she isn't going to just take off her shoes and flop on the bed, does the wardrobe do nightclothes?

Yes it does!

Actual nightgown, then! And then sleep.

Cozy, cozy sleep.

So cozy. Once again she wakes up early out of habit and then goes back to sleep until the sun is streaming in.

Breakfast arrives by adorable animated tray.

So adorable. And delicious. What a good combination.

She eats breakfast and then spends about half an hour reading her book and then she gets dressed and puts the book in a pocket and goes a-wanderin'. Maybe there will be spontaneous doors, maybe not.

No spontaneous doors this morning, it looks like. Lots of beautiful architecture.

She wanders until she's familiar with a little more of the layout, then decides to try asking. "...Can I have a door to Tarakova?"

Spontaneous door back to his art studio! He's working on another painting.

Pretty!

She sits down on the balcony and takes out her book.

He paints. It's lovely.

There's something nice about having another person around, even if they're not actually interacting. When the person isn't scary, anyway. She reads her book and occasionally looks up from it and glances at the painting-in-progress.

It's a landscape. She might recognize the mountains from her adventures with the viewing pool.

She does! Nice!

Eventually she finishes her book, notes the time and how hungry she is--not super, but a little peckish--leaves, has lunch, swaps out books in the library, and then returns.

This time he looks up and smiles at her.

She grins back. "That's really pretty," she says, nodding at the painting.

"Thank you!"

"The sunset one from yesterday was really pretty too. I guess you've had a lot of time to get good at it," she muses, "but I'm still impressed."

"It took a while to learn," he says. "I like it. I like being able to... make something beautiful."

"That makes a lot of sense."

Nod. Paint paint.

Smile. Back to reading, then.

It's nice, having her be around and happy while he does things.

That's the idea! She is perfectly content to be around and happy and reading a book while he does things, and interact when one or the other actually has something to say. This was a good idea. Although given that it's probably a bad idea to distract him from his painting she'll let him start the conversations...hm...

She asks the castle for something to write with and on.

A delicate little wooden tray tiptoes onto the balcony on delicate little wooden feet, bearing pen and ink and paper, and then folds up into a lap-desk.

Aww.

She makes notes on things in the books--the one she's reading and the one she recently finished--that she didn't really have the context to make sense of. She can ask about them in case he understands them, next time he wants to look up from his work to talk to her.

He finishes the painting he's working on and comes over to stand by the balcony, which puts him within a reasonable conversational distance.

"That's really nice! Did you do it because of the viewing pool yesterday?"

He smiles and nods.

"That's sweet."

"I liked seeing all the prettiest parts of the world again."

"It's amazing how many of them there are!"

He laughs. "It's a big world."

"I think I'm starting to get the idea...it's almost sad, how many people never get to see more than the tiny piece of it where they live. If things had been different I'd never have known anything but forest."

He nods. "Yes... it would be nice if more people could see the world like that."

"Yeah.

I'm really glad the Valley lets me in." She shivers slightly. That is not the biggest reason she is glad the Valley let her in.

"So am I."

"Yeah. It's good that you don't have to be alone...at least for the next handful of decades," she sighs. "I'm not immortal. But something's better than nothing."

"The valley made me immortal; I certainly didn't start that way. It might do the same for you," he says.

"Maybe! But it didn't turn me into a dragonperson, so who knows."

He laughs.

"It'd be nice, anyway," she says. "I found some words in these books I don't know, could you explain them to me if I tell you what they are?"

Shrug. "I don't see why not."

She lists a modest number of words, including a handful of noble titles, some expensive objects people in forest villages would have no reason to have heard of, a handful of euphemisms (for bastardry, homosexuality, and promiscuity, not that she knows this), and "concubine."

"Asking what the weather was like when someone was born is a coy way of suggesting they're a bastard," he says. "Calling a woman a honeybee means she sleeps with other women. Comparing a woman to a bridge means she sleeps with men, but lots of them. A concubine might mean a rich man's mistress or a slave he keeps for sex, depending when and where the story takes place."

"...Are those things that happen a lot?"

"...Which?"

"...Well, until just now I didn't know that women sleeping with other women was a thing--how would that even work? I don't--I'm not married, I've never--I have only the vaguest idea of what sex is supposed to entail, but it involves a man putting his thing in a woman's thing, that much I know..."

...he giggles.

"I can suggest some other books you could read if you wanted to have a better idea of how that all works," he offers.

"Okay. And what's a mistress?"

"When a man is married to one woman and secretly sleeping with another woman, the second one is his mistress."

"Oh. Huh. I think that happened once, with the smith and the miller's sister. People thought it was happening, anyway, dunno if it actually was. They called it an affair."

"Yes, that too."

"Most of what I know about sex is that it's supposed to be what a husband and wife do but sometimes people do it even when they're not married, I didn't know it happened a lot."

He laughs. "It happens a lot, yes."

Shrug. "Well, there's lots of stuff I don't know about. At least the library'll help me fix that."

"Libraries are good at that."

"Yeah."

After a moment's consideration she puts her hand through the balcony railing and reaches over to pet his hair.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. He smiles delightedly at her.

She smiles back. "So you were going to recommend me some books?"

"Yes. Come to the library and I'll show you the ones I mean."

Spontaneous door! Library!

With some reluctance she stops petting so she can go down the stairs and through the spontaneous door.

And Tarakova searches the shelves until he finds what he's looking for and starts carefully pulling out books and piling them up on an adorable little wooden tray that follows him around on very long thin wooden legs. It crouches progressively lower as he stacks more and more books on top of it, but its balance never wavers.

"The tray-things are so cute."

He giggles. "They are!"

Book book book book book. Wandering off to find a different shelf. Book book book.

She peers up at the tray, trying to see if she can examine any of the spines.

The lower part of the stack is easily visible from where she stands! The titles aren't super informative. A lot of them seem to be fiction, but the two big ones on the bottom are textbooks.

Textbooks make sense. She's not entirely sure why fiction...well, probably it would be good at showing examples of things considered too basic to put in a real reference.

"There," he says, when the stack is nearly as tall as he is. "You don't have to read them all, but they should all help."

"Thanks!" ...She looks at the stack. There is no obvious way to reach anything that won't cause an avalanche if she pulls it out.

The tray summons several friends to divide the stack into sub-stacks of more manageable size.

Convenient! She picks up the top book from one of the stacks at random.

Fiction.

"I think I'll go for a run," says Tarakova. "Enjoy your book."

"Enjoy your run," she says, and finds somewhere to sit down and read the book.

That sure is a book in which people have a lot of sex!

Oh gosh.

...

She keeps reading it.

The sex is described in enough detail to answer some of her questions about the mechanics of how women might manage to sleep with other women.

Huh.

...Well, she's pretty sure she's not a honeybee.

There are plenty more books to read if she'd like to learn more!

...Yes.

She will be so educated.

That's one word for it, anyway. Wow. Do people really get that flexible...? This is fiction, right?

Yes, it's fiction. Well, most of it is fiction. The textbooks aren't, but they have nothing to say on the subject of whether people get that flexible or not.

Huh. And some of it's...wow, people do that stuff?

At least in fiction they do! So whether or not anyone does it, clearly some people at least like to think about doing it.

Then some people probably do it.

...She suddenly remembers Tarakova telling her he used to torture people to death. Well. At least now she has more of a sense of why.

Hey, Tarakova might not torture people to death for sex reasons...

...

...although there's this one book that shows noticeably more wear in the spine than the rest, about a sex slave in an imaginary empire who gets tortured nearly to death several times and has conflicted feelings about how much she enjoys it... there's also a whole lot of rape, some of which she conflictedly enjoys and some of which she really doesn't at all.

She should...probably find this less compelling than she does.

The book won't judge.

And it has a reimagined version of Tarakova in it, and...it occurs to her only after she's finished it what the creasing in the spine has to mean.

It is likely to indicate that this book has been read a whole lot!

And there's really only one candidate for by who.

Well, this strongly supports her hypothesis for why the torturing people to death, anyway.

Doesn't it just.

Would she like to read any more porn today? Perhaps some textbooks instead?

Textbooks yes that seems so much safer.

...Actually, dinner first.

The food trays refuse to come into the library, but dinner is happy to meet her just outside.

Makes sense. Om nom dinner. Okay, now to look at the textbooks.

Textbooks! Here are the academic names and known properties of all of the parts of the human body!

Huh! She hadn't previously known academic names were a thing.

She has learned so much today.

She has learned a hell of a lot today.

She reads the textbook until she's ready to go to bed and does so.

Bed is the coziest. West-facing windows encourage her to sleep in as always. Breakfast arrives by adorable tray.

Yeah...

After she has eaten breakfast she seeks out the painting studio.

Tarakova is not painting today!

Fair 'nuff. She asks for a door to wherever he is.

He is in a large pond, swimming!

She--stops. And stares. And turns bright scarlet. Apparently he sensibly didn't want to go around in wet trousers, after.

Well, all the parts of him that would normally be covered by shorts are underwater and therefore somewhat obscured. But, uh, yep.

He hasn't spotted her yet. She has a chance to flee in embarrassment if she likes!

Nnnnnope, she is way too frozen in place to do that.

He turns and sees her and starts giggling and ends up briefly underwater as a result. There is some undignified splashing before his head pops back up again. "Hello!"

She makes a similarly undignified squeaking noise before managing "Hello!"

"Should I go put some pants on and come back?"

What she fully intends to say is "yes." What actually comes out of her mouth is "How accurate was the book about the slave girl?"

She immediately claps her hands over her mouth with a horrified shriek.

...he giggles his way underwater again.

She hides her face with her hands and decides that the fact that she hasn't died of embarrassment is weak evidence in favor of the Valley having made her immortal.

After several more seconds, he surfaces.

"It got most of the details wrong, and I'm not sure any people with Nimire's attitude to torture actually exist and if they do I certainly never met one, but it had the general idea."

She does not ask any more stupid questions like what kind of details. Instead she just says. "Okay."

"Sorry," he adds, "I probably shouldn't laugh."

"I did not mean to ask that question out loud," she says, flustered. "...But I can see why you would find it funny."

He grins wryly.

"Answers the question of why you would torture people to death," she mumbles.

"Yeah, it does."

"Whatever else those books were, they were not uneducational. ...Pretty sure I'm not a honeybee."

He giggles again, but this time manages to stay afloat.

"Do people really get that flexible?"

"Not usually. And depends which book you mean. But I picked all those ones because they were mostly not wrong about that sort of thing."

"Oh. Okay, thank you."

And now he sort of doesn't know what to say. He treads water and looks at her.

"...I kind of want to come over and hug you, but you're mostly underwater and not wearing pants," she observes.

"...I can solve one or both of these problems," he says, grinning.

She valiantly does not say anything about the possibility of him only solving one of these problems. "That sounds like an excellent idea."

He giggles at her and then dives underwater.

Half a minute later, he emerges from a spontaneous door, still dripping wet but now wearing pants.

...Those pants sure do fail to conceal. A thing.

She turns bright scarlet again and makes a noise similar to a teakettle that's been on too long.

He giggles some more.

"You, um, you've got, um," she fumbles inarticulately.

"Should I," giggle, "go away and come back again," giggle.

"...Maybe?"

Well that's not a definite yes so he's just going to keep giggling.

She sits down and puts her head between her knees and breathes heavily. "Why are you so pretty," she mumbles.

"Blame the valley!"

She raises a fist and shakes it at the air, still with her head between her knees. "Whyyyy have you betrayed meeeee?"

Now he is giggling so hard he has to sit down.

She glances up, sees that the offending object has been blocked from view by his current position, and uncurls slightly. "So. Um. Does that just. Happen a lot. Or."

He grins at her.

"Stupid lousy breaking problem."

"...yeah." The grin fades.

"You," she says, pointing at him imperiously, "are going to practice a lot and fix the problem."

"Am I now."

"I would ask if you knew how stupidly hot that one book was except that I already know the answer to that question, considering how creased the spine is!"

Giggle. "It's my favourite."