"Thanks, Jorem. Best innkeeper and best inn I've stayed at yet."

She heads back upstairs.

It's not immediately obvious who's running the body when Sable comes up; the foxgirl is sitting cross-legged at the head of the bed with her eyes closed, her ears twitching every few moments.

Adorable.

"Would you cuties like to split some bread and cheese with me to tide us over until we're up for heading down?"

"I think we're good to head down, actually," says Hibiscus. Then she flips a coin she's holding in two fingers over to the other side.

Her tone shifts, gets softer. "But I won't say no to bread and cheese. Um, we've been practicing listening and swapping."

"Ahhh, that's a pretty great thing to do. How's it feel, Sin?"

"It's still really weird, but I installed a trigger for us to swap back and forth on and that helps a lot. I was worried that Hibiscus would... get stuck."

She flips the coin in her hand over again.

"It's a bit of a hack compared to what you've got going with you all, but it seems to work. The real issue is that when one of us is out, the other one is really hard to hear unless we're deliberately listening. It really jarred Hyacinth to not even have a chance to talk."

She flips the coin back over.

"Now that we can switch reliably, though, that's a little less scary. I don't feel as worried that... Hibiscus will just take over my life, given that she's been deliberately practicing giving me back control."

Sable grins and nods. "Yeah, that sort of thing is important to practice, both for the skill itself and to reassure each other. We had to practice a bunch too, early on."

She sets out the plate, tears off a chunk of bread, and puts some cheese on it, then takes a bite.

Hyacinth takes some bread and cheese as well, and eats.

It helps. It helps really surprisingly much.

"Thanks a lot for going and fetching this," she says.

"Gladly, love. Gladly."

Sable sips her water and smiles, then has another few bites.

And for a little while they just eat companionably in silence. It seems like Hyacinth is still processing.

Sable squeezes her hand encouragingly while they eat.

Hyacinth smiles and squeezes back.

"Alright," she says after a little while. "Let's go have a proper supper."

Jorem greets them warmly when they get downstairs, and says he'll have a plate of shepherd's pie out for each of them shortly. The inn is comparatively crowded tonight, people scattered across all the tables and the bar, some of them even in adventurer garb.

For example, there's this slightly-femme catboy dressed in black leather with a bandolier of knives across his chest. He's eating quietly by himself in a corner of the room.

He's kinda hot, NGL, but also he's an obvious total noob. It's the classic "shady dude in the corner" character every guy who thinks they're cool makes before they smarten up a bit. She has been there. 

The cat ears kind of spoil the effect though, so maybe he's got a sense of humor. She knows most real edgelords would probably take Darkling if they weren't just boring old humans.

"Hmm. Boy with the knives looks promising," Sable murmurs. "Want me to invite him over?"

He does seem the kind of person to have died already a couple times, fighting solo in close with knives like that. 

"Sure, go ahead."

Sable walks over to the corner table the catboy's eating at. "Hi there," she greets with a warm grin. "Any chance my girlfriend and I could pick your brain about a few facts of Blessed life?"

He looks up from his pie and gives Sable an assessing look. 

"Sure," he says. "Hit me."

"Come on over to our table then, I'll buy you a drink. What're you having?"

"I'll take an ale if you're offering." He gets up from his place, bringing his plate of shepherd's pie along. "The name's Cocoa, by the way."

"I'm Sable," she replies. As they get back to the table, she introduces him. "Cocoa, meet my girlfriend, Hyacinth. Sin, this is Cocoa. I'll be right back with an ale for him. You want anything, love?"