cheated

[mute_pen]

The castle is livable indefinitely. Etty flies over the space around it, but she's not as fast as the Baron was in his owl form, and she can't fly for very long if she's hungry and can pack nothing if she travels as a swan; she doesn't range farther than she can travel in a half-day, and she doesn't find Astgabels or anyone who knows where it is. (Not many people are willing to talk to a girl in a feather dress from out of nowhere, but a few are.) She flies home to Nona after each failed journey. They feast on what appears on the dining table. They snuggle. They pick through the library. Etty writes her thoughts. They sleep, curled up together in Nona's bed.

One morning they wake up together and are lying there in comfortable silence when Etty scoots up and kisses Nona.

Comments

[growcrooked]

"I don't know," she says. "Do you mean how much of it do I need to do? I definitely don't know that. Or how strongly do I feel about doing it? I'm not sure I know that either. I know how I feel about never ever doing it again, though, and it's really really bad."

[mute_pen]

"I meant the first thing."

Write, write.

[growcrooked]

Nona curls up and has some more sads.

[mute_pen]

"I'm sorry," murmurs Etty. "I just - I don't want anybody but you, and I don't - understand."

[growcrooked]

"I don't understand either," says Nona. "I don't understand why it's such a thing the way it is."

[subtly_artistic]

Bella will Not Be A Sex Therapist some other day, apparently. "She doesn't want anybody but you. For a monogamous person that's connected with - depth of feeling, commitment. If Etty heard a reliable prophecy about the future that said she slept with somebody who wasn't you, she'd assume this meant that in the prophesied future, you'd broken up or that she didn't like you much anymore or something was unsatisfactory about the relationship - correct me if I'm wrong, Etty."

[mute_pen]

"You're not wrong."

[growcrooked]

"Oh," says Nona. "That's not - no. At all. No. How much I love you doesn't have anything to do with how I feel about anybody else."

[mute_pen]

"I don't understand how that works."

[growcrooked]

"I don't understand how not that works," says Nona.

[subtly_artistic]

Can you be of any help here? Bella asks Celo.

[pythbox]

You're the telepath, he points out. Ask Nona if you can read her, then explain her to Etty and then maybe explain Etty back to her because you seem to have Etty pretty well figured out. I'm a nymph; what I know about monogamy amounts to 'don't fuck it'.

[subtly_artistic]

"Celo suggests that I could read Nona and then try to explain you to each other," says Bella.

[growcrooked]

"Sure," says Nona.

[subtly_artistic]

"Is there anything I should not look at?"

[growcrooked]

She shrugs. "There's some stuff you might not like, but I don't think there's anything I'd be upset about you knowing."

[subtly_artistic]

"Okay."

Bella touches her temple and reads.

[growcrooked]

Nona is mostly wondering what she should be thinking about. How do you explain something when you don't understand the thing it's supposed to be different from? Loving Etty and having sex with Celo don't have anything more to do with each other than loving Etty and masturbating do. Slightly less, actually.

[subtly_artistic]

Bella picks her way through thoughts. She gets a brainful; the detail isn't graphic but it's not something she'd have asked for.

"...Okay," she murmurs eventually. "What I'm getting amounts to - you would be just about as bewildered if Etty were deeply hurt by you trying hot chocolate - you don't have so much a sex drive, an impulse to be lovey with someone, as you do an arbitrary number of these things that may or may not be operative at any time, and Etty gets her very own over here -" Bella gestures - "and it's just completely failing interact with whatever you do with Celo -" gesture far away from the first. "Am I putting that into words in a recognizable way?"

[growcrooked]

"Yeah," she says. "I guess. Do most people just have the one impulse to be lovey and they can only point it at one person at a time? That's weird. I think I have - well, one per person I feel lovey about."

[subtly_artistic]

"Most people at least approximate the one-impulse model," confirms Bella.

[mute_pen]

Etty nods.

She looks at what she has written, which includes notes on what Bella reported.

"Is there a way I can see what you see?" she asks Bella.

[subtly_artistic]

"...Difficult. But not impossible. If Nona doesn't mind. I don't think I can do that and filter content at the same time, so Nona will have to present me with anything she wants to show you, on purpose, specifically."

[growcrooked]

"Okay!" says Nona. "...What do you want me to show you? Specifically?"

[mute_pen]

"I'm not sure. I don't know what there is."