Meditating isn't fun so much as relaxing.

Either way, he fixes the symbols in his mind, sits cross-legged on the bed, and meditates.

Can he discover any hidden meaning this way?

Nope. The symbols don't seem to reveal their secrets to him even in this post-conscious state.

It was a long shot.

He takes a deep breath and exits the meditation and peers at Sadde and her computer screen.

Sadde's having fun figuring out how to read user input and turn it into something her potential program can understand.

"I didn't get anything from meditating on the symbols. I wanna try quizzing Windy again, do you mind?"

"Nope, go ahead."

Windy is summoned.

Does windy know anything about these symbols? Which ones are most important, what they mean, he can play twenty questions to get specific translations if so.

The Windy does seem to indicate that two of those symbols are more related to her than the others. The top one more strongly than the bottom one, specifically.

Terry thanks Windy and quizzes the other cards on their affinities. Well, quizzes Change at least, asking Sadde to detransform for a moment if she doesn't mind. Loop and Float probably can't talk.

Sadde detransforms and hands Terry the card.

The non-Windy cards aren't very helpful, and aren't directly related to any of the four characters or the twelve symbols like Windy is.

He hands Change back to Sadde after. "I guess we still have to visit the library later, then. How's your program coming along?"

She Changes again. "I was trying to do input processing but I decided to do that later, so I'm doing the actual-processing-the-operations part," she says, and gestures at the if-else structures she's using.

"Ooh, let's see..."

She seems to get it pretty well. Deeper and deeper layers of if-then structures aren't generally a good idea, though- let's explain how to write subroutines and functions!

Oooh! Those sound really useful. She can copy them to other programs that do the same thing at some point and just call them there, yeah?

It's slightly more complicated than that. You have to make sure to include the file the functions are listed in whenever you try to use them in a new program. There are also lots of pre-written functions for common things on the internet, if you're stuck or want to skip some of the tedious busywork.

That sounds useful for most practical purposes, but while she's learning stuff she thinks she'll try to write the functions herself.

That is sensible and smart!

And, okay, they've been kissing occasionally all day but now Terry would kind of like to do more of it. Once she reaches a stopping point and saves her work.

(Click here to skip the explicit content.)

She saves her work, and is more than happy to indulge in more kissing. Especially because, well, she's kinda been holding back all day.

This is going to be fun, then. He's going to have to repeat his experiments on good places for hands.

Ooh, yes, he will, won't he? She's perfectly willing to help with these experiments. And perhaps they could be conducted in Sadde's room again?

Right, that's the obvious place to do it.

He's not actually much less nervous about the whole thing than last time. On the one hand, it's not so new. On the other hand, it's still new in other ways.

But Sadde is still delicious and delightful either way and he tells her so.

She finds him delicious and delightful as well! And super adorable. And she comments that she's been holding back all day because whenever he started on an explanation spree she wanted to eat him up.

"Well. I should make sure to stockpile more explanations, then." Kiss! Is it just Terry, or could Sadde's shoulders possibly be served better by not being covered in shirt?

Sadde concurs. Off with the shirt!

...she also believes there's still one too many shirts here.

That is more than fine.

He is briefly distracted by wondering why there's such a huge difference in how shirtlessness is treated between boys and girls. Then he's distracted by something else. Two somethings else.