The sky is low and dark, a deep twilight blue lightening to green around a dim and distant sun. All around her, the ruins of some ancient city stand empty and crooked and silent, vast stone blocks cracked and crumbled, iron spires gone to rust and tipping over gently like drunk old men. Here and there among the ruin, a faint light shines; and the light reflects from that low sky in rippling gleams like moonlight on water. In places, the ruins are tall enough to cast shadows on the sky.

A whale swims by overhead, blocking out the sun.

Oh.

If this place isn't dangerous enough to abandon entirely, she thinks she'll want to come back just to look at it. The abandoned sunset doesn't seem like a loss, now. Even ruined as it is, it's very pretty. She twitches a finger to pull at a thread of starlight in her mind to bookmark this location for later. Is that an ocean overhead? But she's certainly breathing air, she would have noticed if she'd missed and started breathing water. Not that breathing water would hurt her, but she'd definitely notice the difference in composition.

She looks around with a small smile, and carefully begins investigating.

The architectural style is distinctly foreign. A lot of curves and circles - low-rise apartment buildings arcing in tiers like blocky crowns around central courtyards, stone-scaled streets snaking between sweeping lines of buildings whose profiles arch and leap and dive like curling waves. It would be magnificent if it wasn't half rubble. It's still a little magnificent even so.

One building in particular seems to lie at the center of the pattern, and it's by far the most intact thing in sight, the stone only slightly falling apart, hardly any of its metal skeleton exposed. It even has a handful of unbroken windows, glass glittering in the light that glows from the streets - and it is literally the streets: the stone itself gives off a faint white light, in patches that look attributable to the slow scattered failure of a spell that once covered every tile.

Interesting. She might have to take the time to figure out how to copy the street light phenomenon. It's - neat. Pretty.

But first she thinks she wants to see why that building in particular is so intact. Is there anything interesting inside?

The outer door leads to an entrance hall, its walls decorated with looping arcs of luminous stone. She could turn off it onto a side corridor, or continue forward along what is clearly the main path.

Main path! Side paths are for when she's figured out what this place's deal is.

The door at the far end of the entrance hall leads to...

A cavernous space, ringed with crumbling arches, blue-grey stone swirling with thin lines of faint white light.

In the center of the room sits a chipped marble throne, rising from the floor in fluid lines like a frozen splash of silver water; and in the throne sprawls a man, tall and dark and wreathed in shadows, his eyes glowing with a light as green as the sea. The edges of his tattered black cloak shift like shadows and curl like mist. He props his head on one hand and stares at her with a hard-to-read expression.

... Huh. Is he like her...? It's sort of hard to tell. Especially since she hasn't met anything like her before, and she has no reason to think they'd be structurally similar.

Whatever he is, he's human shaped, which is about the most promising progress she's had in years. And he's on a throne. She doesn't have a ton of practice at curtsying, but somewhere along the way she picked up the ability to move with something resembling grace. She steps forward into one of the more well lit portions of the cavernous hall, and curtsies politely.

Her clothes are loose approximations of what she would have worn on Earth. The dark jeans and violet blouse are almost ordinary, though both are softer and sturdier. Her jacket is less ordinary - it looks like intricate dark lace set on a darker, light-eating black. Subtle flecks of stars sit fixed in the inky sky, fixed in place even when she moves, like moving an aperture looking into something instead of the something itself. There's something off about the rest of her, too, something a bit too perfect. It's a little uncanny. Like someone sat down to make a person and then succeeded too well, made something too pretty and perfect. In the dark, the irises of her eyes have a faint golden-white shine to them. Her hair is a touch too red, it catches the light better than it should.

He frowns in puzzlement and asks her something in a language she has predictably never heard before.

Yep, that was pretty predictable.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand you. I might be able to rig up something that'll let me speak your language if I work at it, though."

He looks at her consideringly.

"Can you -" she points at him, then at her mouth, "talk? It will help me with aiming." She makes a little 'go on' motion with her hand, to express that she would like for him to talk, and keep talking.

...apparently he can't, or at least doesn't want to, because he just looks at her some more.

She sighs. Okay, well, she has a perfect memory, and he said something earlier. That's probably enough to work with.

While she doesn't need to sit anymore, it'll probably be communicative if she does. So she does. She sits, cross legged, closes her eyes, consults her memory, and starts fiddling with her magic. To outside viewers, it looks like she's just sitting there with her eyes closed. To her, it's - well. There isn't really a metaphor. Like sewing with starlight, or conducting the movement of dust to make a symphony, following the hint of a melody that she only heard once but that is written down somewhere...

(She might notice after a while that the stone of the floor shifts ever so slightly, rising and falling by a fraction of a millimeter, in time with the shadowed man's breathing.)

She's actually barely paying attention to her body. Maybe she'll notice it later if she reviews the sensations it felt.

After a while of work, she opens her eyes and looks up at him.

"̶̝̩̦T͖̭͉͞ͅh҉̱e̘r̨̞͙e̼̲̱̣̣̟͟,͍̯̪̮̠̻ ̧͍̞n͖͖̫̦͓o̥̪̺̜̲͠w ̙͔͇̬̰̙͞ͅ-̲̪" she begins, in his language, almost intelligibly. Then she stops and huffs, annoyed. "̲̀ͅṈ̷̤o͚͚̯̠̺̤̻͡.̵̪̤"̖͖̱

She makes a face, briefly wrestles with proverbial starlight some more, then tries again: "There. Now do I sound a bit less, uh. Creepy and unnerving?"

"Where did you come from?"

"Another - um, dimension. I'm from a place called Earth. I got forcibly relocated, and now I'm trying to get back. Have been for a while. Hello."

He stares at her some more.

She shifts in her position on the floor, a little uncomfortable. Is she doing something wrong...?

"Sorry for appearing unannounced in your city, by the way. I - assume it's your city?"

"Not much of a city," he says. "But it is mine."

"It's -" she fidgets awkwardly on the floor, looking at her lap. "... I like it, it's a nice city. Even if it's - it's - maybe in need of some serious spackle and major structural - I'm sorry, I don't mean to - you are literally the first human shaped person I have seen in years, I am really tragically under socialized so I sincerely apologize if I'm -" She waves a hand awkwardly. "Too much this. I don't - if I'm bothering you I can go -"

"There hasn't been anyone else here for hundreds of years," he says. "Sometimes someone stumbles in through one of the old portals, but they mostly have the sense to run right back out again."

"Oh," she says. "Then I - absolutely don't have to go." She smiles, tentatively, at him. "I'm Yvette, what's your name?"

"Saikirei."

"Nice to meet you," she says, with absolute and slightly intense sincerity.

He smiles, slowly.

"Nice to meet you too."

She beams at him, then shifts how she's sitting so she can rest her chin on her knees, arms wrapped around her legs.

"Do I, um, look kind of terrifying and uncanny? Because I am pretty sure that I do, but I haven't seen anyone in years so, um. I haven't been able to fix it."

"...well," he says. "Probably not any more terrifying and uncanny than me."

"Weird things have happened to my sense of terror and uncanniness. You're not uncanny. You could probably be terrifying if you tried, but you're not right now. ... Mostly I just want to fling myself at you and try not to cry on you."

...he blinks, surprised and confused and uncertain.

"I -" She scrunches a little. "I'm sorry, that was probably coming on too strong. I'll be fine. You don't need to touch me if you don't want to."

"I... I'm not..."

He shifts in his seat, gesturing with both arms at the crumbling walls of his throne room and implicitly at the ruined city beyond.

"I did that," he says. "I'm not... the sort of person people fling themselves at."

"Oh. ... Did you mean to?"

"Does it matter?"

"I guess not. It's been a while. And either way I'm not - I don't -" She stops, frustrated with her inability to say the thing she means.

"I don't care very much whether or not you're the sort of person other people would fling themselves at. I'm an unborn cosmic horror that gets more and more inhuman the more things I figure out how to do. I cry starscapes and don't sleep and don't need to blink or breathe air or eat. People probably wouldn't want to hug me, either. I care whether or not you want me to, and I care if I want to, and that's - that's basically it."

"...it's not that I think you shouldn't touch me because most people wouldn't, it's - it's that - I don't want it to be because you don't know."

"Oh. Fair enough, I'd be upset if someone hugged me under false pretenses and then turned out to regret it after they knew the whole story." She hugs her knees closer to herself. "I don't think I'd regret it unless you tried to eat me or something."

"Well. I won't try to eat you."

"And - do you - want to? I - I'd regret it if it turned out you found me gross and weird and didn't want to touch me, but did anyway for some reason."

"...I don't... know how to tell," he says.

"Oh. Okay. What are you feeling? Maybe I can help."

...he shakes his head.

"Okay. Take your time, then, feelings are hard. I don't mind waiting."

"I don't know if time is even the thing I need..."

"Oh," she says, in a small voice. She looks down at the ground. "Okay. I'm sorry. You don't have to figure it out if it's hard. I'll be fine. We can talk about something else."

A wispy, immaterial limb, which can't quite seem to decide if it's an arm or a wing or a tendril of swirling black smoke, reaches out toward her from the dark haze surrounding his throne and settles over her shoulders like a blanket of warm soft shadows.

At first she stays very still, afraid the slightest wrong movement might send it away, looking at it longingly and leaning towards it. When it settles around her shoulders she relaxes, snuggling it slightly and gently pulling it closer around her.

She smiles at him.

He smiles back, soft and tentative. The shadow-blanket wraps her up cozily.

Yvette nuzzles the shadow-blanket affectionately. It's so snuggly.

"Thank you," she says, softly.

"You're welcome."

It is the snuggliest blanket. Or possibly hand or wing. Whatever it is, it is the snuggliest one of it.

Snuggle.

She's just going to snuggle beneath his blanket/hand/wing/limb and smile at him, then. Delightedly.

This is good. This is a good thing.

Snuggle, snuggle.

"So I am kind of terrifying and uncanny, then?" she confirms, after a while of this. "Anything that's really obviously - not right about me? I don't particularly like looking uncanny."

"...???"

Blanket/hand/wing/limb snuggle. She can nuzzle it again, even.

"I um. Accidentally let my original body get destroyed a ways back. I did the best I could to recreate it, but." Shrug. "I was kind of hoping that having literally any outside perspective would help me figure out the problem and fix it."

"...I don't know how to say... I'm not exactly the best authority on what looks human," he says, gesturing at himself with one hand. The glowing green eyes, the way he doesn't always look quite solid at the edges, the threads of mist connecting him to the shadow-blanket wrapped around her.

Shadow-blanket nuzzle.

"Fair enough. I think you look fine. I just - if I look inhuman I want it to be deliberately, not because I messed up years ago and died. If there are other humans in this dimension, I might go sneakily stare at them to see if I can fix it."

"There probably still are. Up there." A vague wave at the ceiling, accented by a sweep of shadow.

"Okay," she agrees.

She shifts under the shadow-blanket to pick a mote of starscape out of her jacket. She could just make one, but this is slightly less effort; it's why she bothers with the freaky star jacket at all. Casually, she releases it, and it floats up towards the ceiling, fading from impossible-dark to transparent, to finally completely invisible just before it reaches the ceiling. This task done, she snuggles the shadow-blanket some more, humming happily.

Shadow snuggles: they're the coziest.

(The literal surface of the ocean overhead is not inhabited, but there's some preindustrial human settlements on nearby landmasses. Also, this underwater ruin is big. The city is only part of it; the actual extent of the air bubble is closer to the size of a small continent.)

She can move her little invisible mote pretty quickly. After spotting how large the ruin is, she splits her mote and sends one to go awkwardly stare at human settlements, and lets the other wander around the ruins looking at pretty things. That one can be visible, she doesn't think she wants to hide what she's doing from Saikirei.

"Do you mind if I stay here a while?" (Snuggle, snuggle.)

Snuggle. "You can stay."

"Oh, good," she says, beaming. She considers her current arrangement of shadow-blanket snuggles, then gently repositions herself so that she can be lying down for Maximum Shadow-Blanket Snuggles. She's comfortable in just about any configuration, but this seems much more snuggly. More of her is free to snuggle, now. Snuggle, snuggle.

Aww.

...The shadow-blanket scoops her up and carries her closer to his throne; he reaches out tentatively to pet her hair with his actual mostly-solid mostly-human hand.

She giggles delightedly when scooped, and snuggles the shadow-blanket happily while being carried. When he reaches out to pet her, she leans into his hand, smiling brilliantly at him.

Her hair is very soft. It's smooth like silk, and entirely free of tangles or frizz.

Aww!! She's pettable!! So soft!!

More shadow-limbs emerge from his aura to snuggle her, and somehow she ends up in his lap, cradled against his chest, being thoroughly cuddled.

Maybe someone else would find a bunch of shadow-limbs emerging from an ominous aura of shadow to touch them more than a little bit unsettling, but she's had a shitty couple of years. This is great, and she's delighted with it. Eeeeeeeeeeeee!

She wraps her arms around his chest and snuggles as close as she can. She's snuggly and soft and warm, though warm like sunlight is warm, not like a typical flesh and blood thing is warm. It's a little like cuddling a snuggly, person-shaped star that has toned down the heat and fire as much as possible for maximized snuggling potential.

He hugs her with one arm and pets her hair with the other and wraps her up in cozy shadow-limbs. Yes good.

"Eeee," she giggles, nuzzling him. "I am so snuggled."

"Turns out," he says, laughing a little, "I want to hug you!"

Well now she's giggling and gleefully attempting to aggressively snuggle him even more. It is impossible, she is snuggling him the maximum amount that her human-shaped form will allow. Maybe at some point she will get adventurous and delve into other Best Snuggle configurations, but not right now. Right now she just wants to be very snuggled.

"I'm so glad!" Snuggle snuggle aggressive snuggle.

"You're so happy," he says delightedly.

Nuzzle-snuggle.

"I'm being extremely snuggled! You're - giving me a thing I've been desperately wanting for years. I am the happiest."

Snuggle snuggle snuggle!!!!!!!!!!!

Eeeeeee yes so many snuggles!

She hums happily and settles comfortably in his lap.

Leaving just a mote of herself to be snuggled by him seems... insufficient. There's something comforting, about being human shaped and snuggled. Something she doesn't want to give up in favor of leaving a shard of herself to do it for her. Neither does she want to just stay here forever in his arms - well, okay, maybe a little. But she's on a timetable, and there are people who will waste away into nothing while she snuggles Saikirei for the eternity that she longs for. She's hesitated to split her attention in too many directions, hesitated to expand her mind too much in the directions necessary to pull it off comfortably, because she hasn't had any real anchor to hold onto. Now - maybe she does.

This doesn't mean she should gleefully fling herself to self-modify indiscriminately, but maybe she can see about what she'd need to do in order to comfortably run two human-shaped bodies at once. While snuggling him. She is not going to stop snuggling him for the foreseeable future. She does not need to sleep or eat or even breathe, she can absolutely stay right here in his lap as long as she likes.

She is so cozy and pettable and soft and good. He doesn't know about forever, but he wants to snuggle her for a long, long time.

Yvette is so on board with this plan. She has things to do, but none of them require her to stop snuggling him, so she'd rather not stop at all. He's just so comfortable.

From her little invisible mote of self, she stares at people and studies what makes them not uncanny. In the expanse of stars that holds her mind, she notes down what improvements could be made to her human shaped form. She maps out a plan to implement them. Then, separately, in another part of her mind, she plots out directions her mind could safely expand. Both tasks are tricky, in different sorts of ways. One is artistry, figuring out how to twist a shape so that it looks like her when she was human, with materials that don't really understand how to be human shaped. The other is about careful pre-planning, of observation of what things will be necessary and what things are safe to change without potentially compromising herself. She switches between them, with occasional breaks for sending motes to new dimensions to see if her family is anywhere nearby, and to simply enjoy the snuggles and hairpets.

After a while of this:

"I think I've figured out a form that's less unsettling," she announces with an affectionate nuzzle. "If you would like to see and judge?"

"Sure." Pet pet.

She beams at him, caresses the hand petting her hair affectionately, and then swirling tendrils of darkness wrap around her, swallowing her whole. For a few seconds an Yvette-shaped too-black void sits in his arms, stars shining out through the black. Then the tendrils retreat, and reveal her new shape.

Most things she left intact. The broad strokes and the facial structure are definitely the same; those she got right the first time. It's all of the things on top of it that gave her form the uncanny nature. She's definitely recognizable. But - yes this is an improvement. There's still a hint of too-perfect to her, but not so much as to make her actively uncanny. A very pretty model in perfect makeup, mysteriously under the perfect light. Implausible, but not actively impossible, not a wrongness marring the world.

"Aww. You're pretty." He hugs her some more.

Hug!

"Thank you! And not too uncanny? I think I'm almost actively normal looking now!"

"I still don't think I know what normal looks like. But you look nice."

"I'm going to declare this a victory, then! Perhaps not a total, final victory, but at least a step in the right direction." She turns her head to locate the hand responsible for the hairpets, so she can give it an affectionate kiss. She locates the hand, and bestows one upon it. Then she goes back to smiling at him.

He makes an adorable squeaking sound and hugs her.

She giggles, delighted.

"You're so cute!"

"Well - well - so're you!"

"I accept this description with gratitude and grace," she agrees, proudly. Snuggle, snuggle.

Aaaaa so good and cozy.

Yessssss such snuggles all the snuggles she's so happy.

He may have another affectionate kiss, this one on his cheek. Because he was so cute when she did it the last time.

He makes a happy noise and wraps his arms around her and presses his face against her shoulder. She is so pretty and snuggable and good!!!!!!

Yvette giggles again, wrapping her own arms around him and kissing the top of his head. So cute!

He giggles and nuzzles her shoulder. (Most of him is wrapped up in blurry shadows that approximate clothing, soft as shadows to the touch; but his hands and head are unobscured, solid, human, real. Mostly.)

Mostly is good enough for her! And the shadows are nice and soft, anyway. She definitely doesn't mind them.

Snuggle, snuggle.

"I'm glad I found you."

"I'm glad you found me too."

She hums happily, and settles in to him.

"Have you just - not wanted to leave, or are you actually stuck down here? I might be able to help if it's that second thing."

"Second thing."

"Ah. I'm sorry." Pet pet pet, snuggle snuggle. "I'm here now, even if I can't get you out I'm not abandoning you down here alone, all right?"

Nod. Snuggle snuggle.

So many snuggles for her snuggly shadow man. Also a kiss to the top of his head, for tolerating upsetting questions.

"Do you mind talking about what happened?"

"I was... a prince. I wanted to be Emperor. And immortal."

Sigh. Nuzzle.

"Managed the second thing," he murmurs, a little unhappily. "The first..." he waves a hand at his ruined continent.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs, petting him. Snuggle, snuggle.

Snuggle.

"So then everyone died and I couldn't leave. I - sort of am the place, now." He waves a hand and the stone floor ripples like water before smoothing back out into its customary shape.

Pet, pet.

"I save memories of a lot of the places I've been. I can show you some of them, if you want to, um, see a place that isn't here for a little while."

...He shakes his head. "It would just be - things I can't have."

Nod. Snuggle.

"Okay. Well. You have me, now. This part of me doesn't have to go anywhere."

Snuggle.

"You're - good."

"Thank you! So are you. You're snuggly and nice and I want to keep snuggling you for the foreseeable future."

He struggles with words for a moment, and then gives up and just hugs her tightly.

Hug!!!!

"I thought about making extra bits of me here so you could snuggle them too," she informs him, nuzzling him happily. "I could if you'd like me to, actually, but I'm perfectly happy being the happiest little -" she doesn't have a word for it in his language, so she uses a loanword from English. "- burrito."

Giggle. "The happiest little what?"

"Ah, on Earth there's a type of food that involves wrapping a thin, cloth-like bread around a food filling, and that is called a burrito. So, I am the happiest little burrito."

"Aww."

He pets her hair.

She squirms happily in his shadow limbs to nestle closer to the hand petting her hair.

"I'm maybe not edible, though. I am a burrito that is terrible at the primary purpose of burritos."

He playfully nibbles her ear.

"Eee!" she giggles, delighted.

She tastes - weird. Not bad weird, just weird. Like cool mist from a waterfall, like a faint hint of a strange exotic fruit, and slightly tingly, like he's nibbled on something with just a bit of a natural electrical charge to it.

He laughs and pets her hair some more.

She nuzzles him, still giggling a little.

"Did you need to check?" she laughs.

"Well, how else were we going to find out?"

Giggling! Such giggling.

"I suppose there was just no other way. Thank you for your sacrifice, brave explorer. What did you learn about my edibility?"

"You're kind of tasty!"

"Really?" she laughs, delighted. "I hadn't constructed myself for that."

He nuzzles her. "Yes, really."

She nuzzles him back, then looks at him thoughtfully, faint smile on her face.

"Hmm?"

"Oh, um." She looks down, shyly. "... I was considering kissing you."

"Oh."

(Ee.)

"Do you, um." Snuggle. "Want to?"

"I—yes."

Snuggle.

Well, all right then.

She kisses him.

He kisses back, carefully, tentatively.

She's pretty clearly inexperienced, and similarly tentative, but she's quite sincere. And he's nice to kiss.

Oh what a good idea this was.

Such a good idea. She hums happily and slowly becomes less tentative about kissing him.

Better and better!

Definitely.

She's content to kiss him for a long while. Gently, slowly, patiently.

She can do other things while also kissing him. Not things that require any sort of thought or creativity, granted, but she can organize and distribute motes to investigate other dimensions and gather information for her to sort through later. The invisible stalker mote can be split to watch humanity some more, so she can later figure out how best to help them. Collecting data is easy, it doesn't require her attention once she's given her motes parameters to follow. And then once they're floating around she can just - give him the focus he deserves. Mm.

She is so cozy and kissable and soft and good and. Like kissing rain, like tasting sunlight. He wants to snuggle her forever. He wants—

—well. Some things. (The shadow-limbs wrapped around her curl a little tighter.)

... Yvette is just going to quietly put the tasks her motes are doing in the background on hold. That seems like the kind of thing that she should be doing right now.

She squirms in his grasp and kisses him with a bit more hunger. She might want some things too, she's been awfully alone for a very long time.

Oh. Good. That's a good thing. That is a very very good thing. More kisses are also good things, and more of touching her, very much more of touching her, so much of that—he is glad she likes his shadow-limbs, they like her too—

She feels so liked, and it's intoxicating - she's touch starved and has attention to spare and he's proving to be very, very good at holding all of it.

In the back of her throat, or perhaps from somewhere else, she makes a strange little echoey whine that sounds like wind through a canyon and ice cracking and shifting but mostly like a woman who's enjoying herself very much and doesn't want him to stop. She touches the shadow-limbs affectionately with a hand, caressing them and pulling them closer and gently leading them to where she would like to be touched. Her other arm is devoted to pulling him closer, because it's very important that she be as close as possible to him. She doesn't need to breathe, but she does need to be kissing him - he's so good he's so good there's so much of him and she wants to experience all of it -

He wants to wrap her up and never let go, wants to hold her and touch her and kiss her and cover her in shadows and make her make that sound again... the shadows that were serving him as clothing unspin themselves and merge with the half-substantial tendrils wrapped around her.

Oh, are they ditching their clothes now? Sounds good to her. Hers can turn to voidspace that fluidly moves to snuggle the tendrils around her to pepper them in affectionate and snuggly night-kisses, before dissipating entirely. She's tempted to keep them around, but she thinks that for her first time she'd like to keep things relatively simple. Let's just have it be this one body. Later they can explore the available possibilities. For now they can just - explore this. Exploring this is pretty great.

A marble throne is not the right place for this. The stone shifts and softens and reshapes itself into a nest of pillows, and Saikirei continues his attempt to have as much of himself touching as much of Yvette as possible.

This is a good goal to have, and she is so supportive of it. He can touch as much of her as he likes. She'll even make more little echoey otherworldly-but-still-human-like noises, just for him.

Good.

She's very - encouraging. And hard to break. It's clear that she enjoys his attention very much.

He isn't trying to break her!

...but it's nice that he can't.

She enjoys his attention so very much.

Her body doesn't get tired, precisely, but she can get tired. Of a sorts, anyway. She can be exhausted mentally and emotionally, and enjoying his attention this much is definitely exhausting. In all of the best ways. She absolutely wants to be reduced to incoherent adoration. It isn't long until she has her wish. He reduces her to incoherent mewling and appreciative whimpering with a bit of sustained effort. Her body isn't the sort of thing to collapse into nightgoo without her sustained attention, but wow, if it were, she would be such a happy puddle.

He snuggles her amid the nest of pillows, petting her hair and wrapping her gently in shadows.

Yvette makes a satisfied hum and nuzzles him. For a little while she just happily shivers in his grasp.

"You're so good to me," she sighs.

"You're - good to be good to."