... no response. 

Also, is it just her or is her voice higher —

Eva pauses. 

She experimentally squeezes her chest. 

She looks down at her crotch and flexes her pelvic muscles experimentally. 

... Okay, she has bigger questions, like where did her dick go. 

The black crags and rushing sea have no answers for her. 

Seriously though, what is she supposed to be doing about being on a blasted crag of rock in the middle of the ocean.

"Hello?"

Something stirs amid the waves. Something with a fish tail, but the upper body of a human. 

Its eyes are milky and sightless, but they fix on Eva all the same. 

It opens its mouth, and sings a beautiful song. 

She should go to it —

(A faint snatch of another song clears her mind, as if sung from high above in the sky —) 

She starts backing away. She does not want to tangle with an actual goddamn siren.

The siren slowly approaches. It's not adapted to come to land, but it sings, and with every note the compulsion grows stronger —

"Stay back!" She shouts over the song, trying to drown it out. "I'm not yours to — eat or whatever!" 

And then the siren's song is suddenly interrupted by the piercing horn of an electric train locomotive. A strange craft, like a train that had a few cars folded up on each other into something long and sleek with a hint of blockiness, pulls up beside the rocks, splashing both the human and the siren.

A black-haired trans girl shouts from the engine's window. "Get in!" She jerks her thumb at the door behind her.

— Okay, she'll take it!

She piles into the trainship and slams the door in the siren's face. 

"Better luck next time, sirens!" She pulls away the second her new friend is aboard, charging out onto the open waves in a spray of seawater.

Then she turns around with a smile, now that there's nothing around. Now that they're not in a life or death situation, it's viscerally obvious that the black-haired girl is like her, full of connections to other places, like an electric cityscape, a vast empty sky, a starlit forest, and what is unmistakably an Earth.

"Welcome aboard. I'm Sable."

"Hey, uh, I'm Eva." 

Eva smiles hesitantly and offers her hand to shake. 

"I'm sorry, I have no idea what's going on. I was having... dreams... and then I woke up on that crag of rock with no idea how I got there. Also I was suddenly a girl. I mean, I was a girl before, but now I'm really a girl — what am I saying. Sorry."

She giggles ruefully and shakes Eva's hand. "Lucked into a magical transition with the spiffy powers, sweet. W—I got this awesome trainship instead."

With a shake of her head, she continues, "I wouldn't say no to a magic transition, but I think one of my powers is doing a better-than-hormones thing gradually in the background. We'll see, though."

"You said you were having dreams just before you woke up on the rocks? Wow, you've got to be even newer than w—I am!"

Eva smiles. "Yeah, I literally woke up like five minutes ago. What've you figured out so far, because I've got nothing."

"We're travelers. We walk — or in my case drive — between worlds at natural holes between them, where they leak into each other. There are lots of worlds, and this one is all ocean, with rare exceptions like what you woke up on."

"Ooh. That's super cool. So we're literally in a different universe right now? That... would explain the floating train."

"Yep! The train's from an electric city world, full of stone and metal people, although folding it up on itself seems to be one of ou— my powers. It's... for some reason I just get the impression that the lever that controls that wouldn't work for someone else."

Eva flashes her eyebrows. "... Lemme guess, you're and plural?"

Sable sighs and facepalms. "Fuck. We just can't stop slipping on that around people we actually care about getting to know, can we?"

"It's cool! I, um. I have an awake character myself, she goes by Isabella. She's cool, you might get to meet her later. She's a vampire."

"Oooh," she grins, her cheeks turning faintly pink, "vampires are fun. We look forward to it. There's five of us. I'm Sable, the others are Hailey, Maya, Neo, and Ruby. So, heading anywhere in particular, or shall we just keep exploring?"

"I mean, give me a minute, my whole time here was basically spent trying not to get gutted by a fish. I haven't even figured out my powers yet. I assume I have some if you got a whole train and stuff."

She pauses, focuses. 

"I think I can tell which way we're heading. West-southwest...?"

"Mhm! Dunno what there is to find here, but we plan to find out."

And then with a look down at their clothes — a nightshirt with a heart on it that just barely hangs low enough to cover their panties, stopping mid-thigh — she continues, "And maybe find someplace to buy clothes on the way."

Eva's wearing a black v-necked shirt and a black skirt with a white water-lily pattern.

"Yeah. I've only got this one outfit too. Have you been to any other worlds yet?"

She focuses again. 

"I feel like there's a direction i can go that's... inside me. It feels kind of cozy. And then..."

She points north. "That way to something that feels unsettling..." 

She turns slowly. "And off far to the east, I feel a connection to... peace and tranquility."

Eva frowns. "And... It's weaker, but..." 

She points downwards, into the deeper sea. 

"I feel a vital pulse from deep below us."

"Ducked into the city long enough to get the train, but haven't explored it much. Wasn't keen to stick around in this state of dress, and don't have anything to sell to buy clothes with. Could maybe try for cargo runs?"

She shrugs and smiles.

"Sounds like you've got some interesting connections, though. We've got a similar inward place, but ours feels emptier than cozy. Also got the urban world I mentioned," she points south-southwest, "someplace starlit, welcoming, and loamy-smelling," northeast, "and vasty black," high in the sky to the south.

"Yeah. Surely there's something worth selling on this planet. But if it's all ocean..."

Eva looks over at Sable. "Can this thing dive, or is it a purely surface ship?"

"From deepest blue to highest black, this girl goes everywhere," Sable replies with a fierce grin.

"Niiiiice. I wonder what's down there. Want to go find out?"

"Hell yes." Her left hand grabs a blue lever and flips it, causing a chime and a brief rumble through the locomotive. "Trackless pitch mode enabled, full trackless attitude control unlocked." Her right hand grabs the attitude control, a sphere with rods sticking out of the top and bottom, set into a nested series of partial rings to guide and track its movement. "Diving!"

She tilts the orb forward, pitching downward, and the trainship dives beneath the waves, as though guided by invisible tracks.

"Whoa!" Eva rocks on her feet, taking a wider stance as the craft dives unexpectedly.

Then she grins. "You don't do things by halves, do you? Alright, let's see what's down here."

She goes over to the train windows and looks out. 

The black, jagged rocks descend precipitously into the darkness, forming underwater crags of basalt. Amid them, long strands of heavy kelp float in the waves, darted through by flashing silver fish. As she watches, a siren swims by, catches one of the larger fish in her webbed hands, and tears into it raw with her rows of needle-sharp teeth. 

"Oh, wow..." 

Eva wiggles a little in place; the view is beautiful, even if the savagery of the sirens outside sends a shiver down her spine. 

"It's gorgeous down here." Electroluminescent wires running the length of the train in thin lines switch on, illuminating the water around them with their orange glow. Bright headlights join the running lights, piercing the gloom. Sable's eyes fall on the vision of ferocity out the window, her breath catching in her throat. "And intimidating, that too."

As she sweeps her gaze across the crags and kelp, she hums thoughtfully. "Those... twig our instincts a bit. Feels like we know how to get them to grow, and what they're called. Crag basalt is good stone, and shivering kelp dries like teak, while retaining flexibility like bamboo."

"How do we harvest it without being eaten by sirens, though? Does this thing have robot arms too?"

She pauses. 

"Huh. For some reason it feels like I wouldn't have to worry about drowning. Do you have that too?"

"Drowning is for scrubs," Hailey interjects with a sharp smirk.

"Heh," Sable jumps back in with a softer smile. "Hailey means yes, we do have the no-drowning power. Feels tied to this place, somehow, like our connection here provided it."

"Yeah, it does have that feeling to it."

Eva looks out at the sea. 

"I think we shouldn't dare the deeper parts of the sea just yet. This is more than enough danger already..."

She frowns. "Any thoughts on how to gather wood safely?"

"Hmmm."

"Hailey again. Got an idea," she replies with a grin. "Seawater's more conductive than fresh water, yeah? We got a sparky electrical power from the city world, same place as the train. Electricity just charges us up, and we can zap stuff with it."

"Ooh, like an electric eel! I should probably be, uh, very far away for that though. I'm pretty sure I fry like an ordinary human still."

"Yeah. You stay on the ship, maybe hang out at the cargo hatch once we're parked by a forest and stow kelp I throw at you?"

"Sounds like a solid plan. Does the train have, like, airlocks in this form or no?"

"Even. Fucking. Better." Her smirk sharpens, and she points at the exterior door, the same one Eva just slammed in the face of a siren a few minutes ago. "Go open the door."

Hailey, meanwhile, is piloting the ship steadily toward a nearby forest of shivering kelp. The thick, wavering stalks of seaweed trail deep into the fathomless, darkening blue.

This is probably okay but does not mean she doesn't feel a little scared. 

She goes and opens the door. 

The door swings inward — outward feels like she'd be fighting the force of the water rushing past them and not worth trying while they're moving — but the water doesn't follow it in. Instead, a wall of water presses against the invisible boundary of the threshold, unable to cross into the cabin of the engine.

"Fuckin' sweet, yeah?"

"Whoa."

It is at this precise moment that a Siren, swept up and disoriented from the passage of the vehicle's wake, splashes right in through the door. 

"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHKKKK", it screeches.

Eva startles, falls back from its clawed fingers, and abruptly a bright light shimmers around her. A moment later, she emerges from the glow with bright pink hair and eyes in a sailor fuku, and catches the Siren with a right hook across the face before it can sing.

"Shit!" She flips down a hatch labeled with a lightning bolt, revealing a compartment for charging batteries and connecting electrical equipment, and shoves her right hand in there, while her left whips out to point at the siren, a bolt of electricity arcing out and zapping the fish-tailed woman in the face.

"Good hit," Hailey says to Eva, "and love the meguca look."

The Siren goes down. Eva shoves it out the door with her foot and closes it again

"That was some seriously bad luck," she grouses.

Then she looks down at herself, and releases the transformation. 

"Well. I feel a little better knowing that I have a combat form, but I still don't want to get up close and personal with another of those sirens anytime soon."

Hailey nods, keeping one hand in the electrical compartment while she steers closer to the forest, drawing in more and more power. Not gonna let another siren catch her without a charge, no ma'am.

"Yeah, fuckin' valid. You can stick to just kicking them back out if they go for the ship instead of me, while we're parked. Probably I'm more tempting to them, though."

The kelp draws closer.

Eva nods, and turns back into her pink-haired, pink-eyed self.

"I'll try my best. You've got something that works against their songs?"

She looks away a bit, flushing. "Not directly, but I should be okay. Ish. The open sky would insulate us from it if we were on the surface, but if that doesn't work down here... I think I have a hack."

She does not elaborate immediately.

"A hack, huh...?" She frowns. "Like, maybe switching disrupts it?"

"Heh, um. Yeah! That's definitely worth a try too."

Her blush brightens a bit.

"I should probably tell you my actual idea."

She still is not explaining her actual idea.

They have only just met this girl.

"Okay, now I'm curious what your actual idea is and why you're being so hesitant. Spill?"

She nods and takes a breath.

"I'm a sadomasochist. And it's much easier to find an outlet for the masochism than the sadism, just claw myself up a bit while looking at porn. So if the sirens manage 'brain-off horny' on me, the pent up sadism and the threat and my competitive streak and the fact that I've got lightning at my fingertips are all gonna mix together, and my instinct is gonna be to zap them. And enjoy it."

"Oooooh." 

Eva smiles, a little more toothily than necessary. 

"I think the two of us are going to get along just fine."

"That said, though, I have no such protection away from the stars either, so if you have like some earplugs or something like that that'd be great."

"Ooh?" Hailey grins. "That sounds promising."

"But no, I have no earplugs. I can use the profits from this trip to buy some, which'll work for next trip, but your best bet at the moment may be to hope the sound doesn't transfer well across the air bubble. Or hide in a different room if they show up."

Eva considers for a moment. 

"... Can you park the ship for a moment? I have a feeling I can fix this but only if I go inward for a moment, and I don't know where I'll show up when I come back."

"Sure." She pulls the throttle back to the centerline, then tugs on the brakes for a moment, bringing the ship rumbling to a stop.

"Alright, here goes. I'm going to need to focus for a second."

Eva sits down cross-legged on the floor and starts feeling for the connection.

She sits back and watches, a curious smile on her face.

A moment later, Eva disappears, as if sucked inward into herself. 

She appears in a cheery, cozily-lit cave before a pearlescent egg as large as she is.

She reaches out and puts her hand on the egg, and memories rush through her: all her life, every moment of it. Her graduation from university. Swim lessons in fourth grade. Seeing the site where Leifla Eiriksdottir discovered North America, sent by the forces of United Scandinavia. She'd asked if the fire was real and told "it'll give you a real burn"; it turned out to be a gas fire because the whole historical reenactment village kept burning down from too-historical fireplaces. 

It all passes through her, and then the feeling is gone.

The egg clicks softly once, barely loud enough to hear.

She goes and sits back on her bed, and pops back again. 

Hailey is still in her seat, an eyebrow raised. "So that's what it looks like from the outside. Not very dramatic. Felt a lot like a normal connection point, while you were gone, but not quite the same. Not sure if I could follow you or not."

Eva nods.

"I'm all backed up now. It's okay if I die, I'll respawn. Short my memories of the intervening time, but you can't have everything. If you want that too I can bring you over and you can borrow my pearl."

She gives Sable a smile. "I think I'm ready."

Her jaw drops. "That would be fucking awesome. Yes please. Immortality is good. Yes fucking please."

"Alright. Hold my hand and I'll bring you with me."

Eva reaches out and offers her hand to Hailey.

She reaches out, takes a slow breath, and then takes Eva's hand, briefly sucking in air tightly through her teeth at the feeling of skin contact with someone new.

Exotrauma continues to be a bitch, yes, thanks.

But she steadies herself, and nods firmly.

And Eva pops through again.

The egg greets her, just as pearlescent and solid as before.

She points. "Just lay your hand on that and it'll do a capture. I'll have to manually retrieve you if you die but it's way better than having no backups at all."

She nods, and rests her hand on the egg.

Countless memories flash through them, in far more detail than they normally have anywhere near the capacity to recall: bullies, ADHD diagnoses, medication causing a nervous twitch when they were eight, screaming breakdowns over realizing pointlessness at twelve, crushes, their first kiss, the lingering, poorly-understood discomfort of unidentified gender dysphoria, their eleven year relationship with their abusive ex-girlfriend before they'd cracked their eggshell, all the moments where Hailey had been fronting and no one realized because they didn't understand they were plural yet, the horrible mess of a cult that formed around that one author, the excitement taking hormones for the first time, exhaustion of pointless dayjobs, and so much more.

It's done in a moment.

She shakes her head to clear it.

"Wow. That was a fucking experience."

"Isn't it just? Even knowing to expect it, it's a lot."

Eva smiles softly and offers her hand again. 

"We could stay here, but I think we were in the middle of something."

She nods, steels herself, and takes her hand. "Yeah." Her breath is a bit shallower during the contact, though it's easier than it was the first time.

"Let's go get our salable goods."

"Yes, let's."

And within seconds they're back through.

Eva goes to the door of the submarine and nods to Hailey. 

"Ready when you are."

She pulls the trainship around so the aft cargo hatch is right next to the forest, then parks again, locking the train in place.

"Okay. Lemme show you where the hold is."

She gets out of her chair and walks over to a door at the rear of the locomotive, checking if Eva's following.

Eva follows, apparently all ears.

Through the door is a tight little junction of corridors, with a door directly ahead of them, and upward stairs to either side. "Up there is the living quarters, lounge, and galley. You're welcome to claim a bedroom up there when we're done with this. Through here," she gestures at the door, "is the hold."

She opens it and steps through, revealing a large, boxy compartment spanning the entire width of the ship, with some fold-up shelves off to the sides, various straps in a box in a corner, and an enormous hatch occupying the entire far wall. She heads directly for that hatch, swinging it open out into the water, which obligingly fails to pass through the threshold into the ship.

"Here we are."

"Looks like we've got a lot of space. Once we get samples I think my world can make more, but getting those samples is the hard part." 

Eva frowns. "I have a bad feeling for some reason. I'm not sure why. It just..." 

She looks out at the forest of kelp. 

"Be careful out there, okay?"

She holds up a hand and stops suppressing the slight overflow of having a full charge for just a moment. A few sparks jump between her spread fingers, and she winks. "Will do. I got this. Get ready to catch lumber."

And she turns and leaps out the hatch into the water, looking around carefully.

Eva shifts to her combat form. It's stronger, anyway, and she's going to be hauling wood. 

She's got this. She hopes.

The water is still and quiet. The kelp forest has a few fish passing through it, but nothing of any real size. It's not that far to go.

She swims the few feet to the first piece of kelp, grabs hold, and braces her knees against it a bit lower down. She leans back, pulling the sturdy stalk as hard as she can, but she's not quite strong enough to snap it.

She scowls and swims back into the hold.

"Shit. It'll snap like bamboo, but I'm not quite strong enough to break it. Lemme see if there's a saw in any of the leftover junk that came with these cargo cars before we folded them into the ship."

She starts rifling through boxes.

Eva nods, closes the hatch behind Hailey and helps her search. 

Unfortunately, no saw or cutting implement is in evidence even after they take a thorough search of the hold. 

"I could try snapping it with my improved strength?"

"That'd work. I'll guard while you snap?"

"Yeah, that'll probably work. I don't like us both being out of the ship at once, but I think we can manage." 

Eva goes over to the hatch again, and takes a breath. "I'm not going to trust that no-breathing power before I've tested it, but it seems to work fine for you, so... On three?"

"On three," she replies with a smile. "One, two, three."

And she leaps into the water, looking around.

Eva swims out with her, transformed, taking powerful strokes with her hands and feet. She is, for some completely mysterious reason, suddenly wearing a bikini top and swim skirt. 

She stops at the kelp, grabs a handful, and strains to snap it over her knee.

Which is precisely when a whole school of sirens, encrusted with barnacles on their sea-green bodies, swim out of the depths of the kelp forest and start closing fast.

Hailey scowls. They haven't started singing yet, but they probably will. Better to have a bit of separation between her and Eva when she starts getting zappy, and hope the combination of her powers trying to guide the electricity and the greater distance to Eva will make it mostly hit the sirens.

She swims closer to the oncoming threat, and then lashes out with lightning as soon as she it feels like she's in range.

The sirens startle as some of their number fall, and start singing. Their voices are sweet and ethereal and fill everyone who hears them with longing.

Oh... That sounds very nice...

Eva starts drifting towards the sirens with a look of vague bliss on her face.

Her cheeks flush. That does sound nice. She swims a bit closer.

Wasn't she doing something? Right, she was zapping these sexy fish ladies.

...Why?

Doesn't matter, s'hot to see them flinch and twitch as she electrocutes them, so keep at it.

She ramps up the lightning.

The pulse of electricity flashes through the water, burning and disorienting the Sirens —

— and Eva swims directly into it, a blissful look on her face —

And then gasps a curse into the water as she's burnt and electrocuted. 

She takes a gasp of water, doesn't drown, and starts swimming away from the sirens as fast as she can.

Oooh, that's fun to see. She swims closer to the disoriented sirens. Pity about the barnacles, those kind of detract, but it's still fun to see them fry.

Wait, these are a threat. Yeah, she still endorses her actions, just not quite why she was doing them.

She keeps swimming closer, ramping up the shock further. You do not get to threaten her, her headmates, and their new friend. Not allowed. Please promptly fucking die, sirens.

More sirens die, and the rest scatter into the kelp forest, fleeing the lightning.

Eva growls and snaps off the kelp she was working on, and starts slowly swimming back toward the ship.

She glares at the departing sirens, then swims back to help Eva haul, her head still on a swivel in case the sirens come back, or a new school shows up.

Eva hauls her way back into the craft and thwaps the sodden kelp onto the floor before collapsing onto all fours. 

"Fuck," she swears.

Hailey nods and scowls. "Fuck." She takes a breath, then—

Sable switches in, and kneels down beside Eva, a gentle hand squeezing her shoulder. "Hey. You did great out there. It was a fucking mess, but you handled it. Need a hug?"

She prods her side and hisses in pain. "I think... I would've died there if not for the magical girl form. As it is..."

She coughs up a little blood. 

"Surface? The stars —"

She nods firmly, standing. "I'll be back to help you up while we're surfacing." And then she's off.

She sprints through the hold, down the junction, and into the engine, hopping into the seat. Brakes unlocked, twist the attitude orb back pitch the pseudo-tracks up, and ramp the throttle gradually up to full.

The train steadily picks up speed, churning through the water toward the surface.

Okay, path is clear all the way up, she has a few minutes to help Eva before she has to level back out and park again.

Back to the hold she runs.

Eva manages to get herself into a sitting position against the hull. There's pain inside her, all the way from her left shoulder down to her left thigh. The bolt seems to have missed her heart, for which she's not sure whether to be grateful or annoyed. She's not sure she likes these memories. They kind of hurt.

Sable frowns at the sight of her, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, Eva. That's gotta hurt." She crouches down beside her.

"Want a lift to up to the lounge, rest on a sofa up there, and be closer to an aft balcony where you can get a view of the sky once we're on the surface?"

"Please. Talking hurts."

She leans forward, slips her arms under Eva's shoulders and knees, and scoops her into a princess carry, lifting her gently as she straightens back up. "Hup."

Eva flushes. She's lighter in this form, evidently. Has she lost height...? 

Her side twinges and she closes her eyes with a wince.

Sable cradles Eva gently to her chest, her cheeks flushed as well, and carefully carries her out of the hold, turning to slip through the door, then up the stairs. She does her best not to jostle her, making her way through the center door on the upper level. That car turns out to be a surprisingly spacious lounge, for a train car, with couches and chairs and tables and cabinets with transparent doors that look like they might be bookshelves. She continues down the lounge, stopping at a plush-looking sofa all the way at the far end, right by the aft door. Then she gently lowers Eva onto the sofa.

"How's that?"

"Better." 

Eva reaches up with her less-injured right hand and squeezes Sable's arm.

"I want to remember this. Promise you'll tell me if the stars don't work?"

She nods softly, resting her hand atop Eva's. "Will do. I'll try to level us out gentle when we get to the surface, make it easy on you back here. You just hang on, stick it out a couple minutes longer."

"Mhm."

She doesn't say anything else.

Sable dashes back to the cockpit, hops into the seat, and watches anxiously for the surface. A minute or two later, the ship breaches the waves, rolling ahead into the sky. Sable's already dialing the throttle back, though, and pitching the attitude control back down, easing out to level as smoothly as she can, before finally parking in the sky. She locks the parking brakes, gets up, and sprints for the lounge.

"Eva?"

She has her eyes closed and is still lying on the couch. Her breathing is hitched and shallow, and sounds wrong, like there's fluid in her lungs. 

She opens her eyes and meets Sable's gaze, but seems too out of it to speak. 

Sable's not thrilled with that, but at least she's conscious. Ish. "Just hold on, sweetie." She gently scoops Eva up into another princess carry, and carefully carries her to the door, then steps out onto the balcony. There's a clear view of the sky.

She sighs softly as the light hits her. 

It feels comforting. 

The pain is less. 

"Thank you."

It's a beautiful starry night. Dark and sweet and gentle. 

There don't seem to be sirens nearby.

"Gladly," Sable murmurs back. "Gladly, Eva. Lemme know if you wanna stand, but otherwise I'm content to just hold you here as long as you like."

"... feel safer being held." 

She leans into Sable, trying to be a lighter burden to her.

"Glad to hear it." She smiles softly, blushing a bit.

She's helping. And making her new friend feel safe.

You've totally got a crush, Hailey teases her.

It certainly does look that way, Maya adds.

Ruby can't help but chime in as well. Mhm!

Neo as well.

As if y'all don't, Sable jabs back.

They all just settle for holding Eva close, cheeks flushed.

Eventually, Eva's thoughts get less jumbled, and she's able to focus and think...

"— Sable?"

She nuzzles in.

"I think I have something for this in the stone cavern place. It'd be safer. For the longer term recovery. I'm pretty sure I won't die now."

"Okay. I think I can feel how to cross your cavern bridge rather than mine. Not sure. Might take your help or permission or something. Want me to take you there, so you don't have to worry about standing or focusing?"

"Give me a second..."

She focuses. 

"You're a guest now. Go. Bring the whole ship. There'll be space."

The whole ship?

Okay. She focuses for a moment, wrapping her attention around the stationary ship, and Eva, and the bridge to Eva's cave house.

The multiverse swirls for a moment.

And there they are.

They arrive in a dark cavern lake just big enough to fit the whole ship. Rails lead up out of the water to a docking bay. 

Eva groans. "Pain's coming back. Get me to the library, it's the second door on the right."

Okay. She carefully carries Eva back inside, through the lounge, down the stairs, and to the engine. She peers out the window, then shakes her head. The water's a little too deep to just jump out here, so she sits down in the cockpit, Eva still cradled in her arms, and moves her hands just enough to reach the controls. Carefully, she rolls the train up onto the dock, parks, and then stands back up, carrying her out of the train and into the library.

The library is quiet. Inset stars in the ceiling shine with what seems to be entirely natural starlight. Three walls of the room are covered in bookshelves, and the fourth is occupied by a large desk and chair. There is a mahogany couch in an old victorian style towards the back of the room, along with a few overstuffed leather chairs.

"Ooooh. This is really nice, and the starlight feels great."

She walks further in and gently sits down on the couch, leaning back against it and cradling Eva tenderly in her lap.

"I've got you, we're just gonna stay here until you're better."

Eva lets out a long and dreamy sigh and smiles. 

"Thank you." You're so good to me. 

She doesn't say it. For one thing, it hurts to talk. But she thinks it. 

She lays still, and drifts.

"Gladly," Sable murmurs, as she softly stretches Eva's legs out onto the couch, slips her arm out from beneath them, and runs her fingers softly through Eva's hair.

She stays there, smiling, slowly petting Eva and savoring the closeness and the starlight.

It's soothing. 

The soft shine of the stars slowly knits her body and takes away her pain. 

It's easier for her mentally, too. It feels comforting. Lulling. Calming. A little lonesome, but she has Sable here for that. 

She smiles and drifts for a while. She feels no desire to get up.

Her body feels lighter the longer they stay there. It's really subtle, but it just feels righter and better.

She sighs gently and snuggles Eva tighter into her chest. She's awfully attached to this girl awfully quickly, but... it works.

She keeps combing her fingers softly through Eva's hair, listening to the soft sound of her breathing.

Wow, she had not been accurately estimating how touch-starved they were. At all.

This is pretty great.

It really is. 

Eventually, though, Eva cracks her eyes open. 

"Do you think you could get me a book?" she asks. "I haven't looked at the library yet."

"Sure. Any preferences? And d'you wanna stay held while I look, or get set down on the couch?"

"Something cozy. I don't mind if it's smutty, sometimes I read that kind of thing just for relaxation. If you find anything that looks useful to our current situation pull it too."

"And I'll stay on the couch."

Sable smiles softly, blushing slightly, and scoots out from under Eva, then runs her hand through her hair one last time before heading over to the bookshelves to take a look.

The bookshelves are full of books; some in English, some in other languages. Most of them look either very old or very new. 

Among the newer-looking books there's a collection of beat up Terry Pratchett paperbacks, a few Jim Butcher hardcovers, and then an assortment of single paperbacks by names she doesn't recognize. One of them is named "Practical Demonology" and has a pentacle on the spine. 

There are also some older books, leather-bound. One or two are in perhaps middle english. Others are in older languages. 

Huh, Practical Demonology. Are demons real? She takes a look at that. 

That... is porn.

She tucks it under her arm and keeps looking.

Several languages she doesn't speak, although it feels like maybe if she kept puzzling over them long enough she might start? The Jim Butcher hardcovers tempt her for a moment, just for some familiar comfort food to reread, but then another book catches her eyes: Journeys of a Conduit. Something about that feels promising.

She pulls it out and glances through a few pages. 

It's about multiversal travelers like them!? Yeah, she's reading that.

She heads back over to Eva, sets the books on her stomach, and then lifts up her legs to scoot in under her and cradle her close again. "Some good finds. Got some interesting-looking smut, and also something about a familiarly-empowered multiversal traveler."

A sly smile crosses Eva's face. 

"I think I want to listen to the porn."

"Sure," she says with a shy smile, after a moment. "The possibly-about-our-powers book will keep." Journeys of a Conduit goes onto a side table, and she squeezes Eva tighter as she gets Practical Demonology settled into a hand for easy reading while petting.

"Practical Demonology, by Vinifer and Hex.

"I knew immediately that opening the door had been a mistake..."

And they pass an enjoyable — if somewhat blushy — time together.

It's a good story, and it passes the time well. 

Objectively this is not the sort of thing one is supposed to do with one's friends in real life, but who cares? All the rules have changed in an instant. She's living a grand new magical life of danger and comfort both. Better to say it. 

"... it was really nice to be held by you," she says quietly. 

There's still a slight flush on her face from the raunchier passages. 

"Next book? And... Could you pet my hair some more?"

"It was really nice to hold you and read to you," Sable murmurs back, blushing as well. "And absolutely."

She shifts Eva slightly to have easier access to her hair while continuing to read, combing her fingers through the blonde tresses, sighing fondly.

Journeys of a Conduit, it seems, describes the travels of someone with powers suspiciously similar to their own. They call the links between worlds "Bridges", themselves a "Conduit", and their own cavern home a "Bevin." Worlds are described, as well: countless Earths, an ocean world like they just came from called Epiphor, an electric cityscape like where Sable and her headmates found their trainship called Rorch, and so many more. New powers take some multiple of a year in time investment in a world to acquire, Crowns are very powerful, but not available to a particular type of Conduit called "Wanderers." A year's time investment can also create synergistic combinations of existing powers.

All told, it is a very useful book, and an enjoyable read, snuggled close and petting Eva as they are.

"It's like something out of a fairy tale..."

Eva sighs and smiles.

"So we're in a Bevin..."

"So it seems," Sable agrees, continuing to pet Eva softly. "And we're called Conduits."

"Yeah." 

Eva shifts in Sable's lap and looks up at her face. 

"You know, I would like to be yours for a very long time."

Then she flushes, suddenly realizing what she just said. 

"I, uh, ah —" 

She looks away. 

"Sorry. It just sort of slipped out. I — it's been really nice to... be close. I was just thinking it would be good if that... kept happening."

"Yeah, I... think we'd really like that."

Whether she means Eva being hers for a long time, or closeness continuing to happen, is left as an exercise to the reader.

"... thank you. For not... For not thinking I was weird."

Eva looks up at the ceiling-stars. 

"You're good to me."

"You're pretty enjoyable to be good to."

Sable sighs fondly. "And it's not like we've got anything resembling room to talk about weirdness."

"You're... You read to us. You carried us so kindly. You take us seriously as a person. You..."

Eva takes a soft breath and smiles.

She wants to snuggle but this is still so raw and new and she's still in a little pain and doesn't want to move. 

She settles for reaching up to gently touch Sable's face, caressing her cheek. 

"I've never had something like this before. Physical connection, yes, but emotionally..." 

She lets her hand fall. 

"Sorry. I don't really know how this works. I just know that... I want to be close to you."

She leans into Eva's touch, and combs her fingers slowly through Eva's hair, sighing warmly.

"Honestly, yeah, that is basically how it works. Want closeness, find ways to cherish each other and spend time together, repeat."

Then she leans down and presses a soft kiss to Eva's forehead. "So you're doing great."

"Yeah..."

Eva smiles softly and presses in closer.

"... I've never been kissed like that before."

She turns her head and kisses Sable's side through her cute heart pajamas.

"... Thank you for everything. For making sure I could keep my memories of all of this."

"It was sincerely and truly my pleasure, Eva."

Sable squeezes her girlfriend? partner? Eva tightly, smiling warmly, a hint of blush lingering on her cheeks.

Y'know, rather than wondering and waffling in our head, you could try asking her.

Okay, that is a good point.

"So, cutie. Wanna be magic girlfriends?"

"I would love to be."