They've hired a precog, too, who has a bag of ice on the back of her neck and is munching her way through a package of Ho Hos.

Seems like as good a place as any to sit and snack. Lucien has pretzels.

"Hullo. Isabella."

"Oh, I'm Lucien. Hi."

Oh wow she is pretty.

"What'd they haul you in for?"

"Oh I uh, technically asked to be here. I'm a diviner."

"Oh, I volunteered for the gig too, figured I might as well visit my mother on the company dime. I'm the precog."

"Oh I didn't know that they'd managed to find the funding for one this time."

"This isn't the first time?"

"There were a couple of others a few weeks ago, yeah."

"You local?"

"I'm from Jersey City, you?"

"I live in New York working for one of those faceless corporations that does predictions."

"Some of the faceless divination companies tried to persuade me but I've ended up mostly doing freelance work for medical studies I can convince to use divination."

"Oh, neat, what kinds of things do you wind up doing there?"

"All sorts of things! There's a study on asthma I tracked how much people were breathing out CO2 for, I did some stats for a hospital about what time of night they were carting the most patients between rooms, some exploratory work that involved testing lots of cancer treatments in parallel that was difficult too do all the measurements for by hand."

"That's so cool! I hope to get around to divination eventually but I hadn't actually thought of using it that far upstream in the process of research, all the flashy divination is the kind where you're just like 'this cancer treatment works' or something, but of course that takes so much more investment..."

"Yeah, I prefer to think of divination as a tool for amplifying science, not replacing it. Medical studies are pretty central to the sort of thing I'm excited for. Ideally I'd like more people to think of it as a tool they can reach for when they want to take measurements that costly or that they didn't think of in time. And also it'd be neat for more people to take up the sort of lower investment divination I'm working on."

"There are so many psionic skills that I want there to be more of in the world and people keep picking up the ones I don't want them to instead, as though they have priorities other than doing whatever I want, and I fear this will be the case for your thing too. Do you have other stuff you've got working or did you frontload divination?"

"I have a sort of memorized catalogue set-up and some not very functional sleep skipping."

Hopefully these are things she approves of people doing.

"Memorized catalogue?"

"I can remember what articles I read on a given subject and where to find them but not the contents, basically."

"Huh. I have a full eidetic memory that I'm really happy with. And verbal telepathy, and back in virtuality I picked up lucid dreaming."

"Oh wow, all that and precoging. I just got the broken sleep skipping out of virtuality. Though I am pretty happy with my cataloguing memory - probably I should get it to full but I'd miss the satisfaction of organizing everything I can get this way."

"My precog range is very short but they seemed to think it would help for this. What's wrong with your sleep skipping?"

"I get all hyper focused and fidgety and irritable."

"How'd that happen, what were you aiming for with the design?"

"Ability to keep my mind on track rather than having sleep derail it? That's probably not really a good description of what I was aiming for but it's the best I have."

"I want to get around to sleep-skipping eventually but the opportunity cost isn't amazing with the lucid dreaming."

"I would happily trade what I have for lucid dreaming."

"It's fun! But I still have to spend a lot of time on it compared to what I would normally choose to spend on pure recreation."

"Can you manage to get non-recreational things done with it at all?"

"I can, like, plan my day, organize my thoughts, but it doesn't take eight hours."

"The eidetic memory doesn't help?"

"It would if I were writing a book or something, but I'm not. I guess I should consider writing a book."

"Do you have thoughts on what you would write a book about?"

"Definitely something about magic but I don't know what specific subtopic most needs another book."

"Honestly I think a lot of subtopics on magic could use more books."

"They really could. I'm on and off into editing Wikipedia but they don't exactly let me cite personal conversation."

"I spent a few months editing nearly full time during school but have successfully cut down to more reasonable expenditures that don't involve my skipping sleep nearly so often."

"Hyperfocus thing?"

"A bit, a bit just really liking the entire infrastructure and rules Wikipedia is based on. It's really satisfying how everything works and how there's a system for everything and I can play a part in it."

"I love Wikipedia but it's surprisingly fighty under the hood!"

"I think that's mostly concentrated in the more controversial articles, and there's a lot of work put into keeping things working even when there's a lot of fighting."

"Controversial articles, like 'hummus'."

"I think that was downstream of politics? But it was definitely a very silly controversy and not Wikipedia's best moment."

"I mean, the underlying tensions are nothing to laugh about but the way it affected the hummus article kind of was."

"Yeah."

She finishes her Ho-Hos and opens a bottle of iced tea.

"So um. Why'd you pick up the telepathy."

"Missed my twin brother. I got that down in virtuality, too, but at first it only worked on Alex, I expanded it over time and it's still not very highly developed."

"You wanted more than just email?"

"Yeah, he's not a great letter-writer and couldn't write during school hours even if he wanted to and there was just a lot of shared context that we fell behind on till I could be talking in his head constantly."

"My parents and I wrote a lot but I suppose they were pretty good letter writers and didn't have school."

"My parents wrote but I didn't miss them nearly as much to begin with."

"You and your brother are particularly close?"

"We're twins! I guess there are probably twins who aren't especially close. So yes."

"Does the telepathy work with anyone now?"

"I have to know who I'm aiming at but yeah." [Like this.]

"Oh that's really neat!" Can he reply? Hello?

[Hello, I barely caught that, you have to direct it a little more firmly and compose it all in fully verbal sentences.]

[Like this?]

[There you go, well done.]

[Thank you.]

[It's convenient enough that I expect to do all further development of its features through practice rather than just meditating on it.]

[That makes sense! It's really cool. What are you working on for it?]

[I'd like to add images, and more support for being able to tell if it's a bad time - I don't ring like a phone, so I just have to hope.]

[Would images be things you can see or imagine or something else?]

[I'm starting with things I can see, I think from there because I have eidetic memory it should branch pretty easily to things I can remember though it'll probably take longer for anyone to send me images like that. Then I can work on imagined images.]

[Is the idea you could send post cards to your brother or did you have other uses in mind?]

[He picks my clothes, the office is a little dressier than 't-shirts that came in a six pack' and 'jeans' and I have no fashion sense. A lot of the pictures I send him on my phone are of outfits.]

[Huh. I have no fashion sense but have to deal with just looking very boring as a result. Sometimes my parents buy me things and tell me they look good I guess.]

[Freelance probably has a slightly more relaxed dress code.]

[I spend a lot of time with PhD students who don't particularly have a dress code, except for lab coats sometimes, which I have yet to be offered even though it would neatly solve my style problem.]

[Is there some tradition that you must be offered your labcoat as a gift?]

[I'm not consistently in any single lab, I just visit for a few days. I assume it would be overstepping to get myself a lab coat under those circumstances.]

[I guess I wouldn't know.]

Lucien is happy to keep chatting but eventually the break is over and they are headed out to go spelunking towards the portal.

The precog walks with a cane and will require some help over tricky sections of cave.

Lucien can be helpful!

[Thanks, I always had bad balance and virtuality did terrible things to it from there.]

Nod nod.

[I'm happy to help.]

The portal doesn't look like anything.

She slips on a steep part -

Lucien can hel-okay wow this actually for real steep-

She flings out her cane trying to catch a stalagmite but this doesn't work at all.

As the cane hits Lucien instead and sends him tumbling into the portal, his arm still locked with Isabella's for support. 

It turns out that the portal looks like nothing only from one side, and from the other side it looks like dense forest canopy rushing up to meet them.

"AAAAAUGH!"

"AAAAAH-"  Lucien is interrupted by leaves and twigs smacking into his face, and then - after a brief interval of thin branches bending underneath his weight - the ground.

Isabella tried "learning to fall". It didn't work, because she doesn't have the reaction time, but she learned the principle: hit the ground on purpose, to absorb some of the force that would otherwise go into hitting it accidentally. She has long enough to think on the way down to try it.

Things don't go exactly as planned and Isabella manages to miss the ground entirely, landing on Lucien instead. 

"Ow."

"Sorry." Do all her limbs work.

Yes! She has some scratches from twigs but nothing serious. Lucien is also relatively uninjured, though his stomach is a bit sore from landing on it. 

"Ugh, are you okay?"

"Scratched, bruised, alarmed, nothing life-threatening."

"The same, I think."

"...we shouldn't use magic for anything, we don't have food on us and they'll probably retrieve us soon."

"I do have some sour skittles on me, but nothing else."

Lucien glances around the forest which seems almost tropical - the trees might be a normal type of palm tree from Earth, though he's never heard of a variety that has branches like these do. Temperature wise it's hot but much less humid than where they came from, so that's a plus.

"Nobody was able to go through before..."

"Yeah - I think some of the prior portals had filters on who can get through?"

"Maybe this one only lets psions, but there's lots of psions."

"Probably it's something more specific? But hopefully not too specific, given that we both made it through."

Lucien looks up at the patch of sky about where they fell from, vaguely hopeful of imminent rescue.

"Yeah, we don't have a lot of other obvious characteristics in common..."

"Possibly we both have unusually close relationships with our relatives? I'm really stretching with that one though -  it doesn't seem likely to be the kind of thing the filter would go by or to have prevented all prior attempts to get through."

"It would be weird on so many levels, yeah."

"Yeah."

Still no sign of even a hand being put through the portal experimentally or anything...

"They're probably on the phone with the insurance or something."

"Probably."

There's nothing but clear sky during the next half hour.

She has Bejeweled on her phone.

Lucien can listen to an audio book. 

Eventually the sun starts setting - for some reason this planets atmosphere has sunsets consisting of bands of magenta, reds, and oranges, repeating several times until they give way to the darkening blue of the remainder of the sky.

Wow.

"I guess we're lucky we can... breathe. - if we might be here over the local night we should probably rig up something that'll trap body heat in case it gets a lot colder."

The temperature is in fact starting to drop.

"I have a vague sense that lean-tos are a thing you can DIY? I can start getting branches for one if that seems like a good idea."

"Yeah, I'll trip if I try to tromp around in the woods so you gather I'll assemble."

"Yes," Lucien nods obediently and goes to gather branches and leaves, returning with armfuls for new instructions as to what Isabella needs more of for construction. 

There's a kind of flexible leafy branch that weaves tolerably well with sticks to provide stiffness, so she wants lots of those. When he winds up having to go farther afield for materials for the lean-to she stuffs leaf litter into the gaps in the weave while waiting.

Honestly were it not for the pit of anxiety in his stomach he'd be enjoying the chance to follow instructions and complete tasks from a very hot and competent dom. ... Possibly he is in fact managing to enjoying it even with the anxiety.

(Lucien isn't asking if he is bringing the right sticks, but if she does tell him a bundle is good he is definitely noticing that.)

"This reddish kind has really flaky bark and it comes apart and loosens up when I incorporate it, skip it next time," she says, pointing out a variety of stick.

"Yes ma'am."

The next batch won't have that type and will instead have a few smoother slightly green branches he found from a different sort of tree that felt unusually sturdy to him.

"Yeah, these work, thank you." Weave weave.

Than Lucien can bring more of that type the next time.

They run out of daylight before she runs out of useful work to do on the lean-to, but it'll have to do. "It's quite chilly. I don't think it's likely to freeze but we should sleep very close together and maybe bury ourselves in leaves."

Nod nod.

"That makes sense."

She collects leaves. She props up the lean-to on a big tree. "Get in here, we might as well get started warming each other up before we get too cold."

"Um. Yes. Yes ma'am." 

Lucien is going to be so bad at arranging himself inside the lean-to hopefully she has opinions about where he should be.

She will allow him the dignity-preserving measure of being the little spoon.

Leaf piling ensues.

It turns out it is sort of difficult to fall asleep in these circumstances, so Lucien is going to stay awake as the temperature drops down to quite a bit colder than anything Florida gets.

She manages to sleep, eventually. She talks in her sleep.

Cute.... And honestly sort of relaxing in a way that helps Lucien start to drift off...until he hears the sounding of crunching leaves of twigs coming from outside their lean-to. Probably it's nothing? It's - oh that breathing is heavy and loud ad does not sound like it belongs to a small forest creature. 

"Cube. Hat. Triplicate."

The crunching stops, and then starts approaching closer.

She can't see him. "Hm?"

[There's something large outside that is looking for us, I think.]

Isabella can hear it herself if she listens - it stopped moving once the stream of nouns stopped but it's breathing is still audible.

She stiffens up behind him and does not fall back asleep.

Leaves start crunching again, interspersed with heavy breathing. It gets closer, than farther, than even closer than before... it can't be more than thirty feet from them.

It's so tempting to look ahead, but she has only seconds, and there aren't a lot of things she can do differently, here, if it's going to attack by default.

[I could check hunting patterns maybe if there's a specific thing that would be helpful.]

[I can't think of actionable information about it. If it's an herbivore, great, we lie here, if it's a carnivore, shit, we still lie here.]

[Any chance you can speak in animal minds?] 

[I cannot.]

It gets closer, bit by bit, as it search back and forth.

- and then, in the distance, what might be the sound of a twig breaking under a different animals foot, followed by the sound of the creature outside their lean-to spinning and bolting at top speed away toward the new sound.

[So probably the problem is that I talk in my sleep.]

[Probably - though it's not impossible I'll snore or one of us will turn over and snap a twig even without that.]

[When it's had more time to get a distance away I'm going to take off one of my socks and put it in my mouth, it'll be unpleasant but less unpleasant than getting eaten.]

[I'm considering whether it's worth it to check how frequently they pass through areas like this.]

[Is it actionable?]

[We could try moving if it's only once or twice a night? And finding somewhere with fewer of them.]

[If it's not actionable tonight, save it for when we find out if we're going to find anything to eat.]

[Okay.]

She risks the sock after another few minutes. Puts her shoe back on. Snuggles back up for warmth. Quietly.

Lucien does not succeed at getting back sleep but skipping one night has pretty minor side effects and costs barely any calories so it'll be fine.

She manages to get back to sleep and mumbles only very softly and infrequently around the sock.

Lucien watches sunrise as best he can lying down - its still gorgeous.

[I've heard a couple of smaller animal sounds since earlier but nothing large, probably it's safe to go out and look for plausible food?]

"Telepathy is not very calorie-costly but it's still at all," she murmurs. "By all means let's look for food."

They can find some bright red berries with some searching, and a bit farther afield, where the ground starts getting sandier, what look like banana bundles if all the banana's were overlapping just enough to be one large contiguous fruit. 

"I'm so suspicious of those berries. The bananalikes are easier to get in large amounts... how much is it going to cost you to find out if they're nutritious?"

"A moderate amount if I phrase it as whether it's been digested by repeatedly by creatures similar than us, I think? I can ask a dozen questions like that without getting too hungry."

"...you're the expert on how to phrase it but does this fail informatively if no creatures on this planet are similar to us?"

"I'd get a null result from that which would be different from the negative result of there are creatures like us that ate these but they didn't do so repeatedly." 

"Okay. I know... more than zero... about fishing, so we maybe want to also look for fish and construct a fish trap, but let's start with the bananas."

And...

"Eaten extremely often by creatures fairly similar to us."

"Do you want to test it first or shall I?"

"I can."

Pealing it reveals... basically exactly what you'd expect. Overlapping contiguous bananalike substance.

"Well. It also tastes like a banana, I can report. Maybe a little more sour."

"Watch out for seeds, on our planet we domesticated those away." Banana tasting for Isabella.

Tastes as advertised! There are indeed some seeds once they get closer to the center of the cluster.

"Probably we should set-up fish traps so we don't just have this? Though I can check a lot of other vegetation for edibility now that we have at least one form of calories."

"Bananas aren't exactly high density calories but yeah. Fish trap is a good idea."

"I am suspicious given the vegetation and the sand that if we keep going in this direction we'll eventually find a beach - would that be a good place for fish traps?"

"A stream would be better for the kind I know how to do but if there is one we can find it walking the coast."

Lucien nods.

Th density of bananish trees increases until they happen upon a beach! The water is absurdly clear and shallow enough they could walk for at least several dozen yards. The gentle waves in the distance occasionally reflect light in a similar pattern to the sunsets, glowing with repeating gradients of magenta and red. 

But are there any fish in the ecosystem, is the question.

There are shells, so presumably some sort of life. If they search for a while they will spot what look like catfish with speckled beige scales that blend in with the seafloor. 

"Are those things food?" she asks, pointing out a catfish.

"Often for creatures vaguely similar to us, and less often for creatures more similar but not never." Lucien reports.

"...honestly they don't look like they move super fast, we might not even need a trap, maybe we can spearfish." Is there a stick she can sharpen handy.

They can get one that's fallen from a nearby bananish tree. 

She breaks off an end and starts picking at the splinters to get it pointy.

"Should I do another one like that?"

"Yeah, probably, or we can just take turns trying it."

Lucien can get to carving his own.

Eventually she can walk up to a catfish slow and leisurely, barefoot with her jean cuffs turned up, and attempt to, after lulling it into a false sense of security, stab it.

This definitely doesn't work the first few times, but maybe she's getting better?

Ugh. She'll try ten times and then give up and start building a funnel thing.

Lucien manages to catch one after a while more of trying.

"I think I got lucky."

"You almost certainly have better gross motor skills than I do, I walk with a cane, remember?" Weave weave.

"Oh, yes."

Lucien has not forgotten that she has a cane.

Weave weave weave. "Start deboning it and we can have sashimi and see if we like it."

"Yes ma'am," and he can set to work deboning it as best he can on a nearby rock that seems smooth enough for the purpose.

It tastes mild: a bit sweet and a bit fishy.

"Okay. Sashimi and bananas. I can live with that."

"Should we find a supply of fresh water too?"

"Yeah, is that doable for you?"

"Probably?"

He can determine a direction they can go in to find what turns out to be a pond neighboring the beach. 

She has her half-empty iced tea bottle to drain and refill.

Lucien has an aluminum water bottle of his own.

Are there fish in the pond too?

Little tiny ones, and some sort of marine slugs near the bottom.

If the catfish weren't edible she'd be psyching herself up to learn to like escargot, but as it is she is not. "These look too small to be easily processed but the sea is pretty shallow and traversible, I'll put the trap in there."

Nod nod.

"Should we trying to finding a safer place to sleep for tonight?"

"Maybe. Of course anywhere could have the same problem."

"I can check for what sort of areas have that problem?"

"...yeah, there's probably enough bananishes for that."

It will take him a several tries, and he'll need to eat quite a bit afterwards, but he can eventually conclude that some weirdly warm rockier areas without trees are safer than the forest (mildly unsafe) and the beach (incredibly unsafe).

She'll bring him all the bananishes he can keep down. She's going to write a note to leave in the lean-to explaining where they've gone, for when someone finally comes through to get them.

Lucien is feeling up to getting more materials for a new lean-to on the rocks - it'll be easier now that he knows what sort of stick to look for.

She can weave it, once she's done making and placing the fish trap.

Lucien was up for getting the materials but apparently not for much more because he is going to sort of collapse exhaustedly nearby while Isabella constructs it.

"- are you okay, is one of the foods poisonous -"

"Just tired, I'm not very in shape and its been a lot of a day."

"Yeah, not wrong." Build build build.

The rock is pleasantly warm and Lucien does not want to get up from it until it is time to move to under the lean-to.

"I want to go check the trap and get another bananish or two but if I go by myself, and trip and hurt myself, it might be hard for you to find me even if I contact you by telepathy."

"I... can come with you. Yeah."

"If you need a rest take a rest, I'll keep an eye on the shadow lengths, but have it in mind."

Nod nod.

He is going to be so flop until it is time to go and then he will be fine. 

They can collect more bananishes to bring back to camp and see if any fish are in the funnel ready to be picked up and strained out.

There are fish!

Lucien keeps up without complaint.

The fish can be speared through to carry kebab-style and the funnel put back.

"If I had known it'd take this long to send a rescue I would've saved my phone battery to use as a nightlight."

"I still have some?"

"I don't think we need it right now specifically. It's just unfamiliar to have to plan around the sun."

"Yeah. We could try to figure out how to light a fire? To at least have a campfire amount of light at night."

"I assume if you had a lighter you would have mentioned it before now and I'm not exactly optimistic about rubbing sticks together but I could probably identify flint if we found any and my keys might be steel."

"Any chance you know where flint shows up?"

"Nope."

"Oh well."

"I'll keep an eye out."

Nod nod.

Eventually it starts getting dark again.

"What do you think about whether I should do the sock thing here too?"

"I did not get the sense that it would be necessary. The beach had most of the danger and is pretty far from us," Though they have a decent view of it from their higher up vantage point.

"Okay." She puts her sock back on her foot - she has been going around wearing one sock all day just in case she was going to have to put it in her mouth again - and she cuddles up for warmth.

She continues to be really hot and Lucien continues to be happy for her to arrange him as desired.

It's been a long day and she didn't take a near-nap. She's asleep and mumbling into his neck pretty quick.

Lucien is also pretty tired it turns out. 

When they wake up the sun is rising and what looks like brown amphibious sharks are crawling all from the woods towards the sea, a safe distance away from them.

"Huh, I wonder if those were what we heard the first night."

"They definitely look like they could be - that one has blood on it's snout I think? Which makes sense if they hunt on land."

"Man they're weird looking. Land sharks."

"I guess it's not as unusual as the sunrise."

"The sunrise looks like a painting and the land sharks look like a cartoon, they stick out more to me."

"Ah, the land sharks seem more plausible to me than the way the sunrise doing repeating colors like that."

"Oh, I agree they're plausible. There they are being plaused. But there too is the sunrise! Somehow!"

"Yeah I really have no idea what could be causing it to repeat like that - different colors I'd buy but this feels like it's against the rules."

"Maybe it's in the genre of an aurora."

"Oh that would... make at least some physical sense. I guess."

"Maybe when we are rescued you will be able to spare the calories to divine its nature. For now we should probably try to diversify beyond bananishses and catfish. Maybe check those berries, or try to identify and stalk a creature similar to us and see what it eats."

"I can check the berries now if you'd like?"

"Is it cheaper closer to an example?"

"Not really, unless they only grow in a very specific area."

"There's more bananishes, than berries, by volume, but variety's probably good if we're gonna be here a while, go ahead and check the berries."

"Yes ma'am."

"The things most similar to use tend to eat the berries at most once."

"Well that's ominous. No berries. Do you get any sense of what creatures it's referencing for similarity here?"

"Not without further use - I can check different sorts of similarities individually?"

"Maybe we should put out some bananish and some fish as bait and see what if anything comes and eats it."

"We'd need to stay hidden somewhere with a decent view, probably?"

"Yeah. Up a tree, only I can't climb a tree."

"I can climb a tree?"

"Yeah, if you want to do this while I wait here and make another fish trap or something sounds good."

"Okay," Lucien can head out with some food for bait to find himself some critters to spy on.

Isabella stays behind and weaves sticks.

Lucien can find a decent enough tree to climb - the branch he's perched on is a bit flimsy but isn't bending too far. He places the food in the forest clearing below and waits.

It takes half an hour, but something like a cross between a badger and a porcupine shows up eventually. Nosing the fish and bannish around a bit before-well he thinks its eating it but it moved the food to an awkward angle so he'll have to lean over to see it properly and-

- the branch was flimsier than he thought, and he is sent hurtling onto the animal from above, his shriek loud enough to be heard from quite some distance away.

[Lucien, what's wrong?]

[Fell -] "Fuck" [-on something with quills.]

[Can you walk or do I need to come find you?]

[I think I can walk fine?] He takes a step, and then another.

[Though not very fast so I might be a bit.]

[Okay. I really hope the bacteria on this planet are less biocompatible than the food is, fuck.]

[Ye-] Ow [-ah.]

[How many quills, how long?]

[Maybe eight inches - it had a bunch I'm not sure how many got in me, some are caught in my shirt but some others are in my back and two in my leg.]

[Getting them out is going to suck but I don't see a way around it. Is there anything you want to make it suck less - probably you should have something to bite down on, but like, is this something where it would help if we approached it like it was a scene, I'm not averse if the framing would improve your pain tolerance.]

[... Yes that would definitely help. If you wanted to do that.]

[The exact nature of quill removal is sort of not subject to negotiation, alas, but anything else I should know?]

[I um. Can't think of anything?]

[Well, I'll make it up as I go along, then, I apologize in advance if I'm terrible at it, I haven't dated much.]

How does Lucien politely say that he will be happy with almost anything she might want to do to him without coming off as having a crush that might bee inconvenient to have considering that they have only each other for company.

[I think whatever you end up doing will probably work well.]

[ETA?]

[Twenty minutes? Sorry I'm trying not to move the quills around too fast.]

In the end he makes it in nineteen.

"Yikes. Okay, lie down, they're mostly on one side of you at least."

"Yes ma'am."

Okay here he is lying down, having no feelings about anything.

She starts with the ones in his shirt that didn't break the skin and assesses their hookiness level; is there a way to tell which way they curve so she can get them out in the direction they went in without tearing anything?

They are not particularly curved, though there's some sort of texture going on with the tips and they don't come out of the shirt as easily as it seems like they should.

She should be doing some kind of - patter, this has to be excruciating - "Be patient, I'm checking over the ones that didn't get into you so I don't hurt you any more than I intend to." That sounded okay? Maybe?? What happens if she scrapes a fingernail over the business end of a quill, can she figure out the texture that way.

"Yes ma'am."

It's somewhere between sticky and rough if she scrapes her fingernail up the quill, but smooth if she scrapes it down.

Nasty. But it means she should pull it out as straight as possible.

"Now, do you want me to tell you how many there are," counting, counting, "or should that be a surprise?"

"Um. I want you to tell me."

"Fourteen. Count them when I pull them, as though they were cane strokes." Is that helpful. She has no idea. Subs are aliens. This is not really a situation where she can Google it. She presses firmly around either side of the first quill, the one that looks shallowest, with one hand and then yanks as straight and firm as she can with the other.

A sharp intake of breath - that hurt way more than he expected.

"One."

"Do you need a break, or would you rather them all quick?"

"All quick, ma'am."

"Safeword me if you change your mind." Next one. Press and pull.

"Two." He was ready for it this time so it wasn't that bad. Or it was positioned in a less painful place, he's not sure.

She keeps going till they're all out.

It turns out two was definitely just positioned in a less painful place than basically all of the rest. He safewords at seven but is ready to resume pretty quickly afterwards because he would really just rather this be done. He does apparently start crying at ten but he doesn't notice that until he curls up afterwards and notices his vision is blurry.

When he safewords she stops and pets his hair and tells him he did a good job telling her when he needed a break. Asks for a color, when she sees tears.

He leans into the pets so much! And smiles weakly when told he did a good job asking for a break.

"Green, I think, I want it to be over," he says when she stops again.

"Almost done. Count them." Four more pulls.

And then she pulls him into a hug.

"Fourteen..."

And then he is going to cling so tightly! And cry on her, hopefully that's okay.

It's so okay, he just had fourteen space porcupine quills pulled out of him! She hugs him and rubs his back. "You did good. You did so good."

"I did?"

He is sooo clinging.

"Yes, you did great, good boy."

Oh good. 

Lucien slowly transitions to a sort of out of it but happier state, still clinging to Isabella (who is extremely good) but also rubbing his face against her a bit.

She has no idea what a reasonable amount of post-de-quilling aftercare might be and will not try to pull him off her for a while. She will pet him and hold him.

"I really like you," he sorta mumbles to her at some point. "You're really hot."

"...thank you. I hope that made it easier, with the quills."

"Did. Cept for how I was worried t'would make it weird if I too 'bviously liked you."

"Well, it's only weird if we make it weird."

"That makes so much sense," Lucien mumbles.

"I certainly think so."

"Well you're very smart."

"I certainly like to think so."

"Yes that is another good fact about you."

"What, that I'm egotistical?"

"Yes it's really good."

"There's no accounting for taste, I guess."

Lucien does not follow but that's okay he can just look at Isabella like she is the BEST PERSON in the WHOLE WORLD.

...wow that is sure a way to look at her.

It's because she IS the best person in the WORLD. 

Pet pet pet.

Mmmmm. Pets are good.

"You're very cute."

No words only smile.

Pet pet.

Mmmmm...

Eventually Lucien decides he is hungry.

Totally reasonable. They have some bananishes stockpiled. Is he going to sit up and eat them or is he still in need of post-quill care such that she will be feeding him?

He can eat them! Not like, dignifiedly. But he can eat them. 

He doesn't need to be dignified about it. "I can go get some more of these. I'll try not to trip into any porcupines."

"...you're leaving?"

"- oh not right now, just, we should make sure to have food around and you're in no condition to go tromping around."

Nod nod. Not right now.

Pet pet.

Eventually Lucien seems to become more awake, rubbing at his eyes and blinking. He cocks his head, trying to remember exactly what-

-what happened. He. What did he say. He said.... oh god....

"Lucien? You okay?"

"Ummm."

Does being beet red count as being okay?"

"Lucien, are you okay, I can't tell the difference between you having thought of something embarrassing and you having been poisoned by the quills."

"Oh um. Uh."

"The first one."

"Okay." Pet pet.

"I'm um. I said a lot of things."

"It's okay. You were full of porcupine quills and endorphins. It's not weird if we don't make it weird."

"Okay."

Probably she should stop petting him now since he's embarrassed. Would he like his shirt back, here it is.

Nod nod.

"I didn't. Not mean what I said."

"Presumably you didn't mean to say it."

"Yes."

"So I can pretend you didn't if you'd rather."

"I think I'd rather it not be weird and you remember. If that's an option."

"Oh, I wasn't going to forget, my eidetic memory doesn't have exceptions."

Maybe she'll pet him a little more.

"Mmmm."

"I like you? Did I say that?"

"It seemed strongly implied."

"Oh good."

"You're cute."

Oh no look he's back to being red again.

"Mm."

"I usually prefer to operate on more information at least when I'm doing anything more optional than removing porcupine quills and I'm getting mixed signals."

"Um. Oh? I really like you. When I am not saying things it is because I am embarrassed about things and this is because I really like you."

"Okay, but is being embarrassed about things fun for you or not, I wouldn't like it but I'm a dom."

"It is fun, yes. If you are not uncomfortable about it."