She repeats herself.

Scyelen looks up at them, tremulous. "R-Really?"

"Yeah. It's not my thing but there are plenty of people who like it. You just have to be careful."

"You're not... just saying that?"

She sniffles.

He musters a smile. "I'm really not."

Scyelen sucks in a shaky breath. "O-Okay."

Then she blinks at the other occupant of the room in confusion. "When did Miss Vaux get here?"

"Just a minute ago. You scared me, sweetheart." Squeeze.

"Oh. Sorry?"

She doesn't really have a clear memory of what happened. Just. She thought something crushing was true, but she was mistaken.

Then she reviews what did clearly just happen.

The big picture.

Raafi knows.

Miss Vaux (aaaaa seriously what the heck) knows.

And they're both... saying its... an acceptable way to be? They're not judging her?

Still, "You... you can't tell. Anyone," she whispers.

"I wouldn't dare, sweetheart. Katri'd kill me."

"You told me. Without her permission, even." She puts a lilt on the word 'permission'. (Scyelen blushes.)

"I'm not going to tell anyone unless I think it's safe and I have a very good reason, or permission. You're practically a cleric of Lastai yourself, that's different from shouting it on a streetcorner."

"I suspect that's a high complement. Thank you. And don't worry. I'm already keeping even more scandalous secrets than yours, Miss Vallière."

Scyelen relaxes at this, nodding in agreement.

"Would you be okay with her staying? I think we need to talk about how things work, and it'd be good to have here here for that, it might be a little different in this world."

"She already knows," Scyelen agrees with a small shrug.

"All right." Tiny squeeze. "If you aren't too busy," he says to Miss Vaux.

"We had a pending conversation anyway, and I am very curious about this religious order you think I should belong to."

"I think you'd want to have the option, at least," he nods.

"Did you have any questions that you'd like me to start with, sweetheart?"

"She probably doesn't know what she doesn't know. Maybe start with the, rather Lastai's concept of, the thing that would've prevented your... misunderstanding. I'm curious to hear how the subculture you know frames the idea of the 'backstage'."

"I think we formalize it a little less than you do," he comments, and then returns his attention to Scyelen. "So - I'd usually talk about how Lastai sees things in general, here, what she thinks is important - she's not just a sex goddess, her domain is all the kinds of pleasure that make life good. So it matters a lot to her that what happens in her temples is good and enjoyable for everyone there, even when it's things that most people wouldn't enjoy, or that come very close to being things that the people doing them wouldn't enjoy after all. And that's hard, sometimes. Different people want different things, so you can't just have everyone doing whatever they feel like and still end up with everyone happy and safe and enjoying themselves. And there's a lot of things that people can do to help with that, but one of the most important ones is talking ahead of time about what's going to happen, so that if there's something you don't want, you have a chance to notice that it might happen and say so. You don't want to say 'do whatever you want, I don't care' and then find out that someone likes torturing people to death, and even if they just like feeding people cake until they can't move, that's probably not what you meant, and you'll have a better time if you ask them to do something else instead and feed the cake to someone who wants it."

("I don't formalize it at all, actually," Miss Vaux disagrees in passing.)

Scyelen frowns. Now that she's calm, she can see the logic. Parts of it still make her deeply uncomfortable, though.

"That sort of makes sense, I guess, but it." She takes a shaky breath. This is still hard to talk about. "I think there are things that, um, the feeling that is compelling about many of my daydreams... isn't there, if I also imagine I've asked for it?"

"Mmhmm. There are a few ways around that, usually by telling people in a way other than talking to them directly. Putting a sign up saying what you like is popular, at home, or letting someone else know what you want and having them do the talking. Or you can just get to know people the regular way until you're pretty sure they won't do anything that will bother you too much; that's riskier, but it can work okay. Or you can let them do whatever they want and just make very sure you can tell them to stop if you don't like it, but people usually don't like that so much, it's better to be able to relax and enjoy yourself while you're in the middle of things."

"I dunno... but... a sign?" That mental image is both mortifying and hilarious.

Shy finger-poke. "It's... different, and, um, objectively safer, obviously... but... it still seems a bit contradictory...?"

Scyelen trails off; she doesn't know if she's making sense.

"Yeah, this one's tricky, there isn't a very good solution." He glances at Miss Vaux, checking to make sure he isn't getting too close to crossing a line. "It helps for some people to have it be part of a bigger story - they'll wait until there's a sex party being planned, and talk to the people planning it about setting up a room to let people do things to them in, and there'll be a sign but it's less their sign, that way, they and the sign are both part of the party, and that works a little better for them."

That isn't quite what Scyelen meant to ask about, but she blushes deeply and fidgets as she envisions such a room as Raafi described. Only... the vision rapidly shifts, stripping out the part where she's there voluntarily...

She frowns, conflicted.