It's lovely. She wishes she thought it was real.

"I'm going to kick myself if it's been this obvious all along," Isabella says one morning, "but I don't suppose it'd be out of character for Maira to provide perfectly nice fanfiction-reading-session lucid dreams in which nothing horrible happened?"

"Little bit out of character, but if she'd gone to the trouble to construct this scenario - you're doing things more important than sleeping anyway -"

"I could make the time if it'd help, things've calmed down enough. But I guess it wouldn't help."

"...sorry. Does - this - help - I thought it might -"

"It's wonderful, lovely. Forget I said anything."

There are badly drawn timocratic borders over here that need Isabella's attention now.

Okay.

Isabella talks to timocrats and some birdperson activists and her historian advisers and redraws some borders.

She interviews people and reassures people and negotiates with people - 

- she solicits hugs from her sisters a lot -

Her work is very valuable and appreciated and Isabella hugs her too and doesn't bring up the option of lucid dreams again.

And after a while of this she clears some time to go talk to Island and his husband. 

And comes back, quieter.

"You okay, lovely?"

"Yeah, sorry, fine."

"Okay."

Deregulating the nepotistic vehicle industry it is.

And he would like to bother Kib about their alts, again, when he has a moment free.

Kib can find him a whole string of moments. Here are some.

Hug. "Dream is at this point willing to consider getting married for the hopeful distinctness of getting free will from psion effects, but Sibyl has shown absolutely no indication of interest in her and has commented to the effect - though I don't think it was intended this way - that until Dream gets her preferences-about-her-experiences sorted out there's nothing she can do for Sibyl that lucid dreaming can't do better. And she doesn't have the preferences-about-her-experiences sorted out, not wholly, though she's finding it distressing to be unwanted so that's sort of a preference there."

"...do you happen to have Sibyl's exact words there?"

Yep. Bounce.

"Just as I suspected that is definitely not what Sibyl meant, insofar as it applies to sex she was probably trying to be reassuring about her lack of interest in sexual assault."

"What does Sibyl want -"

"...can you be more specific?"

"My alt is not going to be okay for a very long time and has less incentive than the rest of us did to pretend. Even when she is okay she is going to be a post-Angband me, with upsetting-to-Bells preference sets like 'it would be ridiculous to want to refuse you anything I gave Sauron'. Given that -"

"If she wants to try getting married and unmarried Sibyl'll do that. Sibyl is... very unlikely to otherwise be particularly interested in having sex with her traumatized girlfriend, but I could talk her into it with the 'distressing to be unwanted' fact. But she'd be all timid about it and that's probably extra awkward with the dom thing, not that I have a lot of details on that, I'm guessing."

"Is that in fact indicative of or related to damage to the relationship -"