"Yeah, we want something at the low end of the shock spectrum. Hmm, I can think of one or two things..."

Eva takes a turn into a small alcove amid the bushes, and suddenly mahogany shelves full of faintly-glowing jewels surround them on three sides.

... Iris is mildly freaked out by this. She did not see them before this.

She fidgets a bit with her sleeve and tries to figure out how to see where things abruptly change with her magic, but otherwise doesn't react.

Eva doesn't notice Inavet's fidgeting: she's too busy browsing the shelves. Yellowing labels crackle gently beneath her fingers.

"Hmm... Exotic fruit? Interestingly shaped jewellery? Stimulant incense? Gravity generator?"

"... Gravity generator," she decides, because that sounds interesting.

Eva taps the rightmost crystal on the third shelf, and a small device of black, smooth material appears in her hand.

"Here you are, then. The left buttons rotate gravity left-to-right: the right buttons rotate gravity back-to-front. I reccomend you start slowly." She proffers the device.

She takes a minute to inspect it so she actually knows what's she's working with (it's heavier than it looks, and while it looks smooth it's got enough of a texture to easily hold onto, and it has a hair-thin seam down the middle) and then -

Geeeeeentle gravity tweak?

The whole world tilts very slightly.

That is incredibly weird. She brushes hair that tilts left for no reason behind her ear, and then puts it back to 'no gravity change.' It seems like a good idea to pull her hair back, so she does with an industrious use of nudged iris-alike vines to hold it up. Then, after another moment to adjust, she sloooowly shifts the gravity again.

...

It's rather fun.

She's slow and methodical, but she doesn't shy away from experimentation. One such experiment ends in her slowly sliding across the floor, surprising a giggle out of her.

Eva happens to be standing between her and the shelves full of crystals! She catches Iris in a loose embrace, before she has a chance to really pick up speed.

"Having fun?"

... She maybe should have planned out the direction of the slide. Because she did not do this on purpose.

"I um," she says, with as much eloquence and grace as can be expected under the circumstances. "Yes, thank you."

Iris fixes gravity and rights herself. Is that a blush? It's hard to tell.

Eva is maybe also blushing a little. Iris' face is really quite close at the moment.

"You're welcome," she says.

And then: "Would you, um. Would you mind if I kissed you?"

That earns a surprised blink out of her!

After an equally surprised pause, followed by an assessment of how she really hasn't had any romantic relationships for a damn long time and it's kind of overdue: ".... No! Please, kiss away!"

And there is a kiss!

Eva does not really know what she is doing, but that's okay, they can learn together.

Correction: Iris can demonstrate, because she has more than a theoretical idea of what to do. She's about three hundred years rusty, and needs a bit to recall how this is supposed to go, but she thinks she'd like to equate it to riding a bike. You don't really forget.

Eva recalls some branches of her that have had occasion to kiss people as well.

This kissing thing seems to be rapidly improving.

Excellent, this can only mean good things.

...

Or maybe not.

She has gone a long damn while without anything in this category. It was never a huge issue before, she wasn't going to go fling herself at a random stranger or anything, but now that she's kissing a pretty unobjectionable person it's becoming very clear that A: thinking about things further than this is kind of absolutely terrifying, especially the parts where she is naked and therefore without her knife and poisons, and B: she really wants them anyway.

That's confusing, and a complicated emotional bundle like that is a bit of a mood killer. Geeeentle kiss end, even as she smoulders a bit in Eva's direction. Want. Or - not want? Want in a confusing, complicated, slightly frightened of fashion. Yes. That.

"Um," she says, "wow that several centuries of celibacy is biting me in the ass now. You are very nice to kiss."

Eva was feeling a little hesitant herself, but Inavet's words wipe all that away and put a big goofy grin on her face.

"Um. Thank you?"

It's been a while since she has had a person she found attractive enough to want to share her messy, complicated, honestly kind of all over the place self with. Now... Well, she really doesn't care, except for the part where she really absolutely cares.

... cross that bridge when she comes to it, she would like one more kiss right now but it is more important to listen to lovely kissable Inavet. Iris. Whichever.

Iris giggles a bit at the 'thank you.'

"Sorry, I realize that's sort of a strange thing to say, even if it's true, um." She is torn about the urge to nuzzle and the urge to definitely not nuzzle, what is this, why is it so confusing. She hadn't been confusing before, when did this happen. Oh right, trauma. "Right, so, apparently I am now slightly complicated than I thought I'd be when it comes to, uh, this. Which is not your fault, you haven't done anything wrong, you're really great, and I would like to - keep kissing you in the foreseeable future, but if you want to opt out of it I will totally understand because. Um. Well, I was sort of treating things like I could just put myself on hold and pick it back up when I was safe again, and surprise surprise, three hundred years of people trying to kill you has some effects that make you complicated. I'm not sure how to word the complicatedness, but it's present and relevant and you really deserve to know."

"Um. Okay, maybe you should go on about the complicatedness? Like, I don't think it's likely to be the kind of thing that makes me want to not kiss you, I really kind of doubt there are many things at all that could make me not want to kiss you. And, um, I'm kind of used to having a complicated sort of life already?"

Another giggle. Eva is so great. Iris wants to kiss her terribly, but talking is really important and not talking is how a relationship explodes. Especially when she is apparently Complicated.

"Fair enough, um. Trying to word the complicatedness is hard. It's. I both want to tackle you to the ground right now, and also go hide in a corner and freak out a bit? I am, uh, sort of starved of pleasant physical contact and dearly want it, but at the same time it's unutterably terrifying. So, um, to guess at what this means without properly sitting down and figuring out what I want, I, think I would need it to be very slow? With some understanding in case I freak out, because I very well might. ... I'm not freaking out right now but I'm sort of close." Pause. "And things other than that will take a bit for me to figure out, I just hit this emotional iceberg about a minute ago because I was not prioritizing 'analyze self for romantic relationship potential' since it was just, uh. Not happening anytime soon." Cough. "Well, before I found the door in the middle of the street to the OTC, that is."

"Okay, um... Why is it terrifying? Because it's hard to be vulnerable when you've been on the run for so long? I mean, I don't want to push you for answers here, feel free to just shake your head if I'm being nosy, I just want to maybe know if there's something more specific I can do to help? Because, like, while I don't have a huge problem with going slowly, my hindbrain is going 'kiss her, kiss her more, kissing will clearly fix everything' and I would like for this to actually be a solution or at least not make things actively worse."

Iris smiles a bit. "I - yeah, the vulnerability, I think. I wish 'kiss me more' were a valid solution to fix it all, that'd be much nicer."

"... Are we talking about emotional vulnerability, or are you afraid of being caught off-guard because distracted by... by me? And yeah, it would be so much easier if all problems were solvable by kissing."

"Um. The - first problem was actually physical vulnerability. I think I can do emotional - reasonably well, I'm actively talking about my feelings instead of going, 'Excuse me I need to go hide behind my fork' and bolting. Which is a good sign, I think."

She gently un-hugs, this conversation is not a while-hugging conversation.

"I, don't know about the distraction part. Maybe? I still haven't sorted this all out."

Eva looks a little mournful at the unhug, but lets Yvette go.

"Wellllll, I can probably fix physical vulnerability pretty effectively, if you're willing to let me spoil you drastically with my personal fortune. I don't generally spend a huge amount of what OTC pays me?"