"I'll think about it, definitely."  She starts paging through the catalog.  "Uh, so you're like, pretty committed to sticking with Ancora and helping them out, right?  Because of your thing or whatever?"

"I would probably instead go back to resurrecting Elves if somebody besides Ancora showed up and could just resurrect the Maiar with a wave of their hand but I'm sympathetic to their project too."

She nods.  Keeps flipping through the catalog.  Possibly the shaking is getting slightly worse.

"Do you want a hug?  You just seem really - like you could use a hug."

"I should probably explain why I look like that before you hug me."

"I could also use a hug."

"I should probably explain before you hug me for any reason. It's just kind of a lot."

"Please?  - If you don't want to hug me that's fine, but - if it's on my account then I really super, super don't think there's actually literally anything you could say that would make me not want to?  And that's not - people tell me I don't suffer from lack of imagination; I just.  This is not the sort of action I can regret, I don't think."

She's definitely shaking harder now; a catalog page she's holding but hasn't turned yet is making wobbling noises.

"...okay." He holds out his arms. And wings.

Hug.

She pulls her sleeves over her hands and turns her head to the side so her hair's in between her face and his chest; caring about touching a shirtless person where shirts normally go is literally the most useless, trivial thing she could be spending brain on when - whatever, it would take more to try and not care about it, it's fine -

She gives the best hug she is capable of, for what maybe verges on awkward amounts of time.

And then - Cam should stop being awake. As quickly as she can manage it.

He slumps in her arms; his wings droop behind him.

Cool.  Cool cool cool cool.  This is exactly the outcome she wanted and took steps to enact.  - Gosh, okay, she sure has not really spent magic on augmenting her physical strength; setting him down on the floor is an awkward endeavor.  And then - she complimented one of Ancora's statuettes earlier and asked if she could keep it.  Its base is solid and weighty.

She aims for the head.

( - she's actively spending magic on keeping him out - she'll feel it when he dies - )

He doesn't even bleed. The slight red mark on his forehead fades in a fraction of a second.

Gosh, yep, okay - time to temporarily boost her physical strength a bunch, apparently -

The result is... identical except that he scoots a bit across the floor this time.

- she still has the steak knife up here -

s . . . tab?  stab stab?

Did she mean instantly healed scratch instantly healed scratch instantly healed scratch?

Apparently she did!  What.  She's relieved.  She's confused, and scared.

She has never kept somebody unconscious with magic before but it's wearing down her supply quite a bit faster than it intuitively ought to; she does not have much time - she tries to slit his throat???  Probably this will also just fail to work probably.

Totally fails to work.

Rad and cool and great and fine and chill and fine.  - Maybe it's an intent thing!  She does not really want him dead but she does not want seven billion people dead or subjugated either so she wants him dead -

Nope.  Okay.

Okay.

She takes the not-murder-weapons and puts them in the bathtub and draws the shower curtain and turns off the light in the bathroom and shuts the door and - takes a few seconds to think; she's running out of time but strategy is important and she needs to pick one and stick to it -

- it's so tempting to feign concern, like he just passed out and she had no clue why this happened, or pretend to have been knocked out herself as well.  If it worked, this would be a costless mistake and she wants this mistake to be costless so, so badly - but the fact is that it won't work; her acting ability is simply not adequate to hold that much weight - it only didn't give her away before because she was so below suspicion -

- she exits the room, closes the door behind her, starts heading down the stairs - still burning magic on keeping Cam unconscious -

- if she walks out the door time starts there again and she's pretty sure the alien can just teleport directly to her, wherever she goes, forever -

- she sits down on one of the couches by the fireplace - no that's not right; could be taken as trying to be nonchalant; she needs to signal that she knows what she did and she's sorry and she's not going to try it again - hide under Bar?  Obviously she expects to be found but it would help play up the 'scared and young and not a threat' angle - too much risk of seeming like she's actually trying to hide and just grossly incompetent -

- her magic is very very close to running out; she cuts it off, keeping a sliver left; that amount of time won't make much of a difference and a sliver is so, so much better than nothing at all -

She puts herself on the floor and crams herself into the space between the arm of a couch and a very ornate bookcase that the alien didn't want in their room, in full view of the door to the stairs, and draws her knees up, and does not get the blood on her hand on her jeans.

Cam wakes up... confused. "Judy?" he says, a few times, but this fails to produce Judy so he lets himself out of her room and goes downstairs. "- Judy, there you are, what happened, are you okay?"

"Uh - hi - I'm fine - " she says, somewhat weakly.

"What happened?"

"Uh - you - passed out and then I - "  Okay so when making this plan she did not account for how hard it is to not just reflexively lie about wrongdoings you have done wrong.  Also she thought it would be obvious enough that she wouldn't have to explain it; she'd kill not to have to explain this - well, no, empirically she wouldn't, if not for lack of trying -

She puts her face in her hands.  Now her forehead has blood on it.  Excellent.

"I... don't spontaneously pass out."