"It can wait until morning."

If Katie wakes before sunrise, it will be in deep darkness. Otherwise, some gray will leak through around the blackout curtains over the window on the wall above her.

Tazich will be holding her, on a thick mattress on the floor in an alcove stacked with books.

Gauzy curtains will wall off the alcove, obscuring the rest of the room, but Katie might be able to see another set of cheap hangings, a clean work table, dense cupboards.

The blankets are thin, and Katie's clothes are still off. A breeze blows through angled slats in the wall. It's comfortably cool.

She wakes. Upon noticing the feeling of warm, soft flesh pressed up against her, she opens her eyes. Waits for them to adjust. Fuck, that wasn't a dream, was it? Oh gods. What the fuck did she do? She fucked an Urgathoa cultist. She may or may not be an actual fucking undead now. She's going to die horribly and spend eternity in the Abyss or Abaddon or shit, maybe even Hell, maybe this is all some really complicated Chelish psyop somehow. Wait, aren't you most likely to just get your soul annihilated entirely in Abaddon? That's... well, it's certainly better than Hell. Probably better than the Abyss. May even be better than Limbo. And it's not like she was gonna make it into Axis or one of the Good afterlives anyway. She does her best to calm down. Just do the same thing you've always done and avoid thinking about anything other than the immediate present and/or arcane trivia that has nothing to do with your life at all, she reminds herself. Yesterday, you would've never expected to be where you are now. Who knows where you'll end up tomorrow. Just focus on where you are today. And at the moment, where she is today doesn't seem half bad. "You're awfully cuddly for a literal hellspawn."

"Mrrphgh?"

Nibble.

"Oh. Hi . . . Katie. Sorry for nibbling on you."

Snuggle. Squeeze.

"Uh, if you need to pee I can show you where the bathroom is. Do you need water?" It's dawn, fuck, she's groggy. But she looooooooves Katie. "We have a lot of food too, on the off chance . . ." Kind of a lie. "Or if you need anything else, just say. The others won't be up for like four hours, and we'll all explain some shit to you then. I can answer questions now, too."

"Yeah, all three of those things would be appreciated. On the questions, first of all, so, am I an undead now?" She tenses up. She's scared to hear the answer. She still sort of wants to hear a no, even though she doesn't feel any different. She's just scared of- permanence, of making big decisions that can't be undone. Of being stuck. Y'know, as if she wasn't stuck before.

It's such a . . . question, coming from someone as quick as Katie, who's obviously already undead. Tazich had thought Katie would know it of herself instantly, as she did.

She regretfully disentangles and passes Katie one of Tiar's stolen jumpers [ it should fit, Tiar's almost exactly Katie's size ].

"You . . . can't really be uncertain about what you are." Right? "'Undead' isn't something you aren't. If you're asking if Urgathoa's still gonna smite ya, She isn't. You belong."

The confusing wording is concerning. Is it deliberate? "Why the speaking in riddles? I don't feel any different, seemingly I still need to drink water and pee, and to my understanding those are in general not things undead need, so like, it would be a surprise if I am, but I'm surprised by a lot of stuff that's happened lately. Wait, what do you mean, 'still gonna smite me'? She was going to smite me before?"

"Asleep", in the main room, the thought occurs to her that Katie has never heard of the concept of 'when in Hell, do as the devils do'.

She's quickly acquired the impression that she's underestimated the River Kingdoms' level of disorder.

Which bodes very well for her ends.

"The wolf would have killed you, if you were offending Her instead of pleasing Her. It was dosed with a living plague to that effect. All of ours were.

You abandoned your previous life, sacrificing part of yourself. Urgathoa almost always finds such a shedding is necessary, to join Her.

Theoretically not always. Maybe She didn't find that, with you. You don't feel like you've lost anything? There's no sense of absence?"

"Well, uuuh, to tell the truth, I feel a mild sense of terror that I've done something that cannot be undone and damned myself for all eternity and all that, but like, internally at least that just feels like an ordinary emotional response to my circumstances, not something directly supernatural. Other than that, I feel basically normal. Is that good or bad?"

"It's neutral. You're safe either way. I'm jealous of how much my goddess likes you if you're not undead by now, though. I can pray about it and see if She says anything after we get something to eat."

She holds out her hand, plausibly to make Katie following her in the dim light easier.

She gets up and follows, and for a moment, her fears are melted away by the transcendent joy of holding hands with a pretty lady whose thighs are each wider than her whole body.

There's a chamber pot situation, with a door and a little washbasin with cups. She waits for Katie to go first. When they're both done, she looks at Katie.

"Sorry, Urgathoa's blessing doesn't guarantee our opsec. I'm gonna have to tie you to something while I run out and dump the toilet."

"Okay so I know this is kind of an awkward question, but given how much I ate last night it's probably gonna be relevant soon. What do Osirioni people wipe their butts with?"

". . . Water? There was soap in there.

Sorry, we don't have that many rags. You're not one of those people who comes in under the impression that Osirion is in constant dire drought, right?

Wait, didn't you say you know a laundry spell?"

"See, this is why having a big fancy organized efficient government sucks. Back home, there's enough paper currency printed by failed regimes floating around at any given time that we just use that. At some point, would-be warlords started competing for support by promising to print softer banknotes, so even if their reign didn't last, people would at least have a more comfortable time on the stool. 'Soldiers want war, peasants want peace, nobles want power, but everybody shits', as the saying goes."

She blinks. She very dearly wants to kiss Katie right now.

"I don't think I'm going to have to pray about this. I'm going to, but I don't think I have to. It seems like you were just born to teach the likes of us how to, you know, reject the order of creation and revel in the annihilation of man as the image of God, and all that. Fuck, you don't even know! But you do. Pharasma."

"Well, I have very little idea what you're talking about, but on my end, I'm told you know it's really love when you get that warm fuzzy feeling from being around them even if you're doing or discussing something really gross, and we are and I do, so that's a good sign."

"In what context were you told something like that?

Here they teach us, more practical stuff, than that, about mortal relationships, and less fun stuff, than that, about the divine."

"Oh, I wasn't, like, told it, y'know, by a person, I just read it in a book at some point I think. I love books. Easily in my top 3 things. Fuck, how much access to books am I gonna have as you guys's hostage? I might be feeling that deep sense of loss coming on."

Oh, no, she wants more books than she saw in the alcove?

"Besides just what you can see around here, Ran's friends let us sub-borrow books from the library in the big fancy Nethysian temple pretty regularly, and—fuck it, wanna break in with me as practice?"

"I am extremely clumsy and terrible at being subtle in just about any respect. Are you sure that's a good idea?" It does sound fun, though.

"It'll have to be fixed eventually!"

She ties Katie to a door handle for the brief sojourn to empty the chamberpot, letting her re-wash herself the Osirian way first if she desires.

Then takes her to the kitchen.

Lights a candle, nods at water pitcher, cups and dishes.

She starts and stokes a fire under the flat metal stovetop, then opens a waistpouch triumphantly. "I found these in the gutter!" It's three huge purple eggs.

Cough.

"Sorry, Ran still has to unpack a lot of the stuff from last night."

She demonstrates that the cupboards contain any sacks of dried fruit, nuts, jerky, honey, spices. There are also some oats, rice, and beans, on the lower levels.

"This is pathetic. Help yourself though.

We really do have a lot of leftovevers waiting. We just hunted-and-gathered. That's how we get most of our stuff. Surprisingly, there was wolf left. We'll set most of it curing, but we'll cook some. It keeps in the bag." God, she wishes she had some right now.

"Eggs are yours." She starts them frying. No embryos!

"Not normally the biggest fan of eggs, but I've never had ones like this before. What laid these?" She's not really hungry but does her best to please Taz by nibbling idly on some dried fruit anyway."

"Rainbow bustard. They're kinda like, I can show you later, either in real life or a picture, but they're these huge groundbirds. The female is way bigger than the male and has this reflective black neck frill and the male is the one that sits on the eggs."