Rivethira leaves him be, and lets herself fall away into the trials and tribulations of people that don't exist, because the trials and tribulations of the people that do exist are too close and painful for comfort. She finishes her book just as the sun begins to brighten the mountain. It was pretty good. The last thing she recalls as she meanders back to her room and her bed is that she'll have to look up other things the author's written, because the writing style was descriptive without being too flowery and the characters were fascinating and multi-faceted and the worldbuilding was, was.... zzzzzzzzz.

That was not an insult to the worldbuilding, instead that was about the point where she actually made it to the bed, and promptly became completely dead to the world.

She wakes up some time around noon, takes half an hour to actually persuade herself to get up to get food, and then gets dressed and sleepily plods to a dining hall for that purpose.

The dining hall is there for her!

Excellent. Thank you, dining hall.

Nom.

... She really wants to go read more books by that author. She should maybe study Ansati some more, but also, what if there's a sequel? There might be a sequel. The ending was a satisfying one but not everything was wrapped up.

There is a sequel. It turns out to be better than the first book. She has enough presence of mind to notice when she gets hungry and summarily feeds herself, but is otherwise completely lost to the world. She's in another.

Hours later, she closes the book and stretches sore limbs and scrubs at her face. The ending was sad but beautiful, okay. There was a redemption arc and it was believable and heartwarming and sad and shut up she's not crying you're crying.

She gives herself a minute so her voice won't come out as a crackle that might alarm Serik - she's fine - and then she says, "Hey, Serik, are you busy?"

He appears.

"Not particularly."

"Hi." Smile. ...Sniffle. "I finished a book and it made me cry."

"Aww."

He hugs her. He glances at the book.

"Yeah, I cried over that one too," he admits.

She smiles up at him.

"Aww, did you really?" Snuggle. "Well, it's a good book."

"It is!"

Snuggle-hug.

It is so snuggly!

"How went the work on resurrection?"

"I have a few things figured out."

"So it's something resembling possible?" Smiiile.

"Well, I don't know yet. There's two main parts to it. The first one's easier because I've run into it before; there's something about people that makes them harder to copy or create than things. I've never seriously tried, but I've run into it incidentally while working on something else. Magical things can be the same way, which is why I can't just hand you endless copies of the same bottle of healing water, but people are even harder than that. So if I was going to resurrect someone, I'd have to find a way around that problem. The other big question is, where am I getting them from? I've run into that one before too, actually, trying to get my dining-hall spell to give me things that nobody makes anymore, and I couldn't figure out how to draw from any time other than 'now' so I gave up. If I can solve both of those then I'll have it."

She nods.

"It sounds like a fascinating problem - I should finish learning Ansati so I can actually get started learning the theory..."

He smiles. "Yeah. It's fun."

"Yeah." Nuzzle. "I think I can't focus on Ansati right now though, I uh. Did kind of marathon two novels and sort of need to do something now? So learning it is slightly delayed."

He laughs and hugs her.

Snuggle.

... She looks at him thoughtfully.

"Yes?"

"I was - briefly distracted by the intersection of you enjoying the sight of me crying, and - let's go with 'alternative exercise methods'?"

Giggle.

Giggle.

"Sorry. That probably came a bit out of nowhere."

"I'm hardly going to complain!"

"No?" She smiles, and kisses the corner of his mouth. "Lucky me." Snuggle.

She weighs her options and desires, then says carefully, "... I think since I've spent basically a full day not recalling that I exist in favor of falling into a book series, I might want to - um. Take the opportunity to be reminded that I have a physical form? In way of, uh. Experimentation?"

And now she's blushing. Why this thing.

"Any experiments in particular on your mind?"

"You mentioned thinking about all of the ways you could hurt me," she murmurs, shy. "And now would be a pretty good time for careful empirical testing. I'm all calm and fuzzy headed from reading all day."