Eat. 

You're still hungry, even if the thoughts are fading, and it feels easier to just cease acknowledging that. 

I am. 

The rest of the meal is... hard, frankly, swallowing turning into this arduous slog, each breath something that hits another faint trigger, each sip an excuse to shudder with discomfort, each pause a moment to feel that urge returning once more to consume, each glance at the plate a reason to flinch and glance around to see if someone is going to come and scold me for eating more then I need. 

After a while, it's done, though, and I feel a little better as tears roll down my face. 

So. 

Life goes on, for all of us.

There's more to do, but not nesscarily all that much in our present condition. 

For one, I'd advocate for a change. 

...Yeah. No need to fill the rest of the night with the buisness attire.

I keep our footsteps clipped and sharp as I walk us over to the dresser once more, as I take off our top, slipping the suit off with some focused motions. 

Our chest breathes, free from the probably? mostly imaginary constriction, the little bits of clinging heat dissipating to leave us distinctly cool, in this room. 

I discard the slippers - they're for counter-signalling our mental state, more then anything else, beyond hperhaps an instinct to feel like we ought to be wearing something. 

The felt-like embrace of the trail is fulfilling, I find, and a faint smile graces my lips as my hands settle back into being comfortable parts of the self beyond being a simple tool to manage so sharply. 

The dresser is still quite excessive, but it's simple enough to shimmy out the pants and throw on a simple grey translucent - though not indecently so - tank top on. The comfort settings are fine to keep the underwear fuss free, so there's no reason to worry about that, and pants feel perhaps a bit besides the point, now. 

I stretch out, a bit of confidence brimming in our body. We've never had the chance to train our body, but there's always the little moments where I feel like I can face the world. The path is soft and forgiving, our body is well-fed and not too tired, after the nap, and we have every reason to expect that we should be fine, to do this. 

...And many a reason to expect that this is the time where that means... not a lot. 

You saw the same basic information that I did about mythos, Moonsilver.

There's no fundamental limitation on how low you are before it starts augmenting, but there's any number of reasons to expect that doing things in those terms will help - exercise even normally is something that can help the clarity of your thought, grow the strength of your muscles, mitigate the need for sleep, and make us shine all the more brightly. If it's part of your story, then it's part of our powers, and it is not as if physical capacity is something useless, when all is said and done, or else we wouldn't have found Alena's prospects so interesting. 

And? We could meditate, we could study, we could simply start doing that wehn we actually get the power and not when we're tired, like this. 

You're well aware that you are devil's advocating at this point, aren't you?

I tilt my head in a nod. 

"She is."

"Regardless." 

I smile widely, and start bouncing on the balls of my feet. 

"Those are reasonable enough uses, but there's more to consider. Pushing through this is something that we can develop, and starting with some built up cardiovascular capacity will help, alongside the habit, and getting a sense of our limitations aside the active modifications of our myth is something that we won't get to experience again, and will be a useful guide for our more fundamental limitations, for a time. And I expect Emergence and the mental enhancements that will come with our powers to make it simple enough to multitask through some of these activities - it's simple enough for many people to listen to audiobooks throughout, and aside the sensory issues there's no reason to think that we can't go do that ourselves. Meditation has been a habit for us for a long enough time that it's simple to drop in to each moment, and to let our mind dive and delve back into that state once more. This, this si something new, something eminently sensible, and something that we can adapt, eventually - there will be prescriptions for alternatives, in the classic, of course, but that's true enough of everything we could end up doing."  

I bounce my arms out, fingers splayed and interlocked - I hope that my thighs won't rub together too much, but I have enough confidence in the systems of the ship and the enchantments fo that not be too much of a worry. 

"And..." 

I smile again, wanly, this time. 

"I'd just like to have this, for me." 

"...Okay."

The run is... odd. 

The air always feels right, the little stresses in my foot seem rather even, all things considered - the soft burn along my ankle and along my sole is liquid and low, relatively speaking. My gait smooths out, after a while, and my lungs burn, at times - there's nothing about our lung capacity that has improved, after all, and it's not like we've suddenly gotten a vast phyiscal upgrade that means that we can do more then jog and switch to walking, intermittently, for perhaps an hour. 

I miss when that felt so much more natural - we had a fitness kick, in our mid-teens, but this... 

This is good too, even with the heavy sheen of sweat upon my brow, the flush of my skin, the thundering in my chest and all the little dysphoric things that creep back in. 

My thoughts are clear and...

I think we'll think well, about the things to come, now.

Lumen will be interesting? 

Perhaps not today - but I expect there will be some interesting interplay with our affinities and the options that they have for mental illusions. It'll be useful to get a feel for that, as well, and getting our own options for alternative workouts seem wise. That likely makes it worth enquiring about say, figuring out blade work - figuring out an appropriate weapon would be sensible, as would hand-to-hand, perhaps? 

Generalized spiritual growth is something to keep in mind, and things where we can be more directly augmented by the tools we have is something to encourage. 

That being said...

We do have the ship's resources, here? Even if it's all going to be renters for anything remotely worthwhile, that doesn't mean that we won't be able to build skills up for later - for all I know it could make sense to train up our power armor piloting skills or such-like, for whenever we go about making that. 

 I take the time to settle comfortably into bed. 

That depends a good deal on how we end up implementing emergence, I think? That'll have to be another meditation, I expect. 

That's true enough of most things. The important part is having something to fill our time that makes sense.

I do want to casually meet at least one of our candidates.

Seria, perhaps? 

She seems quite inclined for 'casual', and I expect she's the sort of person who's more then ready to avoid any of the hanging issues that are somewhat inherent to our relationships, right now. 

I rub away at a non-existent headache, and snort. 

Enna'd be fine, likely, if a bit hard to transition into something more meaningful? She seems like she'd be reasonably fine with talking about normal things. 

I'd expect it'd be a bit... artificial? Not exactly the sort of thing that would work to build a relationship, perhaps.