By the time Lightning orgasms, Lilian’s been cumming for a while. She started when Lightning shocked her and sort of never properly stopped for a while, just rode one long orgasm up and down. She may not have any limit on how many orgasms she can squeeze out, but she’s feeling very pleased with how things went here.

Once Lightning rolls them over into cuddling, Lilian happily snuggles back into her. Lightning’s cock inside her makes her feel extra cuddled. It’s nice. The slight movements Lightning’s making are more than enough to keep her feeling pleasantly needy.

When Lightning mentions being tired, Lilian yawns. When she talks about sleeping together in a non-colloquial sense, happy warmth burbles up inside her.

“Yeah. Deep Heart Glisten Palace. And. Sleeping like this sounds nice.”

"Sounds interesting. Let's take a nap then."

Lightning, it so happens, possesses the ability to fall asleep most anywhere. Not exactly on command, but nothing's particularly bothering them, as the area was very recently a hazardous battlefield and some of the less sturdy flesh in this little meetingspot-throughway is a bit... Singed.

Snugglesqueeze. Zzzzzz.

Lilian, as it happens, takes a bit longer to fall asleep than that. So, she gets to spend several long, cozy minutes snuggled up in Lightning’s arms before she finally falls asleep.

Their nap is disturbed eventually by a quivering running through the Pink the ground rising and tilting ever so slightly and vibrating subtly, as if some titanic breath was taken in elsewhere.

Lightning stands and stretches and yawns.

"...Hey, Lilian, I was wondering. What is 'evil'? I remember the word and kind of have a feeling about it, but something about it seems..." She trails off.

Lilian is abstractly aware that this is sort of a strange thing to wake up to, but you couldn't pay her money to pretend to care.

And wow, Lightning's missing a lot of memories, isn’t she? That’s a concept most people pick up young and hold close.

“That is a surprisingly hard question to answer. I guess the easiest and most widely agreed upon answer would be that it’s the opposite of good, but that just passes the buck to what good is. So, instead I’ll say that evil can be a range of different things. I think I’ll just try to give a bunch of examples to point to the idea in case that jogs your memories. Evil is hurting people in ways they don’t want to be hurt. It’s not caring about people, and so deciding it’s perfectly okay to hurt them or make their lives worse for your own personal satisfaction. It’s wanting to make people’s lives worse for its own sake and letting yourself do it.

“It’s more complicated than any of that, because good is more complicated than any few sentences can sum up. It’s like how you want to do lots of different things, and so if you tried to sum up everything you like doing in a few sentences you’d miss things. Good is deliberately helping you do those things or helping to arrange the world so that you can do it yourself. Evil is willfully, deliberately stopping you, or intentionally arranging the world so you can’t. Sometimes things are complicated, and doing something has too many different results for everything to line up good or evil, but sometimes it’s simple.”

Headtilt. "Not very clear-cut, is it? Yeah, I remember- It's really complicated. Someone told me once 'all you can do is your best'. I wish I remembered more, I know I was someone, and with someone, but I feel like... It's been a long time. There was a book-" Frown. "Things are simpler here in the Pink. Most things here want sex and that's about it. It's relaxing, but I still miss the rest. I want to go see it all soon."

“All you can do is your best. That’s a good way to put it.

“And yeah, this place feels like a really good place to take a vacation, and maybe even live with how fast I can run. But I don’t think I’d want to only be here. I want to see cities and learn magic and make lots of friends and learn everything about the world I can. Having sex is nice, and sometimes I feel like I could spend all my time doing it, but I wouldn’t actually want to, you know?

“I wouldn’t want to leave before figuring out what’s going on with the ominous rumors from the north, though. I’m pretty strong compared to most people, given how the fact that I was strong enough to fight you at all was something worth remarking on. If something really bad is coming, I could maybe help stop it, and so I should.”

"Yeah, we need lots of different stuff to do instead of just one thing! I remember - an argument, no a debate, about this, but not who it was. It was like, there's always more people to save, are you just going to save people forever? You'll never be done. And I was like, well I made a difference to that one. And that one. And that one. -I get the feeling Charity wants me to help here even besides that, though."

Lilian smiles. Lightning is good. Lilian thinks she remembers a pretty similar debate back from her home, actually. She guesses people, or at least the humanlike ones, are the same everywhere.

It’s a nice thought. That no matter where you go in the multiverse, you’ll find people talking about throwing starfish back into the sea.

That word Lightning said, “charity” but as a proper noun, it rings a bell.

“Charity?”

"The Charity Queen? The goddess?"

Wait, goddess? A goddess maybe actually communicating with people, and being real? Huh. Well, she is in a fantasy universe, she probably should have expected it.

Does Lilian trust Lightning enough to just blurt out that she’s from another world, and that’s why she didn’t know one of the local goddesses? She wants to. And she’s pretty sure she’ll end up that way if she knows her for long enough. But what if she’s got some horrible brain parasite sitting in the back of her head waiting to take over and turn her to the side of evil? What if there’s a mind control wizard one tentacle community over that will make Lightning tell them all the secrets? What if only evil gods grab people, and so everyone will think Lilian’s evil?

But “Charity” sounds so familiar. Not just as a piece of information half-remembered in the back of her mind about her new home, but as someone she knows. Maybe that’s who saved her?

It’s been a long, long time since she’s prayed. Maybe now is a good time to change that.

Charity, are you there? Is it safe for me to tell Lightning about things?

A sense of warmth and pleasure. The sensation of being squeezed tight. The knowledge that she’s safe, and that things are going to be okay.

If she dies, eventually she’ll wake back up, warm and safe and cared for. Nothing can take this from her.

A brush of who this mind reaching out to her is, life and joy and a boundless beautiful cycle.

A tentacle coiling friendlily around Lightning.

Oh. That is who saved her.

And Lightning is safe, apparently! Lilian is very happy about this! She didn’t want to keep secrets from her new friend!

“I woke up a little ago out in the Fringe, with no memories of what this world is like, and a bunch of random knowledge of dangerous things I should avoid shoved into my mind, like I’d read a book about it. Instead of memories of this world, I had memories of a different one, one without magic or tentacle beings but much better technology. I died there. I’m, um, pretty sure the Charity Queen just told me she saved me.

“Maybe she wants me to help with something too.”

She stops, then, and realizes what that sounds like. What people on her old world would think of someone saying something like that.

“If you maybe think I’ve actually just been messed with by an evil mind mage or something I don’t blame you? And I guess I can’t actually rule it out. So that would be a pretty reasonable thing to think, I think. But it doesn’t feel right. I’ve got so many memories, and I think faking them all would probably be hard.”

"-Doesn't sound impossible? Everything has to come from something. I've never heard of any of that, but I also woke up without a clear picture of my history."

Lilian sounds stressed and scared. The obvious action: Hug.

"It does kinda hurt, doesn't it? Uncertainty."

Lilian sighs happily in Lightning’s arms.

Being held is nice enough to dispel any lingering disquiet.

Nice as it is, she should probably respond to what Lightning said instead of just luxuriating in the warm happiness of Hug.

“Yeah, it’s not fun. Not when it matters, at least. Unfortunately, there’s no way out but through.”

She nods to herself, nuzzling against the crook of Lightning’s neck in the process.

Multitasking!

"I feel like there's something huge I've forgotten. But it's... Not fine. But it's not going away, so. Just ignore it? Maybe not the best idea, but ehehehe..."

Lilian frowns.

“Yeah, I don’t really know the balance there. Does it seem like it might be urgent, or like ancient history? If it’s just some really bad memories it’s probably fine not to dig them up, if you don’t want to.”

"Old. Very old. The oldest."

Siiiigh.

Now that Lightning’s the one feeling sad it’s Lilian’s turn to provide comfort snuggles. She rests her head on Lightning’s shoulder and squeezes her tight, careful to modulate her strength enough that it’s comforting, not painful.

“Then you can probably afford not to try to dredge it up. It’ll probably come back some day, if you’ve still got inklings of it, but no need to push yourself to remember faster.”

Now she's crying. Like most everything else, she does it unreservedly. Sobbing, really.

Oh no. Lilian holds her tight and whispers, “It’s okay, I’m here. I’m here as long as you need me.”

She cries for a while, muttering under her breath.

"It was - there was - I had - something beautiful, but nothing lasts forever. I used to live in... A kingdom. In a castle. There was grass and trees and rocks. And- Gone. All gone."

Oh. When Lightning said “old”, she meant it.

She’s feeling a slow pulsing urge to make it better somehow. But she can’t. And this isn’t about her and her emotions anyway. It’s about being here for Lightning while she needs her.

What do you say to someone who’s lost quite literally everything but themselves?

Lilian doesn’t know.

But she can hold Lightning tight, and be here for her. That doesn’t require words.

Eventually the crying peters off into sniffles, and then later to her saying, "I want to take another nap now. Or maybe fling myself into a pit for a while. Or just scream. You don't have to stay here."