Ishaza takes a long sip of her tea.

"That sounds like it's worthwhile, and it's always good to get some variety."

"Yep," she sips again. "It's pretty great, in my opinion. Proud of what I'm doing."

She closes her eyes and sighs. "There's just still an extent to which I'm the same untransitioned trans girl whose miserable life ended on the hood of a speeding truck, looking around bewildered at everything. I keep resetting to face whatever's in front of me, keep rolling with it, but I don't know that I ever really processed it, y'know?"

"Hence why you're here with me. Would you like to unpack your thoughts a little more, then?"

"Yeah," she says, then pauses for a moment, taking a long sip of her tea.

"It's... There's a part of me that feels like I don't deserve it, that feels like I don't deserve this fascinating new life with this perfect body in this world with magic and more sex positivity and rare, lucrative things I can do. How do I deserve to have a bunch of skills I already had upgraded, and skills I didn't downloaded whole cloth into my mind? Why not someone with the training to uplift a society? I only have sketchily-remembered snippets of the path. Why not someone with a strong track record in social activism? All I did was help organize one activist's legal defense and join some protests."

She sighs hard. "Why me?"

"Says the woman who's already helping people escape their abusers and helping to protect the civilized world from the wildlands."

She blushes, that dusting of violet coloring her pale cheeks again. "Yeah, well, maybe you've got a point. I feel like lots of people would do that, though, and plenty would be better suited to do more."

She eats a bit more of her food, sighing.

"And how many of them would manage to turn a blessing from the Avarice King into something good, hm?"

She giggles and grins, blushing brighter. "Okay, fair point. That's fairly hard to do, and I like to think I've done a tolerable job there."

She shakes her head, smiles, and sighs. "You're pretty damn good at this 'confidant who provides helpful perspective' thing. Thanks."

"It's nothing." She tops up Sable's tea again.

"Thank you," she replies, taking another long sip, and then finishes the meal off in a few more adored bites. "This was absolutely delicious."

She leans back and sighs warmly, her body language relaxed aside from a subtle note of "I don't know what to do next" that Ishaza can probably spot.

Ishaza smiles. "I'm glad to see you a little less tense. It seems you had a lot to express and make peace with."

Her hand slips up to touch the pendant at her throat, tangling in the fine gold chain as her thumb runs across the ruby nestled between her breasts. 

"If you want some time to think, I can clear the dishes and perhaps come back with my violin - or, if you wish, I can simply come sit next to you and hold you close for a little while." 

She smiles slightly. The ruby pendant winks in the light. 

Her eyes follow Ishaza's hand reflexively and... yeah, that was deliberate. Also, yep, Ishaza continues to be really hot, and continues to be very good at this.

She blushes, both at the enticing thoughts and at being called out so directly for needing a hug.

"Being held sounds really great right now," she replies with a soft smile.

Ishaza gets up, steps around the table, and sits down next to Sable. Gently, she wraps an arm around Sable's waist and squeezes; she leans in, and presses a kiss to Sable's temple.

Sable relaxes further into Ishaza's embrace, the uncertainty melting away, her blush intensifying slightly at the kiss. She wraps one of her tails tenderly around Ishaza's waist, and an arm around her shoulders. A tender, pleased sigh spills from her lips.

Ishaza leans in against Sable. She's very close; Sable can smell her cinnamon perfume and feel the wash of her breath against her shoulder.

She just smiles, and holds Sable gently, not insisting at all.

She leans in against Ishaza as well. She doesn't wear perfume, but this close it's easy for Ishaza to smell her inky nature, faintly metallic, bringing to mind libraries and old books and handwritten letters.

She savors the closeness for several minutes, something seeming to soften about her, despite not having any muscles to unclench.

Eventually, she speaks again. "Do you mind if I touch you, explore some?"

Her fingers stroke curiously and demonstratively across Ishaza's shoulder.

"Not at all." Ishaza's smile widens a fraction.

Sable's smile widens as well, turning intrigued and slightly sharper. The hand on Ishaza's shoulder strokes slowly down her arm, while her other hand reaches up and gently touches one of her horns, fingers tracing softly along.

If anyone had a good view of Sable's eyes right now, they'd be shifting toward heart-shaped pupils.

Ishaza's hand, which is already on Sable's hip, starts to explore a little in turn, stroking at her side and a little of the top part of her thigh. 

Ishaza's stroking gets a pleased little wriggle from Sable, her leg inching fractionally closer toward Ishaza's hand.

Sable's fingers trail warmly down to Ishaza's wrist and explore further into her palm, savoring the feel of her silky-soft skin, then slide back up to her shoulder. Slowly her questing fingers slide out along Ishaza's collarbone, trailing gently across. At the same time, her other hand savors the smooth upper curve of the horn she's been exploring, briefly wrapping around it in an exploratory grip before sliding gently off, feeling the pleasantly grippable ridges on the underside.

"You are fascinatingly beautiful, Ishaza," she murmurs.

Ishaza lets her eyes half-close as Sable explores her body, her smile deepening, though she still maintains that reserved air. 

The hand wrapped around Sable's back continues to explore her skin, and Ishaza shifts in a little more, her free hand caressing Sable's shoulder as she turns her hips a little so Sable can see the gold pin at her left hip. It looks... structurally important. 

"Thank you," Ishaza says. "I try."

Oh really, structurally important? She'll just have to do something about that, then. How playfully can she manage it, though?

The hand on Ishaza's collarbone trails slowly across to her side, slowly tracing over the outer curves of her breast, then over ribs and down to her waist, before tracing back up, savoring every inch. Sable's other hand strokes her hair, then down her neck to her shoulder.

But while all this is happening, a tiny tendril of ink extends from the side of the tail wrapping around Ishaza's waist, discreetly reaching down to wrap around the pin, then very carefully and slowly tugging it free.