"I promise I won't kidnap you, or exploit you for your eggs. If you want something more private, the bar mimic actually has a few rooms people can use, in addition to the apartment the 'barkeep' stays in. Although not as many as it would if it was an inn mimic proper. They're also, ah, rather small, and typically intended to be used for a short period of time. And, given that this is the Pink, often in use. But probably one of them is free right now."

"...ah. I see." She blushes. "Well—as long as we're very clear that we're going in there to talk. And not... not talk. Then I think I'd rather. Sorry, I just—it's all tangled up with family secrets and I think I have some idea why the family keeps them so secret. I really don't want to be overheard."

"No, that makes perfect sense. Anyway, I'm the one who's been here before, let me lead the way."

And then she heads off towards the staircase in the back.

Wow, Aire's ass really does look nice in that tight skirt, doesn't it? Tanthe should be careful not to stare.

Oh dear. This is going to be one of those nights where she's up past midnight meditating, isn't it.

Well. Aire has been really helpful so far. She's hard to get a read on sometimes, but she seems all right? And she hasn't lied, and she responded appropriately to requests for reassurance. All in all, it seems pretty safe.

She takes slow calming breaths and follows Aire and doesn't even need to spend that much effort avoiding looking at her ass.

Those slow deep breaths probably aren't helping with the pheromones!

And here they are at the room! It is, as promised, small. There's a bed, a pair of chairs, and a small table between them all packed rather closely together, and that's about it. There isn't actually space for both a third chair and the ability to move to fit in the room together at the same time.

Aire moves to sit at the far chair, and gestures invitingly at the other. Then, she waits for Tanthe to talk.

Do you know what else won't help with the pheromones? Being in a much smaller room with Aire!

Fortunately they aren't actually incredibly strong, either in effect or scent, while Aire is wearing clothes. Just enough to make her seem just that little bit more attractive and reasonable, and ensure she smells nice, that's all. 

Aire does smell very nice. Tanthe tells herself firmly that this is not relevant to the conversation at hand.

She sits in the other chair and fidgets.

"Um. So. ...the normal way it goes, in my father's family, is that the women lay golden eggs once a month and that's all, everything else about them is pretty ordinary. I didn't realize until I laid copper that laying copper was something that could happen. But, it turns out, it can. And it's—a problem."

Further fidgeting.

Deep breath.

"...this is sort of weird and awkward to explain but... all right. The ones who lay gold all the time, they do it because they have only one womb. The rest of us have more, in a chain one after the other. Three is silver gold and platinum, so you start silver, and only get gold if you, um, activate, the next one. Five is copper silver gold platinum emerald - my great-grandma was one of those. I have seven; I started at copper, but if I went deeper I could do silver, gold, platinum, emerald, sapphire, and diamond. And I shouldn't. I shouldn't have sex at all. Because the more wombs we have, the worse we are at stopping once we start. I never heard about Great-Grandma until I laid copper, because after she accidentally went too far she spent her whole life in the brothel across the street—it gets worse at every layer, see, each one makes you want twice as much as the last, and she got caught by a plant monster that opened all five and that was that. And I don't want that," she says, near tears with the strength of her emotion. "I want to help defeat the Red Queen, I want to inherit the inn from my parents, I want to find that library I've heard rumours about and read all the books there, I want to live a life."

She wipes away her tears and blinks nervously at Aire.

Aire keeps very strong control over herself, once it becomes clear that this is going to be approximately the hottest thing she’s ever heard. That’s a vastly superior version of what she’s been trying to do with Sex Magic, and only vaguely succeeding very small amounts at. Perhaps she’ll learn more in the future, and be able to do it on demand, although she doubts that. No, she thinks she’ll be able to get more damaged, stupider, and hornier people out the other side. Something good, but not something perfect. Her old favourite thing, and not what she suspects will very rapidly become her new favourite thing.

It’s suddenly very important to her that she not mess this up.

Okay, no fooling around, no being blatant enough that if Tanthe was just a little bit more alert she’d notice. No acting like this is a game. It’s not that it still isn’t one, of course, it’s just that if she loses this time it will be a tragedy.

Oh, once the conclusion of the evening is sufficiently foregone, she can play a bit. Right now, no. No risks.

“Oh no, that’s a much worse problem than I was expecting. Well, I can’t say I have some shocking revelation about how I happen to have exactly the solution to all of your problems. But I also haven’t suddenly reconsidered my promise not to exploit you for profit, if that’s what you’re looking nervous about. If I could fix that I would, but I don’t think I personally could alter the biology of that. I can’t think of anything besides perhaps an incredibly skilled fleshcrafter that would have the chance, and that’s plausibly my own ignorance of fleshcrafting speaking there more than anything else.

But, well, I don’t think I quite understand the bit about no sex, if the problem is womb penetration? Most boys aren’t actually large enough to manage that, and girls would have an even easier time not doing it by accident. Is the “worse at stopping once we start” thing bad enough that you’re worried you might actually just decide to go out and, um, do it on purpose? If so, well, all I can say is that I wouldn't wish the inability to have sex on my worst enemy.”

Everything she said is true, actually. She’d fix Tanthe's problems after she’d fucked her silly, so she could put her problems back and fuck her silly again. But Tanthe doesn’t need to know that. And the rest of it is just straightforwardly true.

She shakes her head. "Womb penetration is a problem but it's not the only one. It's not safe for me to have sex at all, even just regular penetration could start something I can't stop. It's, um," she blushes, "also not safe for me to orgasm but luckily I can't without help."

Fidget fidget.

"It's... possible that with as much willpower as I've got I could get away with dabbling, but without knowing how much is safe ahead of time, I really shouldn't risk anything, you know? And even if it turned out to be safe, it'd still make my life more difficult. Um. Because—we're hornier at laying time, and the ones with seven layers like me, all the records say as soon as they had sex at all, they were in laying time for the rest of their lives. I already have a lot of trouble around laying time, I don't want to make that my life."

Aire nods. With all the caution engendered by that kind of thing Aire is suddenly quite glad she didn't do anything more blatant than lean forward slightly to give Tanthe a bit of a better view and touch her hands. She might have realized Aire's goal to seduce her, which normally isn't that much of a problem, beyond it being a less fun move in the game. Most people enjoy being seduced by pheromone-enhanced attractive women. But, well, Tanthe is in a highly abnormal situation.

“Ah, I think I understand a bit better. Well, you have kissed someone and not ended up spending the rest of your days in the nearby brothel, so I guess you have some idea of what all that willpower purchases you in increased tolerance. Or did the problem with your telepathy crop up quickly enough that- Oh. If you were in their mind enough to be changing things, you would also be reading things. And then perhaps putting the combination of what you got from yourself and your partner back into your partner’s mind for you to read out again in a feedback loop. Which is an odd enough situation that maybe you didn’t get much information about the non-telepathic version out of the experience.”

"It was... a little worrying, on the willpower front," she admits. "I wouldn't have thought ahead of time that I'd ever go in somebody's head without even noticing I was doing it - so if I got any more carried away, what else might I do? But. Yes. Maybe it would be better, if I wasn't reading them. I don't know."

Well, the obvious thing to do at this point if Aire didn’t particularly care about the outcome is offer to try kissing. But she does care about the outcome, rather a lot. Even if it seems like Tanthe will nervously demur, she thinks the correct choice here is to offer, just to put the idea in her head. It wouldn’t be worth the risk if she seemed likely to decide to bolt, but she isn’t parsing that way to Aire’s instincts. No, more likely she’d either shyly accept or shyly decline, most things outside of that range don’t seem likely to her.

She’s got rather good instincts for this type of thing, albeit not infallible ones; she did spend most of her memories living in a cave alone with a Pit Worm. Most of her old procedural knowledge is still there, but some of the subtleties and reasoning behind it are missing.

Well, she can’t let that stop her. Her only option is to use what she has to figure out what the best course of actions is and then do that. So, course of action chosen, she moves ahead on it.

“Well, we did just meet so it would be entirely understandable if the answer was no. And I don’t know if you like girls as much as you like boys, so maybe you wouldn’t actually learn too much from it. But we did just discover that my shields are strong enough to keep you out. So. If you were curious how much less intense it is without the telepathy, well, you do have the opportunity to learn.”

"...maybe?" she says, hesitant and uncertain. "It's not just that I might hurt you, right, it's also that I might get carried away and do more than I meant to. I guess... if you make sure to stop things if it goes any farther than kissing...?"

"I could absolutely do that!"

"...maybe, then." She's darting blushing looks at Aire's chest and lips. "If... if you're sure it'll be okay."

"I will work very hard to make sure that you don't regret it."

She takes another deep breath, looking very very nervous, and closes her eyes for a few seconds to settle herself and think things through.

She doesn't have to do this. There's a case to be made that she shouldn't. But Aire did already solve one major problem today, and she seems so confident that she can keep things from going badly. And... it would be nice, to be able to safely kiss someone. Maybe, with enough practice, she could even go back home having learned how to keep her hands off other people's brains, and then—well. Best not to get ahead of herself.

She opens her eyes again, and nods hesitantly. And—looks around for a sensible place to try things. The bed is very intimidating, but at the same time clearly logistically superior to trying to shuffle these chairs closer to one another.

"We can do either the bed or the chairs, whichever you prefer, but I really do recommend the bed. Less awkward, more comfy."

And easier to slowly escalate there.

The goal here, she thinks, should be to turn up the desire Tanthe's feeling slowly enough that there isn't an obvious point where she should stop. To that end, it's better to let Tanthe make as many decisions as possible. She'll be perhaps less likely to get carried away that way in the short term, but that's plausibly a good thing, and she'll also be less likely to notice anything wrong. What Aire cares about here is the long term, so the primary thing she has to avoid is Tanthe becoming suspicious or worried enough to decide to stop.

She eyes the bed warily, but nods. "I must admit you're right."

Okay. So. All she has to do is... sit on the bed. Yes. Yes? Yes.

She slides nervously out of her chair and perches on the very edge of the bed as though she is half expecting to have to jump up and flee the room at any moment.

Aire will move very slowly and gently to sit just far enough away from Tanthe that she'd have to scoot a bit closer to actually start kissing.

"We don't have to start quick. There's no hurry; there's still more free rooms, and even if there weren't nobody would begrudge us for spending half an hour in here sitting on this bed doing nothing. When you're ready to start, let me know, and I'll shift a bit closer."

And, of course, if they do end up sitting there doing nothing for half an hour Aire's pheromones will have enough time to make Tanthe suggestible enough she could probably be convinced of all sorts of things. 

She does in fact take a little time, first closing her eyes and lightly meditating, then opening them again to study Aire. Her truesight has always been less well-trained than her other talents, because neither Mama nor Auntie Meri had it, but she thinks she can glimpse an outline of Christa through Aire's body if she focuses just right.

...right, Christa. Is also here. She hesitates for a moment before processing this information, because they had a whole plan here, and this is a disruption to the plan. But it is correct for the plan to be disrupted by this. Not letting the plan be disrupted by this would be a mistake.

"Um, I may be very silly but I just noticed, your friend doesn't have your shields," she says apologetically. "I'm not going to squish you by accident but... is there a way to make sure she's safe, too?"

Ah, she'd missed that. She does have a solution to the problem, but it will leave her bereft of Christa's telepathy for the duration. Well, if Tanthe's lost enough for her shields to come down she should also be lost enough to project into Aire's mind, and she thinks she might be able to twist her shields such that the information gets through without the associated mental alteration. If that's the case the only thing she'd be losing is Christa's ability to plant thoughts in Tanthe's mind, but Tanthe's an experienced enough telepath she'd likely notice that anyway if she was even sort of in her right mind, even if she was distracted enough to let her shields down. No, the ability would only be useable after it was no longer needed.

"I've actually got the ability to walk around independently of my wearer, if I want. Christa should be fine having a bit of a break in the bar's basement. There's tentacles for her to play with there of course, so she'll still be enjoying herself, but maybe something a bit less all-consuming than what I've been doing to her would be a good change of pace. Given past experience, even if I left her to sleep it off in a neighboring bed it'd still take her most of a day to come up from cozy pseudo-dreaming. She won't mind."

"Oh, that's good," she says, relieved. "Okay. Could you please do that, then?"

"Of course."

And she heads off.

Christa notices something's changed, when the pleasure gets less intense, but her only real response is to snuggle happily into the bar mimic's tentacles and drift off halfway to sleep.

It doesn't take Aire long, she's back and sitting next to Tanthe again a couple minutes later.

In that time, Tanthe has settled somewhat more comfortably onto the edge of the bed and meditated a little. She opens her eyes when she hears Aire return.

"You look different," is the first thing she says. "Not outside. Inside. That's interesting..." and then she ducks her head, blushing. "And I'm getting distracted again."

Aire is actually having to exercise deliberate control not to look too eager. Well, fortunately she's good at that, although Tanthe is uncomfortably perceptive.

She giggles.

"Don't worry about it, it's cute."