Perhaps it is time for Tanthe to start saying things out loud in words then, so as not to leave Christa out of the conversation. She will be careful not to touch on secret subjects.

"I just think it's a really interesting question, why people relate to each other the way they do and how they might relate to each other if things were different!" she enthuses. "But yes. Later. Not now. Though I might still spend time speculating about social dynamics as I get to know the people here."

Christa is telepathic too! Although she does pay attention to her more conventional senses first, when she's coming out of a daze. Aire will follow Tanthe's lead here, it seems like the right thing to do.

"Oh, speculate as much as you want! Far be it from me to pretend I don't find it incredibly endearing."

(Christa is now vaguely noticing that words are being spoken, although she hasn't moved on to parsing them just yet.)

Tanthe has never had to deceive another telepath before and doesn't want to try it for the first time in a three-way link. She's going to stay shielded to Christa until it's time to tell Christa certain things.

"I'm really interested to find out more about how Tentacled society works! Though of course I will have some trouble fully participating even if we do work out a solution to my embarrassing personal problems." Even if she recovers fully and reliably every time, it'll still be inconvenient trying to interact with Tentacled while at risk of having a new addiction crisis and week-long pleasure bender every time she has sex.

Okay, no, that's just flat out correct and Aire is somewhat annoyed with herself for not noticing that concern. The pattern of Tanthe being impressively clever continues.

Also, Aire continues to expend heroic amounts of effort to not think about the details of the week-long pleasure bender. It sort of looks like that effort has fallen far enough into the background that she's not really noticing it. 

"That would be a bit difficult, wouldn't it? Well, I suppose you can learn more through the avenue of having me participate fully and asking me questions." And also maybe it will turn out that Tanthe's subsequent pleasure benders are shorter, she did mention coming back stronger every time, perhaps that includes recovery speed. Although hopefully not so much that eventually she stops going on pleasure benders at all, that would be terrible.

"Oh, would you? I'd really appreciate it!"

(She decides not to speculate in depth about possible futures for now—that can wait until they aren't talking in front of an increasingly awake Christa—but she does hope that everything works out in a way that's compatible with both their preferences in the long term.)

"Of course! Hmm, if I manage my shields well enough, we might even be able to feed you sanitized telepathic input so you can understand it on a nearly the same level as if you were participating yourself." Of course that assumes Tanthe trusts Aire enough to let her bring her shields partially up, and while Aire is confident that will happen eventually, she's much less confident it will happen soon. So probably if that happens it won't happen for a while.

"That sounds fascinating, though very tricky."

If Aire is going to be interacting closely (i.e. sexually) with Tentacled then she's going to be some combination of 'not interacting with Tanthe at all' and 'not sending Tanthe all of her thoughts', and it might as well be more toward the latter, since this does in fact sound fascinating.

"I'm a little concerned about what happens if you share more than you intended, though I suppose you can always deliberately err on the side of sharing a little less than you think you can probably get away with..."

"I'll be careful, and make sure always to err on the side of caution."

Also, Aire needs rather a lot of orgasms a day to be fully fed. She can do that quickly, but there's still going to be some need for mental distance within the next day or so.

Huh. Sounds? Voices? What are they talking about? Sharing things? What are they sharing?

"Oh, hello Christa. Are you awake enough to want control of our body back just yet?"

That sounds like work. 

But okay, sure. There's a new person here? Who is the new person, help!

The new person is named Tanthe. They're nice. And while Christa was unconscious Aire made friends, and she'd like to meet Christa.

If she needs a bit more time, she can have it. There isn't any rush.

No! New person! And Christa felt that affection when Aire said Tanthe was "nice"! Aire has a crush! Cute!

But anyway, it's not like she was sleeping really, just not properly aware. Now that she's basically all there she can shake herself out of the last of it pretty quickly.

And then Aire will give over control of their shared body to Christa.

(And she'll use her Arousal Seal to keep Christa's from getting turned on, Aire's tattoos, seals, and mutations all conspire to mean that she really needs the help. That said, after she's given it, there's no hint that Christa would normally be a cauldron of lust at all. This is also why Aire isn't suggesting she and Christa separate, Christa would be liable to get distractingly aroused by Aire pretty quickly.)

She asks Aire to unroll herself a bit so she can talk with her actual face. Aire does, and the end result is a Christa who looks like she's wearing a ruffled pink collar.

"Um, hello? My name's Christa, I'm Aire's host. It's nice to meet you?"

"And I'm Tanthe. Tanthe Coiner, from Peachport. It's nice to meet you too! Aire told me lots of nice things about you in the course of explaining who she is and where she came from."

"Oh!"

Ooh, new person is friendly! Yay! Probably she should have expected this from someone Aire managed to become friends with so quickly, but still!

"Nice things is good! Thank you Aire."

"But, um, what all did she tell you about?"

How much does she know about the entire disaster that resulted in her and Aire ending up out here?

Christa's mind is completely unshielded, entirely open to Tanthe's perusal if she so desires. So is Christa's face, actually, so even without that Tanthe probably knows what she's concerned about. Not that Christa is aware of that.

"A lot. She was very careful of your friends' privacy, but I heard about the boy and his dragon. It was very brave of you to try to clear his name; I'm sorry it turned out to be such a troubling process. I hope next time one of your friends is in trouble it'll be more feasible to ask other friends for help."

She smiles happily when Tanthe calls her brave, and nods when she mentions asking other friends for help.

"Yeah. That would be nice."

Of course, she couldn't get Aire's help that time since Aire would have been too worried to let her go. She managed to put together the pattern where Aire makes her distractingly horny to stop her from doing something she thinks is dangerous pretty quickly, after all. And if she did that over Christa helping with whatever her mysterious plan was, she absolutely would have done it over Christa trying to turn herself in to the Inquisitors.

It's sort of nice not to have to tell the entire story herself, actually.

"This is the first time I've ever left my hometown so all the," she waves her hand vaguely, "strangers and strangeness, can be a bit overwhelming. I'm hoping I'll feel more settled once I've made some friends here and I'd like it very much if you were one of them. From everything Aire's said, you're a good friend to have."

"Friends! I'd like that! And I'll try to help with the overwhelming if I can, especially if all I need to do is make a new friend! But, also, questions! You know so much more about me than I do about you, after all. Why'd you decide to leave home? And what's Peachport like? I don't think I've heard of it."

She's also just now noticing that Tanthe is very pretty, but due to Aire's finagling with the Arousal Seal this just takes the form of her noticing that Tanthe is especially pleasant to look at the same way that the best sunsets are.

"Peachport is a nice little town on the southern coast, right where the Fringe meets the Green. My family runs an inn there. I left home because we heard a rumour about the Red Queen and when I cast the stars about it they said DOOM—they did not literally say DOOM, that was just what it felt like—and I'm a really powerful psychic so I thought I might be able to help."

Oh no, is she reading all of Christa's embarrassing thoughts? Wait, she hasn't actually had any of those. False alarm!

"I'm glad they didn't literally say DOOM, that seems like it would somehow be even worse. And wow, it's really impressive that you came here just because it was important and you thought you might be able to help! It's admirable."

So cool! She's a real-life hero! The type of person Christa might read a book about.

"Oh, also, I'm, well, not fully psychic, just telepathic, but still! I'm not the best at controlling whether or not I read people, but you don't need to worry, you've got really strong shields. Aire probably already told you that, but it's important to be sure!"

"Aire did tell me, but I still appreciate you saying something! You're right that it's one of those things it's important to be sure about. Speaking of which, I am reading you but I can stop if you want—" hmm except she's still reading Aire which kind of entails some reading of Christa by proxy, but to mention that she needs an excuse to still be reading Aire and to prioritize that over Christa's privacy which would otherwise be quite important—actually wait, Aire, is it okay to tell Christa I'm reading you? (She thinks she can come up with an excuse fast enough to finish the sentence, if she gets an answer immediately. But it just occurred to her that Aire probably never drops her shields for Christa and so it would be weird that she's done it for Tanthe, so she'd better check before mentioning it.)