"That's so random, I've never heard anyone advise that people should ice themselves if they meet a maw-mouth."

"I have no idea how or why it works. But, like, I'm not surprised it's not generally known, people aren't usually stupid enough to try to interact with maw-mouths enough to do science to them." 

"True enough." Hug.

Hug hug hug. 

Eventually Lucia drags herself to her feet. Sitting in the muck until they die is appealing, but not actually going to, like, accomplish anything. 

"We're probably going to miss dinner if we actually take showers. Have you got a cleaning spell that isn't a stupidly inefficient Old English charm?"

"Yeah." And then she quietly murmurs a Mandarin spell that sends cool flames running down their bodies, leaving their skin untouched but burning away the Horrible into a fine grey dust that is then flung off of them and into a light dusting on the piles of Horrible around them. 

"Thanks."

And off they go, slightly late to dinner to get whatever nobody else in the line took.

Lucia fries a couple of things hiding in mostly-untouched trays and does not eat anything but their mana. 

When they find Aadhya and Liu to sit down with, Lucia says quietly, "My dad is not going to open a fertility clinic and you do not want one of me." 

"...damn. I'm sorry to hear, uh, whatever that implies."

"You will be sorrier when we have some privacy and I share the full details." She stabs a Food Object more firmly than necessary and starts eating. At least this kind of hunger isn't hazardous to feed. 

Aadhya is capable of Not Asking during dinner.

After dinner, in Lucia's room, she sits on the bed and hugs her knees. 

Deep breath. 

"A maw-mouth came into the killbox this afternoon." 

"- well - you're here - but, uh, shit?"

"El killed it. While I was busy freaking out. Because it--I--it--" 

She takes a deep breath. 

"I. Recognized it. And its eternal hunger. In myself." 

"What does that... mean."

"As an experiment I found a little scavenger mal that could survive for a bit without its head, destroyed its brain, and tried to--absorb it. It worked. Not, like, a physical absorption, my body stayed the same, but it--vanished--and I had its mana as surely as if I had finished killing it a normal way--when my mana touched the maw-mouth's, it was, like a tug of war, except I couldn't afford to win or lose because if I won then all the people in it would be screaming forever inside me." 

"Wow! I appreciate that you learned this before I tried to have one of you!"

"Yeah! And! For bonus points! It wasn't even the worst thing I figured out while I was having a deep heart-to-heart with the maw-mouth's magical structure!" 

"What in the fuck was."

"There were--two things. One was the core of the maw-mouth, and one was--a connection, to something, elsewhere. The core was a person that had been crushed to death, and I'm 98% certain that the connection was to the foundation stone of an enclave." 

"But -" says Liu, and then she trails off.

"--Your family is going to be fine, El has the Golden Stone Sutras and you guys are at the top of the list." 

"I hope I can cast the bloody thing. They must have switched away from them for some reason. Was it just to make the enclaves bigger? They felt a bit cramped, so -?"

"You're enough better than me at Sanskrit that if there's an answer in the sutras I bet you find it first. My dad might know but it's not in my top five things to ask him." 

"Yeah-huh. Uh, graduation day Aadhya'll pop out closest to you, but still not on your doorstep..."