Then she smiles softly and squeezes her tightly. "Yep. We're back. Not going anywhere. Wanna head back to our room and hear the story?"

"Yeah. I sorted out Cocoa's gear damage with the funds I had on me. I, uh, kind of shoved a couple crowns at him and told him to take a hike. Not in those words, obviously, but it was stressful to have him standing right there while I was waiting for you. I should probably apologize."

Hyacinth squeezes Sable again. "Love you. Let's head back."

"Love you too," she replies with a squeeze of her own, before starting back toward the inn. "Yeah, probably worth apologizing, ideally we can handle it nice and easy on the way back to our room. Maybe he'll be having a drink to unwind after that."

"Maybe, yeah. We'll see." 

She falls in next to Sable, still holding her hand.

Sable squeezes Sin's hand with a soft, warm smile. "Turns out she is extremely chill, by the way."

"Oh. Cool."

Hyacinth flushes a little and looks away.

She lets go of Sin's hand to wrap around her waist and squeezes her close, giggling. "You're adorable. Just unbelievably cute at all times."

Hyacinth giggles. "I try!" 

She darts up and kisses Sable's cheek.

Sable blushes faintly at the cheek kiss, grins wide, and tightens her grip as Sin bounces up to twirl her around in a circle, laughing delightedly.

Hyacinth lets out a soft "eeeee!" and giggles even more. 

Then she flumphs back down to the ground and leads Sable on a little faster in the direction of the inn.

Sable follows, giggling, and soon they're just outside.

Hyacinth leads the way inside. Cocoa's nowhere to be seen in the front room, so she just tosses a small wave at Jorem and moves on.

Sable waves as well, and smiles eagerly as they head upstairs to their room. When they've got the door closed behind them, she tugs Sin down onto the bed with her, giggling warmly and squeezing her close.

Hyacinth hugs her so close.

"Okay," she says. "What all did you learn?"

"Well," she starts. "She's an SAI named May, though I get the feeling that's not supposed to be spread around. She can observe most things that happen in the game — and has seen a lot of sex as a result, though I get the impression that she doesn't mean to watch people so much as just catches it incidentally while keeping track of how people are doing. She explicitly said she prefers when people have kinky deaths they enjoy over traumatic deaths in war, too."

"That's, um. Good. Good to hear." 

Hyacinth ducks her head and snuggles into Sable a little more. 

"It sounds like we should head for the city then..."

She grins and nods. "Yep. Things are coming together for our little plan."

"Yeah, they really are..."

Hyacinth snuggles back against Sable and smiles.

"So I'm thinking we stay overnight and head off in the morning?"

"I think so, yeah," Sable agrees with a smile. "The one question I have is whether you and Hailey want to try things tonight, or focus on being careful on the hike tomorrow and the next day until we get to Cordova."

"Let's focus on being careful. Cordova is only two days away, and we have warding stakes. I don't want to have to explain blood."

Sable nods. "Makes sense. I figure we could consider rentals in Cordova if there are month-to-month options, and otherwise head closer to the capital with bigger cities still."

"Ideally," Hibiscus says, "We get some specialized sheets, or lock a cleaning charm of some kind. A cleaning charm's probably worth the point just in general."

"Hmm. There should definitely be a way to build it. At a guess it would be... a node for a material-filtered effect, one for vanishing the target, and maybe a filterable radial burst node? Or something like that? Would be in your trees, for sure. I don't have the radial options at all."

"I am fairly sure I do not want to make an effect that vanishes all the blood in a burst. That seems like it would be inimical to the continuation of life."

Sable laughs and shakes her head. "No indeed. Good point. Probably environmental conditions like whether it's exposed outside the body need a separate node, yeah."