[Somehow, she isn't expecting the movement as Lup finds her way around her body, and she falls with a bit of a laugh, looking up to the sky. It's staggering, the way that Lup seems to erase the time that crossed between them, the way she simply removes any uncertainty and pain. It feels like she could close her eyes and imagine herself back in the cycles, like she could open her eyes now and be on beach planet, next to Lup in the sand and her journal just at the edge of her fingertips. Like she could open her eyes and be at the conservatory, up on a hill with Lup while she practiced her linework. Open her eyes and be back, back before it all, back when she was young and kind and gentle, before she could rend the world with her pen.

But Lup speaks, and draws her back, and she finds herself smiling too.]

Well, you wouldn't exactly be close-lipped yourself. I recall a number of horrifyingly explicit conversations about the dick parade we found ourselves with.

[Maybe this is all just a dream. She'll wake up, like Lup said, and Lucretia will be able to feel her hair in her fingers and love in her heart and let it thrum, just a bit heavily, while the other woman slept. Isn't that the best she could hope for? Isn't it all she can hope for?

It's not. Because Lup draws her back again, finger on her lips, and Lucretia feels like her heart has stopped.

For a moment, she doesn't feel old at all. She feels the fantasy, fully in her body, as if her hands aren't rougher and her skin not as smooth, not that spry near immortal girl suspended in time. They can't. She-- she can't, this can't be happening. After all this time, after every quiet year and moment of companionship and reaching, just-- barely reaching for something she knows she can't grasp and it's in front of her. It's in front of her and she can't.

But she does.]

Please.

[Oh, please.]