Scene #9831: Girls Talk Romance

Owner	Pose
Petra Soroka	In order to accommodate Matilda's weirdly fluctuating energy levels-- presumably a lasting effect of being so totally worn out by Lilian's camp-- when Petra gets her out to Hydrochoeria, it's late at night. Where the island is positioned over the Great Ocean, it's flying above the layer of low-lying clouds, so the uninterrupted dome of the stars is as clear as from the window of an airplane. Between the moon, stars, and little street-lanterns, it's plenty bright to navigate too. Along the playground-rubber roads, between flowery bushes and still-young trees, past the concrete residential blocks, the end destination is the terraced garden hill facing the castle, where Petra is waiting. Rather than taking a seat at the various picnic-type chairs and benches, she's lying down in the grass, reading a book by the light of a flashlight her Silver is holding. Her tail bobs back and forth, idly cheerful. When Matilda arrives, she rolls over onto her back and waves. A droplet of Silver drips down from the flashlight and flattens into a bookmark, while Petra sits up. "Hey Matilda! Come join me. Sit."
Foundation Scions	Even just one day's return to the St. Pavlov Foundation, from (just!) three days on ritual training retreat, is a dive head-first for Matilda, right back into the complete tonal opposite, Reacclimating comes with thoughts straying deeply unproductively, as they did while stuck in hospital, on the likes of wandering out into moonlit woods, or open-places, much like she had no choice but to do. Quiet, sore, and sleepy hours in the library, writing forms with bruised arms, and staring out high, thin windows, has a way of making a girl lonely! As the day winds down, and evening starts, and duties fall away, it may just be that the roads are rubbery and the bridges rope, but there's a springy-skip to Matilda's steps, when visiting, again, to Hydrochoeria! It's so easy to stroll the streets, and see how the lamps cast shadows, or the flowers accumulate dew! It's so hard to not brush them with fingertips! "Petra! It feels like it has been quite some time! You are well?" comes with a full-arm wave, despite achey soreness! She must be well, if she's wagging! Quickly- and then slowly, when quickly hurts, Matilda dusts off her monitor assistant's uniform, and crouches down to sit on the grass alongside Petra, knees to her chest. "What are you reading, rather than looking upwards?" Matilda adds, with neutral intent- if it's competing with this night's sky, it must be something neat! Then, Matilda just, sticks a palm-down hand into the grass, and wiggles it around, and then just sorta wiggles at the shoulders, s "Ahh... it grows very soft here! Do you cut it, to make it smell so green, in summertime?"
Petra Soroka	"Has it been that long?" Petra double-handedly pat pat pats the slightly damp grass next to her to indicate where Matilda should sit, then swivels to start inspecting her. "Well, I guess it'd feel longer for you. Lilian's really not forgiving about training at all." "But she was in a super good mood after, so?" Eyeing the bruises, "How'd it go?" As for the book, she twists around to look at it. The one she was reading actually isn't the only one here, with another, much older and leatherbound tome placed carefully on the iron wrought chair nearby. "Oh, I'm just trying to get through Ulysses, for school. Normally I do all my reading at Lilian's friends' country house--" Which Matilda scried upon! "But it's kind of a, can-only-focus-while-alone type book." The grass is sooo soft here! The top layer of the terraced hill is set up like a miniature park, but paths and stairways lead down the slope, each step of which is visible from the top. There's no apparent cohesive vision of the garden, rather than being varying sizes of people's individual and collective plants, with sections that are culinary herbs, others as simple collections of flowers, and others as more carefully cultivated plants. Petra flops down and rolls again, expecting Matilda to roll with her. "So? Sonetto was there? Tell, tell."
Foundation Scions	"Well! For one, it was unforgiving!" On inspection, aside from the bruising and scrapes, tanning and sun-burns, and the obvious tiredness, here, plunked down on the grass, she looks weirdly restless and excited! It might be the remnant feelings of the outing, or just the energy of a nighttime outside. Her posture shifts a time or two, and she starts pulling little blades of grass up between fingers. "But, for two, or three, or other numbers... It was extraordinary, and so, full. There was fighting, and running, and seeking, challenges that took so much to complete that it felt as-if they could not really be done, but they were! And, some of them, I did very well! And the rituals, they were some of the most exquisite arcanum I've gotten to see, much less do..." "You should have seen us! You should have seen me! I cut through a wave of the ocean, with an arcane skill, like Mrs. Rook's!" She looks so proud! "I want so-much to learn more! The way it all is taught, it feels so different, and so much more, as things should be? I do not think it could have been found in books, were I to look!" Matilda does gaze out at the iron-bound book, despite Petra answering her question- "And, what is that one?" Hushed, "Is it..?" Matilda doesn't even have to consider that she's being expected, or invited, to roll! She just does it, and giggles! Damn the grass stains! Sitting half-up, she even just tosses a little clump of plucked grass to Petra, a little nothing-action, except that they'll stick in hair! "Yes! Sonetto! She and I, we were partners in cooperation, for the challenges! We spent so much time, relying-upon one another! I, feel as if I know her better!" Maybe! "Surely, she feels the same, in that," Probably! "She said my orbuculum, was very pretty! How sweet is that!" Very! "We slept together!" HUH? Matilda blinks, then adds, "Er, side-by-side, I mean, in a tent." Ah.
Petra Soroka	"Lilian does have a way of doing that." Matilda's adulation makes Petra a little giggly and secondhand-proud, giving the correct answers on a test. "It's always impossible, until you end up doing it, and then it's so much more, and so much more real, than life was like before her. I think magic was basically made for her." "I cut through a wave of the ocean, with an arcane skill, like Mrs. Rook's!" "You did?" Petra shoots upright, leaning forwards on her knees towards Matilda. "Oh shit, so she was so serious then! That's what she was so excited out! Good job!" Having grass in her hair is pretty much normal. Even before Matilda tossed some, there could very well have been a blade or two that was dislodged by her rolling. Petra shuffles around so that her legs are crossed, and then picks up and places Matilda's head into the bucket formed by her lap, so that she can mess around with her hair while continuing to praise her. "Like, really. Lilian doesn't show that kind of stuff off trivially. Getting that training, and developing her own magic sword techniques and everything, is like, top three most important things to her. So, good job on measuring up." So she doesn't have to get up, the tome over on the chair is brought over by a platter of Silver, depositing it in Petra's hands. "Exactly what you think it is, yup." She flips through it to a certain page, then flips it upside down over Matilda's face in her lap, showing her the yellowed pages with dense, careful scrawl, and detailed sketches around the margins. "Love potion! But you've gotta do something for me first, too." "She and I, we were partners in cooperation, for the challenges!" "Yes!" "We spent so much time, relying-upon one another!" "Exactly as planned!" "I, feel as if I know her better!" "Yes!!" "Surely, she feels the same, in that," "She'd better!" "She said my orbuculum, was very pretty!" "First among many of your charm points!" "We slept together!" "I KNEW YOU COULD--!" "Er, side-by-side, I mean, in a tent." "Aww." Matilda's face, which was the target of gradually more and more exuberant squishing for her triumphs, gets cheek-pinched and wiggled up and down instead. Thumbs right at either end of her mouth, flattening out her lips with a little stretch, Petra bends her head down to look at her face-to-upside-down-face. "Only that much? Did you apply the infalliable test? Did you at least kiss her?"
Foundation Scions	"Yes! She was so serious! And so were we! Each and every one! Even Ms. Sarracenia, she was quite serious! Her! With the wooden car!" She lets out a dreamy, content and buzzy sigh. Matilda is so content to lean back into Petra's lap! She stretches, and rolls her head around, half in response to her hair being futzed with, but also, her neck, it is so, so achey! Petra can hear little pops! Yawning and rolling around a little is literally the perfect set of actions to do like that, and by Jove, she's doing them. "It did not feel trivial for even a moment. Everywhere, and everywhen, else, felt so far away, during all of it. It was all so, full of the feeling of life, and all so magical, and dream-like!" With a wiggle, "But, also so clear, in what of any of it should be clear? So many things were, and so many things, simply did not matter." "I can see why she is so proud! She should be! Tout était incroyable!" 'Love potion! But you've gotta do something for me first, too.' Matilda reaches up to grab the book, no doubt yoinked just out of her grasp, as Petra's sentence concludes. "You wished me to look at the ritual you spoke of, yes? I can do that!" Grabbyhands again, while let to read it, "This is the recipe for the potion? It seems... It will be do-able, regardless of how it seems! I am sure it will work! Yes..." "So! What is the problematic ritual? Tell me about it!" 'Aww.' Matilda groans, and kickies her legs, heels thumping and sliding against the wet grass, mid face-woobling. Matilda's lips part to teeth, momentarily a bit snarly! "Well- I did kiss her!" which is so different than 'we kissed', and by her followup statement, no doubt while she wasn't awake, "And... it was perhaps close, to the test, to spend the nights in the tent up against her..." But that's a no. Matilda tries to shake Petra's hands off a little, which isn't that effective, it's just a neck twist. "We were hardly even wearing clothes! For the entire trip, nor the tenting! I cannot understand!" Whining fades down to, "But, she asked on further nights, to be cuddled-close! Do you think that is progress..?" Good luck, Matilda.
Petra Soroka	"Even Ms. Sarracenia, she was quite serious! Her! With the wooden car!" "Oh my god, really? Her?" Petra pouts a bit. She knows Lilian well enough to know that, if Sarracenia took the retreat seriously, then there's a sort of moral buffer of good behavior that she's earned to justify her bad behavior without naked hostility. Unfortunately, this means Petra also has to be nice to her, despite not having observed her good behavior. That's probably fair, though. If anything, it's good, since Petra was always harping on about how easy it would be for Sarracenia to treat Lilian with dignity and respect. "Amazing. Lilian bared her heart to her, and she wasn't a freak about it. That's, like, progress, kind of." "Well- I did kiss her!" Petra leans further down until she's almost forehead-to-nose with Matilda in her lap, staring into her eyes. "Matildaaaa, did you do something naughty?" She pulls back and giggles. "It's okay, though. Your secret's safe with me. Love knows no limits." "But, she asked on further nights, to be cuddled-close! Do you think that is progress..?" "That'd be great progress-- if you were, like, sixteen years old." Despite her scolding, Petra goes right back to playing around with Matilda's hair fondly. "So, like, you were basically naked, sharing a tent, physically active and paired together, mutually high off of magic-vivid hyperreality, and you didn't fuck? Like, not even a little handsy?" Petra concludes, sorrowfully, "Shoulda sat on her face, Matildork. Do you think you're getting a second shot at a once in a lifetime magic adventure?" "But it's okay. I'll save you. I've never once failed in this." Petra closes the tome and places it on Matilda's chest like a table. She pulls out her phone instead, scrolling through it to find her notes. "It is progress, though. If she wants physical contact, but neither of you can push that boundary, then that's exactly what the love potion will solve. We should probably scan the pages and print them out, though, because Lilian might get worried if the book's gone for a while." "Anyways!" Petra turns her phone around, showing off a notes file and a bunch of pictures of worrying-looking charcoal scrawls in a room. The ritual, as described in the notes, is a weirdly invasive diagnostic scan, with nothing indicating that it could or should be applied to people besides an end product where psychic energy waves are translated into geometrical shapes. The former part of it is like a magic radio ping, that resonates with unnatural quasiparticles to produce the subsequently measured waves. "I need you to figure out how to rework this spell so it doesn't actually read anything. Like, the psychological effects happen, on the person it's cast on, but the diagrams and measurements it spits out don't happen."
Foundation Scions	'Matildaaaa, did you do something naughty?' "Ah! Er, all things considered-" Yes. Red-faced, Petra's giggling is an assurance, that at least this is a safe space for evil. 'Love knows no limits.' Matilda nods along, mostly just rustling in Petra's lap. "It certainly should not know any... Ah, if only..." 'Do you think you're getting a second shot at a once in a lifetime magic adventure?' "It could be thrice-in-a-life! Mrs. Rook was considering further instances! A second and a third, each longer than the last! I'm excited! They will, surely, be greater, and more magical, and I cannot wait, for Matilda Bouanich to come out the other end, the better for it..." Tossing and turning more, leaning into the hair-playing (hers is kind of really fluffy-bouncy, for only being somewhat wavy,) Matilda murmur-whines out, "Mmngh! You're right! I should have! I will get there! But, what did-happen, it felt all the more necessary, in the moment?" Quieter, "I must stay goal-orientated. I must make the potion." She puts her hands on the edges of the book, it's perfectly fine if she's the table for it! Anywhere else, it'd get wet, and this way, she has something to fidget with as she's looking upwards at the upside-down Petra. "J'ai eu les mains un peu baladeuses, je crois. Her skin is very smooth! Like a silken handkerchief!" She should have a little more shame! Actually, a lot more! Matilda's pupils shrink when she's shown the phone, and her eyes dart from part of it to part of it. Murmuring, with 'hmm's and 'Je vois's, and a 'Comme c'est curieux!' or two, she's mostly quiet for a while to think. She does the grandma-thing, of course, of trying to grab Petra's phone to see it. "Is the doing of the assessing, or the resulting information, the problematic portion? If it is the latter, then... I would need time, but an objectiveless formatting should be simple! If the measuring, however, needs to not happen, hm!" Matilda holds the phone closer to her face, squints a little bit, and then hands it back. "I can break it into its pieces and parts, and polish them up, and only the well-behaving and shiny elements need to stay! Rest assured!" "What is this for, however? Objects and spaces do not usually need psychological effect, and this seems, to not care very much about looking at someone who is a person?"
Petra Soroka	"It certainly should not know any..." "Don't worry. I'm moving the goalposts, sector-wide. I'm trailblazing." That's scary. Don't say that. "Mrs. Rook was considering further instances! A second and a third, each longer than the last!" "Oh! I hope so!" Only half to Matilda, Petra babbles on about that while stroking her hair. "Each one longer... it was already so hard for her to get three days off. She's actually got a lot of vacation time now, because of that super adorable heartsickness thing, but she can't bring herself to take it. Hopefully I'll be able to encourage her." "But, what did-happen, it felt all the more necessary, in the moment?" Petra sighs. Her fingers drum against Matilda's round little cheek, with all its cherubic squishing. "Well, bit aside, that's important too. I mean, you do love this girl, right? So eventually, sure, Sonetto's going to be your girlfriend no matter what, but it's still sweet to spend time with each other." Petra lightly grabs Matilda's hair at the roots and wiggles her head around. "Matilda! Matilda. She said she wanted to be cuddled in the future too, didn't she? How close is her dorm to yours? No-- wait, she probably lives in the Suitcase, right?" "J'ai eu les mains un peu baladeuses, je crois." "You have learned so well, my student. She should be talking poetry about your skin too. Actually, your skin is so soft and elastic and stuff. How do you do that? Is that just, like, being really diligent about sunscreen?" "What is this for, however?" "Well, you see," Petra leans down again, close to Matilda's ear. Partly, this faux-conspiratorial talk is to playfully hint at the alliance they are in, as two girls of similar interests, but partly it must be to hide from her own surveillance cameras. "You've seen the triangles, right?" Pulling back slightly, but keeping her face hidden from the sky, "Remember the Fruit we brought back from Kepler? This is a magic ritual from there. The actual, like, magic-scientific point of it, is not really relevant anymore, but the psychological effect of casting it..." Petra closes one eye, finger to her lips. "It's an equal trade."
Foundation Scions	'I'm trailblazing.' "Some-day, perhaps I will blaze my own trails!" That's also really scary! "Matilda Bouanich, she is ever an innovator!" 'Hopefully I'll be able to encourage her.' "I hope that your encouragements are well-received! Her heartsickness... Comme c'est adorable, vraiment! And, if that means that longer retreats, and more spectacular occasions, so much the better!" "I hope the memories stay as fresh as they are, for so long! It was incredible, Petra! Truly!" 'No-- wait, she probably lives in the Suitcase, right?' Matilda nods, which isn't a really readable expression, so she says, "Oui," in such a sad-pensive way, and then lets out a frustrated little wiggle-groan, "In fact, in the association, we share a dorm! But she does not spend time there! Can you believe it! It is like I am being taunted by what appears as good luck!" "Maybe this is a good excuse! Or, I could find-reason to spend more time in the suitcase? Anything is possible! Some day, she will compliment me in-verse, and sharing a bed, and so much more..." "Sun-screen yes, and also excellent, deluxe creams, for the maintaining of moisture and clarity! 'Lavender-Scented Vitalization Ointment, no. 3'! It smells very pleasant!" Matilda sticks out a forearm to demonstrate. Dreamily, "One day, Sonetto, she will be familiar with it's aroma, too... Ah! Do you wish for a tub of the ointment?" 'You've seen the triangles, right?' "I have," is similarly whispered, and thoughts as to Petra's implications start to swirl. The follow-up elicits a scandalized giggle, and Matilda reaches up to just sorta bap the side of Petra's shoulder or head, "Petraaaa! You are so ruthless..." Matilda mimics, after, the finger-to-her-lips gesture, and breaks it to just giggle. "An equal trade... Super... If the parts are to be equal, I hope very-much that they both work!"