Aegis lay sprawled on her bed like a starfish. Face down. Arms spread. Dead to the world.
[Everything hurts. I can't feel my legs.]
And yet, she couldn't stop smiling.
Part of that was the post-fuck haze that she still had. Part of it was because the contraceptive Nazraya stealthily slipped into her dorm, a little nut-looking thing that prevented pregnancies called haltseed (bit of a play on words, there, apparently). Aegis recalled this bit of lore from the game but actually ingesting it taught her that it also, apparently, acted as a painkiller.
Across the room, Lune painted quietly. The soft scratch of brush on canvas filled the air. Suddenly, that scratching stopped.
"You've been lying there for thirty minutes."
"Mmph."
"Are you dying?"
"Mmm... maybe." Aegis turned her head slightly. "A whole new world opened up to me today."
"Ah." Lune dipped her brush. "Did you have some sort of academic breakthrough?"
"Something like that."
