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I probably shouldn't have been surprised when Daledonne popped up next to me - now that I knew the specifics of his particular assignment, I had the feeling I'd probably be seeing him the most frequently out of all of them. He certainly seemed the most driven of them, at least in the conventional sense, and I got the feeling that he'd extricated himself from my side some hours earlier, and had already been working at something or other for several hours. Unlike the others who were still hanging around the bed, stretching and yawning and rolling about in their skivvies, he was already dressed, although for what I wasn't quite sure: somehow he'd managed to combine wearing a button-down shirt, skinny navy-blue tie, black sports jacket, and what looked to be a pair of full-length black cycle shorts of the type worn by professional contestants, down to the various sponsorship decals printed on the sides. It looked completely incongruous, but Daledonne didn't seem to notice, and as I wasn't sure I wanted my first interaction of the day to be about trying to figure out the idiosyncrasies of Tiaileng clothing choices, I let it be.

"Sleep well?" he asked, and I nodded in return.

"Yeah, although... it got, um, a little more extra-snuggly towards when I woke up..."

Don nodded. "Yeah, sounds about right, unfortunately. You can mention it to them when we're all together over breakfast, but I doubt it will do any good - we do tend to move around some when we sleep, and when it happens, there's an unconscious bias towards snuggling together. I know it doesn't sound great to say this, but if there's any way you could make an effort to try and be comfortable with waking up like that..."

"I, um... actually, it wasn't too bad. I'm nowhere even close to used to it, but if it's just at that level, I think there's a possibility that I could eventually tolerate it, at least..."

"Well, it sounds like you're trying, and that's what matters. Besides, it's a pretty well-known psychological principle that even things people are initially uncomfortable with, as long as they're not inexorably traumatic, tend to get easier to handle with repeated exposure. That's how phobias are cured by psychologists, even today: bringing the troubling thing or situation into gradually closer and longer exposure until you're habituated to its presence. And since we're not exactly going anywhere, I really do think you're going to find this easier and easier as we all adapt to this living situation. Plus, as far as living situations go, this one has quite a lot going for it." He paused, gesturing around the room. "Well, taste in decor aside, I suppose, but that's something we can remedy down the road if necessary."

Don tilted his head towards the door. "Speaking of accommodations, I think we might as well let the rest get up on their own schedule - at least the ones who aren't already up to something elsewhere. So, before they get up and things get hectic moving on towards breakfast, how would feel about me showing you around your personal suite?"

"Er... personal suite? I thought we were all, well... staying in here..."

"As far as turning in for the evening, yes, that is true. However, the building does feature a sort of suite on the upper floor designed to be the sanctum, I guess, of the previous resident. While the bedroom isn't sizable enough for our purposes, the ones involving sleep at least, there's also an office, bathroom, and a sort of... private living room thing? In any case, that's where we stowed most of the stuff that showed up on the moving truck from your old room, so I should show you where everything ended up - and I also figured that in terms of getting ready in the morning, showering and stuff, you might prefer a more... secluded venue for that. That being said, if you don't prefer that, it was heavily suggested that you take part with the rest of us, and there are already several volunteers who would be happy to help you wash up, your back and, um... other parts of you..."

"Y-yeah, I can imagine... thanks for thinking of that." It was true that such an event would probably be equal parts embarrassing and aggravating, but I had to admit that when it came down to it, the strongest internal motivation for keeping it private was to protect one of the few usually guaranteed times I had to spend in private, especially as opportunities for that seemed to be dwindling troublingly quickly.

"Not a problem. As I said before, our first priority is to help you adapt to this situation, and as there are some challenges that will likely be unavoidable, at the very least we can try to figure out some accommodations to compensate. It's still something of a process of trial and error for us, though, so I'm sure we'll be soliciting your feedback continuously throughout this process of adaptation. In any case, like I said, I think we should go and check it out while there's some downtime, and get you ready for what I'm sure will be an eventful day."

Daledonne gestured for me to follow him out into the hallway as he continued. "Oh, and as we're walking, do try and pay particular attention to the routes between here and there - actually, that's probably good advice for everywhere you go in this place. I'm not sure why the previous owner decided to make the place so... labyrinthian, but we'll all be better served if we can get it mapped out quickly. Given that we're almost always with you, it's probably not an issue, but I'd hate to see you getting lost in this humongous facility."

I followed along, trying to figure out which hallway was which based on whatever oddities happened to be featured in it. We made our way through three short, interconnected hallways, which I identified as weird bust of golden insect - doorway to room with vivid blue walls - painting of what looked almost like a teletubby but with a weird squiggly mouth, giant cartoon eyes and deely-boppers sticking out the side of its head. At the end of that particular hallway, a door opened up into what looked like a sitting room, with a massive fireplace in one corner. Don, though, walked over to the tools hanging on a rack next to it, and tilted the poker in a particular direction. The fire flicked on for a moment and then off again, revealing it to be a convincing display rather than an actual fire, before the fireplace's front panel and a portion of the supposedly solid brickwork above it slid smoothly into the floor, revealing a surprisingly plain spiral staircase behind it, albeit with immaculately polished brass handrails running along the steps' outer edge.

"Somehow, I have a hunch that the previous owner of this place was a little too obsessed with mystery novels. Then again, though, I also have a hunch that one of the reasons the Tiaileng authority acquired this place is because its weird layout made it available for a discount - well, that and a stipulation I found in the documents that all the weird stuff inside had to come with it, with certain objects explicitly required by the agreement to be kept. I do think those... odd busts in the bedroom could stand to be moved elsewhere, though." He gestured towards the staircase. "Anyway, just up those stairs should be your inner sanctum. I think there's also an elevator hidden away somewhere, as I can't imagine that the others brought all of your things up through this narrow access point. I'll find out where that is when the rest of them are awake, but... shall I leave you to it? The layout above is straightforward enough that I doubt you'd get lost, and I assume you'd rather get ready in peace. If you would prefer some company, though - or, for that matter, someone to wash your back - you need only ask."

"I, ah... I think I'll be fine for now, thanks." In fact, there was a part of me inside that was halfway jumping for joy, as Daledonne was presenting me with the first real opportunity for solitude since I'd awoken the day before to my assignment.

"All right, then. I'll meet you in the dining room for breakfast. Oh, and on the off chance you get lost..." He reached into the pocket of his jacket and brought a cellphone out for a moment before putting it back. "I hope you don't mind, but after he got it charging, Serrivanne took the liberty of putting all of our cell numbers into your address book. If you have any trouble, just give me a call and tell me the closest, um, landmark, and I'll make sure you can find your way."

Daledonne turned around to head back, and I made my way into the "fireplace" and towards the staircase, hearing the wall slide back into place after I'd entered. I turned around to see what it looked like on the other side, and this one was thankfully less puzzling - just a blank grey wall with a red handle set flush against it.

I climbed the stairs, ascending through a circular hole in the ceiling and up to the next room, which appeared to be a kind of antechamber, and one the was surprisingly unadorned, aside from the ornate inlays carved into the molding around each of the doors, one inset against each of the four narrow walls.

I opened the nearest one, which led to a very short, nearly square hallway, with a door at the other end. This one had what looked like an electronically locking handle, complete with fingerprint reader on the top. Sure enough, when I placed my thumb against it, the device beeped approvingly and the lock clicked open a moment later - obviously, my fingerprints were among the many things the Tiaileng had on file. The lock also contained a keypad, which was I assumed how the Tiaileng had access - as far as I knew, the nature of their hands meant that they didn't have fingerprints, or at least not in the same way that humans did. Of course, I'd never really examined a Tiaileng's hand up close, but I thought I'd read something about it in biology classes years ago.

I swung the door open to reveal what was certainly the office part of the quartet of rooms - and I have to admit, for a moment I just stood in the doorway, surprised at what I found inside. It wasn't just the scale of it, although that certainly was part of it - out of the entire crazy mansion so far, it was the closest thing to a regular-sized room that I had seen, only a little bit bigger than the home office my dad had kept. What stood out even more, though, was the relative lack of ornamentation - while it still had a plush crimson carpet, and light sconces on the walls reminiscent of those at a high-end hotel, etched crystal and all, on other respects the decor was minimal. The desk, while made of a rich-looking, nicely-finished wood, was also decidedly minimal, with clean lines and a sort of L-shaped design, with my laptop and other computer peripherals set up on the short end off to the side. Apart from that, there were a couple of plain, grey filing cabinets along the back wall, a plush-looking executive swivel chair upholstered in chocolate-brown leather, and what looked to be a server rack in the corner that didn't seem to contain much beyond a short panel with a bunch of ethernet cables spooling out from it, one of which ducked under the carpet and re-emerged to run along the side of the desk and up to my computer. Beyond that, though, the room was white-walled and empty, little more than functional and a stark contrast to the overdone level of showy opulence that was featured throughout the rest of the house.

I poked my head into the other rooms, and noticed a similar trend - while they were all nicely apportioned with the furniture that they happened to contain, none of them contained anything solely for decoration or that didn't have a purpose. While it was certainly a relief from the excesses of the rest of the place, I couldn't help but wonder a little at the nature of the place. Was this, right here, what the tech guru had actually wanted? Perhaps, I thought, everything else really had been put into place just for show, or to play up to the man's purported image, when most of his real living had taken place in an inner sanctum like this, one that seemed devoted to little more than getting things done with a minimum of distractions. Well, either that or the craziness of his house eventually drove him nuts enough that he needed a sanctuary to retreat to, one where he didn't have to look at strange, fine-art caricatures of himself all the time.

In any case, the Tiaileng seemed to have already thoroughly populated the place with most of the stuff from my room, although they'd seemed to prefer sticking with the minimalist aesthetic - the posters that had hung in my bedroom were now rolled up and sticking out of a box in the corner of my new one. The solid, inlaid wooden dresser, though, contained all of my clothes, just as they were - almost eerily so, in fact, in that they seemed to have been replaced, stacked and folded exactly as I'd left them.

In the bathroom, too, all of my toiletries had been arrayed along the marble countertop, reflecting in the mirror that, like the counter, ran the length of the far wall. Oddly enough, the bathroom didn't seem to contain a bath at all, as the others had, or even a shower at first glance, just a quarter or so of the room that contained a slightly-sloping tiled floor that tilted down to a drain in the center of it, and a polished metallic ceiling. Upon closer examination, though, I noticed a small control panel set into the wall towards the side of it, and when I experimentally poked at a couple of controls, it quickly became apparent that the entire metallic section of the ceiling was a sort of giant showerhead, plinking down drops from its entire surface in an effect that seemed to mimic a gentle rain. It was certainly a drastic difference from the small shower cubicle I used at home, although it seemed odd to just have it as part of the bathroom, instead of behind something for privacy - but then again, as it was part of an inner sanctum that supposedly no one else was supposed to have access to, that probably wasn't a major concern.

After taking a few minutes to sort out the control panel and set the water temperature just right, I stripped out of my not-quite-pajamas and stepped into the unusual shower. I tried to relax, enjoying the feeling of the warm curtain of water playing across my skin, thankful that I could have at least this one important routine of my day in quiet and solitude. It was nice enough that I considered just staying there for a while, but after a time, the notion of Daledonne wondering where I was and deciding to barge in came to the forefront of my mind, and I reluctantly stepped out and turned the thing off. Even without that threat, though, it was true that I was, indeed, quickly getting in the mood for some breakfast.

I toweled off, noting that my regular towels, at least, had either been upgraded to something far thicker and softer or simply replaced by whatever had already been there. My hunger, though, ensured that I didn't dawdle with them either. I quickly headed back across the anteroom to grab some clothing, thankful that no Tiaileng seemed to be poking around inside, at least not yet. I pulled on my usual everyday clothes, which consisted mainly of T-shirts with obscure or geeky things on them, and khakis with an assortment of extra pockets down each side. The shirt I pulled on read "I Think in 636F6465" across the front in thick green letters reminiscent of text displayed on one of the very early computer displays. To most people, of course, it was completely meaningless, but my friends and I had always gotten a kick out of random stuff like that - in any case, it was better than the T-shirt next to it, which featured a generic anime girl on it who was probably flashing a bit too much cleavage to be strictly polite - somehow, I figured that Tiaileng women in particular wouldn't exactly favor being confronted with one of the things that human women had on them first thing in the morning.

Satisfied that everything was in order, I went back to the office and retrieved my cell phone from its charger, glancing at it as I made my way back to the antechamber and down the stairs. Unsurprisingly, there were a few missed voicemails from my parents, and several text messages from my friends wanting to know what was going on with my Tiaileng situation and why I'd all but disappeared last night. I wanted to reply, to see if I could find some way to explain the sheer craziness of my situation, but my stomach was starting to growl, and I knew I needed to pay attention if I was going to avoid getting lost inside the mansion's maze of hallways. I took a moment, though, to fire off a few quick "I'm okay" texts to some of them before pulling the lever and exiting back into the mansion proper.

Somehow, the landmarks I'd considered before managed to stick in my head well enough, and I made only one quickly-noticed wrong turn before I made my way back to the part of the mansion I was more familiar with from the night before, and from there it was a relatively straightforward path back to the dining room - well, compared to the rest of the mansion, at least. By the time I made it inside, at least half of the Tiaileng were milling around the room, talking amongst each other, the varicolored morning light streaming across them through the stained-glass windows. It was more than the light, though, that left me gawping at the assembled Tiaileng, momentarily stunned in disbelief at what I was seeing.

The Tiaileng, to say the least, were no longer dressed up in the sort of generic, modern high-schooler getups that they'd been wearing before. Apparently, one of the things they'd received the night before had been a new shipment of clothing, and what they were wearing made Daledonne's disconcerting ensemble look at least slightly normal in comparison.

It seemed, actually, halfway like a bizarre variation of an anime convention was taking place in the dining room. Nearly none of them were wearing anything that particularly resembled normal for a weekday morning - well, maybe a handful that seemed to be wearing bike shorts or other workout-style clothing. From there, though, it got stranger. A couple of the women seemed to be wearing one-piece swimsuits, the sleek type seen at swimming competitions. Several others were wearing sailor-style schoolgirl uniforms, with perilously short skirts. A couple others were wearing gymnastics-style leotards, complete with eighties-style leg-warmers, and one seemed to be wearing what looked like a form-fitting take on a military flight suit. A few others, both male and female, seemed to be decked out in costumes that resembled those from a popular fighting game, and there was even a contingent of women in Japanese-style gym clothes, including their particularly abbreviated shorts. As for the guys who weren't decked out in the outlandish costumes, most of the rest seemed to be wearing rashguard-style shirts, and either jammers or bike shorts. In short, it was an insane hodgepodge of things, albeit one that I was more than aware had one particular, unifying theme running through it.

"So? What do you think?" Daledonne said, and I turned to see him coming up behind me. "The new clothes arrived last night, and everyone wanted to roll them out and see how they were." He patted his coat sleeve. "I admit that I didn't feel like deviating too much from my usual appearance, but I do have to say, these shorts are surprisingly comfortable."

"Um, well..."

Daledonne glanced over, looking a little concerned. "Oh, you don't like it?"

"Well, ah, no, it's, um, technically fine, but... I mean, I know you looked through my porn stash and stuff, but I wasn't expecting you to use it as a fashion catalog..."

Daledonne looked across the assembled Tiaileng. "Yeah, maybe we went a little overboard... I guess we all just wanted to find something that would be appealing to you, and we knew that you enjoyed seeing people wear those things, so... I'm not sure which one of us had the idea, but it caught on quickly, and pretty soon everyone was starting to have fun with it. I think it's also just... well, this is a pretty unusual situation. For most Tiaileng, they don't exactly have to compete for the attention of their assigned partners - but here, you probably only know the names of a small fraction of us yet, let alone anything more substantive, so there was definitely a motivation to find something that might catch your eye and help each of us stand out as unique individuals."

"Yeah, I... get that. It's just... well, those kinds of things are appealing to me, but they also appeal to me in a kinda specific way - hence, you know, the whole 'porn' thing..."

Daledonne nodded. "Ah. Yes, I suppose that would logically follow. Er... as long as you can handle it, though, these choices do seem to work for the most part - coincidentally, or perhaps less so given their source, the generally abbreviated nature means that many of those clothing choices are well within our realm of comfort. So if you enjoy them, it's a win-win, right?"

"Yeah, but... there's still the whole, um, sex thing, and me being, well, a little aroused constantly wasn't exactly what I was looking for..."

"Hmm." Daledonne's head seemed to pan over the crowd again. "Well, you seem to be handling it with a little more equanimity than before, so if you can manage for now, that can be one of the many things to be discussed after breakfast - and fairly urgently at that, I think. Oh, and I hope you don't mind having scrambled eggs, as that's one of the few things we seem to have on hand at the moment - we'll be getting a proper shipment of food in later today, and then we'll hopefully be able to cook things for you that are more precisely tailored to your specifications."

"Yeah, that's... fine..." I said, still gazing across the variably clothed Tiaileng, with more filtering in every minute. Somehow, though, even with that, I felt a little less overwhelmed than I had before. Maybe, I thought, it might be that just being around them so much already had made the crowd seem, if not normal, then at least more expected and less overwhelmingly new. There was also, admittedly, the more pertinent fact that while the clothes were certainly something that did admittedly increase my attraction, they were all generally much less revealing than the crowd of Tiaileng wearing little more than panties that I'd somehow managed to sleep amongst the night before - compared to that, even the skimpiest of the outfits they were currently wearing were considerably more modest.

In any case, the Tiaileng were beginning to take their seats, which meant that the sexual aspect of their costumes, at least, was somewhat reduced from the waist up. That wasn't to say, of course, that they weren't still interesting - and as I headed to my own seat, I realized that Daledonne had been correct about the differentiation. Before, dressed in many ways the same, the Tiaileng had kind of seemed to fade into a larger group when they were all together, but the way they were now, it seemed somehow easier to pick out individual faces. Some of them, of course, I already knew from my admittedly brief personal experiences with them, but even the ones I hadn't met yet seemed more noticeable.

As I sat down, at the head of the table, I noticed that people seemed to be sitting in different places - Sam, Kat and Lara were seated back towards the end, and some new Tiaileng had been seated closer to where I was. I supposed it made sense, and was probably in line with the rotation scheme that had been discussed the night before - I wouldn't have been surprised if the closer-up Tiaileng were in fact part of my "entourage." One thing hadn't changed, though: I was still flanked by Daledonne on one side, and Envelie on the other. While I wasn't sure, given her similar demeanor and slightly higher level of maturity, I speculated that, like Daledonne, she worked for the same organization, and was, perhaps, more minder than companion.

However things were arranged, though, it still felt weird to be at the head of the table. In my own household, that had always been for my father, my human one, the de facto head of the household. It was a role that my Tiaileng parents had never sought to question or challenge, even though my father was hardly the pushy or dominant sort. In fact, on a direct level at least, they had always seemed to defer to his decisions - although once I'd grown up enough to figure certain things out, I eventually realized that things discussed in bed the night before probably had considerable influence on decisions announced the next morning. Even so, it was a strange position to be in - whether it really meant that or not, being in that chair made me feel like I was somehow supposed to be the leader of the group, and if they were all here to serve my best interests, ostensibly I would be required to advise them about what those interests were. At the same time, though, I was barely old enough to even legally smoke, and now I was expected to somehow... take charge of fifty Tiaileng, most of whose names I didn't even know yet? The realization made my anxiety start to kick into gear, but luckily it was quickly overridden by my hunger as a Tiaileng came up behind my left side and reached over to set a plate of scrambled eggs in front of me.

I wolfed them down, partly because wandering around the maze of the mansion's interior had built up a good appetite, and partly because I wanted to spend the least amount of time feeling unnerved by the Tiaileng tendency to watch me as I ate that I'd noticed the night before. Thankfully, the Tiaileng at least seemed to be getting more familiar with each other, so some of the staring was mitigated by side conversations between them. Plus, at breakfast they also had something to eat, or at least drink - other Tiaileng walked along the sides of the table with wheeled carts, setting down a tall glass of blue-green liquid, eerily similar in color to the Tiaileng's own fur, in front of each place before sitting down themselves. It was, I assumed, the liquid nutrients that were the closest the Tiaileng came to consuming actual food, and instead of just gulping it down, they seemed to swish it around in their mouths for a while before swallowing - perhaps having it interact somehow with their not-quite-teeth. It was an unusual sight, though, to be sure, seeing their cheeks puffing in and out as they moved the liquid around, and if I didn't know better it wouldn't have been hard to imagine them as kids playing around at the table just for the heck of it.

Despite the antics, though, which were amusing to me at least, there was still a certain seriousness to the situation - while no one really seemed to be admitting it yet, out loud at least, I was more than aware that there were still several things that had been left unresolved. Sure enough, the situation played out much as it had the night before - once everyone was finished, they remained seated, staring at me once again as he fiddled with the orb Envelie had been playing with last night.

"So, ah, I'm not sure if it's going to be exactly a regular thing or not, but as mealtimes are one of the few times we're all but guaranteed to be together, for breakfast and dinner at least, it seems like a good time to make sure we're all on the same page, so to speak. Well, that, and to make sure that everyone has a chance to be heard if they need to be." He tossed the orb into the air, and it zipped and darted about over the table in a manner reminiscent of a drunken insect. "Unfortunately, as interesting of an idea as that little orb is, we've discovered it doesn't scale quite as well when everyone's awake and competing for its attention. It should hopefully pick out those who really need to speak, but apart from that, I think that out of necessity Envelie and I will be doing much of the speaking again." He paused, shaking his head. "Sorry... I guess that makes it sound horribly like a meeting or something. It really is supposed to be more of a, well, regular conversation, but I don't know if it's possible to make that work for all of us at once. And, that being said, there are a few things that we really, absolutely must discuss to start off with, as they are critical points that must be dealt with for the sake of our mutual requirements... and, I suppose, mutual sanity."

Daledonne cleared his throat before continuing. "While it may be me talking primarily again, the issues that I'm bringing up are those that all of us have already discussed and want to deal with - first in discussions that were held by the others during our walk last night, and a hyper-condensed discussion that took place this morning while you were getting ready. I know that... doesn't sound great, having discussions without you, but after last night I wanted to make sure that everyone was on the same page, and was fully informed about your situation so that we can all move forward without further confusion. Are you... okay with that?"

"Um, yeah, sure... I mean, it's not like I feel you're hiding anything from me." In fact, on the contrary, on some issues it felt like the Tiaileng had provided, perhaps, too much disclosure.

"Yes, that certainly was not our intention. And, for that matter, I do apologize for handling things... less than well on your first night here with us. Everything was a bit of a whirlwind, getting things together on such short notice: prepping the mansion, tracking down and assigning a record number of Tiaileng, and several dozen other things. I'm afraid that one of those additional things was my review of your file, and in doing so I wasn't able to connect all the dots sufficiently and properly determine your potential response to such dramatic change. I believe that has been remedied now, and that all of us are now more properly informed as to your needs and your current capacity to handle certain things. However, those revelations have, well, thrown a wrench into the script of how assignment usually plays out, and we're scrambling to find an alternative approach that will work, both in light of your specific needs, and the unprecedented nature of this multiple assignment."

Daledonne glanced along the table of assembled Tiaileng, watching as they went down the line, nodding in turn in seeming response to a question that hadn't been directly asked - at least, not out loud. Finally, Daledonne nodded back before turning to me. "So... I'd initially planned to start off with some basic stuff, things relating to your continuing education, specific logistics of the entourage, and so on. However, we decided that, while important, those are not the most pressing issues for us to address. To be blunt... we really, really need to talk about sex. Before we do, though, I have to ask: do you feel that you're up to having that discussion?"

"Well... I mean, we're just going to be talking, right?"

"Yes. However, given your tendencies to become... flustered when we mentioned it before, I wanted to make sure that you can handle it. If it helps, I can assure you that it will be a generally serious discussion."

"Yeah, I... I think I can handle it. I guess I'm just not used to everyone being so... direct about it, is all. My teachers just kinda tended to talk around it, and girls, er, human women at least, don't tend to, um... it just always seemed not quite forbidden to talk about, but at least discouraged, so I guess it just makes me a little uneasy because of that. And with my parents, well..."

"Yes... what you told me certainly does factor into that, I'm sure. I hope you don't mind too much, but I explained that in general terms during our meeting. I felt it was important to give us all some background and explanation for what happened last night, to make sure that no one felt too bad about what happened, and to realize that it wasn't due directly to anything they did."

"It's... you know, I guess it doesn't matter, really. Just looking around the room is a reminder that you've all already trolled through my porn collection. If people need to know, well... it's no secret that it happened, and that it impacts this, so yeah, I think it's fine."

"Fair enough. So, if, you're ready...?"

I nodded.

"All right, then, I guess we'll just jump right into it. Here's the most important thing: I think I can reasonably say that all of us here are sexual beings, yourself included, yes?"

"Um, yeah, I mean, I think so, technically at least..."

"Well, for Tiaileng, there's very little technical about it. Upon reaching sexual maturity, a Tiaileng, male or female, will have a specific sex drive - aside from a few incredibly rare medical conditions, there is effectively no such thing as asexual for us. It is a sex drive that is also somewhat more... accelerated than the human equivalents: the least frequent reported level of desire for an encounter is once every other day, and a more common range is one to three times daily, with some outliers desiring up to nine or ten. It is a drive that we can control to a certain extent, and we can abstain from for perhaps up to a week, but not much longer than that without problems rapidly cropping up. Given the tumultuous situation and our desire not to upset you further, we've managed to abstain up until now, but we cannot do so for much longer."

He glanced over at Envelie, who turned towards me and appeared to seamlessly continue the conversation. I looked between them, a little uneasily - while it was hardly a surprise based on what I already knew, it didn't exactly help my current state to be reminded, especially as I knew I was the likeliest target for such desires.

"You see, usually when the assignment is completed, there are only one or two of us to worry about, and those people are generally synced up to the drives of the person who's assigned to them. As a result, those needs tend to be taken care of naturally as the sexual relationship quickly develops. With fifty of us, though, as you can tell, the situation is considerably trickier. We knew from the start that you wouldn't be able to handle all of our needs on your own - in fact, that was one of the other reasons that factored into having both men and women assigned to you. Because of the nature of this situation, much of our sexual contact will by necessity be with each other, although you can certainly be involved as often as you wish. Er... actually, that seems to be where some of the controversy is at the moment, which we need to discuss with you."

Envelie set her hands down on the table, twisting her fingers around each other in a way that seemed to indicate a certain level of discomfort. "One of the... majority opinions for our discussion was that those encounters should take place within your view, for a number of reasons: both to arouse and perhaps entice you to participate as well, and also to help you become desensitized to feeling anxious about your own sexuality - to show that sex is just a natural and normal part of your daily life, and that you can participate without shame or fear. However, upon hearing what Daledonne had to say about your experience growing up, both he and I are of the opinion that such displays are going to be... if not directly traumatic, then at least potentially counter-productive to what we're trying to do: that is, to help you be more comfortable around us, and hopefully also more comfortable about being with us in certain ways, both sexual and otherwise. We are in the minority on that opinion, though, which is why I think it is crucially important to hear what you have to say about this. Do you think that's something that you would be comfortable with?"

Even before she had finished, I was already shaking my head, even as the implications of such a plan were already reddening my cheeks. "I... I kinda get where you're coming from, I mean, that makes sense, the, um, desensitization and all, but... that's just... no. People just going at it wherever, in front of me... I'm sorry, but that's just... it's too much. Way too much."

Along the table, Tiaileng stared back at me, a range of emotions on their faces, although none of them looked angry - mainly just concerned, and perhaps a little frustrated. "Um, I'm sorry, really I am..."

"You have nothing to be sorry for," Daledonne continued. "Your feelings are your own, and you have every right to them. That sort of... direct exposure certainly isn't for everyone, and now that you've said that, I think we will all endeavor to respect that. I don't want to make an absolute promise, as it is true that every so often hormones can manage to get the best of us, but we will try to keep those liaisons out of sight. That being said, going that route does bring up some other concerns - specifically, that by allowing you to avoid the issue entirely, it may only provoke more anxiety in the long run."

"Well, regarding that, there is that alternate plan we discussed," Envelie replied.

"Oh, yes... it's possible that might work. Would you like to propose it, perhaps?"

"Certainly," Envelie said, looking back at me. "There was a sort of... compromise plan that was also floated, which was a little unorthodox given our usual natures, but I think we can make it work. In essence, what we would do is schedule specific times and places for those activities, matched up as best as possible with the relative frequencies of each person's libidos. The way we figured it, there would probably be five or so times per day, ranging from morning to evening, and there are plenty of bedrooms here that are variously well-equipped and accommodating that we could use. This way, that kind of activity would technically take place behind closed doors, and you could avoid it all if you wished - but if you did want to participate, or even just to watch and get acquainted with it, you would know exactly where to go. If we took that approach, you wouldn't have to be 'surprised' by it for the most part, and approaching it would be your choice, so you would be completely in control of the situation and could choose to participate exactly to the extent that you were comfortable with. What do you think - would that work better for you?"

"Yeah, I... think so..." I replied - admittedly, especially compared to the first plan, it seemed much more reasonable. "As long as, like you said, I wouldn't have to... not if I didn't want to, at least."

"Right," Daledonne replied. "The idea behind this isn't to force anyone's hand. However, I do need to mention one additional caveat to this plan, by saying that while we will attempt to use it to dictate our own conduct, you shouldn't feel that you are similarly constrained. Or, to put it more directly, when it comes to your own sexual needs, we will strive to be more immediately accommodating, if that it what you would like."

Envelie coughed slightly, and Daledonne glanced quickly over at her, looking a little confused, before looking back at me and seeing a similar expression.

"What Daledonne is trying to say, I think, is that if you are 'in the mood,' so to speak, and you are interested in having sex with one of us, all you have to do is tell is that's what you want, and we'll take care of you. We are all, shall we say, highly motivated to be intimate with you, and it would be a rare thing indeed for one of us to decline - and with fifty of us here, and many of us conveniently nearby, even if one of us isn't willing at the moment it's all but guaranteed that another will happily take their place."

She glanced over at me, and I was sure she was noticing that my face was getting progressively redder. It was true, certainly, that the alien feeling of having, well, sex readily available had been lingering disconcertingly in the back of my mind, but having it laid out so specifically made it harder to ignore. "Y-you mean I can really, um... I just ask, and you'll... we'll..."

"Yeah, it's just about that simple."

"I, um... I get that, I think, but... with me? All the time? I don't quite understand..."

"Ah. Well, how can I put this... when it comes to sex, our motivations and drives are considerably different when it comes to being intimate with you, as opposed to each other."

"Er... I'm not sure what that means, either..."

"Well..." Envelie said, trailing off and glancing with intention at Daledonne, who quickly noticed and picked up the conversation.

"To put it simply, it's about... energy, basically. Remember the things I said about emotional energy, earlier? How it works with us, kind of like food, but not exactly?"

"Yeah..."

"Well, as strange as that sounds, that's ultimately what sex is about for us when it comes to you. Being around your regular emotions, for example, could be compared to sustenance-providing food - tastes only okay, but it gets the job done. Getting that nice, relaxed feeling when snuggling with you, then, would be more like having a tasty snack. Sex, though, is a significant cut above that - think a three-course meal, with all of your favorite dishes. Each course is a different stage of the act: first your progressing arousal, then the powerful, filling emotional spike of your climax, and then the delicious, comfy feeling of your afterglow fading back down. Just doing that with any of us is enough that everyone within a certain specific radius gets a good taste, but for the person who's actually doing it with you, it's an order of magnitude more powerful - like savoring every last bite. While doing things with each other is about pleasure and instinct, when it comes to you, it really comes down to being able to elicit those emotions. I know it sounds a little mercenary, just saying it like that, and kind of the opposite of romantic, but it also does explain that constant motivation. And with fifty of us, being able to do that in direct contact with you is an honor, and probably a rare enough one with so much competition that we'd have to be crazy to turn it down."

I nodded in understanding. In fact, after what Don had said, I realized that, in some odd way, hearing it in such stark, mercenary terms actually left me slightly more comfortable with the idea. I supposed that from a certain perspective, that made sense - sex had always in a certain sense been tied to some sort of relationship, and was supposed to have some sort of meaning, especially if popular culture was to be believed. The idea that it could be seen as something so innocuous and uncomplicated as serving someone a meal, though, made it seem less impactful, and a little easier to wrap my head around. Of course, at the same time it also felt vaguely creepy, but on balance the disclosure seemed like a good thing.

"So you see, when it comes down to that, you don't need to worry too much-" Envelie replied, although she stopped abruptly as the orb did a quick figure-eight around her head before darting over to a couple of women midway down the table that I hadn't met before, one dressed in workout gear and the other in a seifuku. "Actually, it looks like Erilanna wants to continue, assuming the orb's found a way to do its job properly..."

Erilanna, the girl wearing the school uniform, stood up and seemed to look at a point somewhere between me and the table, her ears tilted slightly in what I thought was a gesture of nervousness. "Um, hi... I, um, I just wanted to say, we haven't been introduced yet, but I'm Erilanna, like Envelie said..."

"Um, okay... hi?" I replied, noticing Envelie looking between us.

"I assume there's something specific that you wanted to add, Lana?"

"Yes, I just wanted to say, um... for some of us, you don't even need to ask..."

"W-what?" I replied, suddenly even more flustered. "What do you..."

"You know... you can just, um, come up behind and... get started..."

"Er, I... what???" Flustered, in fact, didn't even begin to describe what I was feeling. She couldn't be meaning what she was implying... could she?

Erilanna looked like she was about to continue, seeming a bit flustered herself, but Daledonne quickly put a hand up and intervened. "I think what Erilanna is trying to convey is an idea that's more formally known as 'implied consent.' That is to say, some of us would like to extend an invitation for you to express your desires simply by acting on them directly, with no explanation or further consent needed - or, more specifically, that they would prefer for you to simply pull them into a sexual position and have sex with them any time you feel like it, without needing to ask first."

"I- but that's... isn't that rape? I couldn't, that's... that's not me!"

Daledonne quickly reached over and put his hand on my shoulder. "Don't worry - I know it's not. And, for that matter, what they're proposing isn't rape, either, just... a particular kink that some of us have, perhaps following on from some of our early evolutionary stages. Certainly, though, it's something you don't have to do - and in fact, I think a good default rule for now is to just initiate contact by asking, as I have a feeling that will be more comfortable for you and for most involved. Okay?"

"Okay, but... I'm sorry, but I just don't quite understand it. Wouldn't that... wouldn't it hurt? I mean, something like that, it just seems so..."

Envelie piped up from the other side, as Daledonne's hand gently rubbed my shoulder. "Actually... that's where Tiaileng women differ somewhat from human ones. It's actually related to what Daledonne mentioned, about our early evolution. Long before our modern society, long before we journeyed into space, we were... well, something a little bit like your early ancestors. Not really prey, but not a match for the many predators that were around, either. The topography of that place, our ancestral world, was much different than this one - there were no forests to hide in, no caves to barricade and huddle inside for shelter. Life was spent constantly keeping an eye out for predators or food, and so for mating to happen, it couldn't be too long or complicated, and had to be able to take place at any time there might be a lull without predators prowling around. As a result, both Tiaileng sexes adapted: men became able to form an erection on a moment's notice, and women became constantly, well, wet in a certain area. Unlike human women, though, certain other adaptations made it so that wasn't an inconvenience - Tiaileng women tend to stay more... closed by default, and in that resting position an impermeable membrane moves into place to prevent anything from leaking out, but can be retracted quickly to allow sexual activity to occur. Even when civilization arose and things became more stabilized, those tendencies were seen as a benefit, as they were seen to promote more closeness and cooperation, and in the confines of the colony ships, the same ready access to intimacy made those close quarters more tolerable.

"So, from that standpoint, our sexuality can definitely be more... quick and spontaneous, I guess, and so if you wanted to be just as spontaneous with us, it generally wouldn't be painful or problematic, at least in that specific physical respect. Mentally... again, given our nature, I don't think many of us would be all that troubled by it, as long as it was done by physical coaxing and not by force, but I get the sense that it might not feel the same way for you. So, like Don said, I think it makes more sense to do what you're comfortable with, and if that means communicating verbally first before engaging in something more physical, then it makes sense to stick to that approach. Plus, if we do it like that, it's easier to make sure that everyone takes that courtesy into account - and in that case, it makes it more likely that it can be a two-way street, and that we can ask you directly as well, and you can choose to accept or decline that with no hard feelings either way."

"Still, while we're on that topic, there is something else that we should talk about," Daledonne said. "While it's not directly related to sex, it is an important matter of... protocol, I guess. As part of this, we're trying to come up with a way that you can be involved sexually with us at your own pace, to have those times and places set up, to ask or more likely let you ask to initiate things, and trying to keep any abrupt or inappropriate pouncing to a minimum. However, that also means that you'll need to step up as well - and that means making sure that you understand a different sort of implied consent, and one that we've discussed and all emphatically agree on. While we've already discussed the specifics for sexual encounters, I want to make it clear that we both consent to, and actively encourage, certain other behaviors initiated by you: hugging, cuddling, petting, touching, that kind of thing. It really is important for us to be in contact with you, especially as we can't all do so every day, and if you're uncomfortable with us initiating it, we really need you to take the initiative - and if you're more comfortable hugging us than the other way around, then we would implore you to step up and try to do as much as you can. I'm not going to lie - if you don't do that, if you actively avoid contact with us, we're only going to stand for that so long before some of us feel the need strongly enough to press the issue. We really want to find a way to make this work so that you're as comfortable as you can be, but we can't do that to the exclusion of our own needs, and after assignment, contact with each other just isn't enough. If there's anything else we can do to make this easier for you to do, physically or otherwise, we'll do everything in our power, but you need to be willing to work with us, too. Can you do that?"

I looked over, still feeling awkward, but not exactly taken aback - after all, it was a logical continuation of what Daledonne had been saying before. "I- like I said, I don't know how much I can do before I get uncomfortable, or before I need to take a break or something... but I'm going to try. I mean, it's not like I don't... well, like it, it's just... I can't do it all the time, and sometimes I need to be alone, but maybe, in small doses... maybe like that, I can start getting used to it. Just... if I do that, maybe I can, um, just do that for now, and work up to the, ah, sexual stuff later?"

"Like I said, with the sexual aspect, you can take whatever time you need. While it's certainly something we'd like very much, the closeness is probably the more critical need, and one that we can't actively satisfy ourselves, so... yeah, as long as you can do that, I think we can take it slow, but slow or not, it's something that you should consider fairly soon."

As he finished up, the orb darted over along the table again, this time hovering over Kat's head.

"Hey, so, it's okay if I jump in if this thing's hovering over me, right?"

"Yes, Kat, you can go ahead..."

"Great! Um... I hope this doesn't seem inappropriate, but I just had a question I think a lot of us are wondering about. I mean, I know humans can be kinda prudes about sex sometimes, but usually they aren't teenage boys. So, my question's pretty simple: when it comes to sex, what are you specifically worried about? We're working on all of these things based on the fact that there's something you're uncomfortable with, but it can't just be some thing with your parents - after all, this is a totally different situation. Maybe if we talk about not just that you're uncomfortable, but why you're uncomfortable, couldn't that help make things easier too? So, if you're willing... could you tell us? Doesn't matter what it is - by now, you've got to know that we're the last people who'd judge you..."

I hesitated for a moment, trying to figure out how to answer. "I... I'm not sure, exactly. I mean, it wasn't like I didn't know it was going to be a thing - I knew that assignment was going to happen, and basically what it meant, but I just kind of went into denial and tried not to think about it. It was just one of those things where I didn't really have any experience, and I still don't - the only things I really know about it are what I've seen in porn, and what I saw happen with my parents, so... when I think about it, it just comes with this sort of awkwardness, this... not creepiness, exactly, but still something that's hard to get past. Intellectually, I know it should be different - I'm basically an adult now, and things should be better, it should just be normal, but I still don't know how to feel about it. And with my, um, sensitivity on top of that... I mean, it's not like I hate being touched, it's just that while a little feels good, a lot feels, well, too good, so much so that I guess it goes past the threshold of what I can handle and flip-flops to feel kinda uncomfortable and overstimulating. Amplifying that with being completely naked against someone, with the most sensitive part of me... in them, even, and it seems like it would be so much that I don't know what I'd do. Maybe I'd just cum right there on the spot, maybe I'd totally freeze up, maybe I'd pass out again... I just don't know. But because I know that those things could happen, it's so daunting that I'm just... I'm afraid, I guess, and because I know that fear can somehow hurt you guys too, I'm really scared that if I try to do that, to be intimate, that I'm gonna screw things up somehow in a way that's gonna be bad for all of us..."

Kat looked a little surprised at that, as did some of the others around her, which made me wonder just how vague Don had been in his explanations. "Wow, that's... a whole lot of stuff..."

"However," Envelie replied, "it was a good question to ask - and now that all of that's on the table, we can address each part of it."

She turned back to me. "I'm not sure yet how to solve some of those things, the sensitivity for instance, but as far as one of the other things you mentioned, in terms of, ah, 'performance,' I believe I can set your mind at ease."

Envelie smiled a little as she continued. "Remember that stuff we said about sex before? While it's not exactly the most romantic thing, for sure, those mercenary motivations do have an upside, at least in this particular case. As long as you can have an orgasm while in direct contact with one of us, there's literally no way for you to fail - even if you finish soon after you start, you still experience all of the emotions, put out all of the energy for us to absorb, and we get exactly what we're looking for. Of course, that's not to say that we wouldn't prefer longer encounters, as that produces even more energy for us, but that can be taught and learned with experience, and once you get more comfortable it should get easier, too. So if for whatever reason you're worried that somehow your inexperience would mean we'd find you inadequate, or think less of you, know that there's no chance of that being the case. As for the other stuff, well... I don't think it's going to 'hurt' us, exactly, if you panic again, and if it happens, you shouldn't feel bad, or that you're letting us down. All it means is that we're going too fast, and that we need to back things off and take them on more gradually. If you could let us know when you're starting to get uncomfortable, though, before that panic point, that would be even better. And the fact that you're willing to be here, to talk with us honestly, handle this... intense conversation, and work with us to deal with it is already a tremendous help."

"Yes, thanks for putting up with all of this," Daledonne continued. "I do feel, though, like we might be just about getting to where we need to. And with the sensitivity... I do think that the approaches we've already laid out, allowing you to get used to closeness and then intimacy at your own rate, are going to eventually get you used to those feelings, to the point that they won't be as overwhelming and you can handle them without problems. Related to that, I think it's important to highlight a point that was just mentioned: for what we need, the two necessary components are an orgasm and a sufficiency of direct physical contact with you. The two don't necessarily need to occur in the most traditional, penetrative context - technically, if you were to masturbate while one of us was simply snuggled up to your back or side, that could potentially work to a certain degree as well. Because of that, it means that you could work up slowly to different degrees of intimacy, while discovering the types of things that work best for you. I mean, after all, your file does indicate that you're a guy with a fairly typical teenage sex drive, and a way of dealing with it on your own - if you can figure out a way just to have one of us there with you, touching but without anything more overtly sexual than that, it would be a good start at giving us what we need. Again, that's up to you, and we can certainly start by just getting comfortable with some of the other stuff. I guess what we're ultimately trying to get at, though, is that there shouldn't be any excuses not to be with us - whatever problem there might be, we'll find a way to make it work."

I just nodded, trying to process it all. "Yeah, I... I understand what you're saying. It doesn't stop it from being just... kinda weird, though. It's just the way that it sounds, hearing you all talking about it, it's like everything is reversed from what I'm used to. You know, you meet someone, go on dates, figure things out, get closer, and finally, after all that, sex is something that can happen, but this... I know it sounds crazy for a guy to not be enthusiastic about sex that's readily available, it's just... it feels so unreal."

"Well, perhaps..." Envelie replied. "But then again, not long ago, people thought it was pretty unreal for aliens to come down out of the sky all over the world, and now our being here is so normal that no one gives it a second thought. And maybe it's true that sex doesn't have quite the same impact for us, but I think it comes down to a different way of looking at it. Maybe sex isn't this culminating thing, but for us it doesn't serve the purpose of cementing an already built-up relationship, but instead serves as a relational building block that in itself, over time, is used to bring people closer together. So, maybe we do have it a little reversed from the way people usually do it, but I don't see that as a bad thing - if sex comes in from the start, then both the sexual and personal relationships can build up at the same time, becoming stronger and reinforcing one another as each one grows. And that's what matters, isn't it? The fact of the matter is, the pleasure of sex lasts for a while, and the memory of it lasts a little longer, but we're going to be together indefinitely - in that long view, what matters is how it all comes together, not which particular part started when. And if you have to choose between experiencing pleasure in the present, and delaying it to some arbitrarily defined point, why not have it now?"

"Well, I... I mean, I can see why that kinda makes sense, but..."

"But you're still not sure how you feel about all of this?"

"...yeah."

"Still... better than before, right? Now that we all basically know where you're at, and you know where we're coming from on all this... maybe it won't be perfect right away, but if you try your best to do what you can for us, and we do the same for you, I think every day it's gonna work a little better, and get a little easier."

"And with that, we should probably wrap this up," Daledonne said, leaning back in his chair. "I think there's more than enough for all of us to process for now. Plus, we, ah, kinda went a little over time, which means that the guest tutor's going to be here any minute, and we haven't even gone over any of the education stuff. So, for those of you in today's entourage, just follow us as we get that set up, and everyone else, your schedules and assigned tasks should be on your phones. Let's try to have a great day today, as always - and remember, for right now, if you're interested in doing something, make sure to ask, and to take it slow..."

The orderly crowd quickly dissolved into a mass of chaotic movement as everyone got up and began milling about, a mass of shifting costumes as they ostensibly made their way to their respective assignments. I stood up as well, watching as they filed by, some of them seeming to take a detour to pass by in my general vicinity. True to their word, there was no pouncing, but one of the women leaned in quickly as she passed by, just close enough that I could feel the fur on her muzzle brush lightly against my neck, creating a little burst of sensation that shivered uneasily down my spine, and somehow managed to spike both my arousal and anxiety simultaneously. Daledonne, though, was quick to notice what had happened, as a moment later he tugged on my arm and led me quickly towards another of the room's exits, away from the flow of Tiaileng.

Before I really realized what was happening, I found myself walking down another indistinguishably opulent corridor, with Daledonne at my side and another half-dozen Tiaileng, ostensibly my entourage for the day, keeping pace. I glanced quickly between them, but there were only two I recognized: Daledonne, and, to my consternation, Erilanna, whose mere presence managed to make me gulp nervously. Even after the sort-of explanation that had followed her question, the impulses she'd referred to were reminiscent enough of the out-of-control spontaneity that had disrupted my own family that I couldn't help but feel a little uneasy around her. True, it was ostensibly in the opposite direction, but the idea that I could get out of control enough to do something like she had suggested... well, it scared me. There wasn't any other way I could put it. But then again, at the same time, I supposed it was better to know that she had such a desire from the beginning, than to find out through some unfortunate, spontaneous act. Even so, I couldn't help but glance over every so often to keep an eye on her as we walked.

After about a minute in, Daledonne decided that I was calm enough to let go of my arm. "So... how are you feeling? I know that was probably a lot to lay on you in there..."

I just kind of shook my head at that. "No kidding. Although, you know... I wasn't kidding either when I said that this just feels so... unreal. I mean, I'm walking through a crazily laid-out mansion, one that's filled with people wearing what are essentially fetish outfits - from just about any objective standpoint, it's really unusual. I mean, when I walked out there this morning and saw everyone like that, for a moment I really thought I was having some strange dream, that I was caught in one of those Japanese dating sims or something - except that, I guess, most dating sims don't start out with an intro where all the characters are basically begging you to have sex with them..."

I could see Daledonne shrug visibly beside me. "Heh... I'm not sure that's exactly how I would have characterized our discussion, but I suppose it's hard to deny that it's all that far off from our general intent..."

"Yeah... and I guess that's the weirdest, most unreal part of it all. I mean, most guys, wouldn't they just jump all over a situation like this? To have an opportunity like that, tons of women who want you, non-stop sex, it's supposed to be every guy's fantasy, and even with my friends, who got just one Tiaileng, within a day or two they were all over each other. And yet here I am, in what's just like a fantasy brought to life, but instead of wanting to pounce on someone, or, you know, get down to it, all I want to do is sit somewhere quietly and just... cool off, I guess. And it's not like I don't have a sex drive or something, of course I do, it's just that... maybe some fantasies, when through some crazy circumstance manage to actually become a reality, you realize that there's a lot more going on that the fantasy never fleshed out, and all of a sudden you feel a whole lot differently about it than what you might have imagined..."

"So... you've had a fantasy like this?"

Somehow, through all of it, I managed to laugh a little. "Sure... I mean, what guy hasn't? Well, every human guy, at least. And, um, in mine I guess there are also some human girls as well. But if it's a fantasy, it's more abstract, you know? You think of a person, and the main thing you think about is that they're hot and they're gonna have sex with you. You don't really think about... what their personality is. How they're going to feel during it, or afterward. What they're going to think of you. And now, it's just... yeah, sex is there, it's a real possibility, but because of all that it's a lot more complicated actually contemplating doing it than just imagining it. I mean, I see the opportunity, but at the same time, I feel like I'm kinda responsible for all of you, for making this work, and so what we all think of each other, how we all get along, really matters. Because really, that's the even bigger part that the fantasy doesn't tell you. The point of it is to imagine all the fun, sexy parts, but that's only a part of your day, and probably a small part at that - and then you have to spent the rest of your day with them, too. I mean, with you guys... and because of that, it's a big deal. Even if you say it's not a big deal, it's still intimate, and it's kind of a big deal to me, and if I screw something up, I've still gotta deal with that person the rest of the day, even if they resent me, even if they're pissed off at me. So, maybe it's casual, maybe it isn't, but... it still feels like a burden to me, especially with all of my other stuff. Maybe, maybe all that gets better with time, but..."

All of a sudden, Daledonne stopped short in the middle of the hallway, and I followed suit, as did everyone else. He turned around, looking directly at me.

"Um, what did I-"

"Nothing. You didn't say anything wrong. It's just that... maybe with that conversation, with so much talking at you, maybe it wasn't clear enough, or maybe it just felt one-sided or something, but... what you said about responsibility. The fact that despite some struggles, that you truly feel this way about us, it says a lot. What you need to remember is that we all have a similar responsibility for you. That's why you don't need to worry - because, whatever happens, we're going to lift you up. We're going to support you in whatever way we can."

He looked over towards a nearby door. "There's probably a bedroom or something in there. I know that... certain people wanted to get you rolling again on education today, but we can just tell the tutor he can wait for a little while. I... I thought about offering you a hug, but if what you need is more along the lines of solitude... someone can wait out here and take you to the classroom whenever you're ready. In the meantime, well... take all the time you need."

"Thanks." I looked into the empty room - guest quarters, maybe, done up in predictably opulent style. I took a step towards it, but then paused when I looked over at Daledonne's face. It was a small gesture, maybe, but the fact that he was sticking by his word, taking my side and trying to give me what I needed instead of rushing me along to someone else's agenda, meant a lot at that moment. It meant enough, in fact, that I wanted to give something back.

I turned back to him, spreading my arms out to either side. "Actually... I think I might need that hug, too..."

Daledonne's eyes lit up, and a moment later he stepped forward, enfolding me in his embrace. It was enthusiastic, but light and careful, and as I hugged him gently back I felt the other Tiaileng move in around me, embracing me from whatever angle they could. And... somehow, it was nice. Maybe I'd calmed down enough, maybe they were more careful, maybe it had helped to just get everything off my chest. Whatever it was, though, it meant that the hug, the warmth, actually had a little bit of the calming effect it was supposed to. It didn't last too long - everyone was probably being cautious, just in case - but it was just enough to work. Even though it was bright enough in the hallway that I couldn't see any of the energy flowing, I could guess what it was doing, and I realized that I could almost sense it working. Not directly, exactly, but in the way that the Tiaileng seemed when they pulled back: noticeably more relaxed but also somehow more energized, their smiles a bit wider, their movements a bit quicker.

"I guess it's my turn to thank you," Daledonne said, nodding, before gesturing at the door. "There'll be someone waiting for you if there's anything you need - we'll be ready whenever you are."

I nodded back, stepping into the room, and one of them closed the door quietly behind me. Don hadn't been wrong - there was a part of me that definitely needed a break from all things Tiaileng, if only just to begin to process it all. That wasn't to say that I hadn't already done a lot of that already - the discussions so far had at least given me a chance to get a lot of things out on the table. Still... all that talk, all those promises and assurances, and it still took a moment's hesitation to even consider a simple, chaste hug, let alone anything closer or more intense contact.

What could I do, though? Touch had never been something I'd really gotten used to. It wasn't that I'd been deprived of it, exactly - my parents had been in contact with me the way that they should, at least early on when I was growing up. Once I'd been exposed to the things they'd gotten up to, though, it had gotten tougher - every time they wanted to give me a hug or something, my Tiaileng parents especially, I'd started to feel uncomfortable, because somewhere in the back of my mind I was worried they were going to do those strange things to me as well. Of course, they never did, and after a while I learned not to fear it, but by that time they'd just assumed I didn't like it that much, and I'd learned to live without it. As a result, they'd backed off, and so had my parents, and I'd learned to get along with just the occasional touch - and as sensitive as I was, or perhaps had become, I'd started to wonder if it just made more sense to live without it. That was probably partly why all my fantasies had been highly theoretical, as the more realistic they got, the more I might actually have to think about what the specific mechanics of each act entailed. Now, though, with things as real as they could get, I knew I had to make a choice - and while one part of me seemed to be saying that I should just try it now, in a situation where it should be so much easier rather than complicated by a regular, human relationship on top of it, that fear was still there as well, and I still felt torn about which way I should go, which impulse I should listen to...

My train of thought was mercifully broken by a quick, sharp buzzing from my pocket. I pulled my phone out to see an incoming message from Will - probably goofing off in first-period math again. Even in the advanced-placement class, he was already ahead of the game, and while the other kids were still trying to figure out the concept, he'd already programmed his scientific calculator to do the practice problems for him. I knew that firsthand, as I'd sat just behind him - talking was something that tended to get you in trouble, but chatting on phones held under our desks was something the teacher, busy with the other students, somehow hadn't caught onto.

I turned the phone on, idly wondering if I should have set a password on the thing - and what else the Tiaileng might have been up to on it besides adding to my address book. As nice as the Tiaileng were trying to be, I was more than well aware by now that they had dramatically different ideas about privacy than I did.

As I'd noted before, the messaging program was loaded with several dozen inquiries. I clicked on the most recent one, which brought up the expected question:

WG73: Where the f**k are u?

I brought up the virtual keyboard, typing out a reply, although it took a couple of tries for my thumbs to pick out the proper words on the small screen.

DB9: would not believe me if I told u

Unsurprisingly, it only took him a few moments to respond.

WG73: seriously?

WG73: dude, ur not here or home sick

WG73: rumor was, tiaileng vanished u

WG73: ingo had no idea

WG73: or your parents

WG73: everyones in the dark

I was a little surprised by that - I would have thought that the Tiaileng would have at least told my folks something more about what was happening or where they were taking me. At least my earlier message had let them know I was okay, but apparently I'd forgotten to send one to Will.

DB9: Im fine

DB9: u know that mansion in the hills next town over?

DB9: one with the weird statue guy

WG73: yeah kinda

WG73: drove by it once

DB9: I'm in there

DB9: the tiaileng bought it or something

WG73: really?

WG73: wtf u doing there?

DB9: dunno

DB9: supposed to be controlled area or something

DB9: and room for all the tiaileng

There was a much longer pause this time before the next response.

WG73: just how many tiaileng they assign you?

DB9: fifty...

WG73: ur pulling my leg right?

WG73: or autocorrect?

DB9: no, actually fifty. 50

DB9: why everyone is at the mansion

DB9: no room for them all in my regular house

Even as I sent it, I knew that Will was going to be incredulous, and his reaction certainly didn't disappoint.

WG73: fifty

WG73: NO F**KING WAY

WG73: thats never happened before

WG73: not EVER

DB9: dunno what to tell u

DB9: for some reason I can support them

WG73: thats still crazy

WG73: d**n though, u must be rolling in it

DB9: rolling in what?

WG73: p***y, man

WG73: stupid censor BS

WG73: how are they not all over u all the time?

DB9: they tried that before

DB9: I kinda fainted

WG73: that figures

WG73: ur always kinda hands off

WG73: especially with girls

WG73: theyre all girls, right?

DB9: no, some guys too

WG73: wow

WG73: I have got to see this

WG73: we can visit right?

DB9: dunno

DB9: I will ask

DB9: would be good to see u

DB9: just me and tiaileng is... kinda strange

WG73: my folks might give us a ride

WG73: I have *got* to see this

WG73: video chat tonight, at least?

DB9: see what I can do

WG73: all right

WG73: but d**n, fifty is insane

WG73: heh try not faint or melt in the meantime

DB9: yeah, funny

DB9: u try dealing with all of them

WG73: heh

WG73: ah c**p teacher calling on me

WG73: will tell everyone else ur okay

WG73: keep it together huh?

DB9: will do

I waited a moment for another reply, but one wasn't forthcoming. I knew, though, that shortly after the next bell rang, the rest of my admittedly small social circle would be quickly informed of my unusual situation. In fact, when I thought about it, I wasn't sure the entirety of everyone I knew at all well - friends, family, the works - even came to 50 people in total. And now I had that, and more, just living under the same roof with me. Admittedly, it was a very large roof, but even so, Will had been right - it probably wasn't much of a surprise I was having some difficulty adjusting.

I flipped through the messages again, stopping when I saw one from my parents. I thought for a moment about calling them, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt uncomfortable. I worried that if I called them, certain questions would come up, especially about sex, that I didn't really want to answer. If they asked, and I told them that nothing had happened, they'd want to know why - getting assigned a Tiaileng and not being rapidly intimate with them, after all, was an unusual thing indeed. And if they asked, I wouldn't really know how to answer - or how to tell them that fifty other Tiaileng were now privy to some of our more awkward family business. I knew, of course, that I'd eventually have to give them a call, but at the moment it was yet another interaction I wasn't quite ready to have. I took a minute, though, to send them a slightly more elaborate message, at least telling them where I was and a little more about what was going on, although without any of the specifics that might cause them concern.

I put the phone away, glancing back towards the door. I knew that I couldn't stay in the room indefinitely, as nice as the momentary solitude was. Plus, there was another thing drawing me forward: the idea of getting back into a regular routine. Ever since I'd arrived, seemingly every part of my life had been upended, and even usually simple things like sleeping or sitting down for a meal now had additional complications. I desperately needed some sense of familiarity back, and sitting around on what should have been a school day, I realized, was leaving me feeling even more out of whack. Of course, having a tutor would be different from my regular classes, but having a predictable school schedule, and things like homework to draw my focus away from thinking about Tiaileng all of the time, seemed like it might help to settle my life down, and perhaps my emotions along with it.

I got up from where I was lounging on the bed, taking a moment to stretch and try to will myself to relax before swinging the door open and stepping out into the hall. The Tiaileng who had been waiting there was already turning to face me, but the sailor-style school uniform she was wearing was already a giveaway, and before I could even see her face I knew it was Erilanna that I was suddenly alone with. Despite my attempts at calm, a new spike of anxiety settled in my chest as our eyes met, although only for a moment before Erilanna's head ducked and pointed her gaze down at her shoetops.

"Oh... h-hi," she said, and for a moment I couldn't figure out a reply, as the exchange from before flashed through my head and only increased my nervousness. I just stood there, half-frozen for a moment, until she finally looked back up, looking strangely embarrassed.

"I-it's, um, it's not what you think!" she said, a little too quickly and loudly, betraying her discomfort.

"Er, I... what?" I knew what she was probably referring to, but I was surprised to hear her bring it up, at least in that tone.

"It's not, really it's not! I didn't want to make you think... I never thought you were the kind of person who would just take other people - I didn't mean it like that at all! I, I just, I..."

I took a step back, not quite ready to deal with what was happening. I'd been worried that... well, that she might somehow try to seduce me, or pounce me, or something like that because no one was watching. I hadn't expected her to actually seem guilty and borderline distraught, and the unexpected emotions took me aback.

"Um, look, I mean, I know that, everyone kind of explained it, and, um, I don't think it's, uh, you're bad or anything, you just, um, feel differently about how things, er, work, and so..." I trailed off, not really even sure where I was trying to go with it, other than to get her to not feel bad about it - I had a hard enough time dealing with Tiaileng when they were happy, and I really didn't want to try to figure out on the fly how to deal with one that was angry or upset, especially if they didn't have to be.

"You... understand?" She looked back at me, suddenly seeming hopeful.

"Well, I... I'm not sure understand is the right word for it, but-"

"Okay! Okay." She seemed to calm down, at least a little. "But it... it really isn't like that, what I said before... What I meant was... you know how it is in those old-style romance books, right?"

"Um, no..."

"Right, right, more of a Tiaileng thing, and, um, probably a girl thing too..." She continued, looking suddenly much more animated, her eyes seeming to light up as she spoke with greater and greater enthusiasm. "They're stories about early Tiaileng, before space, before real civilization, adventuring in the plains, no complications of modern life, right? Just danger and adventure and passion around every turn, fast and unbridled and wild..."

She went on in the same vein, seeming to be momentarily lost in her reverie, talking about her adoration of certain primal, male characters that I was thoroughly unfamiliar with. As focused as I was at trying to pay attention to her expression, though, it took me a moment to catch her other movements.

When I did, though, my breath caught a little in my chest. One of her hands was still at her side, like normal - but she had tucked the other beneath the waistband of her skirt, and I could see the fabric nearby shifting as her hand moved beneath it in a slow, tight circular motion. I had a good idea of what she was doing, but I was sufficiently surprised by it that I just stayed rooted to the spot. It probably wasn't the most overtly sexual thing a woman had done in front of me - sadly, I had my own parents to thank for that - but it was certainly the first time that anything like that even had the possibility of being somehow related to my presence.

"Oh, yes... like that..." I heard her say, and transfixed as I was by what was happening in front of me, I wasn't able to react nearly fast enough when her eyes suddenly flashed back up and her gaze locked with mine. Almost immediately after seeming to once again acknowledge my presence, she was in motion, the few steps between us covered in seemingly no time at all. I felt the impact of her against me, and I stumbled back into the wall on the other side of the door, and suddenly there was far too little distance between us. I could feel her hands high on my chest, her fingers hooked around and tugging down slightly on the collar of my T-shirt, and some were close enough that I could feel them leave a light trail of moisture against my skin, bringing with it a strange, spicy, exotic scent that tickled my nose. Her face now took up all of my vision, not quite close enough to feel her fur brush against me, but close enough that I could feel her cool breath puff against my lips as she spoke.

"Now you understand, right?," she said, her voice slightly lower than it had been and sounding strangely more confident - talking about her fantasy had certainly awakened something inside her. Even as my panic spiked, though, something about her presence meant that a part of me didn't quite want to shy away from her.

"Don't you see?" she said, her fingers gripping my shirt even tighter. "That tension, that anxiety, it's a good thing!" I shook my head - nothing about that aspect of how I was feeling seemed very good - but it didn't stop her from continuing with enthusiasm. "That's the thing about those stories, you know? It tells you how to be alive again. Even in a world like this, full and modern, where we all pretend to be civilized and stuff to match up with it, there's still that animal part at the core of us, just waiting to be unleashed. You don't need civilization for those instincts to be unleashed, you don't need cell phones, or computers, or even a bunch of complex, fancy words. All you need to do is to let those instincts out, and I know they're there. I swear I can feel them in you, hiding, just beneath the surface..."

She moved in even closer, and my whole body started to feel like it was vibrating with tension. She managed to move one of her legs in between mine, and I could feel the pressure of her thigh pushing in against my crotch, making me more than aware that I'd already become aroused to the constraining limits of my underwear. All of a sudden, my body and mind seemed to be pulling me in two different directions: closer towards her, wanting to see just how close we could actually get, and wanting to run as far and as fast as I could in the opposite direction to ramp down the tense, fearful feelings that threatened to overwhelm me.

"There's no one else around," she breathed, her muzzle close enough to barely brush against my own lips as she spoke. "No one to watch. No one to impress. No one to fear. No rules. No customs. No civilization. Just you, me, and the vital spark within each of us that wants so desperately to join..."

Her hands suddenly tugged forward, my collar stretching and my body following the motion before I could fully react. Her muzzle pushed up against my lips, intensely soft and warm against their sensitive surface, and for a moment the world seemed to stop as the sensation flooded through me, at the very leading edge of what I could tolerate. Then, her warm and wet and surprisingly muscular tongue flicked out to press in against them, stimulating even more as it tried to nudge them aside and intertwine with my own.

Pressed on me so suddenly, and on top of the already-charged situation, it sent my panic over the edge. For a weird, split second, my mind seemed to have unusual clarity, feeling like it was racing impossibly fast as it made one last-ditch attempt to find some way to deal with it. Maybe if it had gone slower, maybe if I'd found some way to prepare myself better, maybe if I'd had any experience at all... but there was nothing to alleviate it, and the tension that had been making my whole body vibrate seemed to burst outward through my chest, a tremendous shock of adrenaline as my chest seized up. My vision seemed to narrow to a couple of close-in points on Erilanna's face, while at the same time my guts seemed to make an attempt to twist themselves into a twisted, knifing knot. Even though I couldn't breathe, I felt for a moment like I was somehow screaming, the sensations and emotions completely overwhelming my thoughts, and for a moment the world went an odd, flashing white, with red veins stitched across it that I realized were from the back of my own eyelids.

My eyes blinked open, though, to what I was sure was a split-second later, but they took in a scene that had changed significantly. I was still against the wall, sliding slowly down it from legs made wobbly from the aftermath of the adrenal shock, but Erilanna wasn't on top of me anymore. Instead, she was several feet down the hallway on her knees, doubled over and cradling her abdomen like she'd just been gut-punched. For a moment, I was horrified, but I knew that there was no way I could have hit her - even at my most panicked, I never lashed out, just curled up and hid, and I'd been so paralyzed by the anxiety that I could barely move at all, much less throw the kind of punch that could send someone reeling.

Seeing her there like that, though, hurt and in need of help, seemed to flip a switch inside me. Maybe I wasn't empathic, or half-empathic like Tiaileng, but I'd never been the sort of person who could easily walk past someone in pain. And especially if that pain or hurt was immediate, if there was any sort of emergency, there had always been a sort of "crisis mode" that I fell into. It was in some ways strangely analogous to the panic I sometimes felt in uncomfortable situations - the same adrenal spike, the same sense of hypersensitivity, hyperawareness, hypervigilance, but instead of sending me out of control, it shoved the panic to the side and left me preternaturally focused on doing what needed to be done - when I was the one having a problem, it wasn't always easy to hold it together, but when someone else was, it seemed to shove my own issues to the side until that other person was okay. Of course, after the situation was resolved and the adrenaline had bled back out, it was even odd as to whether I'd be a wreck or not in the aftermath, but in the moment everything was abundantly simple: someone was hurt, and I had to help them.

Because of that state, everything seemed to start happening a little faster. I didn't really recall my legs firming up, or standing up and stepping away from the wall, but in a few seconds I was crouched down next to Erilanna, my eyes darting over her form and looking for any obvious injuries to attend to - she was still holding onto her stomach, or more specifically onto her side, but I couldn't see any obvious way to help.

"Are you all right?" I asked, reaching out to place a hand on her shoulder - I didn't know exactly how it would help things, but I knew that touch was important for Tiaileng, so maybe my being in direct contact would help somehow. "I... I don't know what happened, I never meant to do anything bad... I guess I just panicked, and I know that's not great for Tiaileng, but I didn't think anything like, like this could happen..."

Erilanna glanced up at me, somehow managing to eke out a small smile through the expression of pain on her face, but she still winced visibly as she replied.

"Hey, I know it's not your fault, all right? Rrgh... I guess I didn't quite believe the stuff you put out could be as bad as what they were saying, and I wanted that opportunity so badly I let myself get carried away..." She paused, grimacing again as she rubbed her side. "Serves me right, huh? But still, what the heck was that? I know that people can sometimes put out stuff that's not super pleasant, that you don't want to absorb, but nothing like that, nothing that's so, so... I don't even know what, but whatever that was, I don't think there's any Tiaileng that can properly absorb it! Ow ow ow... well, at least I know what not to do, now."

"How bad is it? Is... is there anything I can do to help?"

Erilanna glanced back down at where she was holding her side. "I don't think that anything's actually injured. I think it's just that when the energy hit, certain parts of me couldn't handle it, and were... overwhelmed, overloaded or something, and it's gonna hurt until the intensity of it bleeds away. That sucks, but I don't know if there's anything that can really be done." She glanced up at me, the anguish a little less, but it was certainly supplanting any of the emotions she'd displayed earlier. "I don't know if it will help, really, but... could you maybe just hold me for a little while? Seriously, I promise I won't try anything at all, not like before - there's no way I'm gonna risk triggering that kind of energy again! If I can get some better energy from you, though, maybe it'll help flush the other stuff out? I don't think it can hurt, at least..."

"Sure," I replied, leaning in a little closer to her, spreading my arms out to either side. "If it might help you feel better... I'll find a way to make it work."

"Thanks," she said, wrapping her arms around my back and pulling in close to me, resting her muzzle lightly on my shoulder. While in some ways our positions were similar to how they were before, the feeling of the contact was completely different. I didn't feel arousal, or fear, or trepidation, just compassion and closeness. The adrenaline was still there, though, and I didn't want any of that to bleed over to her if I could help it. I closed my eyes, trying to clear my head of any remaining thoughts that might have been swirling around, trying to concentrate on the gentle warmth of our contact, trying to get myself to interpret it the way it was probably supposed to be - as something relaxing, healing, and just generally good. I flashed whatever relaxing scenes I could in front of my mind: the beach, snow falling gently in an evergreen forest, sitting on the edge of the Grand Canyon and watching the sunrise as a gentle fall wind ruffled my hair. It wasn't perfect concentration by any means, as the feeling of her against me was still distractingly stimulating in certain ways, and the sensation of her fur brushing against my forearm still sent a disconcerting little shiver through me, but I fought it off and refocused as best as I could on relaxation. Little by little, I felt it beginning to work - the feeling of her against me began to feel more muted, quickly enough becoming tolerably comfortable, enough so that I could draw her a little closer, close enough to feel the rise and fall of her chest against mine. Even as I calmed down, I could feel her doing the same - her breaths became less jagged, and I could feel her back straightening as she hunched over less. Although my eyes were still closed, I felt almost like I could feel the tendrils I'd seen before stabilizing, sense my better, calmer energy flowing over to her, doing what it could to counteract the problem energy I'd released earlier. I didn't really know to what extent any of that was actually happening, but after a minute or so her breathing seemed to have stabilized, without any of the wincing, staccato exhalations from before.

As she calmed down, though, I became aware of several sets of thumping footfalls, becoming progressively louder and closer, and I blinked my eyes open to see Daledonne and the rest of the entourage running down the hall towards us, concern evident on all of their faces. Soon, they were surrounding us, Daledonne wrapping his arms around both of us and looking quickly between us, concern quickly fading to a look of surprise.

"Huh... you're both actually doing far better than I'd imagined, after feeling that emission. It was fairly gut-wrenching even where we were, so I feared the worst, and as soon as we recovered we came here to make sure things were under control. From what I can feel initially, though, they actually are - I can't feel the energy from before on either of you." He shifted his gaze over a little, looking down at Erilanna. "Dare I ask what happened?"

"I was... reckless..." Erilanna replied softly.

"Indeed," Daledonne said, wrapping his arms around us a little more tightly. "I probably should have paid more attention to both of your conditions, but I was so focused on making sure the education systems were going to work properly that when you volunteered to stay behind, I signed off on it without thinking. For that, I do apologize. The fact of the matter is, though, that while I made sure that everyone knew about one file, there are fifty others to take into account, and even I've barely read any of them. If I'd recognized that you hadn't been handling the abstention very well, I would have arranged the assignments differently. I'm just glad that it's working out, and while this event was... unfortunate, I am heartened to see that you're both doing better now."

"Still, though, I suppose I should check both of you out, both to make sure there are no lasting effects from what happened, and possibly to determine more precisely what occurred and how it can be mitigated in the future." Despite his words, though, he made no immediate motion to move from his position, and the rest of the entourage was clustering in closer around us in what looked like a sort of concentric group hug. It was similar to the one from before, but it managed to feel considerably better - with my adrenaline reserves already spent, my body only had the energy to get slightly worked up about the Tiaileng surrounding me, which made it so that I could at least sense the more pleasant aspects underlying my previous anxiety. And as long as they didn't move around too much, or brush their fur against me in an overstimulating way, it was actually a lot nicer than I'd imagined before, just kind of warm and fluffy and relaxing, something that was reinforced when I looked up to glance across the faces that were visible from my position. It wasn't out of character, certainly, for Tiaileng to be smiling, but their expressions seemed somehow even more genuine about it, kind and calm, without the overeagerness that I'd been interpreting as predatory. There wasn't, in fact, even a hint of arousal involved, and despite their immediate closeness, every part of me felt momentarily relaxed, including one particular part that had wobbled at an uncomfortable, uncertain half-mast ever since the Tiailengs' new clothing had been revealed. It was still an unusual situation, and I still felt a little awkward being sandwiched in the center of it all, but for the first time since the initial chaos of my assignment, I felt a reasonable glimmer of hope that all of this just might somehow work.

As nice as it was, though, as the minutes seemed to stretch by with everyone unmoving, the situation did feel continually more awkward, especially as I was still wondering at why Daledonne, seemingly the most focused of any of them so far, was equally as involved in what was certainly even more of a delay in the day's schedule. Finally, as the hug stretched on even longer, I spoke up.

"Um... didn't you need to check us out, or something?"

Daledonne's eyes flicked over in my direction, and he shook his head rapidly back and forth, like he was trying to wake up from something. "Ah... yeah. Sorry about that. It's just that, well... your energy right now is at the best level we've felt so far, without some of the other, more troublesome energy that could interfere with it. That was something we really needed to feel, and it seemed like it was something you needed too, so we sort of spontaneously took advantage of it. Again, I'm sorry - we really should have asked, like I said we would. I just had this sense, deep down, that after what happened we all needed a little something to bring us together again."

I realized that Daledonne was probably right, although I couldn't help but wonder if that was the whole story. "Uh huh... you know, if you guys were that hungry, you could have just said so..."

I wasn't quite sure why immediately, as it had been meant with a least some seriousness, but my response led Daledonne and the others to momentarily crack up laughing, which at least had the effect of breaking the hug and drawing them back a little ways. Even Erilanna was smiling a little at it, feeling comfortable enough to end her embrace as well.

"Heh, well, you wouldn't be entirely wrong," Daledonne said, grinning. "I guess our ulterior motives are pretty transparent... in our defense, though, that energy was really nice."

"Like... triple-cheeseburger with all the trimmings nice?"

Daledonne chuckled again. "I honestly couldn't tell you. Given how we work, as you probably know, we only take in water and water-soluble supplemental nutrients through that particular pathway, so I'm not even sure we have what you'd call taste buds. About the only reference we have is the way food like that smells, and I've never smelled a cheeseburger, so... I'm not sure how I could describe it in terms of specific food. It was a nice little... snack, I guess, though." All around him, the other Tiaileng nodded in agreement.

"You are right, however," Daledonne continued, reaching into his jacket and withdrawing something from an interior pocket. "As much as I enjoyed that, I really should do a quick assessment while there still might be traces of the other energy to analyze. So, if you'd allow, I probably should get to that, and then we should move on - we shouldn't make the tutor's wait even more intolerable."

I glanced at the device in Daledonne's hand. It almost looked like a particularly chunky, old-style clamshell cell phone, but when he flipped it open, it contained several small displays filled with graphs and charts that danced around as he began to play it over my body.

"Wait... is that supposed to be a tricorder or something?"

Daledonne glanced down at the thing in his hand. "Heh... you know, I never really put that together until now... but yeah, I suppose in the most general sense, you could call it that." He looked closer, at one of the displays in particular. "Wow... that truly is remarkable. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like that..."

"Er... what is it?"

"Um, I suppose it's a little hard to explain, but certain things about the energy you emit are... well, we'll certainly need to analyze it a bit more, but different would be an understatement. Even the amplitude alone is something you don't see every day. That being said, though, whatever that other energy was that you put forth, I'm having a hard time detecting anything that might even be a trace of it. It seems like whatever it was was released so acutely that it completely burned through and depleted its source, at least temporarily. Even that in and of itself is unusual, but then again, I suppose so is having that level of energy available to release in the first place."

"Um, so that means..."

"That as far as I can tell, you're just fine." He made a quick notation on one of the device's screens, then moved it over to pan across Erilanna.

"And that's... even stranger. Erilanna, can you describe exactly how you're feeling right now?"

She moved her hands down, patting at her sides. "There's just the tiniest bit of an ache on my right side, but that's it - otherwise, I feel... good, actually."

"Huh." Daledonne poked at the device for a little bit longer. "If it's all right, might I ask to talk with you alone for a moment? Redalei, if you wouldn't mind, the tutor's still waiting, so I'd like you to lead everyone else back to our main classroom so that we can try to get this day back on plan - I'll be along in just a second."

Satisfied that despite what happened, Erilanna seemed like she was going to be okay, I allowed Redalei to guide me back down the hall, and as I walked I noticed my entourage keeping a little closer to me than before - although not too close. Apparently, they still wanted to bask in my residual calm, however that actually worked, and at the moment I was more than inclined to let them.

The "classroom," as it turned out, seemed much more like a conference room than anything else. It was an actually oval room, dominated by a conference table of the same shape, with several leather-upholstered swivel chairs arrayed around it. The table itself was a smooth glass surface etched with an intricate filigree pattern, set on a base of polished metal. At one end of the table, the wall was dominated by a trio of large flat-panel displays, and several sets of projectors and robotic cameras hung down from the ceiling.

I took a seat, as did everyone else, with the tutor, several years older than Daledonne, already at the head of the table this time. I was about to ask about him, but before I could, Redalei suggested that they all be introduced, as they hadn't really had a chance to be before. So, as I leaned back in the surprisingly comfortable chair, they quickly introduced themselves to me in turn.

This time around, the "entourage" was four girls and one guy - and Erilanna, of course, who was still back in the hallway, apparently sorting things out with Daledonne. Redalei, the woman sitting next to me, was wearing a full-on eighties leotard exercise ensemble in hot pink and electric blue, something I was surprised that even in the commotion I hadn't picked up on very much, given the way it stood out. The woman next to her was wearing a seifuku similar to Erilanna's, but with green trim and embroidered, nautical-anchor accents, and introduced herself as Arathlin. The guy in the middle, dressed in what I guessed was supposed to be a surfer getup and looking a little sheepish and intimidated by all the women around him, piped up an introduced himself as Lucrannon in a slightly jittery voice. The two women next to him seemed almost like twins, with similarly cute faces; they were both wearing black competition-style one-piece swimsuits, one with sporty red accents and the other with blue. After a moment's confusion on which of them wanted to go first, they introduced themselves as Miruvona and Nessaoreth, respectively.

As they did so, I tried to look carefully at their faces, hoping that I could manage to remember their features along with their names and hopefully pick them out of the crowd once they were back in it. I'd never had the best time at distinguishing Tiaileng features, though, especially because of the way that their fur muted and blended the sort of facial structures that differentiated human appearances. It was easier to acknowledge their fuzzy-eared, wide-eyed faces as cute and leave it at that, but I wanted to recognize them as best as I could - after all, I doubted that they would all want to wear the same unique thing every day to help me keep track of all fifty of them.

We didn't get more of a chance to talk beyond that, though, as it was then time for the tutor to introduce himself, and get started explaining my education program. He was Bararaban - No Mr., like my other teachers, as Tiaileng didn't tend to be much for formal prefixes - and was a fairly experienced instructor, first with the state college in the region, and then with the Tiaileng governmental education service, hence his current assignment. He would, as he explained, be my overall educational coordinator, but would only teach a few specific topics that he was familiar with - for the rest, the completion of my high-school education would be based on distance learning and teleconference lectures using the facilities for it that were installed in the conference room. As I was already a senior in high school, with a little more than one semester to go, the focus would be on wrapping up the final few classes that I needed, and was properly prepared for additional levels of education. As for college, though, he seemed less sure - I'd already received acceptance letters from a private college several states away, but given my Tiaileng situation, my attendance there seemed unlikely. The tutor assured me, however, that a college education would be sorted out, and possibly even paid for, by the Tiaileng agencies that were responsible for dealing with specific, special situations like my own.

The initial session, then, became less about learning anything specific, and more about becoming familiar with the various tools I would be using to complete my education - everything from the teleconference systems to a handheld, multi-button "testing" device that looked like something that might be used to give answers on a game show. Midway through the introduction, Daledonne showed up, looking a little distracted and still fiddling with the device from before. While the tutor took a short break to deal with a computer that was being particularly ornery, I asked Daledonne about how Erilanna was doing, as she hadn't accompanied him back to the conference room.

"Don't worry - she's going to be just fine. There was just a bit of an... irregularity that I detected in her afterwards, nothing harmful, but something that those in my organization wanted a more in-depth analysis on. Once that was taken care of, however, I decided that it was probably prudent for her to take care of her... other urges, so I sent her off with a couple of the other male Tiaileng to help her recuperate. I imagine she'll be in a much more relaxed and controlled mindset when she rejoins us later on today. And you... you're still doing okay?"

I nodded quickly to indicate that I was.

"Ah, good. I suppose I should let you get back to your orientation, then," he said, inclining his head back towards Bararaban, who appeared to have the computer situation under control again.

Bararaban tapped something on the keyboard, and one of the screens blared to life with a loud blast of combined static and feedback noise. He was able to quickly remedy it, although not before nearly everyone in the room was left cringing at the high-pitched noise. A moment later, though, the connection came through properly, and we were able to successfully sample a few minutes of lectures from community colleges across the country, teaching what were essentially the equivalents to the advanced-placement courses I was taking before. It wasn't long enough to really get into the material, but it was a good start, and at least gave my mind something to think about other than handling Tiaileng.

It was distracting enough, though, that the time seemed to pass quickly, and before I knew it the feeds wrapped up - apparently, it was time for lunch.

"So, what are you in the mood for?" Daledonne asked, as Bararaban took his leave. "I think we should have a reasonably well-stocked food supply now, so if you know what you'd like, I can call down to the kitchen and have the team assigned there whip something up and bring it to you."

"Or, you know, we could go there..." Redalei interjected. "No offense, Don, but doesn't it make more sense for him to interact more with all of us, rather than just doing things through you? I mean, I get it - you're the guy who got things under control last night, you're who he's most comfortable with right now, but how's he gonna get more comfortable with everyone else if things keep going through you?"

"Well... yes, I see your point, but-" Daledonne began, but Redalei was already turning towards me. I probably could have guessed from her unflinchingly bright ensemble, but there was no question that she had something of a direct, forceful personality, but in a different way from Erilanna. Rather than just bubbling over with uncontrolled enthusiasm, she seemed to have a focused sort of intensity, the kind that allowed her to look me right in the eyes with no hesitation at all.

"You can see where I'm coming from, right? I know that the thing with Erilanna probably didn't get our little group here off on the right foot, but that just means the rest of us need to show you that it doesn't have to be like that. Maybe you don't have the best first impressions of us yet, but that just means you need some second and third ones, so you can see us as we are - we're people, not quite like you but still people, and maybe we're not perfect, but the more you give us a chance, the more you can see we're not... well, we're not how that stereotype looks. We can't do that, though, if you just kinda hide out and let only a couple of us speak for you."

"Um, I... I wasn't meaning to, it's just... it's like you said, I guess. I'm not that great at talking to people, and if I don't know someone, it's even harder. I don't even know Daledonne well, but I know him a little, and since he seemed to be taking charge on stuff, it just seemed easier that way. Maybe you've got a big old file on me, but I don't have one on any of you, and when I don't know how someone is, I don't know how to talk to them properly, and I get nervous that I'll say something stupid that I don't realize is offensive and piss them, er, piss you off..."

Redalei actually grinned at that, to my surprise, leaning towards me a little more. "Heh... you really don't quite get it, do you? Even after that whole long-ass discussion this morning..."

She glanced at Arathlin, who nodded before speaking up. "We're assigned to you, now. That's not something that's going to change, and even if you were a jerk, we'd find a way to make the best of it. Not to sound mercenary - well, okay, actually to sound really mercenary - there are certain things we want from you, and we all know it. Antagonizing you doesn't get us any of the things we want. So if you say something stupid, we're going to laugh it off, because if we do, you feel more relaxed, put out good energy, we absorb it, and everybody's happy. The stuff with Erilanna, that's just an anomaly. We're going to get you comfortable with this, somehow or other, because that gets us what we need."

Arathlin got up, taking a few steps over to stand above me, looking down with a toothy grin that I hoped wasn't meant to be disturbing. "So, come on. Go ahead. Say the absolute worst thing about me you can think of, and I'll find a way to shrug it off. That way, you'll know that no matter what else you say, it'll be fine. Okay?"

I looked back up at her, feeling more confused than ever. "I, er... really? I mean, I'm fine with you, um..."

She leaned over closer, looking slightly impatient. "Yeah, I know, but the idea is that if you're afraid, if you're walking on eggshells and feel like you can't be honest, we're never gonna get anywhere. So, why not give me your best shot, and see if we can get past this nonsense?"

"Um, well... you're kind of intimidating and in my face right now? I mean, I don't know anything else about you, so I don't know of anything I can criticize, and, um, I don't mean to imply that you're all alike or something, but I kind of think that you're all, pretty much uniformly, some combination of cute and hot, so I've got no complaints there... I guess I'm just not that good at insulting people, either?"

Arathlin grinned again, albeit this time with less teeth, and a slightly different type of enthusiasm. "See, what did I tell you? Even if you were a jerk, we'd make it work, and since you're the furthest thing from that - almost painfully tame, for that matter - getting along with you is going to be so incredibly easy. So, why be afraid? You seriously can't piss us off - I mean, you just tried, and it's pretty clear you don't have anything mean enough in you to even manage that. And that settles it, right? We'll go get some food, talk about whatever, you get to know us, we get to know you, and we'll all probably be friends before you know it."

I nodded in agreement. I mean, what else could I do? Tiaileng certainly had a very , even unusually, direct way of doing things, but at the same time, they also had the ability to be surprisingly disarming. That tactic, certainly, wasn't one I would ever have thought a human would use. The fact that all of the Tiaileng women I'd met there so far were, to greater or lesser degrees, so direct and intense was certainly something else - but then again, when I thought about it, aside from my human mother just about all the other women I was familiar with had a similar no-nonsense air about them, Emma especially. It probably made sense, then, that a lot of the Tiaileng women assigned to me would be like that, if that was what I was used to. The guys, though, aside from Daledonne, were definitely a little more lower-key - which, I supposed, was for some reason the sort of guy that I found interesting. Indeed, it seemed that it hadn't just been specific interests or sexual compatibility that had made up the assignment criteria.

With the matter settled, we all got up, heading towards wherever the kitchen was while talking amongst ourselves. Nessaoreth led the way, occasionally turning back to join in the conversation, although our path soon led away from the areas I was most familiar with, at least as much as could be said about the confusingly laid-out mansion. Instead, we made our way along another hallway and back down the curving staircase towards the entrance hall, and then through a halfway-concealed door off to the side that revealed a set of straight, plain stairs. The lack of ornamentation continued as we ventured below, into the more utilitarian sections of the mansion: here, exposed pipes ran along the concrete ceilings of narrow hallways, with doorways leading off into various maintenance areas.

We walked past a room that at a glance looked more like a commercial laundry, the conversation somehow making its way to anime, and all of a sudden the group started to feel a little bit like my regular group of friends. Miruvona and Nessaoreth, unsurprisingly, turned out to be sisters, ones whose parents had been anime geeks, so they'd been all but raised on the stuff. That didn't mean, however, that they particularly agreed on what they thought of various series and characters - as we walked along, they got into an argument about Death Note, with Nessaoreth darting her head back to argue that Light had in fact made some valid points about unrest in society, even if his methods were appallingly unethical, while Miruvona thought he was nothing more than a shallow, posing egotist who was so full of himself that any claimed morality was just a sham to cover up how much he enjoyed his power. Arathlin, though, was of the opinion that it didn't matter - violence of any sort was never the way to address social ills, something that she pointed out that the initial wave of Tiaileng had compellingly demonstrated beyond question. Lucrannon had chimed in that, ethics aside, it was still a fascinating battle of wills, while Redalei seemed completely puzzled as to what everyone was talking about - anime, apparently, wasn't really her thing, and I made a mental note, in the spirit of trying to get to know my companions, to try and find out later on where her interests did lie.

As it was, the conversation was interesting enough that we quickly made our way along the corridor, and before I really noticed we were nearing its end, with a pair of free-swinging double doors ahead. We quickly pushed through them into an area that looked like a commercial kitchen, complete with several massive stainless-steel refrigerators set into the wall, professional gas stoves and grilltops, and various pots and pans hanging from the ceiling over the main work area. A couple of Tiaileng were hanging out by one of the stoves, wearing aprons over what looked like Japanese priestess outfits, heating up a pan over the flames. Off to the side, in a small open area, there was a small, unassuming dining-room table - like most everything else on this level of the mansion, it was more utilitarian than decorative, covered with a white tablecloth and surrounded by a dozen lacquered wooden chairs.

"So," Daledonne said, looking around the room, "I believe we've received at least our initial food shipment, so for lunch, we should have at least a decent number of options on hand, based on your general sandwich preferences. Let's see, I think we've got... help me out, please?"

One of the Tiaileng by the stove chimed in. "All kinds of bread, a bunch of different cheeses, smoked turkey, virginia-baked ham, corn beef, all sliced. Vegetables, pickles, lettuce, other condiments, all that stuff too. Grilled, toasted, plain, however you like. Just let us know. We're not exactly gourmet chefs, the two of us - I think the ones who really know cooking will be on tonight, but sandwiches, that we can do. Oh, and I'm Aleresca, by the way."

"I'm Telanelei," said the other one, grinning. "Yeah, if you want anything fancier, well... Daledonne might know a few things, but honestly, I'm a whole lot better with computers. It's tougher for us to learn cooking, probably since we can't just taste stuff, but since recipes are kinda like programming, doing stuff step by step, it's still something we can learn, technically... Sandwiches aren't bad, though. So, what can we get you?"

I decided to have a grilled ham and cheddar on rye, and the two of them started bustling about getting it ready. The rest of us took our seats around the table, and as we waited, Daledonne started off by apologizing for seeming to have been monopolizing my time. The others quickly forgave him, though, and like before we settled into relatively easy conversation - as strange and blunt as it had been, their earlier stunt had managed to convince me that I wasn't going to step on any toes by accidentally saying anything out of place, and as a result I felt much more comfortable about joining in. This time, though, it was less about anime or other random things, and more of an extended introduction, that continued even after I started munching on the decently-prepared and quite tasty sandwich, if a little overly browned on the edges. Aleresca and Telanelei, finished with their immediate assignment, pulled up a couple of stools from the work area and came over to sit with us, joining in the conversation as well.

Unsurprisingly, all of them had grown up either in the same state, or at most one state over - the area where they could have reasonably arrived from in time to assemble here during the scant few hours between my strange initial assignment and my arrival at the mansion. Like Miruvona and Nessaoreth, Aleresca and Telanelei were sisters, Redalei, Arathlin, and Lucrannon had all grown up a few doors down from each other in the same neighborhood, and Erilanna had attended their same Tiaileng-only middle school. In fact, as Aleresca and Telanelei pointed out, they'd actually attended the same high school that I had, which probably wasn't that surprising of a revelation, either - aside from my own small group of friends, I hadn't really made a point to notice or socialize with really any of the other kids, and as a result I couldn't say I could particularly recall what any of them particularly looked like from memory, aside from a small handful of people I sat next to in my classes. And as much as I hated to admit it, given their greater level of uniformity, at least compared to humans, I had a horrible time telling individual Tiaileng apart, especially if I didn't know them - I eventually learned to tell Tesekorri and Ingotheen apart, but only once I got to know them, and could use the sounds of their voices and their various unique behaviors to differentiate them. Here, though, the same thing was occurring - it was still a challenge, helped along somewhat by the unique costumes, but the longer I watched each of them, the more I noticed specific things about them, and even the subtle differences in their faces, blurred and smoothed as they were by their fur, became more uniquely noticeable. Between all of it, I was able to do a decent job of tying names to faces. If they decided to change their outfits on the fly, though, I knew there was no guarantee I could keep from confusing them, especially the siblings who were, for my differentiation abilities at least, all but twins of each other.

Still, bit by bit, I was beginning to learn at least a few things about my current slate of Tiaileng. Aleresca and Telanelei, it turned out, were more than just good at computers - they'd actually put out a couple of small, indie video games, apparently some sort of dimension-bending takes on the platformer genre, and definitely far more impressive than my limited ventures into programming. Redalei, for her part, had taught herself to play the theremin after hearing it featured in old, campy sci-fi movies, and was apparently good enough at it to play several pop songs recognizably, something she promised to demonstrate later on to whoever wanted to listen. Lucrannon loved hiking, and had, along with his nature-loving parents, backpacked across a significant portion of the Pacific Crest Trail, while Miruvona and Nessaoreth had been part of their high school's swim team, and had been learning how to do high-platform diving - something which probably explained why they seemed to be completely comfortable in their competition swimsuits. Arathlin seemed to be the lone Tiaileng without a specific activity to boast about, although as the conversation progressed, it turned out that she had a surprisingly comprehensive and detailed knowledge of obscure, early American detective and adventure comics and pulp serials, which she had apparently been collecting, digitally at least, for several years. All of the Tiaileng, however, seemed to be universally intelligent, educated, and well-read, certainly not at all prone to shying away from whatever topic the conversation happened to turn to.

Somehow, though, the more I learned about them, and the more that led to me feeling comfortable around them, the more my own feelings, and especially my own attraction to them, began to bleed through the baseline level of anxiety as it faded away amidst the continued calm. While the conversation had certainly made all of the Tiaileng feel, well, more three-dimensional, rather than predators or sex objects or whatever else I'd thought of them, all of a sudden I was once again aware that there were a half-dozen cute, sexy women sitting around the table with me, wearing outfits that made them look, to me, even sexier. And, while it felt a little different, Lucrannon looked incredibly cute in his own way, and I could suddenly imagine myself doing certain snuggly, happy things with him. Daledonne seemed the sole exception, somehow feeling a little aloof and professorial despite a certain sense of attraction, but as for the rest, well... I didn't know if it was obvious again or not, but all of a sudden I felt like I was blushing again, inwardly if not outwardly.

It didn't take long for the Tiaileng to pick up on that particular shift in my emotions, something which I knew would probably happen as soon as those feelings managed to bubble to the surface. All of a sudden, the Tiaileng seemed tangibly happier in their expressions, even as their gazes quickly shifted away from who they were talking to and gravitated towards me. The previously lively conversation just sort of trailed off, and all of a sudden it seemed like they were just... waiting for me, and I could probably guess what they wanted me to talk about.

"Um, ah, hrm..." I stammered, once again suddenly filled with a strong sense of awkwardness. Despite all the calm, reasoned discussion from earlier when it came to this kind of thing, I still felt like I didn't know how to react - well, that and the fact that the incident with Erilanna was still fresh in my mind. It was so completely reversed from what I was used to, despite the Tiaileng's insistent reassurances, it was still hard to wrap my head around. Before, of course, such arousal would have gone unnoticed, and was something I would have eventually tried to suppress, or find a way to save up for later, when I was on my own - expressing such things in that previous world would have prompted ridicule at best, and facilitated social suicide at worst. Now, though, it was a completely different conundrum - I could probably give voice to those urges without any negative consequences like that, but at the same time, doing so seemed to have a very real chance of actually leading to sex more or less immediately, and I was well aware that was something that I still really didn't know how to handle. Because of that, I wanted to couch my words as carefully as possible - I couldn't hide what I was feeling from the Tiaileng, obviously, but I still didn't know the ones around me well enough to anticipate how slowly they would take things if I actually put that interest on the table. Needless to say, it didn't come out quite as carefully, or as coherently, as I'd intended.

"I, um, sorry about that... I mean, I know you can read my emotions and all, so that's... It's not what it- er, well, I guess it's exactly what it, um, feels like, but that isn't to say that I, ah, I'm not asking you to, um, you know..."

The Tiaileng, though, didn't seem to feel awkward about the situation at all. In fact, they still seemed to be all smiles about it, and not necessarily in a particularly suggestive way, either.

"Why are you even apologizing?" Redalei said, seemingly amused. "You know by now that this is one of the ways we want to make you feel. And since it is lunchtime, if you're in the mood to let us have our fill of that particular energy, well, we sure aren't going to complain..."

Daledonne cleared his throat before stepping into the conversation. "Hmm... I assume, though, that a state of low-level arousal is not something you'd prefer to maintain indefinitely, however..."

I looked around the table, taking in the variously tantalizing costumes that the Tiaileng were wearing. "Somehow, I can't help but wonder if that's going to become a permanent state for me, if thinks keep going the way they are now..."

"Well, allow me to be more specific, then, perhaps? I probably should have made more careful note of it earlier, but during the scan, I did notice that Erilanna wasn't the only one to have certain levels that were elevated. And, now that I think about it, according to your files and other anecdotal information, your mean time between sexual gratifications is approximately seventeen point five hours, a time window that's been greatly exceeded at this point. And as you are a teenager, with I believe a fairly typical level of sexual urges, I would be remiss if I failed to encourage their resolution. After all, we know now that it is a bad idea for certain types of your emotions to get too overloaded, so it's probably better not to risk the potential for a blow-up of a different sort. Because of that, while I am of course well aware of your hesitancy regarding that issue, I do believe it would be wise to find a mutually agreeable way for you to relieve that tension, preferably in a way that we can also utilize, of course."

He pulled out his phone, glancing down at it quickly, but returning his gaze to me before I could formulate a coherent reply. "As it so happens, the first sexual, um, 'gathering' is scheduled for about twenty minutes from now. So, no pressure of course, but if you would be interested in participating, it might, in fact, be for the best."

"Uhh... n-not sure about that..." Aroused or not, the thought of actually doing that, of somehow jumping into the deep end when I still wasn't exactly able to even properly handle a kiss, didn't seem like the best idea - even though there was now a part of me that was starting to wonder whether I was crazy not to just give in to what seemingly everyone wanted, including me to at least a certain extent.

I looked away for a moment, but somehow managed to catch Arathlin's gaze instead, and she used the opportunity to interject.

"If you don't want to wait, or if you want to try something with us now that you've gotten to know us a little better... this house probably has something like a hundred bedrooms, so I'm sure we could find an unoccupied one and have some fun, if that's more your speed..."

I shook my head, almost sure my face was completely red by now. "Er, um..."

Arathlin seemed to at least sense my growing anxiety a little, leaning back slightly and seeming to glance off into the distance for a moment as she searched for another tack. "I realize this question's probably obvious, but... if you're this afraid of sex, what do you do to get off, then?"

Somehow, that question actually managed to seem less awkward and stressful than where the conversation had otherwise been going. "Well... the way most guys do it, I guess? Not much to it - I pull up some, ah, porn vids or something, wait until it gets me hard, and rub myself until I'm, you know, done..."

"Right. So... why not do something similar, but with us?"

"Huh? I'm, ah, not quite sure what you mean..."

"Just think about it directly. You're worried about, what, too much contact, too much sensation... something like that, right?"

"Yeah, something like that..."

"So why don't we just do it the way you want? You sit there, no one touching you or anything, and you do what you're used to - watch sex, and get yourself off. Instead of watching some video, though, you watch us. We already know you like Tiaileng porn anyway, we knew that about from the start, so why not enjoy the best, most close-up kind you can get? It works for everyone, at least partly - you get off, all of us in the room get to feel it happen, and we get to show you that sex between us, sex with us, isn't crazy or out of control, just nice and sexy and a whole lot of fun..."

The rest of the Tiaileng chimed in quickly, all basically agreeing with what Arathlin had said. And when I thought about it, from a logical standpoint at least, I realized it actually made a whole lot of sense, at least as a reasonable compromise until I could somehow find a way to get more comfortable with everything. Emotionally, though, there was still a block, a visceral reaction that I couldn't help but feel.

"I see where you're going with that, but it's just... it's the kind of thing that you, well, do alone, you know? Behind closed doors, preferably locked, by yourself... I mean, it's the kind of thing where it's bad enough if someone walks in on you by accident, but to just do it out in the open, it would be so... inappropriate..."

"Inappropriate? Um, why?" Arathlin actually looked puzzled by my response. Daledonne, however, gave what seemed to be an understanding look as he chimed in.

"I think the issue is that we're looking at it from the standpoint of the Tiaileng culture that we've all been well-versed in, and he's looking at it from the standpoint of the human one." He turned to look at me as he continued. "And in your particular case, having experienced both those perspectives yourself and the sometimes troubling gulf between them, you have a very strong sense of what you feel is inappropriate, and perhaps an even stronger sense of what the larger society feels about such things. How, for example, you perhaps tried to discuss such things with a friend, only to have that sense of inappropriateness reinforced..."

I nodded blushing a little more - it was true that, when things had happened back at the beginning, I'd tried to talk about it with some kids that I'd thought were my friends, but shortly after the conversation no longer were, and their subsequent teasing certainly hadn't helped matters. My current friends, of course, were much different, and I hadn't thought of those other kids in a long time, but it was certainly possible that their response had some role to play in how I felt, and certainly in how I'd kept silent about the situation for so long, until Daledonne had managed to get it out of me the night before.

"How did you know?"

"Well, I didn't, which is why I merely suggested it as an example - however, given the way your society works, it was a reasonable conjecture. The evolution of Tiaileng social mores, however, is considerably different, as I'm sure you've already seen firsthand. Because of how crucial sexual activity became as a building block to build connections and relieve tensions in extremely high-density living situations, there was very little taboo about such actions being public - in fact, really just the opposite, as allowing those around you to enjoy seeing that expression of love, and perhaps giving them the opportunity to join in, was seen as something beneficial to society as a whole. In fact, from what I've heard, on initial viewing of some of your media before arrival, some Tiaileng were under the impression that your culture was similar - that pornography was in a certain sense indicative of a sort of exhibitionist attitude, and that the reason for loud vocalization during sex was to inform those within earshot of what was going on, and to encourage them to gather around and partake in that expression of enjoyment. Needless to say, that perception was corrected shortly after arrival, but it's taken a while for us to temper our proclivities to conform to those social mores, at least in public. That does not mean, however, that we believe in them, or see a need for them behind closed doors, although we are attempting to conform to them now in respect to your earlier stated preferences."

"Or, to put it simply," Redalei said, leaning over towards me as she jumped back into the conversation, "we're not saying that yeah, you should whip it out in public or something. We're not in public, though. We're in this nice, big, private house, just you and us and no one else around to judge you or whatever. C'mon - remember earlier? We literally proposed just randomly having sex around you, whenever and wherever you were, so we'd be the biggest hypocrites in the world if we looked down on you doing the same. So right now you're more comfortable getting off on your own than directly with us. So what? It gets you to the same place, and us to the same energy. I get that it's maybe more than you can handle right at this moment, and at the risk of sounding crude, but if you wanted to take it out right now, and get off as, say, Luc and I rolled around and had some fun on top of this table, everyone would be totally okay with that. Um, right?" She looked around, and everyone else nodded, and while Lucrannon looked perhaps ever so slightly reticent, from his body language I also got the sense that he would have no problem responding to anything that Redalei offered. At the moment, though, she was looking down at the table, rapping on it gently with the edge of her hand. "Well, I've done it on worse, so it would probably work. At least, I think it would hold our weight..."

I put up my hands, though, trying to calm the situation down - however the Tiaileng felt about it, I wasn't ready to jump into something like that just yet. "Okay, okay, you've made your point! I get that you would all be more than comfortable with whatever I did, um, sexually. But like I said, I'm still not that comfortable with just... spontaneity. It still just doesn't feel quite, well, right..."

"And of course you don't have to do that," Daledonne replied. "Again, it was just an example, and what we would be more than happy to do for you should you, at some point, want to do something like that. However, that initial idea, of 'performing' for you in that certain way, is something that can still be done in one of those sessions we discussed earlier. And even regarding those social mores, I'm sure you would agree that such a thing would be more than appropriate: in a bedroom, behind closed doors, between a small group of consenting adults who are all there for that specific purpose. It doesn't get more appropriate than that, does it?"

While a little reluctantly, I still nodded - it was hard to disagree with his logic. I still couldn't quite get past the idea that it wouldn't be somehow weird, sitting there and masturbating to actual people doing things in front of me, but given the fact that it seemed unlikely I could get enough alone time to do those sorts of things in my normal manner, it did, at that moment, seem like the best possible option.

"Right, so that's reasonably settled, then - I'll get on the phone and make sure people are up to speed on it. It might be pressing it a little to get everyone on the same page for the upcoming session, but I'm sure we could find a way to fill in those who show up and find a way to make it work. Or, perhaps, if you prefer a later session-"

I nodded, vigorously, as soon as he said it. Given the way I was feeling, and how much I needed to still sort out emotionally, having more time to do so seemed far wiser than trying to jump into anything immediately, especially given how conflicted and unsure I still felt at the moment.

"Perhaps the one later on in the afternoon, then, and we can wrap up your educational orientation and initial introduction to your new courses of study in the meantime. After that, then, all you'll have to do is show up at the designated bedroom, and everything will be set up and ready for you. All right?" I nodded again. "Then if you'll just give me a moment, I'll start putting everything into place." He got up and wandered a few paces away, tapping away on his cellphone.

I looked around the table at the rest of the Tiaileng, shaking my head slightly at the sheer strangeness of it all. I didn't think it was noticeable, but Redalei apparently picked up on it.

"Something wrong?"

"No, just... trying to wrap my head around it all. I think I've had more frank discussions about, um, sexual stuff today than I've had in the entire time before now. I mean, even 'health' class wasn't this direct. Not that that really taught very much about Tiaileng anyway..."

Redalei nodded. "Yeah, I have to say, you seem especially clueless about how Tiaileng work. Which is strange, since last I heard, everyone's required to take at least a basic course on Tiaileng physiology now in high school..."

"Well, yeah, but the time I was originally scheduled for conflicted with AP chemistry, and since they only taught one class of that a year, the physiology got pushed back. Actually, I guess it was supposed to start next quarter, so..."

"Ah. Well, that explains that. I suppose the tutors will have to cover the more intricate aspects, then - I know how we work, obviously, but I doubt I'd be great at explaining it beyond a basic level, though if you have questions like that I'm sure you could just ask any of us. Plus, you'll learn about the 'fun' aspects soon enough, I'm sure. And when it comes to just talking about sex and other things like that, it's really not that complex - it just isn't something that's taboo or hidden for us. When it comes to working with you guys, though, we decided to respect that part of your society at least in public, even if we don't really agree with it. We're not going to sacrifice all of our own attitudes, though, especially not in private. I mean, why do you think that Tiaileng are segregated through junior high and parts of high school?"

"Um, I... never really found out..."

"True, there are probably more reasons than just this, but... Tiaileng mature sexually at a higher rate than humans do, and according to the Tiaileng rules on it at least, once you're old enough to physically have sex, nothing should prevent you from that kind of contact with your peers - I guess we mature faster emotionally in that way as well, so when we get there physically we're ready for it mentally, too. And since we're descended from colonists with population-control genes baked in, the only way to get pregnant is to fill out a bunch of forms and drink a specific chemical cocktail to activate certain things, so there aren't a lot of consequences to worry about. I guess it's because of those things that in certain grades of Tiaileng schools, there are classes and stuff like that, but in between there are plenty of times to play with each other and get used to those sexual needs and desires. I guess you don't know about it, given that we haven't done anything with you yet, but a lot of humans are surprised that we seem well-versed in such things when we're assigned, like we came to that knowledge spontaneously, but that's really the reason why. Tiaileng just eventually become naturally uninhibited that way, and it's not until later on that we're taught about human social restrictions.

"That being said, well... even after assignment, even trying to respect those human codes, I think those tendencies only stay buried for so long. Maybe it's manifesting more readily here, because of so many Tiaileng in the same place again, but I'm sure there are all sorts of interesting things that happen between Tiaileng and humans behind closed doors, and perhaps more often than not between more than just one of each..." She paused, looking over at me as she seemed to realize something. "Er... that's not to say I think such things should be so readily apparent to kids, or trying to excuse what happened with your parents, or anything like that. I guess I'm just trying to explain that, even if it doesn't look like it, this kind of thing, this kind of sexual openness, really is more the norm today than you'd think. It's just a little more, well, hidden from obvious view. And that's part of the point of being in those schools and then transitioning to high school before assignment - learning how to walk that delicate line through both our cultures without falling off too far towards either one. It does mean, though, that when we get behind those closed doors, it's hard not to want to express that particularly Tiaileng side of ourselves..."

"Yeah, um, well... you certainly haven't been failing to express it so far..."

Redalei grinned, leaning in closer. "Oh, believe me, expressing it in words is only the smallest part of it. Once you get comfortable enough for it, I'm sure we'll be able to demonstrate just how creatively and passionately we can express it in other, much more favored ways..."

While I'd managed to settle down a bit during the previous explanations, as interesting as they were, that statement, or maybe just the tone of voice in which she said it, managed to get me fired up again, and I was quickly back at an uncertain but unmistakably aroused half-mast. Before she could get any further, however, Daledonne ducked back into the conversation.

"All right, everything's all set - I also got in touch with the other tutor who'll be helping out with your education, and she's just pulling up to the front entrance now, so we should start heading back so that we can all meet up with her as she arrives at our designated classroom. I also heard from Bararaban, and it seems he's sorted out the last of the technological issues, and has asserted that the remote classroom interaction should go reasonably smoothly from here on out. So, if you're all ready, let's head over and wrap up your afternoon session, and then we can all have a nice bit of fun before dinner."

With that, the other Tiaileng got up, and I did the same, and soon we were all walking back towards the impromptu classroom, the duo from the kitchen, Aleresca and Telanelei, also tagging along for some reason. Given my current state, and not wanting to provoke any more temptation, I made a conscious effort to walk alongside Daledonne at the front of the pack, rather than following along. That was for one particular reason: while it was true that Tiaileng women had nothing in the way of breasts, when it came to other areas, the posterior especially, they were at least equally attractive, especially when most of them were wearing some sort of form-fitting clothes that left very little of their outlines to the imagination. Of course, that was almost certainly one of the reasons the Tiaileng had chosen such outfits, but whether their rationale was transparent or opaque, the choices had had an effect on me that, now that some of the other issues were fading, was becoming harder and harder to deny. I winced as I thought that, not really wanting to reinforce the notion of anything being hard at that particular time, but before it could be too much of an issue we were back at the classroom.

Predictably enough, though, I had a hard time concentrating. Part of it, probably, was that arousal, which at that point didn't seem to be giving any indication of going away entirely. Of course, that was probably normal - it was something that was only unobtrusive when I took care of it at least a time or two a day. Go a couple of days without, and my entire body would buzzing with that particular sort of nervous energy, and a couple of days after that I would be just about bouncing off the walls, found it hard to concentrate on just about anything else, and would get aroused by just about any woman, and some particular types of guys, who happened to be around. As it had only been about a day so far, ordinarily it wouldn't have been that bad, but around so many sources of temptation the feeling was unquestionably amplified.

Admittedly, though, even those things were both enhanced and conflicted by the feeling of both worried anticipation and weird inevitability. I knew, even as I tried to study, that there would be two or three hours of it at the most, steadily counting down, and then we'd all head off to some other room in the house, take off our clothes, and then... something unknowable would happen. Well, not unknowable, exactly - after all, I'd seen enough porn, Tiaileng or otherwise, to have a general idea of how such things worked, even if the videos probably weren't all that representative of what happened between actual people. But at the same time, there was something about it actually happening in person that seemed to take it into a whole new world. For one thing, in a movie, it was just some thing that had already happened in some other place. You were watching, sure, but there was no one watching you back, interacting with you, waiting on you to perform in a certain way, even if that way was just jerking it until orgasm. For all that I'd seen, I'd always just been that completely detached observer, absent from the actual scene, so even just being there, actually participating in some way, was a dramatic difference.

And the scary thing about it was, I really had no idea how I was going to react, or how it was actually going to be. Porn or not, I had no real previous experience that I could lean on to tell me how this sort of thing was supposed to go. I mean, I knew to a certain extent that my friends had gone through the same thing - by the day after assignment, or the day after that at the very latest, it had become clear that they had initiated some sort of sexual relationship with their Tiaileng partners, but they'd never felt the need to discuss it in detail. On the whole, though, once it had happened they'd all seemed completely unconflicted about the situation, and while it had certainly been a change, it had seemed to be a natural, if abrupt, evolution. Friends that had generally sat with a respectful amount of distance between each other were suddenly happy to have Tiaileng frequently hanging all over them, and none of them seemed to mind it in the slightest. In fact, as I thought about it, I realized I was probably the only one among them that had stayed resolutely, physically apart. Had I only been assigned one Tiaileng, as they were... would I have followed the same path? Would everything have just changed in that way so naturally, so easily? It was hard to tell. I was sure I would have still been nervous, still been unsure, but with just one person to deal with, in the familiar surroundings of my own house, my own room... it was hard to say. But in this new, crazy place, surrounded by so many, it still seemed so daunting and confusing that even the currently proposed hands-off approach still filled me with more than enough trepidation.

In fact, when the afternoon tutor started wrapping up, I thought for a moment about trying to postpone again, but when I looked up to find a cohort of Tiaileng faces all looking at me with undeniable expressions of eager anticipation, that impulse quickly evaporated. And so, after a moment, we were quickly on the move again down yet another of the mansion's twisting hallways, the Tiaileng huddled closer around me than before, as I idly tried to remember what I'd actually been studying amidst my conflicting thoughts. I could only pull up snippets, though, and realized I couldn't even recall what the afternoon tutor had said her name was, only that she'd had a particularly cute face, and that she'd been dressed in something that was actually vocationally appropriate. And then, before I could think about it any more, Daledonne was swinging a particular door open, and we all filed inside.

This room, at least, didn't have any inappropriate historical busts in it, but it did feature actual Roman columns protruding partway out of the walls, and the scenes painted on the walls between them were designed for a trompe l'oeil effect, portraying a meticulously detailed scene that I supposed was intended to be the celestial city where that pantheon had resided, complete with towering forums and ground literally composed of billowing clouds. The canopy bed was done up in a similar style, with miniature columns for each of the posts, and it was more than big enough to accommodate the several Tiaileng that were already rolling around on the slate-colored sheets.

To be honest, the scene itself, at least initially, wasn't particularly different from how it had been last night - the Tiaileng already present had stripped down to either panties or short-legged boxer briefs, something that while it had been overwhelming last night, actually felt like something I was halfway used to at that point. In a certain way, I realized, it was actually a little easier, as while they were technically wearing less, by the same token it meant that they weren't wearing outfits that were a specific fetish of mine. And at that point, at least, they weren't doing anything beyond just lying there and talking with each other, which was exactly how it had been the night before. At least, clothing or not, I was getting a little better at differentiating them from each other - I picked out Katonnan and Sammacey right away, and Meccione off to the side, although I didn't immediately recognize the rest.

I only had a moment to take it all in, though, as that was all it took for the conversation to cease and for the Tiaileng on the bed to simultaneously fix me with that uncomfortably synchronized gaze that they seemed to be making a habit of. It only lasted for a second, though, before Meccione at least sprang into action, all but bounding on all fours over to the edge of the bed where she quickly perched, hands gripping the mattress between her knees just tight enough to keep her momentum from tipping her all the way over, as she grinned at me with obvious enthusiasm.

"Hey, you did show up! We, ah, kinda had a bet going whether you actually would. I told them it was gonna happen, though. After all, I said last night that I was gonna be your first, and here we are..."

I took a step back as what she said began to sink in. "Um, they, ah, Daledonne said that, that I wouldn't-"

"Oh, I know that, of course!" Meccione said, laughing. "I know that we're not going to go at it directly, much as I might like to - and should you change your mind, of course, just say the word and you'll be the absolute center of attention. What I meant was, I'm gonna be the one to show you how it works, how it really works, not in porn, not in some crazy nightmare or memory, but what it's supposed to look like, what it's supposed to be like. And when you see that, when you understand how it can be, well... I'm sure that other kind of first will follow soon, and when it does, you'll already know how nice it will be."

She patted the spot on the bed next to her, before bounding back over to the end of the bed where the others were. "So, how about you get out of those clothes and have a seat on the bed, right where I showed you? Close enough that you can see everything, but far away that nothing's gonna touch, so you can watch and, well, do your own thing. And while I have every intention of being the star of the show, everyone on here will be doing something fun for you to watch, I'm sure." She glanced around to either side of me. "As for everyone else you brought with you, I'm not sure there's not really enough room on the bed, but I think there's this one thing that Don said we could use..." She fumbled around for something tucked against the headboard, which I halfway watched as I reluctantly shrugged out of my shirt and pants. As I stood there in my underwear, still not really sure how to feel and not exactly excited about the way that most of them were still staring at me, she finally dug up a tiny thing that looked like a remote control with wires trailing from it, and pushed one of the illuminated buttons.

Suddenly, mechanical noises started to sound all around me, and to either side several sections of the floor began to slide back, revealing several pieces of furniture that rose into view in a sort of semicircle around the bed. Each one was done up in a similar style, with plush red upholstery, appearing to be some sort of benches, or maybe a cross between a backless couch and a small bed. At the same time, some of the ceiling panels slid aside, and several dozen red and gold pillows came raining down to cover the floor, a few lightly bopping some of the Tiaileng standing next to me on the head before making their way down.

For a moment, we all just looked around, speechless, the room completely quiet except for the soft rustling sound for the pillows settling against each other on the floor around us. It was right about that point, in fact, looking around at the sheer craziness of what was happening around me, that I kind of just cracked up.

Maybe it was the way that the complete randomness of what had happened contrasted with a situation that had seemed more and more unreal by the hour. Maybe it was an excuse for the stress I'd been feeling over the situation to boil over in a different way. Maybe I did just feel like the entire world was going insane around me. Whatever the reason, though, looking around at where my life was, amongst a crowd of puzzled, half-dressed Tiaileng recovering from an inexplicable manifestation of bedroom furniture, I just couldn't help myself. And so, despite my attempts to hold back on my emotions, despite the fact that anyone you'd have asked who knew me would have claimed such a thing to be so out of character as to be all but impossible, I actually found myself leaning over on the bed, somehow doubled over with laughter that was unbidden, uncontrolled, and somehow all the better for it.

After a moment, though, I was far from alone, or perhaps it was simply just that contagious; all the Tiaileng around me were soon rolling around, cracking up about it as well, and while it was impossible not to note how their laughter sounded unquestionably alien to human ears, it was still unmistakable in its intent. And while it was true that the communal laughter didn't really do much to alleviate the strangeness of the situation, it did manage to entirely dispel the sense of seriousness and attendant anxiety that had been forming in my mind about what was supposed to happen. As I started to calm down, though, I couldn't help but grin at how the whole thing was somehow completely fitting. It wasn't that I thought of the Tiaileng as unserious, especially after all of the careful discussion and analysis that had taken place throughout the day, but at the same time I couldn't help but think back on the Tiaileng's characterizations of sex, how they constantly used words like fun and play to describe it. If there was anything that they were unserious about, this was probably it, and even if it was inadvertent, it somehow seemed like how it was supposed to unfold.

I propped myself up on my elbows, still trying to fully regain my composure, turning my head to the side to see Meccy's face a foot or so away, and while she was lying prone on the bed, from my own horizontal perspective she almost looked to be upside-down. She was still laughing, her whole body rocking with it, but after a few more moments she had calmed down enough to speak.

"Whew... that was... completely, totally random! I swear I didn't know that button was going to do anything that crazy! Oh, man, the look on Don's face when that pillow smacked him right between his ears..." That alone was enough to send her into a new burst of laughter. "I mean, I know we were shooting for an impressive show, but I didn't think it was gonna be quite this memorable..."

Sammacey, apparently on the other side of me, chimed in too, her voice alive with mirth. "Yeah, seriously... this house is a trip! What did this guy do, actually have someone around here whose job it was to stick pillows in the ceiling just so they could fall down like this? Who thinks of stuff like that?"

"Hey, I guess the guy just really likes making an impression," Meccione replied, "even if that impression is that he's completely, insanely flamboyant. But at least it's fun, right?" Meccione reached down and grabbed one of the pillows that had fallen nearby, chucking it lightly over towards Sammacey. I ducked down as it sailed over my head, and Sammacey just laughed and batted it back over. A few of the other Tiaileng joined in, and for a moment I thought the situation was going to further devolve into some sort of pillow fight, but most of the Tiaileng around me seemed to get bored of it after a couple of tosses back and forth, instead opting to set the pillows back down on the floor, snuggling up amongst them, and first up against, and then around, each other. Apparently that was a sign of things getting back on track, and I barely had a chance to notice what was happening when Meccione and Sammacey each took one of my arms and half-helped, half-pulled me the rest of the way up onto the bed.

True to their earlier words, though, once they pulled me up they both retreated back towards the other side of the bed, as I sat down and tucked my legs under me, ending up in a sort of cross-legged position. My body, it seemed, still didn't quite know how to feel, as on the one hand there were a bunch of near-naked Tiaileng just a few feet away from me, but my mood still felt kind of silly. After all, it was hard to deny that the scene was still ridiculous enough, and while the other Tiaileng around the perimeter of the bed had gotten, well, close with each other, their actions didn't yet seem all that different from last night - apparently, they were waiting for the Tiaileng on the bed, and probably me, to somehow set the tone.

Meccy seemed to notice that attention as well, and uncharacteristically for her, actually looked ever so slightly flustered, although it didn't seem to do that much to dampen her exuberance.

"Oh, man," she said, leaning back a little as Kat and Sam rolled over alongside her, the other Tiaileng on the bed edging closer to them as well. "You know, once Don told me, I actually had a whole thing planned out, but after all that, I don't think I could even do any of it with a straight face. Eh, and it was probably too over-the-top porn-y anyhow. So, what to do..."

She appeared to think things over for a moment, and I managed to place my hands in my lap over my confused half-erection bulge in what I thought was a nonchalant manner before she looked back over at me. I knew even as I did it that it was a silly thing to do, especially in that situation, but some part of me deep down seemed to think it was appropriate. Meccy didn't seem to notice, though, looking over at me as she apparently figured out what she wanted to say. "Actually, you know, maybe that was the wrong idea anyway, us trying to guess at what you wanted. I mean, you're right here and all, so..." She paused for a moment, pulling herself back up before leaning in towards me. "...what would you like me, like us, to show you?"

"Er..." was all I managed to get out, gulping involuntarily as I felt my face flush. All of a sudden, my mind flipped back into the this-is-actually-happening mode, and instead of yet another casual and weirdly random Tiaileng gathering going on around me, I was once again keenly aware of the trio of near-naked Tiaileng women directly in front of me. For a moment, all I could feel was that sense of strange, arousing unknown that I'd sensed earlier, embodied in the expectant look that Meccione was giving me. "I, um... I don't... know? I'm sorry, I just... I wouldn't even know what to ask, I mean, I couldn't... I know it's not inappropriate, but I really just don't know how to ask about something like that..."

If Meccione was frustrated by my wavering, she didn't show it. "Okay, let's make things even simpler. We know that you watch porn as your primary outlet, obviously, since that's what we're basing this on. So, there are certain things you like about it, right? Using that, all you need to tell us is what specific things you're looking for."

"Well, um, that's kinda the problem... it's not really anything specific, you know? I just find something that's okay, hit play, and watch it until I'm, um, done. I don't know if there's any one thing, except maybe the stuff I don't like - nothing that looks like it's forced, or frantic, or out of control, nothing that's painful or humiliating or hurtful, just... nice, I guess. Maybe some people think that's boring, but..."

"Oh, not at all," Meccione said, seeming to understand. "Hmm, maybe I should have just gone with Kat's plan after all..."

"Hmm?"

Meccione turned her head and nodded at Katonnan, who leaned forward as well. "Meccy does seem to have a little flair for the dramatic, and wanted to make some sort of a production out of it, but I thought, given what we've seen, that maybe something more naturally Tiaileng might work well for you. Not... educational, exactly, but not something staged or really porn-like either, just a nice, calm demonstration of the way we like to go about it. True, some of us like different stuff for sure, but it's not really like porn, either, not just about the physical act, or making noise, or putting on a performance. Maybe if we just show you what it's usually, actually about for us, you'll be able to see why we appreciate it, and how nice it can be for you too when you're ready."

"So..." Meccione continued. "Does that sound close to what you'd like to see?"

I guess I kind of half-nodded in response, looking between them as my arousal felt even more confused. However I might have imagined this going before, somehow none of the scenarios had quite played out like this - laughing out loud about the absurdity of it all, and then sitting around nearly naked and having another in-depth discussion. It certainly wasn't anywhere close to Hollywood's, or even pornography's, model of romance. I still wasn't sure, in fact, if it was romance at all - well, aside from Meccione trailing a hand down her abdomen again, to linger just above the waistband of her panties.

"I guess I'll just take that as a yes, then," she said, bringing her legs together as she lay back even more, resting her head in the lap of one of the Tiaileng behind her and bringing her legs together, even as her hands moved drifted to her sides and slipped under the elastic waistband. "Where to start... well, you've seen stuff before, so I assume you're reasonably familiar with the basic mechanics involved?" I nodded again. "So, we probably shouldn't focus too much on that. Although, if you're going to get comfortable with things like this, you probably want to see how things look up close, right? I mean, if you haven't actually been with a Tiaileng before, that's probably the first thing you're curious about..." And then, before I could even really react, her hands were in motion, sliding the pink fabric quickly down along her legs as she moved them together in a practiced, graceful pattern, unhooking them from around one of her feet while flicking them with the other, and I watched as the garment flipped a quick, lazy arc through the air before landing squarely in my lap.

I could have sworn my cheeks were glowing nearly the color of the fabric as I picked them up, feeling the stretchy, gentle softness of it between my fingers, my mind suddenly reeling. In any other situation, holding something like that, something that had recently been right there against a woman's most intimate parts, would have been by far the closest I'd ever been to anything remotely resembling sex with another person. Of course, given that the woman in question was literally right across from me, holding her underwear in my hands probably shouldn't have even rated. Well, that and I still felt self-conscious enough that it seemed supremely awkward to just be sitting there and fondling them. Not really knowing what else to do, I kind of just folded them up as neatly as I could and set them down to the side, patting the soft fabric gently before I looked back up just about in time for my heart to all but skip a beat.

Meccy, it seemed, was not at all self-conscious at that point, or concerned whatsoever about modesty. Her legs were spread out to either side, revealing the area where two of her fingers were already lingering, seemingly there to point out what lay within.

"So, there it is," she said, her smiling enthusiasm seeming somehow at odds with the easy casualness of her display. "What do you think?"

"Umm..." I replied, trying not to stare, but utterly failing to do so after a moment as I leaned forward, looking in with undisguised curiosity.

Admittedly, what I saw wasn't particularly surprising. After all, it had been many years since porn had even considered shying away from anything, and Tiaileng porn had never been concerned with it in the first place, so I generally knew what to expect - and given the way that Tiaileng were less differentiated from each other in general, a trait that extended to most parts of them, it wasn't unexpected that it looked quite similar to what I'd already seen. Still, when compared to the human version at least, it was at once simply, elegantly beautiful, and also slightly disconcerting in what was missing in comparison.

Like all Tiaileng, Meccione's fur became finer and slightly lighter in color as it trailed down her abdomen, and then when it reached the area between her legs, it shortened and faded away along the periphery, leaving a small bare oval of light blue-green skin contained within. In the very center of it, two vivid blue ridges extended upward, pressing tightly against each other. A little ways above them, there was a tiny dimple in the skin that was the Tiaileng equivalent of a urethra, and that was it, as far as I knew. No clitoris, no anus, no intricate hoods or folds, just the female opening streamlined to its most basic parts.

Still, it was something else to be seeing it like that, not a representation on a screen, but right there, right in front of me, close enough to reach out and touch, if the idea of that hadn't still filled me with trepidation. The closest I'd ever come before was on a night when all my parents had been out at the same time, when I'd figured out a way to hook my tablet up to the big-screen TV in the living room and view some of my videos in near-actual size. But now, having it right there in front of me, not just some anonymous performer, but a woman I actually knew showing that most intimate part to me... it felt honestly unreal. I really, truly didn't know what to do next, how to act, what to say. What were you supposed to do when someone's just... displaying themselves to you? Stuff like this didn't happen in movies, or books, or really even in porn. Without anything to go off of, I just kind of stared, as curiosity at the moment was the only emotion I had that didn't feel somehow conflicted or not quite genuine.

"That impressed, huh?" she said, moving her fingers down until they lay on either side of the parallel ridges. "Then let me show you something cool that you probably haven't seen before, even in videos..."

Her fingers pressed down gently against the skin, tugging to either side, and I watched as the ridges spread slowly apart, forming a sort of narrow, rounded diamond shape. In between them, though, was something I hadn't quite expected. Instead of the opening that I had expected, there was instead a sort of translucent shield, curving slightly outward and reflecting the light with an unusual, pearlescent sheen on its surface.

"That's the membrane thing we were talking about before," Meccione continued, somehow comfortable enough with her current state that her voice sounded completely normal and even in tone, talking as casually as though she were discussing the weather. "I guess you can see it in porn if you look for that particular niche, but normally you don't, because the performers get ready before the cameras roll. Anyway, that's the thing that keeps stuff contained most of the time. However, when you do want to get ready..."

She moved her other hand down, using her fingers to trace across the ridges in a quick, circular motion. Once around was all it took - a moment later, the shield flicked away almost faster than I could see, and as soon as it was gone, a thin sheen of liquid began to immediately trickle out, quickly coating the ridges with a slick wetness that made them several shades darker. As incongruous as it was, something about the flicking motion and the general nature of it reminded me of the nictating membranes that certain reptiles had, but that seemed like exactly the sort of thing you weren't supposed to say in that kind of situation.

"And that's really all there is to it," she said, releasing her fingers. "Once that's out of the way, everything else is nice and stretchy and pretty much just works - all a guy has to do is line up anywhere along there, give a little push, and he's naturally drawn inside. After that, it's just about feeling good and finding a nice rhythm that works for both of you. So... any questions?"

Somehow, though it all, that sense of curiosity had actually managed to snap my mental state into a different mode - perhaps it was the educational tone she'd had while presenting herself, or maybe it was that things had gone so far into the bizarrely unknown for me that they'd somehow looped all the way back around into some strange new sort of normal, but all of a sudden it felt more like just another Tiaileng conversation again, albeit with a situation that provided something of an awkward accompaniment. And yet it was that accompaniment that made me realize I actually did, despite the situation, have something I was curious about.

"Um, I realize how weird and totally unromantic this sounds, but... I kind of do?"

Meccione laughed, but not in a cruel or chastising way - in fact, she seemed genuinely amused by my hesitance. "Then ask away! To be honest, romance isn't really my strong suit anyway - I guess when you're a Tiaileng, a woman especially, for most assigned human guys just the fact that you're ready to do it just about any time is kinda romance enough for them. Seriously, though, I don't mind at all - if it helps you to know us better and get more comfortable with how we are, with being with us, then it can't be anything but good, right?"

"Okay, well... um... I was just wondering, doesn't it feel kind of, um, weird to be wet like that inside all the time? I mean, I know human women aren't, and..."

"Ah." Meccione leaned back a little, seeming to think about it. "Have to say, I wasn't expecting a question like that! It feels... normal, I guess? After all, there are parts of everyone that are like that all the time, and you don't really even notice it. Even you - for instance, your bladder has liquid in it nearly all the time, but you never notice anything's there unless you need to do something about it. It's kind of the same thing, just something that's there in the background, but you only really notice it when someone catches your eye and you want to be aware of it, you know?. It's different, for sure, than how arousal works in humans, since for us readiness isn't really a part of it, as any Tiaileng is ready at a moment's notice to begin with. For us, it's more about getting to that impulse that just makes you want to jump into that other person's arms, and from there just letting your body, and theirs, take over. Well, at least it's usually that way for me. Although, speaking of arousal..."

She trailed off abruptly, and then bounded back upright into a crouching position like the one she'd been in before, leaning back over towards me. At the very least, it meant that certain parts of her were again obscured and not involuntarily drawing my gaze, but that particular, expectant look was back on her face.

"So... how about showing me something too?"

"W-what?"

Meccione grinned. "Oh, c'mon... you're a straight guy, or at least straight enough, so I know you've got to be just about ready, too. I'm not gonna touch you, I did promise that, but if you're going to take care of things while you watch, you have to take it out, right? I think it's only fair that we get to watch a little, too..."

"Um, well... I guess I can, you're probably right that it's fair, but... I'm probably not all that impressive, you know, in that particular way. Not that I've really compared it or anything, and in porn and stuff I know that Tiaileng aren't like super huge or anything either, and that you're the last people in the world who would laugh at me... I dunno, it's probably not even that. It just feels... weird, you know? With porn, it's just porn, but with everyone here, it just feels like I'm, not a peeping tom exactly, but..."

I knew that my prevarication sounded hollow even as I said it, but it wasn't like it was untrue - I was still very much on the edge of trying to be comfortable with where I was at the moment, and that trepidation was still lurking heavily in my thoughts and feelings, enough that I was still trying to look for excuses to slow things down. And, weird situation or not, my body was certainly ready for something even if my mind wasn't quite there yet.

Meccione, though, didn't seem particularly irked by it, although her grin seemed to take on a certain mischievous edge. "Hmm, well... oh, could you sit up straighter, just for a moment? Maybe just prop yourself up on your knees for a moment..."

"Okay..." I did as she asked, shifting my legs and resting on my knees as I pulled the rest of my body into a reasonably straight posture. "I'm not sure that really makes me feel any different about-"

"Oh, also, is it okay if I touch you for just a second? I won't touch anything sensitive, and it'll be super quick, I promise..."

"Well, I guess it's okay if it's just-"

"Great!" As soon as she said it, Meccy's arms were in motion, her hands quickly grabbing the waistband of my boxer briefs and yanked them out and then down in a quick, practiced motion. In no time at all, my underwear was sitting around my knees, and my erection, freed from its constriction, bounced up to smack against my hands that now failed to cover up much of anything at all.

"There, problem solved! Now c'mon, just let me have a look, or I can just duck my head around to the side and see it anyway..."

Realizing the futility of trying to hide anything, I gave up on trying to cover myself, instead using my hands to wrestle my bunched-up underwear off of my legs and onto the floor behind me. As I did, I noticed Meccione leaning down, scrutinizing me from only a few inches away, close enough that I could feel her eerily cool breath on my exposed skin.

"Well... I don't know what you were worrying about. It's probably towards the high end of the Tiaileng range in its dimensions, which means it's perfectly fine. If you don't believe me, I'm sure there's a guy or two in here who'd be happy to show you. I mean, Tiaileng women are flexible enough that we can take more if we need to, but if you're worried that when it's time you won't be big enough to hit all the spots or something, trust me, that's not gonna be an issue. Anyway, if you want to see what I mean..."

She leaned back and retreated a little back towards the others on the bed, who I noticed also appeared to have stripped away their remaining clothing, and were more... intertwined than they had been before my attention had become keenly focused on Meccione, although they still didn't seem to be doing a whole lot more than looking over in my general direction. Meccy glanced back and gestured at one of them, who extricated himself from around another and came over next to her, crouching into a similar position to the one I was in. In the same way that Meccione's frame represented a gentler, sleeker representation of femininity, his did the same for the more male aspects, no bulging muscles or anything like that, but just enough angles to be more masculine than androgynous. He was, unsurprisingly, just as aroused as I was, and while I'd seen the male parts of Tiaileng in videos as well, fuzzy blue-green balls and all, it hadn't really occurred to me before just how similar they were. True, the tip came to much more of a point and had a decidedly upward curve to it, the shaft had a couple of subtle rings that protruded about midway along it, and of course it was the same blue-green hue as the underlying Tiaileng skin, but in certain ways it did look quite similar, down to the nearly identical dimensions and the flared ridge along the base of the head.

He looked over at Meccione, and then, when she nodded, turned back to me. "Hey, so I'm Soliaveren. We haven't had a chance to meet before, so, um, hi! And for what it's worth, I think you look really nice... Er, nice in general, not just that part of you! Well, okay, that part of you looks pretty nice, too..."

For a moment, he started reaching out, and I wondered where exactly his hand was going, but a moment later Meccy reached over and placed her hand on top of his, interlacing their fingers and bringing his arm back down to his side, as she nuzzled up gently against his cheek before turning back to me.

"See? All good, right?" She glanced between us for a moment, taking in our unsure expressions, before continuing. "Okay, yeah, so it's a little different than how this normally goes, than how I'd expected it to go, and yeah, maybe even a little weird. But just so we're clear, it's not weird because you're a part of it. And whatever you were feeling about it before, even if we're over here and you're over there, you are definitely a part of this. Not some outsider watching someone unawares, or however you're picturing it in your mind. We're here for you, to get you excited about this, and your part in it is to be excited, alone or otherwise. And if you've changed your mind now, now that you're here with all of us, all you have to do is say the word, and you can be the one in my arms. Or in any of ours, I guess, although if you want to I'd really like it if you were with me..."

"Um, I... think I'm okay with how it is now," I replied - and realized, as I said it, that I actually kind of was. It was still strange, and completely unlike any romantic scenario I could have imagined, but as halting and awkward as it was, in a way it also created a situation with such a complete lack of prior expectations that it somehow actually felt like there wasn't anything more to fear.

"Okay, suit yourself. If you change your mind, just speak up, but until then..." She tilted her head over, flicking her tongue out across Soliaveren's cute little muzzle until his head turned to meet hers, and all of a sudden things weren't halting and awkward anymore.

For a moment, they kissed in the Tiaileng fashion, tongues curling and intertwining in the space between them, their hands roaming excitedly along each other's fur. Meccione's, though, quickly found their way into position along Soliaveren's back, and brought the two of them prone against the bed. It wasn't anything like a pounce, though, or anything forceful or sudden - instead, Meccione seemed to guide herself gently down against the bed, and Soliaveren followed her guidance in perfect synchronicity, drawing in closer as Meccione moved her legs in a graceful art to wrap themselves around him. The only sound they made was the gentle rustling of fur against fur, until Soliaveren rocked down gently against her hips, and Meccione gave a short, high-pitched cry, wrapping herself around him even closer as their bodies began moving together.

It wasn't like anything I'd ever seen before. Not the carefully regimented, even, almost humanlike thrusting I'd seen in Tiaileng porn, and certainly nothing at all like the rapid, frantic, thudding desperation that haunted me, the memories of various combinations of Tiaileng and human parents seemingly trying to hump each other into moaning submission. Instead, it was something, well... different, but in an undeniably good way.

The way they had come down on the bed, I could see them mostly side-on, which meant that the actual, mechanical parts of the thrusting were hidden from view, but it also meant that I could see the other movements of their bodies even more clearly. Even from the first few moments of watching them, there was none of the seriousness or import or desperate need that was usually associated with what they were doing. In fact, the closest word to describe it really was playful, and while the motions of sex were certainly a part of it, it seemed to be just as much about laughing and cuddling and enjoying their intimate closeness in a comfortable, unhurried way. In fact, I realized that the only thing that wasn't constant was the thrusting itself. Unlike the sort I was familiar with, what Soliaveren did was more like a gradual, graceful undulation, starting at his shoulders and arching all the way down his back until it sent his hips through a motion that was more of a curving roll than a hard thrust, letting the residual motion work its way through his legs before beginning another one. He would do four or five of them in a row, each one just a little faster, Meccione working her body and rolling her own hips in tandem, until one or the other of them shivered a little and cried out happily. Then the motion would cease, and they would spend several more moments cuddling, nuzzling, laughing and making cute, chittering, purrs before starting up again. Their hands, though, were almost always in motion, constantly rubbing and petting and exploring every bit of fur they could reach, seeking out the areas that made their partner purr louder and longer.

Those sounds, though, seemed to grow and spread around me, ringing out in different rhythms and cadences, and I looked up from where I had been concentrating on them to note that the others on the bed were now just as active. The other male-female couple on the bed were going through similar gentle motions, although partially obscured by their angle, while the women on the other side seemed to be in more of a shifting, amorphous group, constantly moving among and through each other's embraces, twisting and turning through various positions as though they were trying to find the perfect one that all of them could be in simultaneously. They seemed to be happy and having fun, although not quite to the same intensity as the other couples, Meccione and Soliaveren especially, pulling closer together and moving with a renewed intensity that drew my gaze quickly back to them.

Now, there was barely a gap between their rolling series of thrusts, and after a moment there was none at all, their bodies striving against each other in quick, tight motions that were nevertheless still pristinely, gracefully balanced. As they rocked back and forth, there seemed to be no space at all between them, even their muzzles pressed tightly together for the slight moments between each thrust, during which they both cried out in unison, high-pitched sounds that reflected unmistakable joy. As they sounded, loud and clear, I realized I wasn't the only one looking - while the other couple was still engaged in their own actions, the women on the other side had slowed, huddling closely together as they watched as one the scene playing out in front of them. All of a sudden, the thrusts were rapid, almost a blur, and then suddenly froze arched together at their closest point, spawning a call of keening joy from both of them that climbed higher and higher, for a moment painfully shrill and then silent as it seemed to go above what I was capable of hearing. For a moment they held their position, both of them completely taut and vibrating like plucked strings. Then, despite one being on top of the other, they both seemed to somehow relax inwards towards each other, folding back down into a cuddly tangle of limbs, holding each other close as their hips minutely bucked together, first Soliaveren's and then Meccione's, each to a steady but separate rhythm that moved in and out of counterpoint for several moments, accompanied by quick, purring moans that seemed to sound in time with them, lower and softer than their cries from before. Soon they were still, relaxed against each other, cuddling and nuzzling gently in the same embrace where they had started.

And like that, it was over, and while the other couple continued and the women went back, seemingly reluctantly, to their earlier positions, I seemed to snap out of the reverie I'd been in watching the unique and surprisingly engaging display, realizing that in my intense concentration on observing everything that was going on, I'd neglected to take care of the thing that was the whole point of my being there. Certainly, I was more than aroused, my body practically humming with it, and when I looked down, sure enough, I was as hard as anything, the head throbbing a deep, intense red that I knew meant it was aroused just about to the edge. Somehow, though, watching the Tiaileng in front of me winding down, it seemed strange to do something about it now that the show seemed to be over, and I left my hands awkwardly at my sides for a moment as I tried to figure out what to do.

I wasn't the only one who noticed my state, though. Meccione, unwinding herself from Soliaveren, was suddenly looking intently at me, and once she was free she bounded over in front of me with unexpected quickness from her apparently relaxed state, a look of concern quickly forming on her face.

"Is something wrong? I didn't think there would be a problem with us just going at it like normal, but... was there something we did that you didn't like? That bothered you?"

I quickly shook my head. "No, no, nothing like that! I mean, it was amazing! It was even nicer than you said it would be, it was just so close, and playful, and captivating that all I felt like I had to take in every part of it, every moment, and I was so focused on it that I kinda, well, forgot to do anything myself..."

"Oh..." she said, as Soliaveren bounced down next to her. "Wow, I didn't think it'd impress you that much! I mean, that's just the way we normally go about it, nothing special, but I don't doubt you - judging by what I could feel coming off of you, what I can feel right now, you were into it, no question. But that means you've gotta be near insane with arousal right now! Don't you need to take care of that?"

"Well, yeah, but once you guys wrapped up, I guess it just felt kinda awkward to be sitting there going at it while you, um, weren't..."

"And yet, that doesn't solve the problem does it?" Meccione replied, looking down at where my erection pointed out, unwavering. "Well, if you feel awkward about just doing it alone in front of us... what if we just gave you a hand? Nothing crazy, no full-body stuff or overstimulation, just enough to get you where you need to be. And that way we're all still participating, so there's nothing awkward about it, right? Of course, that's only if you feel comfortable with it..."

I looked down again. To that point, everything had actually gone okay, and I realized that, unlike before, I had actually been relatively okay with everything that had happened so far. If I could keep things stable, if I could keep them just calm enough, then maybe, just maybe, it could work. And since I felt kind of awkward about it either way, and it did actually seem somehow more acceptably involved then just jerking it in front of them, I decided that it might just actually be worth the risk. "Um... I, I guess that would be okay..."

Meccione grinned. "See? Told you I'd be your first - well, partly, at least. Maybe a little differently than I'd expected, but that's okay, too. I promise, you're not going to regret this..."

Both of them leaned in eagerly, their faces close but not quite enough to touch, Soliaveren trailing his fingers lightly along my upper thigh, while one of Meccione's fingers ran lightly up my shaft before rolling around the ridge above and brushing up ever so gently against the tip. The touch was incredibly soft - the flexible, velvety pads of graceful Tiaileng fingertips moving expertly along my contours, my already surging arousal amplifying the sensation a hundredfold. Within moments, I felt the intensity shiver rapidly up my spine, sending me dangerously close to the edge as the rest of her fingers wrapped around my length. All of a sudden, there was no trepidation left, only rapid, raw arousal, and the intensity of her first complete stroke all but took my breath away. I wasn't even sure how I managed to hold off all the way through it, but when Soliaveren's hand reached down to caress my balls as Meccione's hand went back into motion, the sensation immediately went beyond what I could bear, and before I could even get out a proper warning I was already at, then over, the edge.

"I'm gonna-a-aaahhh!" I yelled, my own voice rising unbidden as the inevitability of my climax throbbed intensely through me, and in that brief, frozen moment, the world seemed to go completely, irrevocably crazy.

All of a sudden, a circle of skin around where the Tiaileng were making contact seemed to flash intensely, almost blindingly bright. The light seeming to pulse and surge forward like something alive, pouring rapidly up both of their arms and causing their fur to come to life, shining multitudes of bright, blue-green points. They spread rapidly upwards, covering their bodies until both of them were lit up like christmas trees, a light that had previously been all but invisible except in near-darkness now shining out on its own even in the well-lit room. For a moment, some of the points of light seemed to coalesce into something like the tendrils from before, only radiating out in sharp, straight lines, some of them shooting up against the wall while others seemed to carom off other nearby Tiaileng, lighting them up more faintly but still noticeably. Everyone the light touched seemed momentarily as frozen as I was, and a loud, reverberating cry rose up from all around me to join my own. Then, as my own climax surged back down to tense between my own legs, quick, racking shudders ran through both of the Tiaileng before me. I watched, utterly perplexed, as Soliaveren sprang from flaccid to completely rock-hard in seemingly a split second, a jet of something vividly blue shooting out from his tip and splashing hotly against my thigh before they both all but collapsed forward on top of me.

If it had happened in any other situation, I was sure I would have been filled with fear and panic, terrified that I'd somehow done something disastrous or hurtful again to the Tiaileng that had been assigned to me. Certainly, I would have at least panicked at the craziness of the situation. But the craziest thing was that, at that moment, I couldn't. My body was already in the throes of something far more basic than high-level emotions, and all I could do was kind of sag forward against them myself to keep us all from falling over. I brushed against the very edge of the fur on Meccione's stomach as she shivered against me, even as the first pulse of my orgasm throbbed wonderfully within me, feeling the light touch of her fur shift and reverberate and eventually fade against my tip with each subsequent throb of blissful release. I wasn't the only one, as through it all I could feel Meccy's hips bucking, gently but with an insistent, steady rhythm against my thigh, as wet heat continued to splash rhythmically against my other side. And then, as the intensity of the sensation faded to a deep, warm afterglow inside of me, the glowing quickly faded, replaced by two pairs of arms wrapping around me and cuddling me close, cool breath puffing against my face to match my own rapid, gasping inhalations.

Before I could do much more than catch my breath, I saw the other Tiaileng on the bed crowding close, crawling behind me and to the sides, and suddenly I was being hugged and cuddled from every angle possible, each and every Tiaileng wordlessly, instinctively reaching for any contact they could make with me, leaving me snuggled tightly in a cocoon of fur and warmth. It was tight enough that for a moment I wondered if I would be able to breathe, but the gentle rush of breath against my cheek was enough to recall that with Tiaileng, that would never be an issue. And the truth of it was, once I calmed down from my climax, I wasn't hyperventilating, or even panicking at all over the close, uniform, constant contact against my naked body. It seemed like the relaxation from the afterglow was mutually exclusive with my previous fears of that contact, and so, for once, I was able to relax within their embrace and feel it in a way that was completely unclouded by my own tension and anxiety. And without all of those things, it felt amazing, warm and soft and snuggly, better than being wrapped in the cuddliest blanket possible. The afterglow had managed to mute my oversensitivity just enough so that the brush of their fur, instead of being uncomfortably stimulating, was just about right, comforting every inch of me. It left me in a strange sense of bliss, relaxed completely, leaving me feeling like I was floating somehow in a serene, perfect state. I felt my eyes close, but I didn't drift off to sleep so much as settle into a sort of trance, just aware enough of my surroundings to know I was awake even as my mind surfed through a muddled, dreamlike state, alive with amorphous color and preternatural calm.

When I drifted back out of it, an indeterminate amount of time later, the scrum around me had broken up, although both Meccione, Soliaveren, and at least a couple of others were still snuggled up against me.

"Mmm..." Meccione purred into my chest, before noticing that I was stirring and tilting her head to look up at me. "Now that was certainly something..."

The scene from before, with her glowing and frozen in place, flashed quickly through my mind. "Um... are you okay? I mean, it certainly feels like you are, but after what happened..."

"Yeah, I'm fine. Better than fine. I feel like I've got a week's worth of energy coursing through me right now, in fact. You certainly come as advertised, no pun intended - actually, more than that, even." She paused for a moment, closing her eyes as she nuzzled happily against my chest. "Not to mention, that's one crazy trick you've got there. I mean, I know people can transfer emotions to us, and we can feel them and take them in, but I've never heard of someone transferring actually having an orgasm before."

"I... I thought that was what happened, but everything was so completely, well, unreal in that moment I wasn't really sure what was going on, or whether what I was seeing was actually true..."

"Well, that part of it was, for sure. It was weird, for sure - I swore that you started flashing, then the room looked like it went green somehow, this giant spike of energy, and then just like that there's this sudden climax out of nowhere... yeah, maybe it was crazy, but it's the good kind of crazy, and if you're doing that instead of that other stuff they warned about, I'm sure not gonna complain." Meccione nuzzled up against me again, and then looked back up, surprised. "Hey... you're not freaking out about getting snuggled any more!"

"Um, I guess... I think it's kinda from the afterglow, though, that I was so relaxed I couldn't feel uncomfortable about it. Once it winds down all the way, I dunno how I'm going to feel about it..."

"Well... probably better though, right? I mean, I could tell you were enjoying it, and if you remember how it felt, and put that memory alongside the part that makes you feel afraid or unsettled, it can't help but make you feel more comfortable about it, right?"

"I guess..." I said, before a familiar voice interjected from close behind me.

"I would imagine that it would, but let's make sure not to get ahead of ourselves. This situation is, indeed, something of an anomaly, and we certainly don't want to become overconfident and push him beyond the threshold he's currently capable of under normal circumstances. In fact..." I felt a pair of hands unwrap from around me, and then Daledonne's head quickly popped into view from the left side, in close enough that Soliaveren started a little at the sudden appearance, pulling back in surprise as Meccione more reluctantly disengaged.

Daledonne, for some reason, was still somehow wearing his tie, and apparently nothing else, although from his position I couldn't quite look to see if he'd put on anything below the waist. "Still, that reaction, I have to say, actually did manage to exceed my expectations - some of the things exhibited had been mooted by some of our scientists as theoretically possible, but I hadn't anticipated quite that powerful of a response. Admittedly, that may have been one of the reasons I decided to steer this encounter towards this one particular room - there wasn't much time to prepare a proper study area for this, but as it turned out this room, among a few others, was already wired with discreetly placed cameras from several different viewing angles. I was able to replace those cameras with ones capturing several different types and wavelengths of energy spectra, which means that we should be able to analyze what happened here to an impressive degree of precision." Seeing my slightly appalled glance, he quickly amended his statement. "Such recordings, of course, are the scientific property of the Tiaileng, and will not be disseminated in any way beyond trusted personnel at our own secure laboratories, and used for scientific purposes only. In any case, most of the cameras are not tuned to the spectrum of visible light, so their results would only be useful or interesting in specific scientific analyses, anyway."

Daledonne got up, bounding off of the bed, and by the time I looked back over at him, free of direct Tiaileng contact for the first time in a while, he was already snugging his bike shorts back into place before searching around for the rest of his clothes. I realized, still naked and apart from the warmth of Tiaileng fur, that I was starting to feel a little cold myself, perhaps in part due to the sheen of Tiaileng seed that was still resting clammily against my side. I used an edge of the sheet to wipe the remaining residue off, surprised that it was still slick instead of sticky like I might have expected, before finding my clothes precisely where I had left them at the foot of the bed. Once I had them pulled on, I felt at least somewhat closer to normal, although the sense of calm brought on by the afterglow seemed to be lingering rather than fading away like it usually did. I certainly wasn't going to complain about that, though.

Everything was soon in order, and the whole group was soon ready to move out, except for a few who had apparently been assigned to clean up afterwards, although somehow I doubted that anyone was going to bother to cram the dozens of pillows back into the ceiling. According to Daledonne, we were headed back to the banquet hall - apparently it was actually about time for dinner, although I didn't quite feel hungry. There was still a lot to wrap my head around, especially the notion that Daledonne's scientific pursuits seemed wholly unconcerned with propriety, although in a way I actually couldn't blame him - I was kind of curious about what, exactly, had happened in there too. Especially if that was what had happened with a couple of them just barely touching me - if I'd been entirely embraced with one, in one, what would have happened then?

I was wondering about that as I left the room, and spotted Erilanna leaning against the wall outside. As soon as she saw me, she headed over, although not nearly as abruptly as before.

"Are you okay?" I asked as she came up beside me.

"Yeah, I'm all right. You?"

"As confused as ever, but... pretty good, all things considered."

"Good." True to her word, she did seem okay, but considerably more subdued than she'd been before.

"Um... can I ask you something?" she said, after a moment.

"Sure..."

"Was that... you, a while ago? I kind of wasn't supposed to be a part of this, for obvious reasons, but I wanted to hang around outside and wait for you, and then there was this sudden surge of energy and I, um, kinda just came a little, all of a sudden. Wow, that sounds weird when I say it out loud, but... does that make any kind of sense?"

"Yeah, that... happened, apparently. To everyone that was in there, at least..."

"Oh, okay, well that's just... impossible, probably, but after what happened earlier, I'm not sure I even know what's possible and what isn't anymore. That energy you've got, it's just, it's not like it's wrong, it's like it shouldn't exist like that in the first place. Obviously it does, but... it's just beyond bizarre. No one, I mean no one, is like that. Not on this planet. If you're actually human, I'll blend my own fur and drink it!"

"Um, what!?" I said, looking at her incredulously.

"Er... I mean, you could totally be human! But, like, super-nifty-human or something. And if you're not, well, hey, not like that's a problem either, right? I mean, we're all aliens to each other, so it doesn't matter exactly which one you are-"

"I think we can safely operate under the assumption that he is who he claims to be," Daledonne interjected from the other side. "As you mentioned, we are all working under theories as to what is and is not possible for humanity. Previously, we had assumed certain restrictions and certain upper limits because they appeared to be appropriate based on our known observations up until that point. However, science is a constant process of adaptation; theories are proven and then become facts until other theories are proposed that contradict them. If those theories are then proven, they become the new expression of our expanded understanding until there is another paradigm shift, and then the cycle begins anew. He is, after all, only one of several under current investigation. We may be on the verge of something new, perhaps even a direct, evolutionary adaptation to our own presence here, which is why this is all so incredibly interesting." He paused as his cellphone chimed, and he quickly removed it from his pocket and consulted the screen. "Excellent! It looks like the first batch of automated summary analysis is already in. If you'll pardon me, I'm going to head off for just a moment to review it - I'm sure you can all find your way back, and I'll rejoin you shortly."

"Sorry," Erilanna said as we continued walking along. "I didn't mean to imply... I guess I have a habit of kinda going along with stuff and saying it out loud, even acting on it before I really think it through. If you are human, though, Don's right - it means there's a whole lot about you guys that we still don't have a clue about..." She trailed off, mumbling something barely audible, before continuing. "Seriously, though, I am sorry. About everything... I know I probably paid for it a little, by not being in there with you and all the others, but if there's something, anything, I can do to make it up to you, you just let me know, okay?"

"Okay..."

"All right. Maybe we- maybe I can try again, tomorrow, and see if I can get things right. A nice, clean start. Can you give me that second chance?"

I looked over at her, seeing the obvious contrition on her face. In all honesty, I didn't feel any animosity towards her - if anything, I still felt a little bad about losing control over something so minor, even more so now that I'd somehow handled so much more, even if the circumstances had been dramatically different. And someday, I knew, perhaps even soon, I might be able to share those better circumstances with her.

"Of course."

"Thanks," she said, and that was apparently enough, as we continued the walk back in silence. That wasn't to say that the Tiaileng behind us were nearly as quiet - most of them were still discussing what had gone on before, and sometime during the walk back Meccione managed to latch herself onto my arm and snuggle partway against my side as we walked. I noticed it more than I had earlier - the sensitivity I had was clearly returning. Even so, it still somehow felt at least a little more comfortable than before, enough that I didn't even feel the need to make a halfhearted effort to shake it off.

We eventually made our way back to the expansive dining room, and Meccione finally released me as I took my seat at the head of the table. Most of the Tiaileng were back, although I noticed that some of them were in different costumes - specifically, the ones besides Miruvona and Nessaoreth who had been wearing the one-piece swimsuits had all apparently changed into something else. I wondered about that, but not for too long, as a moment later Daledonne popped back into the room and walked over to stand beside me, addressing all the assembled Tiaileng.

"So, before we begin our evening meal, a quick show of hands, if you don't mind. Which of you, at approximately four-seventeen this afternoon, experienced a sudden, immediate, and perhaps inexplicable climax?"

At least half of the Tiaileng quickly raised their hands.

"Interesting... interesting, indeed. Once we're done here, I'd like you to send a message to my phone detailing the specific location where you were when such an event took place, as I'd very much like to calculate the specific radius of the sphere indicating the maximum range of the effect. Oh, and for those of you who haven't heard yet, that was, in fact, the result of his first encounter with us." Daledonne reached over, patting my gently on the shoulder.

"In fact," he said, turning to me, "I've just been looking over the results of the initial readings, and they really are all kinds of remarkable, even if that just serves to indicate that I really have no idea what I'm even looking at yet. The magnitude of the power spike itself, though, was enough that I'm actually wondering whether even out revised assessment of your capacity to connect with Tiaileng was correct. Fifty had originally seemed excessive to me, even if the numbers had called for it, but I am seriously wondering whether it will be necessary to revise them further."

"Um..." I looked around the table, at the mob of Tiaileng that were already there. "Revise them? Really?"

"Yes." Daledonne said, sighing slightly. "I don't really know how that would even work, but I do think we may need to revise them upwards..."