Thalia comes back to warm hands on her aching back. Every muscle feels like it has been clenched and she looks up from the white frothed liquid as she sees eyes watching her carefully. It is Yarrow and she looks confused at their presence before her as hands continue to work the skin behind her in this massive pool.
"What is going on?" Thalia says, too sluggish to assume modesty, and reminded how twisted the lifelines of her and several people are these days.

She hears a voice come from to the east of her call out. "Group bathing, just go with it. I know I am." The voice sounds dismissive but also in that languid, relaxed and don't kill the vibe way. The voice is Marcus. There are a few muffled words and then a high pitched laugh coming from Honeysuckle? How many of the people she knows from Natare are here?

"Verdan is not here with you is he?" Thalia says, watching Yarrow tense before her, even as the hands on her back move up to her skull to scratch the stubble there.

"Why would you want him to be?" Yarrow says, the metal ring she had gifted them on the rock wall beside them.

"Well I'm half expecting more people I know to be here, and I couldn't really ask you about Heather from the exploration group."

"Because she would not come?" Honey calls out teasing and with a laugh.

"Because there is a likely reason for her to be here already." Thalia says, leaning back into the hands on her body as they find a pressure point on her neck. Her eyes roll back and Yarrow lets out a growl of appreciation that washes over her ears. Oh this was all kinds of complicated that could be dealt with after her mind stops going blank.

The hands stop as she turns to look around, Marcus and Honey sharing opposite ends of a pool, some strangers on a pool on her other side. Ah, means that Syn is behind her. She scoots her ass back and she feels feet - and she hopes Syn isn't getting cold on the ledge behind her. "You can join us in the liquid - water? Syn." Thalia says, voice inviting even as she briefly wonders the hows and whys of the liquid they all are bathing in, especially after the black sludge.

She feels skin dragging over her back before Syn slides in, slipping around all slippery like before settling in Thalia's lap. Thalia sees the ghost of a smug grin on her face as Syn and Yarrow watch each other, but she can't help but question the dynamics. Silently of course, best not poke that beast.

She goes to speak about things, like the fact Yarrow has worn that silly talisman into the bath as a wave of pain shoots through the side of her head and face, and the vision over one eye clouds black. She tries to double over, but Syn pushes back with her back, forcing Thalia to brace between her and the stone wall. Thalia lets out a pained scream as two voices say to her "It's going to be ok." over and over.

Her mind keeps sparking with images from the black pool above and she has to swim away and dunk her head just to get the images to stop. When she looks up, Marcus and Honey are crouched on the edge watching her. "I'm fine, I'm ok, I just need to scream a bit."

This fussing, this caring for her annoys her in a way that Yarrow barely is allowed to do, and so three more people doing it is Too Much.

Yarrow swims over and wraps her in a hug, sighing softly. "Your braid is gone for a bit then." They tease, ruffling the stubble atop her head. 

"It was a good braid," Thalia mumbles into their chest, feeling Syn move close and rub her thigh in support.

"We came as soon as Yarrow knew you were in danger." Marcus says, returning to his tub and giving Thalia a touch of space. "Your friend Syn has told us what has happened, but can you tell us what went wrong."

"Where is Wren?" Thalia says, leaning into Syn and Yarrow, breathing deeply.

"The witch is elsewhere, made herself scarce after Honey went off at her." Marcus says with an approving laugh.
"We are not making friends with the witch community." Yarrow says quietly.

"Well Agava was ok." Thalia says, nuzzling into Yarrow with a sigh.

Her hand reaches for theirs and rubs a thumb over where the scorch marks are on their skin. "Have you worn it since the big ones?"

"Haven't been brave, does it work the other way?" Yarrow's other hand reaches for Syn, holding it gently just to keep her in the moment.

"Think it does, you've been running through the woods alot."

"Hey." Honey shouts from the other pool. That is confusing and needs a talk later, not now though.

"I'm just saying you might have left scratches on my face, the feeling of."

"And I'm saying I'll kick your ass if you intrude on private moments." Honey calls back. "I don't care if you're injured."

Yarrow chuckles around Thalia, rubbing up and down her back as the water slowly cools around all of them. "Everything's a little messy, if you agree to it being messy. I know you like things neater than not."

Thalia looks up and rests forehead to forehead with them. "You've known me long enough to know I want people happy first, and Honey would not be here if she was not part of your growing life. Have you eaten since you got here?"

"Food is coming, Thal." Syn says from behind her, making herself known again. "Marcus is the only one of you lot I'm not worried about."

"Awww." Marcus teases, even as he seems the least worried now he has seen Thalia is safe.

Thalia is reminded of his question - what did go wrong and she thinks to put it into words. "I think I was supposed to be the kind of person who swam for the surface sooner - that I was supposed to see just a touch of your world, and just a touch of the horrors it could bring, and just enough that I didn't hate the humans here on sight, but that I would leave enough alone by choice rather than feeling forced. But I kept looking." She rolls the thought on her tongue and is satisfied with the answer. "Your world is lovely by the way, if you ignore the implications of how stripped bare your world must be."

Marcus sighs and looks at the group as he says. "I guess I should tell you more about myself then."

Marcus had been an engineer, that much he had conveyed to those of the bath already.

Marcus had also been very bisexual, a term he quickly had to explain to a bathhouse who had no concept for such a thing, nor for the fact that Marcus had been very closeted back on his home realm of Tyr. And then Marcus had to blow their mind with the idea that Tyr was just the planet he was from. That humanity had seen the cosmos and gone - I want that.

That Marcus' engineering job was in designs, and that the implant he'd been perfecting while here was done in his own time, while his job and his corporation took the rest. There was a brief discussion if he was like Orion Valtor, some brief arguing about whether Orion was a good man, before Marcus silenced them with the fact that there would need to be a hundred Orion Valtors before you got close to what a corp in Tyr was like.

If working for VRPI was an exacting job, with longer hours and less flexibility than most Levis denizens, then a Tyr corp was like selling your soul to a place who owned you morning noon and night. Thalia had already seen how relaxed and plain decadent Marcus had treated Natare life, and yet the idea that all of his independence, his time and energy got sapped out day in, day out filled Thalia with dread.

Marcus was close to his parents, though they did not know about how the man three bunks down was his lover. This had devolved into discussions on living quarters, or how Marcus was poor enough that he just rented a cot in a human storage block - buildings of just beds set into walls, stacked one atop each other, with maybe a shower block each floor, a basic bathroom, and a cafeteria at the bottom where you had to pay for each portion of each meal - and the food wasn't even fresh.

The bath had erupted in a flurry of questions then, and had only calmed when Yarrow had blown their minds by casually sitting in Marcus' lap and told Marcus to continue.

Marcus told them how humanity was going to other worlds now, building smarter, but also still mining and lumbering and building plastics -things that would never rot, never return to the earth and let things grow like they had in Natare and Brambleberry. But how people were trying to resist all the time, to build their own moments of paradise inside the metal can that was life in Tyr.

"Are there any other humans you've met in the city here?" Thalia would ask, nuzzling her head atop Syn's gently.

"There's Pulsar - he's a technician down at the library, and Pulsar told me of an adventurer - but that's more outside the city sphere. We are from all over the Tyr and her subsidiaries, and Pulsar was mentioning things happening way before when he should have come over, so I don't think its just a bridge forming for a moment."

"Would you go back if you could?" Yarrow says quietly.

"I don't know. I really don't."