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You should stop combing her hair. It's as neat as it's going to get - not smooth at all, but the comb doesn't catch in the strands anymore and that's the most you can ever hope for with hair as unruly as Aradia's. You're continuing for your own enjoyment at this point, and you soon replace the piece of carved horn with your hands, mussing up the flowing locks a little bit. You intend that the styling is a little unkempt anyway, you tell yourself."Mmm, that feels so nice, Kanaya." Her eyes are closed. You had sat her in front of your mirrored dresser so she'd be able to see what you were doing and tell you if she wanted you to do anything differently, but you're quite sure she hasn't been paying attention. Or, rather, she has been paying attention, but to you, not to how you're combing out and arranging her curls. This isn't her first visit, but it is her first extended one. She'd floated to your hive with a backpack filled to the brim with curious knick-knacks unearthed from the ruins that she wants to show you - a third of her pack was taken up by the skull of a rare type of lusus she'd insisted on bringing with her. Luckily she'll be able to borrow most of what she requires from you, of course. Everything since she arrived had been perfect. You'd snuggled and traded confidences in the pile for what felt like hours, taken relaxing walks under the dim, twilit sky in your garden (well, as relaxing as you can get with your beloved moirail running off to examine unfamiliar objects and detritus every five timeticks), watched several new movies on your projector that you'd been excited about, and Aradia had cooked you your favourite foods, made even more delicious with her seemingly magical touch with a spatula. In spite of all of this, for the past few nights you've had the distinct sense that something is missing. It almost makes you feel guilty - that you have such a flourishing moirallegiance and yet you're still finding some unknown fault with it. This is the exact kind of problem you'd wish to jam about... Maybe you should, even if there isn't much to say besides "something doesn't feel right"? You consider Aradia's reflection in the mirror. She looks thoughtful - the corners of her mouth are still quirked up slightly even in this neutral expression, showing off her dimples. "Hey, we should go see if we can find some lightleechers! Ever since you told me about them I've been dying to see one up close." Maybe what was missing was Aradia making a totally dangerous, outlandish suggestion that you'd end up acquiescing in regardless of your better judgment."I don't see how we could," you say, frowning as Aradia gets up and begins to rummage around in her bags for something. She still hasn't gotten around to unpacking. "Unless you are secretly a genius in the biological sciences as well as the archeological ones, and you've discovered the key to resisting the sun's rays. Or perhaps you have transformed into a shadow dropper while my back was turned?" She laughs, looking up from her luggage and belongings piled on the floor of your guestblock. "It would probably put a strain on our relationship if that ever happened! Rainbow drinkers are concupiscently irresistible to you, aren't they?"She's only teasing, but the sense of wrongness squirms and turns itself over uncomfortably in your thoracic cavity, and your frown deepens."To answer your question - I haven't figured out a permanent way for the rest of us to sunbathe all day the way you do, no, but I do have these," she continues, brandishing a pair of rubber gloves, a roll of duct tape, a sun hat, and what looks to be a very big, black poncho at you. "I don't think I follow," you say, after a confused pause. "Those look like items you would use to perform hivekeeping duties." She laughs again. "Now you're just being ridiculous! I'll show you what I mean, just watch." --Aradia's idea is... definitely an inspired and imaginative one, but you're not sure that it's going to work."I'm not sure that this is going to work," you say. You're both standing in front of the exit to your hive. Aradia has donned a pair of jeans, a long-sleeved turtleneck, her walking boots, the poncho, the rubber gloves, and the hat. She's wound a scarf around the bottom half of her face and requested that you tape around the tops of the gloves and the cuffs of her jeans. Not only does this sartorial disaster of a getup offend your senses considerably, you also don't think it will adequately protect her from the sun. At all. "Let's at least give it a try. The rays aren't even that strong right now since it's sunset and all. I'll come right back inside if I start to feel bad, I promise." She's swinging her arms and bending and straightening her legs, testing her mobility with the addition of the duct tape. You hesitate. She's right about the sunset, and it might be better to just make an attempt so she can get it out of her system. "Alright," you say. She grins at you and puts her hand on your doorknob. "Right back inside," you say to her meaningfully, hands on your hips, and she nods. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it), her idea works. That is how, half a clockface later, you find yourself on your belly in a patch of tall grass, picking leaves and bits of twig out of your hair. You don't even want to think about the sand, you're probably going to be getting it out of your clothes for weeks after this. "They definitely aren't trolls," Aradia whispers excitedly beside you, peering through her looktubes at the motley crew of daywalkers you've managed to locate. "Not anymore, at least. They're just reanimated corpses. Look at the eyes on that one, there." She passes you the looktubes and you put them to your face, pointing them in the direction of the one she indicated. You can see what looks to be a single, swaying antenna coiling up in a straight line from the empty eye socket of one of the lumbering bodies - the body of a troll with horns that twist and turn like a corkscrew, the remains of a T-shirt and shorts hanging off of it in tatters. The antenna is bright purple with a glowing bulb on top that's flashing gently. Curious, you pan down from the body's head to its fronds and notice more purple, vine-like protuberances emerging from an arm or a leg and plunging back in again. You haven't given much thought to the creatures after living with them for so long, but seeing them from Aradia's perspective makes you wonder."Can you hear them?" You murmur. "No. Nothing. Their spirits have long gone. They must have been dead for quite a while. Maybe those organisms are helping preserve their flesh and bone somehow. And adapting it to be resistant to the sun? I'd love to know how that works.""Hmm." You go to pass the looktubes back to her, but either you let go of them too early or she's too wrapped up in sorting through the voices to grab it properly, and they fall from your hands, rustling the grass and clanking against a harder bit of ground. One of the daywalkers seems to take notice. It turns around, very slowly, head still facing its left but the rest of its body clearly oriented in your direction. The two of you are frozen, waiting to see if it turns away. It doesn't. Instead, it starts to walk. One step, then another. The other two seem to notice its movements somehow, because they start to imitate it, putting one rotted walkstub in front of the other. "Hey, Kanaya?" Her voice is surprisingly steady. "Yes?" Your bloodpusher is pounding. You try to ignore it. "You can't kill them, right? You've tried?" They're getting closer, approaching the grass you're laying in. "I can kill them, but I wouldn't advise it. Once one of them falls, they begin to swarm, and their mobility quickens when they're aggressive." You'd hunted one, once, with your chainsaw, but a hoard of them had appeared seemingly out of nowhere immediately afterwards. You'd barely managed to escape them all."Alright then," Aradia says, and the next thing you know you've been plucked straight into the air. You cry out in surprise, immediately covering your mouth with your hands to muffle the noise, but the daywalkers notice you anyway, snapping their jaws uselessly at the sky. Aradia floats up next to you and puts her arm around your waist, probably more for your comfort than for any practical reason. You put your arm around her shoulders, holding onto her gratefully. You're not afraid of heights, but soaring through the air like this without the any kind of solid thing lifting you up would be perturbing for anyone. The sun has already set by the time you've made the short jaunt back to the gardens surrounding your hive - made even shorter thanks to Aradia's psionics. Aradia tosses the both of you onto your lawn under a tree, flopping onto her back and pulling the scarf off of her face, beginning to fan herself with the sun hat."Phew! They aren't following us, are they? I didn't see them come after us, I don't think." You sit up and look around. You can only hear the breeze wafting gently through the branches of your trees."I think we're fine," you answer. "What about you? You didn't get burned, did you?""No, I just feel really hot. I don't know how you can enjoy the sun, even with layers of clothes on it felt awful! I doubt I would have been able to deal with it for much longer than this."You make a noncommittal noise, drawing your knees up and brushing off some of the sand that's stuck to your skirt. You don't ask her if she thinks the trip was worth it. Your bloodpusher is still pounding. Now, not because of any imminent threat, but because the reason behind the sense of wrongness that's been plaguing you has hit you like an extra-large psionic blast - why you don't feel the urge to protect that you once did, while the pity is still there and as strong as ever. Why what you've been doing together, lovely as it all was, wasn't quite what you wanted.You've flipped red for your moirail.Oh, no. Oh, fuck. You told yourself you wouldn't do this again, not after Vriska. "Kanaya?" Aradia calls from where she's still supine next to you. She sounds breathless, like she'd sprinted up a mountain. "Yes?""I have a confession to make." That successfully diverts your attention away from your romantic crisis. You turn to look at her. Her arms and legs are spread out, like a starfish, her face unreadable."I... don't think I feel pale for you anymore," she says. You swallow. You want to ask her why - had you failed her in some way or had her feelings simply faded? Considering your own feelings, though, it's probably for the best -"Oh," you say. You look back at your knees and clench your hands into fists. Maybe this is why she wanted to visit you, to tell you in person that - "I think I'm flushed for you.""Oh!" You repeat, turning around again. "I... Aradia, really?" She gives you a firm nod, her mouth set in a grim line, almost as if she were expecting to be rejected."I'm flushed for you too," you scramble, because you don't want her to think that you don't want her for a second, not when that conclusion would be extremely, incredibly false. "Very red indeed. As red as the ridiculous flags Karkat surrounds his hive with. As red as a very red item. Just... very, very undeniably red."You snap your mouth shut, flustered at your stammering travesty of a speech, but Aradia is smiling widely up at you."Really? That's amazing. Oh my gosh, why didn't you say anything before?" She demands, almost indignantly, sitting up and pulling you into a hug. "Why didn't you?" You shoot back, holding her close, not quite certain yet that this is actually happening."I didn't think you'd feel the same way... oh Kanaya, we're both so silly." She pulls away. You're about to protest that you aren't done hugging her yet when she kisses you. Her lips are plump and soft and she smells like grass and earth and flowers.You run your hands through her hair again, drawing her even closer.