Zir own, old-fashioned, unstylish genitals were swelling, turgid, electrically alive. Even in the body in bed, ze was afraid to touch them. In bed, ze closed zir teeth around the base of zir thumb, hanging on.

Shria’s cilia pulled zir gently wiggling hand into their midst. A forest of blue feathery fronds slid and wriggled and whipped over and between and around zir fingers. Shria bit zir shoulder.

“Ow!” Fift said.

“Sorry,” Shria gulped, then started to giggle, and then the giggles turned into moans. Ve held zir, shuddering, with both bodies. Vir arms were around zir shoulders, two from the front, two from the back. Vir heads nestled to either side of Fift’s neck. It was as warm and safe as a snuggle, but zir mouth was dry and zir blood pounded in zir ears. “Ummmmm,” Shria said, and the cilia let go, fluffed up, and settled back down into a modest blue fuzz.

Ve sat up and turned away. In vir naked body, ve rubbed vir eyes. Ve didn’t look at Fift, but picked up vir undersarong, shook it out, and, watching it closely, wrapped it around vir waist. “Well,” ve said.

A silence grabbed them. They’d fallen into it, and it clung to them—as if they’d fallen off the edge of Foo and were trapped in the sticky, invisible webs that braced the habitations in midair.

Fift’s hand throbbed. It had been—it had been there among vir—

What was Shria thinking now? Fift couldn’t see vir faces. There was no feed in the room, and ve had turned away. It was one thing to have theories about how staidchildren had the same bodies and urges as vailchildren. It was quite another to be trapped in a room with a toadclown. Fift had just . . . grabbed. Even another Vail would probably have said something: asked, or challenged, or something—they must have some kind of rituals or introductions around their childhood sport-sex. What ze had done was different: bizarre, shocking, wrong. Gluttonous, like a two-year-old stuffing sweetlace into zir mouths . . .

“Well,” Shria said. “Well. Twice-born Kumru’s bloody placenta, with sugar on top.”

In vir standing body, buttoning vir buttons, ve turned back to Fift. Beside zir, ve was still turned away. Ve looked . . . worried. Maybe scared. Ve started to reach a hand towards zir, then took it back.

“I’m—I’m sorry, Fift. I shouldn’t have—I don’t know how that . . . happened.”

Fift flushed. “What do you mean? Was it—did you not—like it?”

Shria frowned, blinked. A jumble of expressions crossed vir face, like the choppy surface of a splashpool when different waves intersect. Ve settled on a smirk. “Well yeah, I liked it. But that’s not the—I shouldn’t have—”

“It was me,” Fift said. “It was my idea. I did it.”

“Well, okay,” Shria said. “I know. But I’m the one who—I should have—”