Welcome to Gaia! ::

As long as she liked.

It was nice, Dahlia thought, to not have any of the obligations she had in the Negaverse. That was one of the things that made Order fundamentally different; no one was forcing anyone to do anything. If they truly wanted to, they could certainly slip into the shadows and never interact with anything related to it again, although Nembus couldn't quite stomach the concept. Letting the Negaverse and Chaos fester was something she couldn't understand, but she also had the deep desire for self-preservation now that she had been given this second chance that she hadn't quite had when she was Chaos. When Chaos, she always felt her death was imminent. Here...

"I think starting out slow is a good idea," she murmured, tapping her fingers without shifting their position terribly much. "Laying low, moving into starting slow, feeling more like a human," she let out a quiet laugh, "whatever that human part means..."

She needed time. She needed people she could lean on again, a part of her deeply missing and deeply desiring that team bond that she had in the Negaverse and apparently once led as an Order senshi back when the human that was originally Nembus inhabited this body. She needed -- other people who were familiar.

Lourdes. Asphodel. Kerberos. Albireo. She found herself mouthing the names in unison, committing them to memory.

"I'll follow up with them if I can find them. Or if you introduce us. I don't want to put that pressure on you, though." Dahlia offered a lop-sided smile. "I'd like to talk to other people who have this experience. It's people like you, people like Sedna -- ah, Stillwaterite, if you ever knew her -- who were a big part in me finally leaving. I'd like us to have that network. Build it."

Mentioning Sedna stabbed her in the heart for a moment, and she bit back the bit of wetness she felt in her eyes.

"Partially so none of us get lost again, you know?"

There was a part of Dahlia that had hoped that Stillwaterite would have rung a bell where Sedna hadn't, and she felt her heart sink when she saw the way Cybele--Brielle, dammit--shook her head. There were only a few possibilities Dahlia figured were possible if she found herself unable to reach someone she had previously found so easily. Almost none of them were good.

She supposed there was the possibility that Sedna had hung it up, in effect, and never powered up again, but that felt so remote and so impossible that Dahlia was unwilling to even consider it as a comforting reality. No point in self-delusion, no point in that foolishness--

Dahlia averted her eyes for a moment, gathered herself, and finally pulled her own fingers off the comforter. She wasn't sure she trusted herself not to mess up the nails in their current state, but they seemed dry enough, and she had finished her nails at a similar time to Brielle--

"I'd like that, I think," Dahlia's smile was awkward as she buried back down the thoughts of what likely happened to any of them that had been discovered and she could no longer find. "Snacks are good. And talking to people who understand is good."

She was very curious about this Folkvangr, admittedly, if she shared in some of this experience, but she also trusted anyone Cybele trusted. She had more connections than Phaethon did, also seemed to have something of a network established. She craved that.

Dahlia came to her feet.

"Show me around, Bri?"

... Was that allowed? Could she nickname Brielle?