Moonroe Nebula was... not a beginner's drink. It's not that Tori hadn't heard Vai's question, she technically<i>did</i>even though the sound waves had arrived distorted as if they'd had to slog the distance through chunky atoi cider. Coupled with the increasingly captivating distraction of Vai's body, the former slave did not register it was directed at her for a good tipsy-awkwardness-infused minute.<br/><br/>"Ohh~" she perked up in her seat with all the alacrity of a drowsy sloth "me...?"<br/><br/>Forcing herself to expand her awareness - not a small feat in the state she was in - to cover more of the room than the small patch of bar directly in front of her, she became acutely aware of not just Vai's attention, but the stares and giggles issuing from the booths on the far side of the room. Her old slave habits resurfaced, and she went into a minor panic of self-effacement, crossing her legs in an attempt to hide her arousal, first this way and then the other, doing little more than presenting the swollen tentpole to the side of the room opposite the one she was fumbling to conceal it from.<br/><br/>In her time as a slave-companion in a High Nauelli lady's household, there had been another concubine, a "gutterblue" like Vai (the slang term still sounded strange to her). The same antennae, the same long legs and perky rear, the same tall, slender body calling irresistibly to hers.<br/><br/>She and Ouma - that was her partner-slave's name, as if she could ever forget it - had been, as far she knew, bought and inducted into the household at around the same time. Of around the same age, they'd been trained and bonded together as far back as she could remember. First in their basic education as children, and later in the arts of pleasure when they were old enough. Though they had been as physically intimate as lovers could be, each wore the slave mask even if not literally on her face, and they each thought of themselves rather as instruments of their young mistress' pleasure.<br/><br/>They'd also received their emancipation documents on the same day, their status as freewomen added to their credfiles with a wave of the young mistress' hand, together with a generous monetary donation the mistress insisted on calling their back pay. And so the two found themselves standing beside each other at the holoport, strangers beneath their cast-off slave masks. They'd parted that day, each setting out, for the first time, on the perilous adventure of building her own life.<br/><br/>Each time she'd seen those antennae on a Nauelli since had stirred those reminiscences in Tori, and now all the more vividly in her pickled state - Moonroe Nebula was nothing if not a highly effective pickling agent. She blushed furiously under Vai's engaging smile, her tan-striped, earth-coloured cheeks turning the deep, rich red of gem-like Terran pomegranate seeds.<br/><br/>"F-forgive me, pleashe, y-young mishtresh, I did not mean... to shtare..." the young ex-slave slurred, in her tipsy confusion reverting to the habits of speech of her former life.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>