It's Libby's turned to be lulled. She wasn't expecting it to feel this good when she offered, her feathers relaxed and pliant under exploration. It feels like the heat of sunlight on a warm winter's day, a hot shower that doesn't end, the sleepy contentment of a full stomach. Simple, basic happiness, all physical and easy--and she realizes with a shock that comes as slow as sound underwater that this must be how it's supposed to work. These are endorphins being triggered to flood at being petted, this is--this is something that was put in her DNA before she was even a separate creature and somehow in sixteen years not one person has managed to find it.

Usually she'd be furious, for dozens of reasons. Right now, drunk on touch and starshine, she thinks at least now I know. She sighs softly before she even realizes he said much (his brother has wings like that's nothing, like it's freckles or brown eyes, and it twists her a little), then smiles crooked and dreamy.

"You pull it off," she says, arching and angling a little into his touch with a bitten lip, and then she gets back to work, "The shield. And everything. Just--you should pick any name you want."