Trying to stand up was a different story. I made it to my knees twice before wobbling and falling over. Alice didn't fare much better; she swayed side...ays and toppled over like a tree in a hurricane when she tried to rise to her feet. We were a mess.Finally, we got ourselves into sync and helped each other climb to our feet. Like two drunken sailors, we staggered off toward our tent with the beams of our flashlights leading the way. A fuzzy part of my brain was engaged in trying to do a basic. "Tom was sympathetic. "And you never regretted not having the chance of a romantic entanglement?" It was not a matter of regret – at least consciously. I was a career woman, and that was that. It never penetrated my thick skull that some of the academic staff were married women. I mean, I knew that rationally as a fact, but I didn't relate it to me being unmarried. The two were never contrasted, in my mind.I did have one crush, when I was twenty, and I might have done something about it, until. Clara spent the next several hours sitting at the desk, re-reading some of Zhiasa’s earliest journal scrolls. She had a gut feeling that she might need all the information she could get about Zhiasa’s kingdom. While deeply engrossed in a scroll (as she had been for much of the night), she felt a familiar tingling in her toes. She looked down at her feet to see the smoky cloud swirling around them. Not nearly as freaked out by it as she had been last time, Clara casually turned her attention. She had never had a relationship with another woman though; this was totally new to her. Of course, she had read about women loving each other. Sam kept asking herself how something that felt so right, could be considered so wrong in the eyes of society. This societal view was a large factor in preventing her sharing her body with the woman she had grown to love. Sam was confused.Amy never pushed Sam to take their relationship to the next level of having sex with each other. She was content.