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Description
Continued from A Hapless Astrapia

(Astrapia is pronounced As-truh-pee-uh.)

* * *

Lustandra, an off-world alien telepath, was charged with Astrapia's interrogation. Her telepathy enabled her to read Astrapia's memories as if they were so many pages of a book. She took delight in combing the heroine's mind, but not so much for the mundane information she had been contracted to collect. She realized that the perilous predicaments of Astrapia, while irrelevant to her assignment, was intriguing her in sensuous ways. Each new discovery of some distress in which Astrapia had found herself imperiled delighted her with drunkness giddiness. There were so many variations. Her probing not remotely completed, she had already uncovered that Astrapia had been chloroformed, shocked, pummelled, choked, concussed, gassed, and even wrestled into unconsciousness countless times. Lustandra wasn't sure if she was intrigued by the trope of her helplessness or her perseverance in turning each defeat into a victory. It was those two halves that formed the whole cycle, she decided, that made for a delicious scenario. So mesmerized was Lustandra by these new feelings that she failed to grasp the fuller picture. If she had, she would have realized what part of the cycle Astrapia was in and the inevitable reversal of her peripeteia.

Description
Continued from A Hapless Astrapia

(Astrapia is pronounced As-truh-pee-uh.)

* * *

Lustandra, an off-world alien telepath, was charged with Astrapia's interrogation. Her telepathy enabled her to read Astrapia's memories as if they were so many pages of a book. She took delight in combing the heroine's mind, but not so much for the mundane information she had been contracted to collect. She realized that the perilous predicaments of Astrapia, while irrelevant to her assignment, was intriguing her in sensuous ways. Each new discovery of some distress in which Astrapia had found herself imperiled delighted her with drunkness giddiness. There were so many variations. Her probing not remotely completed, she had already uncovered that Astrapia had been chloroformed, shocked, pummelled, choked, concussed, gassed, and even wrestled into unconsciousness countless times. Lustandra wasn't sure if she was intrigued by the trope of her helplessness or her perseverance in turning each defeat into a victory. It was those two halves that formed the whole cycle, she decided, that made for a delicious scenario. So mesmerized was Lustandra by these new feelings that she failed to grasp the fuller picture. If she had, she would have realized what part of the cycle Astrapia was in and the inevitable reversal of her peripeteia.