It was a lovely day, for almost the day.

At one astronomical unit, the sun produces less than 70 watts of ultraviolet radiation per square meter, but it is accumulative. During the time, Lauren’s skin absorbed perhaps half a megajoule of such radiation.

Lauren, of course, wasn't thinking of this as she sunned herself. Indeed, she didn't think much about the slight reddening of her skin: maybe it will turn brown a bit, she thought. She also neglected that the melanin present in the others, but largely absent on her milky white skin, might have mitigated the injury Lauren inflicted on herself in her radiation bath.

But when she got home, the pain began in full, as did the fatigue. Some of the shit that people put on to deal with sunburn—as Lauren did—at times only worsens the pain.

No. This will require nature to take her course. The pain will mostly be gone in a day and her red skin will indeed turn a bit brown, as rotting flesh that was once the upper levels of her epidermis tends to, and like such rotting flesh will fall off, or be peeled off, as her body, in its wisdom, corrects her error.

Many people take pain killers during this time, which is good, though some can enhance their fatigue by leaving them even more drowsy.

Such shouldn't be a problem as long as someone didn't, say, take pictures or videos of Lauren, nor see the contrast of the radiation burn and her healthy white skin—so white one can see veins.

"Oh God this hurts!!" Lauren cried a few times, and often the thrashing at times made it worse. She had removed all her clothes lest any of it travel up or down her injured surface and hurt. Even covering up in sheets was too much. She just lied upon such sheets, head upon the pillow, sometimes prone, sometimes supine.

Eventually, the painkillers and fatigue kicked in more, and she slept. Her dreams were that of one in a delirium. She managed to feel some slight pleasure of her breasts, buttocks, and public area being exposed to the open air. All her cares were set aside: the silliness of this competition, the manner in which she chose to get brown(ish), or that she forgot to take her keys from her door lock when she got in.