"Bella."

Her voice is automatic, casual. She doesn't even look up from her crab. Not that she's eating any of it; she's too focused on preparing and fixing it. Her pinkie claw slides through the shells of various legs and she plucks the flesh out whole and unspoiled before she sets it on a plate near a heating pellet she cracked open when Ember wasn't looking. When the smell shifts she picks it up again and places the properly cooked leg in a neat pile on another plate, dips her claw in a jar of water, and then starts again. 

Occasionally she picks up a bit of crab and sniffs at it with a frown. Overcooked, instead of under. Not that there's a lot of nuance to cooking these stupid rations, but still. These, she shreds to tiny bits and places in a bowl. When she's done with the rest of it there will be a chance to stuff these shredded bits in some old dumpling wrappers, where at least the texture differences will make the mistake pile more edible. Old cooking tricks applied to Ember's picnic instead of actually eating any of it. She won't touch a thing until it's perfect.

"Mosaic." she corrects herself.

This is a lousy date so far. Bella still hasn't looked up from her work long enough to take any real notice of Ember. The lowered ears, the watery, seductive eyes, the small gestures she makes with her hands: Bella sees none of this. The smells and the tone of her voice are impossible to ignore but those amount to all the physical presence her supposed girlfriend even has. She couldn't even say what Ember is wearing right now. Whether she's done herself up in the style of an Imperial Princess or a Ceronian Scout. She could be nude and unadorned and all Bella would know is crab. 

"I don't care." she says, and the lie is obvious across every sense that it possibly could be. 

She sighs.

"It's not like I hate the name Mosaic, ok? My sister gave it to me. And pretty much everybody's going to call me that anyway so it doesn't really matter if you're one of them or not. But Bella is the name that you... that Princess... it's. My name. It's the first thing I had that meant I was a person and not a, a," she snarls, "A product. And it's been twice now that the universe has tried to take it from me. Is that really a preference? It's [i]mine.[/i]"

She flinches, and looks up from the rations for the first time since she sat down. The scowl hasn't faded from her face, but guilt and shame are welling in her eye. What a fucking idiot. This is how you lose everything you've gained in life, Bella. Is that what it's worth to you?