At first, she squeezes her eyes shut again to the point of pain. She forces her body to sit still in stubborn defiance of the sun shining on her. Just another five minutes. Just another ten. She can will herself back to sleep if she can just hold on long enough.

It doesn't come. Her legs crawl up and down with an irritating prickle of energy arcing through her system. The pressure builds in erratic little waves that leave her skin crawling and her muscles buzzing like they were filled with constantly fluttering wings. She can't stand it. She can't keep her hands from scratching at her thighs, and when that doesn't do anything she's forced to start bouncing her legs instead.

The movement undoes her. The more she bounces the more she burns. Heat radiates through her feet into her ankles up her calves. A chill spirals across her spine and sets her shoulders to twitching. Her eyes and nose itch until no amount of willpower in the universe is enough to trick herself into thinking sleep is possible. Her eyes behold her 'bedroom' again, against her will. The decay, and the shining god sitting in the middle of it.

She swipes two clawless fingers across her itching face, scraping away flecks of red-black blood that had scabbed over and dried up weeks earlier. Her cracked lips force themselves open and let a deep sigh and a moan escape from inside her. It's the first noise she's made in... who cares how long, and her ears wince at the grainy crackle. She paws at her face more and more, cleaning it off, wiping at her lips until they feel clean and wet again, but no matter how much she scratches and probes she can't find what she's actually looking for. Underneath the dry, itchy blood smears there's nothing but smooth skin without traces of the wound that put them there, or even the thin line of a scar to remind her of her lessons.

She growls, a low and wet gurgling sound that grates her to hear it. She settles for huffing her annoyance through her nose instead. Apparently her stupid body's been hard at work using all the energy she'd so carefully tried to waste. And it was such a simple plan, too. No people and no princesses to get in her way or be too stupid to follow along. No moving parts that might break if she used them out of order. No moving at all, actually. All she had to do was sit here, and wait. And she couldn't even do that right. Fuck. Of course she couldn't; when had a single one of her ideas ever worked out? She wasn't allowed to have plans. She wasn't allowed to win.

"Yyyy-- HHRRRRRK!"

The girl gags and sputters with the effort of speaking. She coughs and snorts again and again, pulling the muddy buildup of a hundred different crying sessions torturously out of her throat and holds it in her mouth. She glares straight at the smiling god so that he can't mistake her intentions when she spits as messily as possible at the spot between her feet. Her hand feels smooth against her lips when she wipes them clean, though for the life of her she can't figure out why she bothers.

"...Fucking cheater."

She slumps backwards until she feels the dirty, tangled mess of her hair clumps against the base of her tail. Apollo watches her, and smiles. She turns her head away, and his smile follows her in the reflection of a puddle of water that's built up in the hollow where a stack of vacuum tubes used to be. She squeezes her eyes shut again, but even when she buries her face in her hands he follows her into the darkness in the form of flashing spots and a persistent red glare pressing through her lids.

The wall at her back reverberates each time she strikes it with the back of her head. She slumps forward, then back. Forward, then back. Again and again, drumming out her slow, dull percussion with her body as the drumstick. The pain barely registers anymore. That's not why she does it. Forward, then back. Forward, then back. Thump. Thump. Thump. Go away. Go away. Go away. Leave her alone.

Apollo smiles on. The girl's eyes are dry. How can this be? The entire time she's been here, she's never been short on tears. But the proof of her sincerity has completely deserted her. Her mind flits lazily back and forth across all the usual thoughts and images she's kept as companions to keep her strong. The look on Redana's face after she'd forced those pills down her throat. Ivory Smile, cut down by her own hand. The Lanternites' frightened, despondent faces watching her in the dark. Vasilia, reaching for the knife. Mynx. Mynx. Mynx.

Nothing comes. Forward, then back. Forward, then back. Thump. Thump. Thump. She can't cry. Not with either eye. Of course she can't. Of course. She can't do anything right, can she? She clenches her bouncing knees up to her chest and rocks shakily back and forth on her butt, and nothing happens whatsoever. She even catches herself pulling her tail out from under her to keep it from getting pinched. Stupid! What's she doing, caring about that? How dare she find the energy to be bored? Fucking loser, can't even die right. Can't even mourn properly. What a sorry excuse for a perfect Servitor she turned out to be.

A sudden shift in her weight creates a chorus of clinking wine bottles that sing in all of their empty, glasses chimes as they bounce and roll to be away from her pathetic frame. The avalanche tumbles away from her in all directions, not caring that she froze and flattened her ears like a frightened kitten the second she heard the noise. And still no tears, even at this latest abandonment. And still, the god smiles. Her legs itch. Fuck this. Fuck this place.

Her legs tremble under the effort of supporting her body for the first time in forever. She rises off the floor with a loud, gravelly snarl of pure effort. She tumbles forward onto her knees a second after. Fuck. Fuck! Her fist pounds against the floor and hardly makes a sound. She reaches for the last bottle brave enough to keep her company, and throws it to teach it better than that. A meter. Maybe two. And it rolls instead of breaking. And she still can't cry!

The girl sucks in breaths through clenched teeth that settle painfully in her overtensed belly. She grunts and pushes up again, and this time manages just to stumble forward a few tiny steps before finding her feet flat underneath her. Her lungs whine for more air. Her shoulders sag. Her tail droops limply down by her ankles. She turns a cold eye on Apollo and coughs another blob of sap or snot or whatever the fuck on the ground before she walks away.

There is nothing of her old grace in her movements. Her steps are not precise or even, her hips do not sway with the allure of a woman secure in her absolute beauty. Her feet drag horribly and only intermittently leave the ground as she slips and stumbles about in the empty corpse of what had once been a crown jewel of the Hermetic fleet. Her legs bobble frequently and her hip and thigh slam erratically against the wall she's obligated to walk along just to keep upright. The ugly knots in her hair slap against her back with every attempted step.

She has to pause frequently to catch her breath. But now that she's moving, what's the point of sitting down again? She'd only get bored again. Apollo would just find her again. She ignores the acid burn in her thighs and shambles slowly and relentlessly down a corridor to fuck-knows-where with all the grace and form of a person who'd learned how to walk from hearing stories about it spoken through a thick wall. At least she had those sharp, attentive ears, right?

She moves without point. She moves without purpose. She moves because it's very slightly better than the alternative. She moves, and she clenches her teeth because she catches herself flinching when she wonders whether or not there's anything left around here that could do a better, faster job of things than she'd tried to do on her own. Coward. Faker. Can't do it if it hurts, can you? That's why those fake ass tears never fooled the smiling god.

She pushes through a doorway, and a sudden thunderclap of metal dropping onto metal send her ducking for cover, hiding pitifully underneath her arms. Like those could even save her. Like she's even supposed to want to be saved. The echo of the monster rings inside her ears, despite how much she flutters and shakes them to clear them out again. Finally, she dares to open her eyes again.

Well, what the fuck. When was the last time she'd found herself in a kitchen?

They had to make it a hunt, didn't they?

Had to come in with spears and nets and cries of exultation. Had to hound her like an animal, braying with excitement, from one end of the ship to the other. Had to scramble and whoop, had to fan out, to pincer, to chase.

And now that the moment to strike is finally here, who better to finish her off than the one person who least wants Mynx harmed?

Galnius probably thinks she's doing Alexa a favor. Granting her honor, privilege, prestige.

But it shouldn't have worked, is the thing! Mynx is better than this. Mynx should run circles around them, should vanish like smoke, should disrupt their formations with a wink and a laugh. Alexa keeps looking at the phalanx around her and half expecting one of them to blow her a kiss before disappearing. She should have Galnius profiled and wrapped round her finger, not be backed into a glorified closet!!

Something's wrong. Mynx is off her game, and Alexa's going to find out why.

Galnius grunts as Alexa's spear and shield are shoved into her hands. Does Galnius know the privilege she's been given? View it as a usurper taking her spot? But damned if Alexa's going into this armed. Ha! As if not having a weapon somehow makes the phalanx behind her less threatening, less of an armed mob determined to make her a gift to a princess!

Still, she hesitates as she approaches the closet door. Swallows. Hems a bit, holds a hand up to knock. Decides to compromise, one hand flat on the door, feeling its grain as if she could feel the shapeshifter behind it.

"I am surprised to see you aboard the Plousios," she murmurs. Is she loud enough for Mynx to hear? Is she listening on the other side of the door? Surprised to see her among the gathered hunt? "In truth, I would have thought you to be back with Bella."

Unless... Unless this is the trick, is that Mynx is the distraction, and Bella is also aboard. And any moment, she's going to pop out of a vent, Redana in her arms-- but no. There'd be nowhere to go, not unless she plans to fight an army for command of a ship she cannot run.

Something's definitely wrong.

"Do you want to talk about it, Mynx?"

Vasilia laid aside her glaive, and turned an ear to the symphony of the stars.

The bridge offered an unparalleled view of the passing travellers, and little else for her lonely vigil. A place of action, of command, of judgements, it had no use for frivolity and no space for a proper walk. She’d spread out a blanket on the floor to grant herself a place to tend to her weapons, and even this concession felt an intrusion. Wrong, somehow. Breaking some unspoken taboo. It pricked at her sensibilities, like lying down with a twisted back. Forever promising to calm down soon, soon, if only you could just find the right way to sit.

If she had no patience for her guest, then perhaps she shouldn’t have been several days fashionably late.

“You’re always bloody involved, when it’s about a throne.” Vasilia spoke to the air, the hairs on her neck bristling at the electric presence. “Why even bother with all this? One word from you, and the contest’s decided. No one on Olympus would argue.” She didn’t name who she suspected Zeus might choose. No taste, for running through that tired script again.

For as much choice as she had in the matter.

****************************************************************

Dolce did not blink. Had not blinked. For a while. How long?

Well, how long since he’d blinked, or how much longer could he go without? The first one, it’s been...well, he didn’t quite mark the start, it was after she’d pulled out the notebook, which meant at least a minute fifteen, give or take some. The second one, it’d been so long since he’d tested himself in this way, he couldn’t possibly guess what his limits were. It’d been years since he’d had to do blinking drills, and he did somewhat regret stopping, in hindsight, because there was nearly too much Princess for him to keep track of. There were drawings, detailed drawings with lots of figures to remember, and an errant teacup holding something between fluid dynamics and a time bomb, which he could not apply a napkin to until it was about to explode. While his eyes managed that, his ears were in charge of listening. His hands had to drink his own tea, at appropriate intervals. Put it all together, and his mouth needed to come up with useful advice, when asked for, or when the conversation lapsed sufficiently, which was proving to be a rather squirly metric today!

No, no, no time for blinking at all.

“I think,” Dolce said, slowly, testing the waters in case he was about to be swept away again. “Maybe we ought to...compensate, for the factors we don’t choose?” Oh, wonderful, brilliant observation Mister Dolce, no possible way that the Princess slash Senior Mechanic hadn’t thought of that one already. “That is to say, there are other factors, yes? In our composition of crew and armaments that could be used to our advantage. And, perhaps the decision can be made in light of those, ah, other factors, such that the factors - of the ship - can be adequately balanced in light of threats...unknown?”

The too-long sip of herbal tea proved remarkably un-soothing.

Alexa!

"Who is this Mynx," said Mynx in the galaxy's most half-hearted Russian accident. "I am Sergivov Sergistan. I am humble investment banker. Why all this attention officer."

She sighs. Her eyes flick across to you and then back to the spot on the roof she's been trying to stare a hole through. She's flopped over a couch, arms hanging dramatically from the sides. Even the SP landmine she's hidden underneath a dirty hoodie right in your path is half-hearted - though for all of that you do almost miss it on first glance because this room has intense cannot-be-bothered-to-do-the-laundry energy.

She sighs again; she seems comprised entirely of those right now.

Vasilia!

Zeus looms over you, a monolith of indigo and eye-crackling violet. Her eyes fill with an unspeakable emotion and the clouds gather around her.

And then she squeals in delight, pinches your cheeks, picks you up by the scruff of the neck and sits you in her lap so she can pat your head. "I always forget how young you are!" said Zeus delightedly, like she might to a favoured daughter who has just proposed a new design of bicycle with rocket thrusters. "Oh, dear, sweet baby Vasilia! Of course I could snap my fingers and declare a new king. Why, I could snap my fingers and condense this entire sector of space into a black hole! You are very astute to have noticed that I am, in fact, very strong. However, you should also know that I am actually very wise - and it is not bragging for me to say so, for being wise is none of my doing; I merely happen to have my former girlfriend who is wisdom itself living inside my head. I have been known to be foolish nevertheless when my passions overtake me but this hardly seems one of those times. So why, then," she bounced you gently on her knee, "do you think that I am not intervening? Think hard, child!"

Bella!

There is at least one advantage to surviving the assault of Demeter.

You have never seen such bounty when it comes to food. The thorns and the chaos have passed on, the hyper-acceleration of evolution and growth dragged away as the Goddess went away on whatever errand took her fancy next. In its place is the harvest. Bounties of berries, every colour and shape and flavour. Interior fields of wheat so overgrown that a single caress sends seeds cascading down onto the metal below in their fistfuls. Thickets of eggplants, eruptions of spices, and mutations and crossbreeds of every vegetable you've ever known and more you'd never guessed at. And more than the quantity and freshness there is a difference of category when it is compared to food you've experienced in the past. For whatever reason it is plain, now, that Demeter never exactly showered her blessings on Tellus. Even food grown for Imperial lips was not kissed by the Harvest in this way.

Why? Had Empress Nero offended Demeter in some way?

Apollo provides no answers, but he does allow light to work with.

It was a mistake to come here. After such a long time haunting Birmingham's grave she'd started to believe the world really had gone muted. Sometimes instead she told herself that swimming as deeply as she had in the Song had damaged her permanently, cutting her off from all the power she'd been bred and trained to wield. Either way, she'd been wrong. Either way, she wasn't prepared for the assault she's experiencing now.

There's too much color, for one thing. In the glow of Apollo's light this kitchen is more of a painting than anything that should properly exist. The greens are so vibrant she has to squint to look at them. Waves of golden wheat shimmer like a treasure hoard, bending and revealing bursts of red and purple berries more potent and radiant than starlight. She glances at a flowering plant so blue that it pulls the word 'ocean' out of some long buried ancestral memory and buries it on her lips.

She lifts a hand to cover her eye, but there's no escape. Every breath is choked with scents: nutty tangs and floral bursts, whirlwinds of spices that tingle in her nose, cascading saccharine sweetness from a dozen different syrups, earthen notes and pine, grasses and even a savory richness that starts her mouth watering in spite of how irritatingly full her body still feels. One breath she swims in cinnamon. The next, hibiscus. She turns her head away from a sirocco of chili powders, and when she waves it away the next wrinkle of her nose washes it away in a tide of strawberries and vanilla pods. At her feet, a great black-and-brown fruit drops to the floor and bursts open with a rush of something like a fresh cream.

Even the sounds are overwhelming. Swishing and rustling and constant sloughing and snapping and scraping and popping fight with the gurgling of the water supply and the shuffle-stomping of her own useless feet and the the flicking of her tail and there's a can rolling across a metal counter and it's hit the separation rods andeverythingisringingringingclangingbumpingroaringSTOPIT!

She is vaguely aware of her arms slashing wildly through the air. She is extremely aware of the way they crash into everything in front of her. Some of it parts with barely a brush of her knuckles, but some of it is the gear of the Yakanov, and it fights and cuts and hurts like an animal defending itself from her. Her head is pounding with hangover fierceness, and hangover nausea. Her eyes are squeezed shut. Her lungs have shrunk so small she can't hold enough of the confusing smell-soaked air to keep standing. Her knees scream fire when they hit the floor. Compared with the Anemoi, everything here is a hundred times too stiff. And loud.

When she opens her eyes, she expects to see carnage and destruction again. That's the only thing she's good for, after all. So it is... surprising, to see a spotless prep counter instead. To her right, a line of pans sit so pristinely she'd almost think they'd been put there to wait just for her. Her eyes slide automatically over the harvesting tools scattered around her on the floor to the figure of Apollo seated in the garden. He smiles, the same as ever, and offers no insight. The girl shakes her head. Gingerly. Her head is still basically soup.

She sits there, with her throbbing knees tucked together and her legs splayed uselessly to either side, doing nothing at all. Breathing without smelling. Looking without seeing. Her tail curls softly, and flicks at nothing. It takes a long minute after that, but when she stirs she begins by searching about for the pair of gloves she knows will be somewhere nearby. A pair of pairs, in fact: one for the harvest and one for the act of creation that follows. A proper cook protects herself. A proper cook never risks contamination between the ingredients, except where she is being an artist.

She loses an hour sampling the bounty around her. Somehow after everything else she's still unprepared for how rich, full, and vibrant everything tastes compared to what she remembers. The creams taste thicker, the honeys sweeter. There are bitter herbs and biting mint that makes her ears do silly wiggles until she elbows herself in the stomach to make them stop. The thick, meaty mushrooms growing nearer to the floor take a full minute of chewing just by themselves. Every fruit seems to explode in her mouth when she bites it, and many of them have flavors she can't describe in words, but instead flash images in her head of things like fires crackling inside a cozy bedroom, or an untamed breeze rippling through an endless field of flowers. Sunlight streaming through a bed of infinite, briny water. And things even more impossible than that. Things she has no concept of. Things she can't imagine just seconds after she spits out her palate-cleansing sips of water. So why? Why can she picture it so clearly while she's eating?

The sickest part is that even now, while she's stuck reaching through a tiny, shrinking window into a world too beautiful to fit her in it, with all the feeling of loss and longing choking away her insides, she still can't find it in herself to cry. Not so much as a single dramatic tear to make any of it feel real. Shit. As if that matters now. As if anything matters now. She spots a white apron hanging on a pole, and loses another moment watching for it to grow teeth and eat her. Instead she shrugs and, on pure instinct, grabs it and ties it around her waist and neck. There's no engine grease to worry about getting in the food. And no princess to worry about eating it. But that doesn't make it feel less important. Or less like armor.

The Servitor disappears into the drudgery and the long work of turning food into a meal. She gathers herbs, leaves, flowers, and peppers. She harvests mushrooms and lays them neatly in thick, meaty stacks. Nuts, honeys, those cream-seed-things, and dozens and dozens of fruits. She gathers wheat by the armful and sets it in stone bowls before fishing out a wheel to grind it all down into flour. Her feet step into the motion as she torques the grindwheel with every ounce of her depleted strength. Her hips push power into her back, up her shoulders and through her arms. Her tuneless humming adds to the chorus of sounds flitting about the kitchen, soothing her overworked ears.

Heaps of flour form into wells, and water turns them to doughs. She glances around. Something is missing. She frowns, shrugs, and adds her yeasts before chucking the resulting lumps back into the bowls and leaving them to rise. Plenty of time to figure it out. More flour mixes with a beer she found underneath a counter to make batter, while berry juices thicken in a row of pans into rich, sugary sauces and syrups. She crushes the heat pellets as she needs them with her bare hands. Always a risk of burning the palms that way, but it's faster than using the rod. Cleaner that way, too, less wasted product. These are the risks you learn to take when your life depended on getting everything done before your mistress woke up.

An idle Servitor was a mistreated Servitor. But you could never let them see you doing it.

She mixes nuts and berries into her doughs and shapes them by hand into loaves almost ready for baking. Seeds make the foundation of flavor for her cakes. A hundred different kinds of knife sit unused on the opposite counter behind her, but she carefully dips her claws in water each time before she uses them to carve and cut the next centerpiece. Mushroom steaks grill and fry, sauté and fricassee, and gently bake in juices and oils until they are indistinguishable from the livestock and hunting meats that populate tables in Tellurian homes. The ones that matter, anyway. She plates each kind on beds of greens and carefully drips the berry sauces around and over each to compliment their flavors. Honeys for the breads, now. Creams whipped into great fluffy clots to decorate her cakes. She carves up fat eggplants and dips them in her batters to fry them in hot oils. And even still she shows no signs of stopping.

With every plat she finishes, she carries carefully, reverently across the room to a long table filled with broken or worn down chairs, except for the empty places where somebody must have snatched it while they fled the station. She sets each plate in turn in specific spots around the table, and returns often in her moments of downtime to fidget and fuss and rearrange them. By color, by primary flavor mixture, by course. Nothing ever satisfies. Nothing ever seems right.

She clicks her tongue after her dozenth failed attempt, and freezes with the shock of sudden insight. She trudges through the waves of fruits and vegetation to the pools of water feeding into pipes that run throughout the station. She goes waist-deep into the water without pausing to think about what it would do to her pants or what was left of her boots; all of her clothes were ugly, useless scraps at this point anyway. She holds still, not even breathing for long periods at a time until... there! She snatches at the water with feline precision, and after several attempts comes up with a pair of juicy, shiny-scaled fish. There. Fucking finally.

She drags them back to her counter space, and clears a place to clean, scale, and bone them. All by hand, just like always. She carves four large fillets, marinates two for searing, and coats the other two with batter and fresh breading to be fried. A set of potatoes slice up just as quickly to join them, in thin, even slices. Salt, and salt, and salt. Her nose twitches as they cook. Her lips curl into a wide smile with nothing hiding behind it. For once.

She catches herself and forces the expression off her face immediately. Fucking moron, what are you doing? She squeezes her tail to keep it from swishing behind her, and paces impatiently waiting for her work to finally finish. She re-scales her fish in the potatoes and lays them gently on plates of fresh herbs and a dusting of spices. These, she carries to the table just like all the others, and sets them at four places without chairs. She rearranges the other plates to match, such that a person seeking her fish couldn't think to eat it without starting at the salad and the soup, and moving to a mushroom platter, nor can they touch the breads or cakes and fruit skewers till after the fish is gone.

Everything perfect. Her work would make a feast if everyone she'd ever known was here beside her. She carefully removes and folds her apron before setting it to one side. Her claws dig into her palms as she watches the table intently. Like she's waiting for something to happen. Her legs tremble from the effort. Her arms burn with the cost of her labor. Her head squeezes her sick again, and a dizzy spell obligates her to sit down.

She does it on the floor. And doesn't touch a thing she's made.

Oh no, Dolce. Now you have Redana's attention. She's sitting there looking at you with those mismatched eyes like a cat that's making up its mind whether to lick you or to go full feral Silly Mode. "Okay," she says, still drowning you in attention. "So what did you have in mind? Do you think we can compensate better for the heavily armored ramming configuration or the lightly-armored lightning strike design?" She flips another page and hovers her ink pen over the paper, not so much as blinking. It is Dolce's time to shine. "Because I need to give my presentation on this in, uh, six hours? Yeah. Six hours."

She definitely has not slept in the past eighteen hours, which would make her upcoming presentation a little... difficult. Especially if she doesn't make some sort of decision on this right now. Which means it's all on Dolce's fluffy shoulders to help her come to a conclusion and be able to pass out. But what if he makes the wrong decision now? It's not like he's an expert on upgrading starships, after all. Maybe what Redana needs is confidence to follow her instincts, but what if she gets irrationally upset that he's dodging the question? And what is that third sketch up in the right corner that looks like some sort of... pleasure barge? Not on topic, Dolce, focus!

Alexa gingerly steps over the obvious mine and... Entirely fails to detonate a second, better-hidden mine? That was her icebreaker, Mynx! She was supposed to feel something click underfoot, have just enough time to look up into smirking eyes, and lose Mynx in the blast of gaseous pellets! You're really letting the side down, you know that?

She navigates to the couch, nudging scattered clothing and nibbled-at-but-almost-untouched food out of her path until she has room to sit against the base of the couch.

And now that she's here, back against the mottled, mustard-yellow velour, she doesn't even know what to say.

"She really is not here" is an option. It has its merits. Direct. To the point. Blunt. Can pretend she gives a damn about 'catching the assassin' for the peanut gallery bristling around the door.

Oh, yes, Alexa. Brilliant. She's sad. Throw it in her face, why don't you? I'm sure she'd just love to be reminded of it. Sigh city, population Us.

"Redana talks about you?" Small talk. Great. Remind her of the past, back when they were all just... Well, not friends. Co-workers? Not-not-friends? People who all had Redana as a common link? Wonderful. Highlight that they weren't and, kind of, aren't together.

Geez. Redana makes this friendship thing look so easy.

She examines the merits of "yes, and"-ing Mr. Sergistan. Engages at the level Mynx is currently at? Allows her to slip in a joke about crew manifests, stowaways, and overzealous potential crewmates who, can you believe, think you're an assassin, I mean, how silly is that?

She sighs, lets her head flop back, and joins Mynx in staring at the ceiling.

Receives an answering, heavier sigh.

Yep. That about says it all, doesn't it?

"I still cannot believe how far we have come," she admits.

She didn't think. It was something she was becoming rather good at.

The hands of the divine closed in around her, lifting her up, molding her face, and her body ignited with white lightning. Whatever limbs were still hers expressed their freedom to the fullest. Squirming, twisting, pressing up against the boundaries of Olympus, straining for the tiniest gap to reach the floor again and get away, get away, get away!

The deepest sting of all was that she would only be free at Zeus’ pleasure. And whether a heap on the deck or a heap in Zeus’ arms, the end was the same; a panting, trembling lioness, heart racing out of her. “You don’t have to intervene.” The words spilled out, choked and mangled. “Because it’s going to be me. It’s always going to be me, no matter what I do or how far I run or how high the price. Sooner or later it’s. Always. Me!”

******************************************

Oh no.

It was a test.

Were you really paying attention, Dolce? Actually, honestly, taking in what she was telling you? Or were you shirking your duties, and letting your mind wander like some loafing delinquent? Come now, speak; silence only serves as a testament to inadequacy. If you cannot help her, perhaps she will have you replaced with someone more suitable to the job; a wall, a child’s toy, or better yet, an empty room. Or maybe no one will be able to help her. The presentation will fail, the ship will never be repaired, and when the history books look back on this doomed voyage, they will all agree that things might have turned out differently had they actually brought proper help on board.

Think hard, Dolce. And be quick about it.

“Ah. Well.” It was a miracle he could still swallow his tea with her presence squeezing him from all sides. “To, start with, what are the advantages of our crew and armaments? What may be leveraged?” Yes, yes! Focus her mind on the problem at hand. This was, after all, the princess’ problem to solve. A little gentle nudging, and her own brilliance would sort out the rest, no?

Vasilia!

"Oh, is that what's bothering you?" said Zeus. "Why didn't you just say so? Hestia? Hestia? Where are you, girl?"

And there she was, slouching into the room. Her knee-length hoodie had bear ears, her mug of hot chocolate was held in both hands up to her lips, and her slippers were bright white unicorns. What hair fuzzed out from amidst the hood was black and tangled - everything about her was soft and cuddly.

"Nyah?" said Hestia, rubbing her eyes.

"Vasilia here wants to check out," said Zeus. "Humble life for her, building olives or farming automobiles or whatever it is that you do."

"Sure," said Hestia with a yawn. "Hi. Hestia. Goddess of domesticity here. Don't think we've met. I don't know if you actually want to hang out or if my little sister is just making a point. In case it's not clear, destiny isn't real, the call can be refused, and you can give up any time. And not a moment too soon if you ask me," she said. "I mean, you almost died. Holy shit! I'm exhausted just thinking about it."

"Well, it's been fun," said Zeus, ruffling your hair and setting you down. "Off you pop!"

Alexa!

"Doesn't that scare you?" said Mynx. "How does that not scare you? Bella... she's the only one responding rationally to all this, right? This all happened because we fucked up."

Bella!

Apollo picks chopsticks out of his sleeve with a swish and picks a piece of mushroom from your plate. He takes a bite and his closed eyes crinkle in delight. He picks a potato next and bites into it and joy of taste is the whole of his being. He wipes the corners of his mouth with a napkin and then starts to shake with a quiet laughter, rippling out from his belly and up to his eyes causing mirthful tears to roll.

It's difficult to project malice on the smiling god - every bite stuns him into silence, and then joy overflows within him until it can only come out in that soft, wheezing laughter. It maintains the gentleness of an aesthetic used to long silences incongruously paired with the delight of a child to whom all things are new and unbelievable.

The solar god samples everything widely, chopsticks click-clacking, marveling in every new taste. After a while he dries his eyes and blows his nose and hands you a pair of simple black chopsticks engraved with gold. One has the character for STILLNESS and the other MOTION. Still gently trembling with mirth, Apollo gestures for you to eat too.

It's amazing how you never really notice the ceiling, right? Walls and floors and furniture get so much more credit in daily life. Has this section of the Plousios always had vines running along and around the beams? She stares up at the flowers, picks out blossoms, admires the way the bioluminescence shifts and coruscates, painting the ceiling in soft pastels.

What even can she say?

"At least you had a chance to fuck up?" Bitter. Biting. Not really helpful. Takes the question and shoves it back in her face. We didn't fuck up! Bella got hoodwinked and locked in a closet! I was stolen, kidnapped, shanghai'd into piloting a ship! What's your excuse, Mynx? What were you doing while Redana escaped? What was I supposed to do, cosh her in the head, fight off the other two, and singlehandedly fly a ship back through the depths of space?

Although... Well, that might have been true, back when they started. There genuinely probably wasn't something she could have done then. But.. Back in the eater of worlds? Backed up by Bella, Galnius? Redana gagged, no ability to command her? She could have turned this around, then. She chose not to.

Why?

She could have gone home. Gone back to her niche. Forgotten about the worlds she'd seen. Could have plead her case to Nero.

Why didn't she go when she had the chance?

"I am." she admits. "Terrified, I mean. I keep thinking that this has to be a fluke. That we cannot keep getting away with it. That when we come back--are brought back by force--Nero will chip me up for a gravel garden, Vasilia and Dolce will be forcibly split up, and Redana will never see daylight again."

"Yes," Redana says, distantly, staring a hole through a countertop. "Yes, that's a good idea. I know that. All the information's there, Redana," she adds, reciting by rote. "All you need to do is take it apart, evaluate each piece of the whole, and for Athena's sake, apply yourself. So. There's the Alcedi, and they're good... sailors. So they can sail the ship good. And then there's the hoplites, and they can handle the security on board the ship, as long as they're only supposed to be in one place, so maybe if we have, like, an obvious way in, we can just have them wait there for boarders? And we have the Priests of Hermes, who keep looking at me and asking me what the ordained configuration is, because I'm supposed to know, because I did the same sem-- I did two semesters of naval command in case of Outside Context Problems causing an actual honest-to-Olympus war out here, and sometimes it's the really strong ships that can remain powerful and strong and unbroken that hold together an engagement, and sometimes it's the fast ships that can evade SP and carve apart leviathans bite by bite that turn the tide, and all this is useless anyway because I'm not trying to prove why Decadion's[1] ridiculous 'jousting lance' strategy is no longer viable in the current engagement environment I'm trying to make sure you don't all die in space because I wanted society to be better[3]!"

Is Redana shouting? Redana's shouting. At herself. Dolce's faded into the background; there's just her and the specters of tutors in the shadow of Athena. The white of her eye overlarge, she takes the work of hours, her sketch of the heavily-armored Plousios, and she crumples it into a torn mess in one hand, because what good is it, anyway?

What good is she, anyway?

And there's no Bella here to put her hand on Dany's hand and give her a gentle purr. How pathetic is she, missing a crutch like that? You fell for it, honey, and here you are aching for an actress's affection! An actress who tried to hurt you! Who never... who never...

She unclenches her fingers and splays them across the crumpled, torn page. "...I'm not your god," she mutters, once again not to Dolce. "I'm just a girl who's not smart enough for this."

***

[1]: Opinions vary as to whether this admiral was a subversive genius, a lunatic who fundamentally didn't understand the subtleties of space combat, or simply had the misfortune of having his treatises survive to a different age of the universe. Regardless, "you should never be close enough to see your opponent until the battle is decided" and "it is not the wind even when it is the wind" are both hotly-contested koans from his work[2].

[2]: "I don't have to win, I just have to make you lose," on the other hand, is largely considered to be his last transmission, added posthumously to the Book of the Drake.

[3]: And yet she uses her society's spaceships. Curious.

The chopsticks feel strange in her hand. Smooth and frictionless and so light she can hardly even feel them, and yet she can hold and manipulate them as if they were an extension of her fingers. She rolls them across her palm and fights with the urge to curl her fist around them to learn if they'd break before she did.

The sense of danger crawling down her spine is overwhelming. Every muscle in her back tenses until a light tap would shatter her into a dozen pieces. She looks at the food. The floor. Never the god. This is a trap. Something like this is always a trap. Her throat squeezes saliva and a comment down her clenched esophagus with the same sort of pain she'd expect if she swallowed splinters.

The question is whether or not it's worse for her to take the bait, or to run away. And why does it make her so afraid, when just yesterday (wasn't it?) she was completely sure of what she wanted? Her back itches in the shape of a beautiful rose, and she hisses away the rising image of Ivory Smile from the edges of her brain. Not that. Not that. All she wanted was--

"Ohmigosh Bella, you've gotta try this!"

The delighted face of Redana (Age 11) poked over the top of the biggest stack of ultra-fluffy "black cat" style pancakes the planet of Tellus had ever seen, or indeed would ever see again. Her eyes glittered like the prettiest of jewels and her teeth dazzled as she bared absolutely every last one of them in a display of pure joy. The kind of special, somehow purer joy that humans only got from the true marvels of the universe, like surprise breakfast in bed. Her floppy orange pajama sleeves waved across her face to rub a little extra sleepiness away, which turned the bed into a place of pure chaos. Her nighttime braid flopped across her neck and popped loose from its band, untwining with rebellious intent and sending cascades of golden hair every which way. Covers shifted atop a pair of wiggling legs. And the tray of delicious breakfast food with its accompanying pomegranate juice rocked dangerously back and forth.

Bella (Age 12) pounced in a panic to grab the tray and keep it from ruining the whole morning. She regretted the decision almost before she finished making it. Her scrawny little arms clenched wire-taut as her claws scratched the surface of the tray all over with the effort of saving the morning. She knew as easily as she breathed she'd have to take Redana's fork later and scratch everything up more and pray, or there'd be terrible beatings in her afternoon. Stupid, Bella.

Much worse than that was the opportunity to review her own handiwork up close. She'd been too nervous as she cooked and carried it to really pay attention, but now... she blushed and tried her best to look everywhere but the food. This was the dumbest idea she'd ever had, what was she thinking?! Stupid Bella, stupid stupid stupid! There's no way Redana would believe these amateurish kitty face designs were the work of the Imperial Chef! What idiot would? And if Dany figured out that it was her, it was over. She'd know what Bella's cooking tasted like, and then it was just a short hop and a skip away from realizing that they all tasted like this. The lie would be over. Once she found out Bella did all of the cooking she'd dig deeper. She'd learn who did her laundry. She'd learn who did the mousing. She'd learn her special pet and personal servant was doing stuff for the castle almost every second her back was turned, and then they wouldn't be friends anymore. Never let them see you work, dummy!

"Here you go, give it a shot!"

"Re-- Your Highness, I don't think that's such a--"

She had to stop so she could clamp her mouth shut in time to avoid a forkfull of pancake. Bella blushed and tensed with a nervousness that was only a little bit because her favorite fingers were so close to her face. The first rule of the kitchen was obvious: taste everything, so you knew before you cooked it what you were making. But the second rule was even more important than that: never let them see you try the food. Her ears pressed flat against her skull and she squirmed every which way she could, but Redana pressed the mouthful mercilessly in every path she tried to escape towards. This was a trap. Something like this was always a trap. The Master always baited her with kindness before he mmrfghlbrrble!

"There, see? Amazing, right? The best, right? I dunno how he did it, but the chef really outdid himself this morning!"

Bella's tail curled without her asking it to. She... she'd tasted everything, she knew what she'd been making, but even still she never thought that all together it would be so sweet! The sugary fluff of the pancake met the sugary tartness of the blackberry jam on top and her sharp little teeth cut through the delight with a ravenous hunger that gave the impression she thought she'd never see food again. Bella's golden eyes went wide, and then wider than that. Oh no. Her head darted first one way and then the other, looking for the trap to swing shut. For the Box to swallow her and carry her off to Hades like the bad girl she knew she'd been. Her heart pounded terror in her chest and her fingers squeezed tight enough to crack porcelain. She was in so much trouble.

She did the only thing she could think to do in her panic, and forced herself to cough. She gagged and sputtered and shook her head with shocking violence to cover her paranoid searches. And then she wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue.

"Bl-blegh! You're so weird Dany, how can you eat this kind of thing?"

"Oh. R-really? I was so sure this time. Well... darn it Bella, I'm sorry! I swear, I really thought you were gonna love it! And I thought maybe..."

Bella shook her head again, this time to quell her princess. The look on Dany's face was so fraught, so kind, and so genuine that it killed Bella inside to keep going. But she had to do it. She had to keep it all the same. So that she could stay.

"No, it's, it's all right Dany. I mean Your Highness! Thanks for, no. I appreciate the gesture, Milady." her smile was plastic and ugly, but she kept it on her face anyway and prayed, "But did you forget? I'm not a person, like you are! You can't keep giving me people food. I'll get sick!"

Redana's embarrassed laughter cut her almost as deeply as it soothed her. The world's most perfect and beautiful girl pat her head, and Bella purred dutifully.

"Oh right! Gosh Bella, I'm sorry. I always forget you're different. But in my defense you don't exactly make it easy to remember!"

The girl flinches. But it's too late; the chopsticks are already cutting through the fish. The tender meat cuts without resistance, even from a lazy click of the blunted stick. She lifts a bite to her mouth, and closes her eyes as the meat falls to flaky pieces and melts inside her mouth with barely the briefest suggestion of chewing. The sweetness of the flesh bursts across her tongue all the more sharply for the contrast of the salt. If she were younger and less well trained, she might even make the mistake of moaning.

She makes no noise at all. She squeezes a hand shut and focuses on the bite of her claws, and doesn't say a word. She's not stupid enough to try lying to a god. What did she have to do to make him go away? She takes another bite, and another. The mushroom is rich. The soup is creamy. The cake is so sweet, it makes her gag on a memory.

She. What. And her. And her! Zeus!!

“She most certainly does not! I do not! No one is checking out!” Vasilia stamped her foot set herself in a strong and indomitable posture, completely overcoming the indignity of freshly-ruffled hair. Also. She raised a hand in greeting. “And no. We haven’t met. Hello.” Lovely to finally see you, Lady Hestia. Is it Lady? She didn’t strike her as Lady. But she might still be Lady. Gods, what was her title? How in the stars could she forget...nevermind! Informal is fine! She’s fine!!

“I am staying right here, rather than entrusting the fate of this entire voyage to someone who only just recently experienced a third dimension in its entirety. Not a one of the Alced are anywhere near ready to command a starship yet.” Which you know to be true, you great thundering lummox, so come back here and just try to tell her she’s wrong, because you can’t, and she’s nowhere remotely close to finished with you, Zeus! Zeus!

...Zeus?

************************************

Centuries ago, mankind strove to answer the question: What made the ideal servant?

Of the thousand thousand invocations of the answer, few remain coherent today, and only one could be heard within the Plousious’ kitchen: Docile. Agreeable. Lacking in natural defenses and combat capabilities. Pleasing to the eye, pleasing to the soul. But the true masterstroke was this; that whether useful or useless, the ideal servant provides for their master simply by their continued existence.

The inspiring creatures of the distant past knew this secret already, the ability to transmute life into profit, albeit in a much more intensive and tedious fashion. Shearing, cleaning, carding, spinning, weaving, and more! Every step requiring complicated machinery. Complicated machinery requiring trained help. Wouldn’t it be so much faster if the wool were a finished product from the beginning? Soft, warm, luxurious, ready to become product in a matter of minutes?

So the sheep of the Manor earned their keep, and the Family wanted for nothing, having a nigh-infinite supply of the galaxy’s softest wool to trade for anything they did not bother to fabricate themselves. It is said that the tributes - when they remembered to send them - were primarily composed of bolts upon bolts of the precious material. Cared for properly, in the right hands, some of that wool may have survived to this day, in the blankets and pillows of the Tellus elite.

Redana!

You are alone, surrounded by ghosts, gods, and guilt, when a touch of home brushes the back of your hand. Far away, a desperate cook does the only thing left he can think to do, and bonks his wooly head against you. Isn’t it soft? Isn’t it warm? Would you like to run your fingers through the curls? Would that ease your mind? Please, Princess. Please, Hera. At least let his presence be of use. Let him be of some help. Please.

But in the dark, across the distance between heart and body, do you expect the touch of a cook?

Or an actress?

Alexa!

"That's the good ending!" said Mynx. "Did you not notice that the Master of Assassins has gone fucking rogue!? That she wants us all as compost for her bonsai garden!? Does that not strike you as an extremely realistic possibility and exactly the sort of thing Bella is worried about!? Did you not at any point think to pull Redana aside and say, hey, listen, we tried to keep all this shit away from you so you could have a happy childhood, but now that we're here maybe it's time to tell you about how fucking dangerous everything is!?"

Vasilia!

All that is left of the Thunderer is the smell of ozone.

Hestia took a moment to blow on her cocoa to politely give Zeus a moment to return if she desired. She did not. Then with a long sigh she set her cup down on one of the bridge's map desks and pulled out a notebook.

"Okay, so, listen," said Hestia. "This may not be what you want to hear, but right now you need a plan. We'll start by taking an inventory - what assets do you have that can be sold or traded for coin? The pistols, definitely, and the uniform maybe... Do you have any useful skills or business connections that could get you employment? I know you're going to want to set your aim at civilian merchant captain but let's be real - with your history as a pirate there is zero chance of that happening. And after the recent run-in with Demeter I don't think farming is on the table either."

Bella!

Whatever the secret to making Apollo go away, eating a delicious meal didn't seem to be it. Now he follows you wherever you go in the ship sitting in a meditative posture atop a golden cloud, shining radiance lighting your way.

It's deeply unsettling. Having someone important follow you at a respectful distance was the opposite of how the world was supposed to work. Nor too are you able to count on the basic escape of the god getting bored. It's not clear he's capable of it.

You are, though.

There's no one here. No one to protect. Nothing to hunt. No one to terrify or be terrified by. A lifetime of frenzied activity and constant stress is all somehow on hold for the first time ever, and it's the first time you've ever been truly alone with your thoughts. Unspeakable emotions boil inside your mind, steam from a crack in some deep pressure cooker, too much to possibly confront or deal with or be alone with. You need to find something to occupy your mind or else it'll all come rushing out.

The thoughts buzz inside her head heavier and more sickening than any of the wine she's ever had. They float there in her forehead, shapeless, indistinct, and obnoxiously loud. Sometimes they jab at the side of her head, or crush into the back of it instead, so that she feels the urge to slice her hair off to relieve the weight or else feel like her neck is going to shatter under all the pressure.

Pressure. That's the word to describe it, more than thoughts. Except she knows that isn't true. Some of her migraines are memories that churn inside of her until they start to make her nauseous, while others are ideas she simply can't chase to their inevitable ending points. She knows better than to try and grab hold of them, but ignoring them only makes them buzz more insistently. The pressure builds, and she does not have the talent or the background to simply ignore it.

The first solution that occurs to her is exercise. Her body is brimming with annoying and excessive energy, after all. Burn it off, wear down again, sleep, and perhaps if she's lucky slip back into her malaise and die properly this time. Her jaw clenches at the thought, but she pushes past it. Even if she couldn't sink beneath the waves again, she would at least shed the ugly sense of shame that had pulled on her ankles like weights at the utter weakness and gracelessness with which she'd dragged herself this far. So hour by hour and then day by day, she dedicates herself to renewing her body. She lifts crates of abandoned goods and deposits them without pattern elsewhere. She tries crunches and leg lifts and pushups, and when her frustration builds to a peak she finds one of the Yakanov's infinite corners and she destroys everything that looks even remotely valuable until she can't breathe anymore.

Later, she tries simply walking. And when that doesn't work, she runs. The more she does it, the better she gets. Some of the slinky ease she was so used to moving with seems gone forever, but she finds ample power in her stride she didn't have before to replace it with. She sweats, and never bothers with the time it would take to wash herself clean. Her muscles burn, and where she does not bother to stretch or rest them they become nothing but pits of ache and exhaustion. But they also regain their definition, and a little more besides; taking her soft and perfect, touchable body and turning it into a thing fitted snugly over plates of iron.

These are not good changes, and this is not a good ache. They do nothing to pause the buzzing in her head. They do little and less to ease the sense of total disgust she feels whenever she catches her reflection in a glossy enough surface as she passes. And worse than any of that, more she runs the more the memories take shape. Memories of the young woman she watched and helped train, and when she forcefully swats those aside, memories of the time beyond her when she had to take her place. They grow larger in her mind, splinters swelling until they ooze with infection. She has never felt uglier. What is the point of running when there's nothing to run from to?

She stops.

She is vaguely aware of the state of her hygiene. It's such a stupid thing to be bothered by, with no way out of where she is and no company to keep but this single smiling god who never looks like he's even capable of giving a shit what she looks or smells like. But it's a thought that doesn't feed the buzzing, so she clings to it like a precious treasure. Her treasured blue-black hair is matted, clumped, greasy, and more split ends than actual hair. The single braid she'd tied before her life exploded (for luck. now there's a fucking joke...) has turned into a tangled vine that tugs painfully on her whenever anything gets to close to it. Her face is healed of scars, but the blood she'd smeared across it before the wounds had stitched shut is caked across her face in the form of stains and the crusts of scabs that haven't peeled away. Her Auspex shines as brightly as ever, but that only highlights the contrast of her natural eye and the hideous mark she's allowed to build up underneath it with her miserable sleeping patterns.

And her clothes... well. they're worthless, aren't they? Frayed. Sweaty. Torn. Shredded. Threadbare. What had been a beautiful and unique expression of her power was now nothing more than a moldy extra skin and a way to trap extra dirt on her. Ugly, disgusting creature. No wonder nobody loves you. Her stride is fluid and perfect as she makes the long walk from The Grave to the showers. The pump is sluggish after sitting still and unused for so long, but it doesn't matter. She uses the time before she hears water start to splash across the stall to peel away her ruined outfit. It falls apart with barely a whisper from her pinky claw; she knows as soon as it sloughs off of her that it will never move from this spot on the floor again.

The cold water stings everywhere it strikes her skin, but she forces herself not to flinch away from it. It's even worse when she steps far enough forward to wet her hair, and the impossible tangles and mats start tugging against her scalp. She tries to work her fingers through the locks, but whatever magic in her fingers that kept a certain messy princess presentable for every ball and social function isn't up to the task her. Her finger catches against her braid and it pulls a hiss out of her throat. She snarls and slams her fist against the wall, cracking the tile. Fine, then. Fine. She takes claws to it instead. Snip, snip, snip, they run unevenly through the bits that hurt and pull and won't come unstuck whether it's for dirt or knots, and in the end she's left with a crisscross of mismatching styles. Her bangs are gone, the left side of her hair's been cut short against her skin but the right smooths out on its own so she leaves it as it was. Uneven. Unseemly. But at least she can clean it now. She shuts her eyes and lets the water run over her. She scrubs away grime. She scrubs away blood. She scrubs away shame. Soaking wet as it is, her fur returns to the lustrous shine that befits a girl of her high breeding.

All she has to wear now is the towel she's drying herself off on. It's stupid how much that bothers her, but that hasn't exactly been stopping her, lately. There's nobody here. Nobody to care. And even if there was, so what? Let them stare! Let them feast on her beauty and beg her to... she shoots another nervous glance at Apollo, whose eyes are as closed as they had been the last twelve times she'd looked. Heat rises to her cheeks, and she snarls as she pulls the towel tighter.

Her hair and tail leave a trail of water on the ground as she glides through the station. Now her steps turn delicate and quiet: instincts all turned on avoiding attention and keeping her bare feet from stepping on anything that might hurt her. No more pain, she decides for the hundredth time before discarding the thought again. All the buzzing in her head is quiet right now in the face of the problem occupying her. There are thousands of quarters aboard the Yakanov, and in the face of the evacuation there's no way they could have taken anything with them. A hundred new outfits lie waiting for her if she is but willing to explore the depths of a small moon to find them. She turns her feet toward more familiar ground, instead. Through the hall where she'd given herself over to dance and swam through a river of something beyond beauty and terror both. Over the cracked ruins of the weapons and armor she'd destroyed to make it that far, through the winding hallways that echo with a satisfying click when she taps her toe claws on the floor. The Lanterns would be miserable here. It's a good thing that she'd... nnnngh. Her fingers brush across her hacked and ruined hair to quell the thought before it can join the chorus.

And then after hours and hours that seem longer and lonelier tracing backwards than she remembers them going through the first time she reaches the hangar where she'd thrown her life away. Or discarded the first pieces of it, at any rate. And sure enough, there is Apollo, shining and smiling and giving her light to work by. And sure enough, those useless fucking idiots didn't manage to pack a tenth of the gifts that had been laid out here for her pleasure. And nobody bothered to come check when they left. Her fingers trace the edge of the cold metal braces holding the burning star engine that was supposed to be the crowning jewel of the collection. Morons. The fuck was she ever going to need a thing like that for?

She digs through chests, instead. Ingots of electrum, platinum, and gold clunk against the floor as she tosses them about. And then the bolts of fabric, the real prize. Wool and silk, cotton and synthweaves, reams and reams and reams of them in all manner of colors and patterns. She sniffs at a few, runs her fingers across others, and lets her Auspex run the calculations through her senses. She settles on a soft, comfortable wool, dyed red and black and painted every which way with patterns of coins and diamonds in neat, interlocking rows. A little more digging finds her a knife and several pairs of scissors tucked amidst her treasures. Another bolt of black cloth unravels to make her threads. Her eye guides her muscles through the cuts, though she's never made them before in her life. Three discarded patterns pile into a clump behind her before she finally gets it right. Hours pass by in the sewing, and not a thought or feeling squeezes against her head the whole time.

She slides the dress on over her head, and sighs deeply. The fit is tight, enough that it fights against if her she tries to make any sorts of large or exaggerated movements. The knee-length skirt obligates her to sit on a makeshift stool, or with her knees demurely tucked against and her legs curls to the side if she wants to sit on the ground. The fabric stretches across her soft chest and wraps the sharpened muscles in her arms in a dazzling sort of hug. She reaches up and presses her fingers against the weight of the turtleneck, the first sensation of the comforting squeeze against her neck since...

There's a lot more work to do, Girl. A week of failures and an entire chest of ruined silks finally produces a pair of tights for her to put on, which wind up being white by necessity more than design. Four days to make a hat; a soft and floppy red beret that covers the top of her head and hides the worst parts of the transitions between her hair lengths. Like this, she can almost seem like she swept it all to one side by choice. She finds a mirror, and rolls her eyes at the reflection. So much work to do.

It's a time consuming process to carve usable pieces off of her ingots, and an even longer and more exhausting bit of work to take her tongs and her miniature press and shape and squeeze the lumps of metal into small, smooth beads. They glint in Apollo's light in greens and golds and silvers and reds. She sets each one in a bowl as she finishes, separated by color. The god watches her, though if it's with interest or ire or just the passive zen of an observer of the whole universe she's long since lost the ability to tell. She flicks her tail in his direction, and reaches for her tools again.

She's going to need thousands more of these beads for her next project. Mind numbing work. Good. That's the only sort of thing she needs right now.

Bella found her, because of course Bella found her. It was impossible to hide from Bella in a place that her best friend couldn’t sniff out. And that hurt, too.

Not because she wanted Bella not to find her, but because the two of them knew every single hiding place in the Princess’s Estate. There would never be more. All it took was for Bella to go through a process of elimination, one after another. No more mysteries, no more discoveries together, and they were even too big now to get into the air ducts.

So Bella found her there, curled up on the gantry in the garden, head on her knees, shoulder on the hard metal, impossible to see from below. Redana deliberately didn’t look up at her best friend, trying desperately to cling to her hurt instead of feeling like a silly girl with silly dreams.

Then Bella tucked in her skirts, shuffled down next to her, and fit herself into the small space between railing and princess. Her forehead hit the back of Redana’s head and stayed there, warm and unrelenting in its gentle pressure.

And then the purring started. A quiet rumble, like the engines of a starship, farther away than she’d ever see. The purr that made the warmth tingle through her body, the one that always made Bella look down and away, ears twitching.

“Will you always be with me?”

“Yes, my princess.”

“Do you promise? Really promise, Bella?”

“I promise.”

And Redana believed her, and that’s what broke everything.

***

Redana crumples her face against one hand and starts crying, because the softness isn’t right. Because it’s not her Bella, back when she was silly enough to think that Bella cared. Because she’s missing that embarrassed purr that should be there. Because Dolce feels like wool blankets and pillows (for hitting Bella with) and home, home, the home she can’t go back to anymore, the home she gave up everything to get away from, the home where she was safe in gentle illusions as long as she broke herself, over and over, in the arena of logistics and essays and memorization. The home where her prowess meant nothing but medals and trophies on display in an empty hall, and her deficiencies meant everything.

The home where none of her decisions meant anything, given up for a world where they meant everything.

“Fuck,” she says, almost incomprehensibly, as she pushes Dolce away, her other hand sunk into his floof. “Why did I think I was ready for this? Idiot.” That last, at least, is understandable, hissed with an uncharacteristic venom. But it’s clear, too, who she means.

"You know, I used to think that too?"

Hooboy, did she. Redana had doomed them all with her idiotic vision! She'd pitted the four of them against the might and wealth of empire! It was just a matter of time until they got captured, or eaten by monsters, or thrust into the heart of a star. She'd gotten an idea in her head, and was so used to her palace that she hadn't thought how to make it happen or the risks to those around her.

But...

Offerings, carefully made on altars. A listening ear, in midst of crab battle.

"And maybe, setting out, that would have been true. But I feel if you were to give her a chance, she might suprise you. She is not so innocent now as she was."

She's changed. They all have.

Oh, very mature, Zeus. Flee while she has you on the rhetorical ropes, and block off her pursuit with...with...oh gods, how long has she been glaring at thin air? Hestia hadn’t left already, had she? Thank goodness, still talking. Nod, Vasilia, nod thoughtfully, the most thoughtful nodding you’ve ever nodded in your entire life, while you try to remember everything she’s just said while you were definitely listening.

“For the record.” Slowly, yes, speak slowly and deliberately. Every second is precious. “This is just a hypothetical exercise. I’ve no intention of losing or forfeiting my command. But since you asked…” And of course she would consider it fairly, because you asked, because she is a good host, and you should definitely stay, yes? “My personal effects are somewhat limited; if I could return to the Starsong, I have some furnishings that may fetch a worthwhile price. But the return would be, ah.”

“No.”

“Please, at least let me ask the question first.”

“It wouldn’t change my answer.”

“Is there anything I could say that would change it?”

“Again: No.”

“Is it because there’s nothing to be said, or nothing I can say?”

“It’s because the last time you uprooted your life, you took mine along with it, and while the change was a good one, I can’t let you roll the dice for me every time you get antsy.”

“Ah. I...I see.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I just...I can’t. Not again.”

“You’ve nothing to apologize for, Alethea darling. Gods only know how much of me you’ve put up with already. We’ll manage alright on our own, Dolce and I.”

“...awkward. And not likely to produce many recommendations either.” No matter how she rested her hands, she never quite grew unaware of them. Fingers interlaced with fingers. No place for them to lie, and be still. “There may be some individuals here and there that could vouch for me, but only if I wished to stay landlocked for the rest of my days.” Translation: Stuck on a backwater planet that was only barely learning how to spell Civilization. “Apart from starfaring, I’m skilled at stagecraft, speechcraft, and combat, but I don’t think you or I are about the celebrity life.”

She risked a laugh. A gamble, but a well-calculated one. Goddess who went about in fluffy bear hoodies and mugs of hot cocoa were almost certainly easygoing enough to appreciate a little humor.

Almost certainly. The risk was worth the reward.

********************************************

A good servant follows orders.

The moment she pushed away from his wool, she would neither feel nor hear Dolce again.

The Auspex finds him out immediately. It sees the way the air swirls in his absence. The motes of dust, dancing in his wake. He will never be able to vanish around her.

The next sign of his presence was the warm, comforting aroma of a freshly-made bowl of soup.

Is she at all hungry? Does she even want to eat? Can she?

Her teacup would never be empty.

Because she isn’t drinking anything. No matter what blend he brings for her.

She would have blankets to rest on, handkerchiefs to wipe her eyes.

As if she could risk falling asleep. As if she is a child, unable to tend to her own tears.

He would appear whenever called, whenever she needed to talk through a problem.

He will be no help. He had his chances.

Dolce followed his orders. Like a good servant.

And left her worse than he’d found her.

Redana!

Time passes. Regret just burns it all away. If you had a mind to listen to Iskarot's theorizing about the nature of time and the secrets to Birmingham's technology you'd perhaps draw a parallel between that and the weaponized heartbreak at the core of the Yakanov.

And perhaps you do. It's easy to be drawn back into the world of machines by Iskarot as he is now - bright and vibrant and full of life and power. His age-old rival is dead and he is now the master of a contingent of powerful magi and has the allegiance of a full unit of the Coherent. His saffron robes are now fresh and fine and covered in elaborate codes in black and white mismatched checks. The faint whirring of his hidden augmentics is quieted, all his machine aches tended to and upgraded by expert ministrations. The Priesthood has accepted that he is to be the sinister left hand of an Empress and has poured their wealth and knowledge into his hidden form that he might honour their Order through his magnificence. You've never seen him so animated, so energized, such a perfect version of himself before and his mood is contagious.

"The Empire of the Azura," said Iskarot, tapping his new black wooden techno-cane on the beautifully illuminated hand-drawn star map. He is indicating massive expanse of violet stars on the map - bisected by the great tear of Aphrodite's Rift - but now, from your window, you can see that those colours are extremely literal. It's beautiful - the void gleams in strange uniformity, each star haloed with a shining ring of energy.

"The mechanism by which they energize these stars is still poorly understood," said Iskarot with his voice full of passion - this is a project that captures his imagination. "My reading suggests a certain hypercomplex hydrogen based life form that contaminates the entire star like a diamond virus - but that's still speculation. It could also be some sort of previously unrecognized boon of Zeus or Apollo. Whatever it is, it is evidently and enticingly replicable given the lengths the Shah has gone through to keep it secret from us."

The Azura. So many of your lessons were about them; the Eternal Rivals, the only surviving peer to Nero's Empire. Her first act of Empire, even before the founding of Tellus, was to engage them in battle at the head of the Armada at the Battle of Watersweld Binary. It was a legendary test of might and tactics, and was what had secured Nero's fragile grip on the Imperial Throne - to take an Empire devastated by civil war, an Armada of extremely fragile loyalty, and use it to defeat the Empire's only peer power in spectacularly decisive fashion - it was perhaps one of the greatest acts of strategy and statecraft in history.

Of course, Iskarot is only tenuously interested in the history, politics or grand strategy that formed the backbone of your education. He's just here to talk about their technology.

"But that, of course, sets the tone for all matters with the Azura," said Iskarot. "Their technology is different from ours. You will see wonders there, and their tricorns," you've gathered that's some sort of Hermetic slur for their Azura opposite numbers, "will not for a second allow you to forget that in many ways they are superior to us. Oh, yes they are! Their greatest trick, and one they make ostentatious and excessive use of, is the technique of the Gravity Railing."

He gestures at a diagram of what you presume to be an Azura spacecraft though it looks nothing like what you're used to. Rather than a sharp and deadly knife, perfect for cutting through the void at infinite speeds, it's a massive and crude meteor. Around the centre band is a carved ring a repeating pattern of >>>>>. Iskarot then gestures at another diagram, this time of a shield - again with that >>>>> pattern all around the edge.

"Gravity Railings are evidently trivial for the Azura to produce and accordingly they place them on everything. Perhaps due to astrological correspondence they work best on spherical objects, partially on flat cylinders, and increasingly less well on anything that strays from those shapes - though size is evidently not a factor. An object with a Gravity Railing on it can be manipulated spatially with exquisite perfection. They are, simply put, masters at levitation. They can make matter move to wherever they want it to be seemingly with a gesture. Azura starships are astonishingly maneuverable, able to turn on a dime, and their warriors use these devices to mimic flight - often powered by a device worn as a belt - or will strike out with sling balls that can change course mid-flight and strike again and again as the distant warrior directs. The technology is the centre of their art, warfare, architecture, society and culture and its ubiquity will make you feel at first as though you are in a land of fantasy. Do not be fooled!"

He's in full flow now. Iskarot Has Opinions About Technology. "The great limitation of Gravity Railings is that they're enormously dependent on local gravitic conditions. The higher the gravity of the planet, the closer to the star, the stronger the Azura technology will be - and in the vicinity of a massive stellar object like a black hole they're unstoppable. And while Gravity Rails can support each other they're in just as much danger of interfering with each other. A cliche in Azura movies is whenever there's a duel in the throne room the whole castle collapses because the duelists' power disrupt the supports to all that fancy levitating architecture and that is rooted in truth. The Azura love their displays of power and complexity but frequently the ability to manage that complexity escapes their mortal minds. They will show you wonders when their phalanxes drill in the yard, but when it comes to battle nine in ten of those soldiers will retreat so that their real champions will have room to actually swing their blades."

He is not gesturing at it directly, but behind him there is a hand-drawn illustration of an Azura - tricorn? The hat has three points, but the robes otherwise say 'grand vizier'. She's smiling but her eyes are cold and wicked and the caption reads DON'T BELIEVE HER LIES.

While perhaps the talk of technology interests you, you have the sense that Iskarot is getting really close to 'ranting against a strawman of my rival techno-religion' and if you want actual information you'll need to pull him up.

Alexa!

You have changed. You're beyond sentry duty. You're beyond engaging in the ritualistic war for dominance with the Alcedi (a bloodless affair - everything is ritual and ceremonial, contests of skill and strength to win the favour of Athena). But where does that leave you?

Athena has turned her face from you. Here and there you glimpse her in the distance directing the Alcedi but she vanishes when you approach. You are bereft from skill, from strategy, from advice. The most basic of crafts end in disaster, the simplest of plans drift and go awry. You've offended Athena, perhaps beyond recovery, but Ares is sealed within her stomach and he can't help either. You have never felt so actively useless. Tell us of this time, after your meeting with Mynx.

Vasilia!

Hestia looked at you with bleary eyes, and the moment it took her brain to process the words was enough to rob them of their humour. She then smiles belatedly in a 'nice try, not your fault it didn't work' kind of way.

"... okay, so more than any awkwardness, the plan to contact the Starsong involves obtaining a void-capable ship, crossing multiple uncharted and hostile systems or heading back directly towards the entire Grand Armada which is currently in hot pursuit. The backup plan is to make a living by performing." She put on a serious face, so serious that she had to finish her cocoa first and set the cup down to let you know that she was serious. "Listen, Vasilia. These kind of hairbrained seat-of-your-pants style antics have been working for your whole life because Zeus liked them. But you're on your own now so we've got to start thinking more seriously. Like, do you know how to weave? How to sequence? How to sell space insurance? What did you do to make a living before all of these adventures?"

Dolce!

Your long, dark fugue is interrupted when you hear a name from Galnius' Imperial Guard. Mynx. Apparently they've captured her and are holding her for the princess. It's useful being invisible, sometimes - you hear all kinds of things like this.

You do owe her your life, though - and if that's not a cause to shake yourself a little and put the effort into making some kind of really special dish as a thank you, then what is? Do you investigate first or do you trust your chef's intuition to tell you what to cook?

Bella!

Any other god would have interrupted at some point. To make commentary, give advice, rise in your mind as thoughts and inspiration. Apollo simply is. His silence and presence fades into the background like the sun itself. Oh, the sun can be spectacular sometime - or so you've heard - but most of the time it's invisible. As invisible as the evercandles that light the halls. Blinding at first, pressuring at first, but eventually you adjust and come to take them for granted. And so you gradually adjust to the fact that every moment somewhere in your presence is a smiling god whose warmth and good humour is too perpetual to be insincere. It rises here and there but it always settles back into that deep eternal contentment. Athena would have had harsh words for your weaving but Apollo just smiles wider and gives you a thumbs up when you are done.

That thumbs up bothers you for a while. What did it mean? It couldn't be the craftsmanship. He'd been so - well, silent and still wasn't correct. He shifted around a fair amount. Sometimes he stood up, stepped down from his cloud, and went for a walk. Sometimes he did tai chi or pushups or practiced archery. He made noise when he did but it too had faded into the periphery of consciousness. In time the question of the thumbs up does too, drifting away to the edge of your consciousness, like a distant moon beginning a new orbit.

It felt stupid to keep looking out the window like she kept doing, but Bella couldn't help herself. If she strained her eyes from where she was she swore she could almost make out the edges of the palace grounds where safety ended and the death the Master always promised her waited beyond. Where she'd be going any minute now, just as soon as somebody noticed what she did.

She didn't mean it. All she wanted was to give Redana her birthday present.

She'd just... been running to fast, is all. Everything had taken so long to finish and she knew she had to deliver her gift before Redana's training session that afternoon, because after that there'd be no time. Dany would need a bath, and then she'd have to have her hair done and get helped into her new dress and then there'd be the party, during which she'd have no time for Bella on account of all the important guests and after which she'd have no time for anything on account of all the complaining she'd spend the rest of the night doing before finally falling asleep.

And it was so important that she get the timing right. There was so much to say. So much she needed to confess. She'd been working on everything for months, running the conversation over and over and over in her head while she worked on her chores until it seemed almost boring. Stealing the paints she needed bit by bit, in such small quantities that nobody would miss them, but enough that she could experiment and get the colors right. It's not like she had any talent or training in painting, that's not what anybody turned to her breed for, and in any case real Art was something only humans knew how to do. But something as simple as the night sky? Even a screwup like Bella could get that right, with enough time and tries. And she had. And she had.

But it didn't matter anymore. She'd forgotten all the words. She'd crushed her painting (and looking at what was left of the torn canvas, she can't even figure out why she'd thought it was pretty enough to give to Redana in the first place). She had nothing left, now. Nothing. All because she'd been running too fast, and slipped going around a corner. And on top of that she'd gone and knocked over a statue and spilled its ceremonial armor everywhere, and now she had minutes (if she was lucky) to figure out how everything fit back together or she was doomed!

So this goes, and then this over, no no no! What does she, does this go... come on, come ON, you stupid display! This is her life here, don't you understand? This is

"Bella?"

"Gyaaaa!"

Bella toppled over onto the ground with a fresh clatter of metal on marble, and looked up at the concerned face of Redana while desperately trying to smooth out her comically bushed up tail. She had no idea if she was trying to squeak or snarl, or by some daring new combination of the two of them vibrate through the floor and disappear forever.

"Are you, uh, ok?" the princess asked through a sweetly concerned smile

"I'm fine! Er, th-that is, I am fine, Milady. Perfectly fine. I was simply... cleaning. While I had some spare time."

"Haha, from here it kinda looks like you wound up doing the opposite!"

"W-well you startled me!" Bella squeaked and blushed with equal fury.

"Haha, I'm sure!" Redana paused just long enough to make the awkwardness a physical thing before adding, "You want any help?"

"N-no, I couldn't possibly!"

Bella arms shook worse than ever. The breastplate rattled noisily against her claws, which made it feel like she'd taken up playing the cymbals more than any kind of cleaning. It was impossible, just impossible, to get everything back together. But she had to try. If she could just get this...

"Oh hey, what's that?"

"Nothing!"

Bella's blood ran cold. She turned her head so slowly she barely seemed to move. Her mouth felt painfully dry. Please, if any of you gods had ever loved her, please don't let Dany have found it. But of course she had. That was such a stupid thing to pray for. Which god had ever loved her? Which god had ever cared enough to keep the bad things from happening to her? She turned, and saw Redana reaching for her ruined painting.

"It's nothing!" she repeated, more frantic than before.

"I like the colors. Here, just lemme--"

"I said you CAN'T!"

And before she knew what she was doing, before she could stop herself, Bella pounced. All her secret training as a bodyguard had left her motions fluid and her form perfect. Of course they had. The trainers would have killed her if she'd been anything less. And now they'd kill her anyway, for being dumb enough to turn her talents on Imperial royalty. Bella crashed into Redana hard enough to knock over four other displays, and pinned her to the ground. Her eyes were wild, desperate, and filled with hurt as she snatched the painting away.

"Idiot! Dummy!" she sniffled, "What part of 'nothing' is so hard to understand?"

"Bella, please..."

She took the painting, and she ran. That voice meant it was time to run away forever. As she ran, she tore her claws through the crushed and ruined canvas until even a magic eyeball wouldn't be enough to figure out what it was originally supposed to be. The tears stung her eyes, and her sandals pounded every step across the hard floor straight through her legs and all the way up her spine. She ran, in spite of how hard it was to see, in spite of how much it hurt, and in spite of the voice calling for her to stop. She ran, because to run was to live, and anything else was death. She ran.

But being taller, older, and having thirty seconds' head start didn't make her a match for Redana. Bella hissed and squirmed, but she couldn't keep herself from getting pinned to a wall before she'd even made it out of the hallway. Like an idiot, she looked into her best friend's eyes. Why was it so much worse not to see anger there?

"Pl-please don't..."

"Bella, what's going on?"

"You're gonna throw me away! I broke it! I ruined, I! I'm sorry! I don't wanna go back! I don't wanna die! Please Mistress, please! I'll never do it again, so please! Please!"

Bella's voice was high and strained to the point where it was almost impossible to make out her desperate begging. She flailed and squirmed and pounded her fists against her princess' shoulders to get away from her, but kept her claws so carefully tucked away. And maybe that's what really saved her. She'd never know, even years later, what did it.

Why did Dany embrace her like she did?

"Hey. Hey, Bella... Come on. You're not in trouble."

"I'm... not?" she sniffled, and tried to pull away some more.

"You're not." Redana's voice was firm and even.

"But I'm a bad girl!"

"Oh please, you could never be a bad girl. What was all of this about?"

"I..." Bella choked on her words. Her face flushed uncomfortably from being this close, "That painting was..."

"Uhuh?"

"Fr-from an admirer. It came and it was, uh, I mean someone asked me to deliver it to you. B-but I thought it was suspicious so I..."

"...Uhuh?" said Redana with her voice full of confusion about how a painting might be dangerous.

"I don't know! I just, I thought it was... poison or something! And I wanted to check it before giving it to you, but then you picked it up and I panicked and then!"

"Oh Bella, you silly kitten. Nothing bad's ever gonna happen here, ok? Nothing's gonna happen here at all. Not with Mom watching everything like a pair of hawks all the time. Believe me. You've got nothing to worry about."

"But I! I could have hurt you!"

"Psh, you? Please, Bella, you couldn't hurt a butterfly even if I ordered you to. How're you gonna hurt me?"

Bella hiccoughed, and watched Redana's face carefully. There was no lie in that smile. There never was. As far as she was concerned, there never could be. But she always checked anyway, just in case.

"You don't think I'm a bad girl?" she asked, patting around for something proper to blow her nose on.

Redana put her hand on Bella's head, and stroked her hair just behind her ears until the sniffling turned into shaky purrs.

"I don't," she said, "And I never will."

Bella shook her head. Where was that handkerchief? Damn it, she looked like such a mess! All the careful practice, and this is what they got to say to each other today? She'd never get another chance!

"But what if," she stammered as she drifted even further away from the words she'd wanted so desperately to say, "What if I was?"

"You're not."

"But what if I was?" she was shouting now, "What if I did something way worse than this? You'd get rid of me, wouldn't you? You'd get a, a better kitten! You would! You will! Because I!!"

Bella had gotten a lot of hugs from Redana in her life. Dany was a super huggy person, when you got down to it. But never one like this. Never one so soft and warm and safe like this. She was so surprised she couldn't keep herself from hugging back. And for several long minutes neither of them spoke. And neither of them let go, until Bella had uncoiled enough to remember decorum. She drew away quietly, and folded her hands in front of her.

"Bella, you are not a bad girl."

"I... disagree with Mistress' assessment." Eyes on the floor. Words clipped to keep them from betraying her. She couldn't say it, after all. She'd never say it. Ever. She wouldn't risk ruining things ever again.

"And if you were," Redana went on, "I wouldn't throw you away. Bella, you're my best friend! If you did something I didn't like I'd just talk to you about it! And we'd work it out, you and me. Just like we're doing now."

"Do you promise?" Bella's eyes were wide, but full of hope. The shape of a window caught her eye, and she looked away from her princess and back across the horizon where death and danger waited for their chance to get her.

"Gosh, you're such a sillyhead sometimes. Yes, I promise! There's nothing you could do that would ever make me throw you away! Now come on, we're gonna miss my..."

The pattern of the beads remind her of the stars. There's not enough color in the dress, but she can't help drawing the comparison, the longer she looks. It sits on the mannequin and mocks her with all its misshapen tassels dangling at weird angles and the threads she couldn't quite snip cleanly without undoing the whole damn thing again. Looking like the night sky in the shape of a badly fitted evening gown.

And the words echo in her brain again, the other promise of the orbit of her thoughts. Her teeth grind together in an ugly snarl. Never. Nothing. Sillyhead.

Her scream echoes through the hangar, and she pounces on the dress. A few seconds of horrifying violence, and all her efforts lie shattered on the floor. She shakes, and heaves, and coughs like she's about to cry. But of course, she doesn't. Not sick, discarded, broken her.

She shoots Apollo the most vicious, scathing look she dares, and storms away deeper into the lonely corridors of the Yakanov.