In the end, the moment had passed without incident. The crew accepted his words as the words of a Captain. The meeting had immediately gone to questions of logistics, command structure, the hundreds of points of minutia necessary for a ship to fly painlessly. No complaints were lodged with his choice of words, posture, tone, length of eye contact with any one individual in the audience, plan, or even choice of coat. His desire had been achieved. He was Captain.

Victory ought to have felt a little less like a dishrag, wrung twelve times over. 

A teacup wreathed in steam enters the dimmest peripheries of his awareness. Mynx was likely still close to hand. Somewhere. He hopes she understood the noise he made was meant to express a gratitude; the most grateful grunt he could muster. Words, he might not ever speak again.

Except that he would, in time. Captain was not a destination, after all, but a journey, and one he needed to walk a little further still. Past the Endless Azure Skies, drawing ever-closer to the Rift. Perhaps, if the gods truly did favor his ascent, the Azura would know more than they of the perils ahead. They might offer some fresh insight into its terrible workings, of how a ship and its crew might wisely choose their path through. And if he were truly blessed? He rested a hand gingerly on his chest.

Perhaps that might help him to navigate the aching in his own heart, too.

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

The Endless Azure Skies. The once-mighty jewel of an empire, fallen to ruin, the last vestiges of its power and people locked in an eternal battle for supremacy over the scraps.

To journey so far, and find yourself right back where you started. Was it a time to laugh, or to cry?

Mere weeks ago, she would’ve derided the lot of them for fools, let every sight pass unseen, and be off the moment they were able to. Today, she would do even better; no one expected an egg-carrier of the Magos to go much of anywhere, so no one would order her anywhere, and here is where she would stay. On board the ship. With a perpetually discomforting relic. 

But to journey so far, and find yourself right back where you started...

Perhaps the streets of the Azuran empire would teach her what the road to her estate, to the arena, to the favorite places in the vast plains she once visited looked like. Could the warriors of the grav-rail tell her how she felt the day she first saw the perplexing scroll of alien forms in her family’s vault? Would a queen to this fallen empire be her best chance at finding her past, to grant her a wish for a future?

Vasilia would never know, as an egg-carrier of the Magos. But if she wanted to be a little more than that, she had a sacrifice to make, and an apology to deliver. One that would be far, far more uncomfortable than mystery relic eggs.