Bella didn’t break.

Redana’s head rests on Bella’s shoulder. It’s not lolling. Her hair’s a mess and her face is streaked with blood and she feels, rising out of the numbness like a monster rising out of deep waters, the pervasive exhaustion and soreness of putting her body through its paces.

She threw everything she had at Bella, and she didn’t break. All of her power, all of her poise, all of her determination, and the girl she’d tried to protect back on Tellus (so long, so far ago) took it all. And the relief is immense. That Bella is strong enough. That she can take anything that Dany could throw at her except being thrown away.

“I don’t know what happened,” the princess admits. “Any of it. Am I dead? Again? Is this just what happens after…?” After Mynx killed us all. But she lets the thought fade into empty air, because it’s a silly thought. Look, turn it around: it’s empty, too. Nothing there at all.

She should lift her head. She doesn’t. She can be selfish, right now. Bella isn’t shoving her away. And she did such a good job. Didn’t break, either. Was Bella scared about that, too? Probably. But it doesn’t feel real. Not the way the fear of shattering Bella did.

“I’m so glad I didn’t kill you,” she says, finally, pathetically. “That would have been… I couldn’t have. You know. Lived with it.” Her tongue probes the space of a hollow in her jaw, the dull ache where the bone will sprout again. Dolce, will you make her soup? “I missed this. I missed you. I. I’m glad. The three of us. And Beljani. Four of us. Does Beautiful count, too?“ Maybe. For now. Until she explodes again.

“Maybe that’s why.” The thought circles back, grasps itself by the tail. “Because I couldn’t. And someone just… did something, this time. Just for us. And maybe we didn’t deserve it more than all those worlds along the Spear, but… isn’t this worth, that? Isn’t that?”

“…I want to be wine,” she concludes, and closes her eyes. The thought makes sense in her head, because Bella is the cup: her shoulder, where it meets her neck, so big, so solid, so alive. So alive. So alive that it makes Winedana alive, too.

Alexa takes the time to consider it--really imagine it. Ships, traveling between planets like sparks between points of light. Of machines, long dead, now spinning to life again. The galaxy, healing, living, as once it did before.

Gently, she strokes Dolce's fluff, seeing it in her mind.

No, no, not like it did before. Not as it does now, with each niche carefully built and filled by perfection. Mice and sheep built for service, ordained to be a product. Kaeri and Alcedi, destined to throw themselves gladly on the spear of other's dreams. Ranks of uniform masked scavengers, tearing apart ships and recycling them together. Constant iteration, all to fill the engine room with only those perfectly suited for the task.

A mix. Something new. Freedom to choose to work where they please, or not at all.

Freedom to travel. Lights zipping through Two hundred years of entropy and stagnation, ending in an explosion of culture. People, trapped in cycles of oppression, discovering new places, new ways to think.

Atlas, torn apart, scavenged for parts, and put together again. Not in search of perfection, in subsuming efficiency, in lives given in support of empire, but in impossibilities of expectations defied and redefined.

A world where the idea of being defined by your position is laughable.

"It's a good wish," she admits, and she can't keep the longing for that future out of her voice. Freedom--not just for her, but for everyone. Real freedom, the kind that can't be won individually.

She doesn't say it's worth it. It would be, absolutely. But it's not her wish. It's not her journey. She can't cross this rift for you.

Bella and Redana!

So comes sleep, the brother of death.

Across the ceiling runs plasma vents, great channels into the heart of the Reactor as they make their way through to the vast drive plume that propels the Plousios forwards. The flow is uneven, the steady rising and falling of fusion burn as tuned by ever-busy magi. In places along these vents the shutters pull back to reveal transparent windows into the coruscating veins of power, bathing this interior space in artificial sunlight. The shutters open and close automatically in tune with the motion of the engine, creating the impression of clouds passing over the landscape. The gentle change between heat and cool, the steady whirring breath of the distant ventilation macrofans, the changing patterns of light and shade, the soft grass and ever-blossoming trees...

When this ship's keel was laid, so many centuries ago, the builders had memories of springtime afternoons. Of lying on the grass beneath blossoming trees, amidst good company, as the patterns of the clouds shifted and changed overhead. There is something unutterably sad about the way the breeze is stale and the sky is clattering pipes and how the ambient temperature is forty two degrees celcius (pleasantly warm by the standards of bioforms designed to walk on the baking surface of Venus, but somehow not quite right)...

This beautiful room amidst all the artificiality of this vast, interstellar starship is a memory. A memory of a moment left behind so long ago on ancient Earth, something primal, something true. And despite all the flaws in the work of the builders, all the compromises they had to make with the machines that burn as suns do, with the rainbow distances of Poseidon, some echo of the moment they remembered rises again here. Even if the walls are metal and the ceiling is pipes and the clouds are clattering shutters... spiritually, this moment is right.

And in this guise comes sleep. In and out with each of you, drifting away and then coming back. Conversations happening in half-awake murmurs as important words are said, but will need to be said again, and again.

Tell us of conversations that might be dreams and dreams that might be conversations in the shadow of this false spring afternoon.

“I thought you liked them,” Redana accuses, but what little fire is in the accusation comes solely from what it means. What they mean. What this means.

The rumble of the Engine is soothing. She knows it now, knows that tremor in her bones, is familiar with the power of the trapped star. She’s carried scythes that sing with a fraction of its power; she’s sung work-songs with its contribution being the deepest bass. It’s more real to her than the role it is playing. Like seeing an actor first as the actor, the way she used to back home. Which brings her back around to this. Her head rests on Bella’s lap, and she has quite the view looking up.

Looking up. Did she never notice? Maybe because Bella was always trying to make herself smaller back home, to fit inside of the shape that a Servitor should. But she’s so big, here. Like a titan standing vigil. And that’s, in its own way, a relief. Pick her up again, Bella. Hold her tight like you did on Salib.

“How am I supposed to know anything about you if you didn’t even tell me you didn’t like Batrachomyomachia?” Above Bella, branches shift; light dapples; the trees bend over the two of them. Dany’s fingers stroke down scales, warm and almost purring beneath her fingertips.

“I thought I trusted a maid who appreciated those small, brave hearts. Who understood that it was about the mettle, not the size. Who sacrificed themselves for each other.” Ignore the fact that the sacrifices never stuck, not even the ones that involved explosives. It was the willingness, over and over, to declare the lives of your brothers and sisters in arms dearer than your own.

“…and if you didn’t like them, we always could have watched something else,” she adds, and means it. Her legs are asleep beneath Beljani, who has found her spot and will not move from it, who breathes sweet contented summer out that licks their chins.

Here, briefly, is paradise. Here, briefly, is truth. Here, the windows clatter, but faintly, never startling. Here the world is broken into light and shadow and both are kind. Here there is a vast and terrible power capable of destroying it all in an instant, but it will not, it will not. Here there is peace beneath Olympus.

The princess demands it, after all. So let it be.

"...Who even told you I didn't like Batrachomyomachia?"

Bella glances at Mynx, but she's so close to sleep that all she does is smile. Useless. She lets her own eyes drift shut and leans her head back against a pipe and lets the sounds of the ship drown out the rest of the world, if only for a moment.

Water and steam slosh through her hearing with a powerful, thrumming beat. The heartbeat of the ship. It pulses and gurgles; bubbling water that pushes first one way and then pulls back in the other. The ebb and flow... maybe all ships carry the ocean inside of them. Stars and the sea were never very far apart, were they? Maybe that was how the Tides managed to exist in both. Maybe if fate carried her back down there, she could ask them. Maybe...

Her senses pull her away from the larger ship, back into the room. She listens to the venting air pushing a too-even and yet stuttering breeze across the room. The warmth of a light that puts Apollo to her mind splashes across her face. Fluttering leaves cast speckled shadows overtop, and the miracle of this struggle is that is pleasant warmth wrestling with pleasant coolness. No extremes at all: even the act of contrast seems more of a playfight than a true contest.

Bella relaxes into herself. Her breaths fall not more than once a minute. She feels Mynx shift against her, just to nestle deeper into her arm. Their heartbeats are synched with each other. The soft, slow drumbeat of the tranquilized. No tension, no power, just soft and slow and deeply steady. One sound, the two of them. Each the shadow of the other. On the other side of her, Redana's heart thumps a little bit brighter, perhaps a bit more proudly, but it's no less relaxed. Two pound out and one shrinks in. Two shrink in and one pounds out. This is a different way to be matched with someone, after all. The completion of a melody. Beljani's breathing and pulse both rush against Bella's tired legs, still full of energy and the rush of play even after her body has collapsed from the exertion. Only Beautiful stands apart from the group still, but her rhythms can't escape Bella. Curiosity. Those violet eyes are on her, she can tell without looking.

Curiosity. Maybe she'll even settle in with the rest if the answer is correct. Bella sighs.

"Princess..."

"I liked the first one fine. When I was nine. But even you have to admit they didn't make any sense after..."

She stops. The defensiveness falls out of her voice to be absorbed like rain into the grass beneath her body. Too much effort to finish the argument, so she lets it roll off of her. She shifts, if only slightly, and pulls the Princess in until her head is resting against Bella's stomach. Her eyes flutter open, and find Beautiful's above her. For now. Soon, Bella will be the largest and the strongest of them all again. Soon. She's so sure of it.

"It really never occurred to me to say anything about it. Did you never notice? I never..."

Bella's body flushes with sudden warmth. Her fingers curl carefully against scales and skin and her tail wriggles free enough to flick with erratic, patternless motion that ends with the tip curled up around herself. And even then, the sound that follows comes welling up from the depths of her. It escapes with surprising speed and power that she has neither the ability or the inclination to prevent.

The deep, healing vibrations that only a cat is capable of.

"All I wanted," she says through her purr and a yawn, "Was to watch you. Would you have cared what movie we picked, if you felt the same way?"

Her eyes fall closed again, and sleep takes her before the reply can come.

Stone has no heartbeat. Pressed firm against her, even his clever ears hear nothing but stone against stone against wooly curls. But, hearts are also rather clever. Connected as they are, they need very little to know when they beat in time. The longing in her voice echoes the dreams of his heart, from before this journey ever began.

“It is a good wish.”

But just a good wish. As she said, repeating after him, declining to mark a star to guide him. As he says, repeating after her, staring up at Poisidon’s skies, and seeing more stars than he can ever count.

It is a good wish. But.

“There’s…a lot of good wishes out there. Isn’t there?”

He pats her back, once, and immediately feels the arms around him loosen. Free, at last. Up, up he stretches, standing as tall as he can, and perched on her lap he is almost as tall as her. Almost. Soft hands cup carved cheeks. Carefully, like the finest glassware. Tenderly, like a favorite mug on a cold, dark night. He holds her, and bonks his fluffy forehead against hers.

“I hope you follow yours well. A good wish on this side of the Rift...is no less of a wish.”

Springtime!

Like a cloud with a smile, in blows a sheep. After the storm and the blood and the tears and the duels and the pain are all done, in comes a sheep. Just like the springtime, just like the heartbeats, it feels like an echo of a world far, far away.

Scenes fade in and out. Mynx with her fangs sunk into an opaque plastic cup. The steady drip of countervenom as it starts to fill. Trying to wave off concerns that she's not healthy enough to do this yet but the effort sends her back into convalescent sleep. Beautiful doing a complex redistribution of the food so that she only has a single, plain flavour available to her - "Have to cut down on new sensory inputs, don't want to spiral too quickly". Beljani reading a story out loud by your bedside. She's so deep into the story she's doing all the voices, channeling all the emotions, and stopped dead by every plot twist. Some kind of story about... statues on a beach, or all the colours of love and madness. Dolce cooking. Alexa smiling. The metal tang of adamantium alloys mixed in porridge and creamy quadranix-infused teas. Out the window, space rolls away. Moons pass by, and stars. Hot showers and sleep, and sleep, and frustration at not being able to stand up on your own until a moment's distraction leads to more sleep. Faces so bloodless and clean they look like angels, sunken into radiant pillows.

Somehow it has become hard to think of these girls as assassins.

*

Alexa!

You are one of the few left to guide the ship towards the Tunguska.

The station-ship is unbelievably ancient, spectacularly crude, massive in a way that might have impressed a species that had not built worlds and machines to build worlds. It relies on the most primitive expressions of physics; a rotating drum, the spinning force of which keeps people on the exterior. On the inside, seen through the glass, is a city built in black marble and ivy. This was a bank, once. A temple to Hades where a civilization warehoused sacred numbers. The external advertising screens are long broken and mad, hurricaning like snowstorms or blue summer days, faces formed of mathematical symbols, ghostly glimpses of black drinks and smiling girls and wheeled tanks through the haze. There is the buzz of neon and the flicker of lighthouses to guide ships in to dock. The warbling, crackling echoes of long-dead voices asking for the permission of Mr. Actual and Miss Uncontrol trace in your head. The mighty engines strain to shove the ship forward on the thinnest, weakest trail of plasma you have ever seen.

And just beyond it, the Rift. It dominates the sky. An entire direction of radiant, broken pink. Of flooding, drowned grey. It has been over a year since this journey began and it feels like even longer.

And it is your birthday today. In the new sense, perhaps, but in the old tradition too. Your friends from the Coherent have ambushed you as you step out of your room to drone the immortal, turgid chant that has survived since probably the dawn of humanity and numerous language shifts, an act of collective embarrassment with so much weight behind it that for all it's grim inevitability it is so much worse when it doesn't get sung. Happy birthday to you...

Dolce!

"It's your birthday in a month," said Hestia as you put the finishing touches on Alexa's cake, the chant echoing down through the corridor. "Did you remember? How many is that now?"

She looks up at the Rift. "If you go through that you'll never get to have it."

Bella! Redana!

One might grow tired, taking an inventory of every waterlogged room aboard the Plousios. There are only so many ways to say a room is filled with crabs, saltwater, and crabs (in saltwater). Barely any are crab-free. Fewer still boast fresh water. And of those, perhaps only one gets its supply via waterfall.

By some miracle of Engine, evaporation, and the inscrutable whims of time and gods, a seemingly endless supply of piping hot water flows from overhead, glittering as it splashes down a rock face and into a pool below. Just deep enough to sit upon the smooth stones that make its bed, and rest your head on its banks. The air hangs hot and hazy here, wisps of steam curling as they float by. The pool drains out of a long stream, fast-flowing, but shallower still. By this supply, grass grows green and soft underfoot - though you will hardly feel it yourself, borne here as you were on stretchers. Overhead, a solitary tree stretches out its branches, and flowers drift lazily down to settle on the water’s surface. Above, the ceiling glitters with some trace memory of Hades’ treasures. The light is warm here. All is warm here.

What luck, that a sheep should stumble on such a place many months ago, while out for an evening stroll. A fine spot, for hearts to meet. And now, to mend.

Awake, o dreamers. Awake, and feel the stream running all around you, washing your wounds clean, and carrying away the grime of battle. Awake, to the careful hands of Beautiful and Beljani, your sisters, your companions, peeling away layers of shredded, matted clothes. Sit in the pools together; there is room enough for you all. Watch the shining lights of the Lanterns reflected in the rippling waters. Call to Jil, and you will have many hands to help you in, out, across, to wherever you please. Mouse or marble, they are here for you. Stretch out your hand, and Dolce will be there, with a tray of ice-cold beverages in a rainbow of colors and flavors. Each one ready to help replenish your broken bodies. Keep the tiny umbrellas, if you like; we have plenty. And don’t worry if you mistake him for a towel. When next you see him, his wool will be as fluffy and light as ever.

You have fought so hard, just to hold yourselves together. To hold each other together. Now, you need not even fight to keep warm.

Sit. Drink. Rest, all of you. Four sisters, and the princess who is their center. If your efforts have not earned you a hot bath, then there is no justice on Olympus.

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

Finishing touches. Always takes longer than you’d think. Inch by inch, Dolce turns the cake on its pedestal, piping out decorations as he goes.

“I hadn’t forgotten.” He stops. Closes one eye, to sight his aim. “Just. Hadn’t thought of it in the same breath, yet. My birthday’s in a month. We cross the Rift in a week.”

He has an entire palette to choose from, each in their own piping bag. And only so much counter space within reach. He wheels to the side. He selects another. He wheels himself back. “I know the day will still come. But, it’s not the same. If you don’t remember to make it special.”

If you don’t have people in your life to make it special.

"...the Master would be 26 that day."

The song of splashes and steam whispers in her ear. Awaken, Bella. Awaken. Eyes open. Ears bend. Thoughts stir. The air itself is sighing all around her, drawn in by the music played by a dozen tall pipes pouring water into the basin of grass and rocks. The smell all around her is clean, barely fragrant. There are herb scents and floral notes here, but faint. So very faint. All of it is pulled into the steam and cleaned until the only information her breath can tell her is that this is a place of healing.

The water soaks into her fur. It glistens on her bare skin. The water ripples over her and dwindles away in tiny waves, washing more and more of the red away. Bit by bit she is cleansed. The red that had been smeared in everything washes away, leaving pristine soft white fur and pale skin that manages to almost be beautiful in spite of the many marks and gouges that still mar her body.

Something like wine, and yet not wine, is poured gently into her mouth. It is lighter, sweeter, and yet somehow more astringent. It leaves her mouth feeling clean. This is something she knows, though she has never had a name for it. Nero insisted on it whenever she was bathing. Attending to her and Redana when they would attempt bonding meant bringing out bottle after bottle of the stuff in a steady procession. Always in clean white ceramic containers, to preserve the flavor and the purity. It's a scent and a flavor that is inextricably linked with baths.

She sighs, drawing short into a wince as her skin starts stitching more cuts together with fresh unblemished skin. Every part of the process on display for her audience, today. Every part of her, on display. Her greatness, her size, her strength, her softness, her curves, and the perfection of the ritual preparations that marked the original intention among Humankind for her species. Almost human. Almost. You could mistake her for one, in the dark. Touch her. Feel her. She belongs. No guilt. But the luxurious fur now swimming in this hot bath made her exotic. Lesser. A pet and a companion. A maid with skilled hands to accomplish every chore. A songstress or a silent mouth, at Mistress' pleasure. It had been a mistake, or a design beyond the ken of her pedigree, that turned her into the thrice-terrifying Diodekoi.

She would shrug, but the energy was being put to use elsewhere in her body. She lets her head lean back into a warm rock instead, and her blue-black hair splays into a halo on the surface of the water all around her. Lantern light sparkles all around her. On her. On her more than anyone. Even now? Yes, even now.

"Hey, Mynx?"

"Nnnnnnnnnnnn."

"Sorry. Redana, then. Princess. What... are we? Us, I mean. Do you want me gone, or here? Alive or dead? Am I your prisoner? Or am I... something else? Are we?"

The sound of water trickling down awaits the answer. The currents massage and the steam relaxes. Somewhere in her exhausted mind, the not-wine carries up a strange and pointless thought up through everything. With the priestess-garb of Artemis in ruins and finally peeled off her body, she had not so much as a stitch of clothing left to her name. Nothing here was hers, and her authority was stripped from her. And it never reached this far out, besides. So it would be this, then. This forever. Heh. Hehehe. The idea of it makes her chuckle even as she waits for her answers. What a treat this would be for someone. Maybe everyone.

She was, after all, born to be perfect.

"You don't have to do this," she says severely.

Those are the rules, after all. This is a ritual, a humiliation, a celebration. And her role is to feign anger, no matter how her eyes crinkle at the corners, or how no-one can quite keep the smiles from their eyes.

She bounces from one set of arms to the next, and at each interchange, she reminds them that this is quite unnecessary, really, all of you, this isn't needed. And everywhere, people nod, and smile, and pass her along.

She's pretty sure she wasn't wearing a hat before, but there it is on her head--and without missing a beat, she grins at Arth'na, already swooping down on a fresh victim. Great progress she's making, Alexa notes. The young Alcedi asn't earned enough for a hermetic treatment, but already Arth'na's training is showing in the extra turn of speed, the litheness of motion, the--Alexa grins--the presence of more than one set of eyes on her.

"Not necessary," she calls, and can't keep the laughter out of her voice.

She bounces from arm to arm, noting with delight the progress being made, before finally bouncing into Ramses. Big bear hug, physical lift, and squeeze--and then with a whoop of surprise and laughter, she's lifted into the air and find's a spot on the shoulders of Iris, who is making fantastic strides on her apparent goal of being a living crane.

It's all she can do to keep a straight face, looking at all the faces out for her. But, she makes a heroic effort at a poker face as she lectures Ramses.

"You didn't have to do all of this just for me," she insists, cheeks tight with repressed smiles.

But oh, after so long staring out the windows, and maneuvering a ship the size of a city through the eye of a needle, and all under the oppressive pink glow…

They didn't have to do this. Which makes it mean so much more that they did.

Redana has been Not Staring so loudly that it’s nearly drowned out the water. Nearly. But the water is loud, joyful, and there is soft conversation in whispers all about, and they keep bringing her cups. The cups are good. They’re brought to her lips, and the liquid (thick, rich, syruped, like pulped appleskins) trickles down her throat, and the fires of her inner furnace die down to a dull roar. And between the tilt of the cups’ lips and the soft, gentle hands helping massage her mending bones into place and the rushroar of the water striking the pool, she stops thinking. Her world is the suckling, the comb brushed through her hair, the feeling of her bones settling as her body’s hundred thousand mouths are sated.

Then Bella asks her about that.

Apples flood her nose, splatter on her thighs, sympathetic squeaks and noises as her attendants scatter into a loose cordon, as she bends over at the waist and tries to get her breath back under her command, as the implication rattles around her head. Something else? Are we?

“I?” The voice is wrong. Sugar up her nose, dribbling down, rub the back of her hand on it, gross, and she keeps trying to talk anyway. “Here, I mean, if you’d like, because— because—“

She looks helplessly over to Jil, who smiles just as helplessly back and nods at the pool, nods to Bella, and that’s what Dany needs. The encouragement. The reminder. The example. Her smile in return is all apples and tears.

Then she slides into the water, down onto her knees, beneath the warmth, beneath the waves, and she can almost imagine that her uncle is here, too, that this is what it looks like when he is kind, or when he slumbers, and then she stands, and breaches the water, and tosses her head back, and her gold slaps against her shoulders with a wet slap, and she rubs her face clean with her hands, breathing more easily, and that turns into running her palms over her hair, elbows out, hiding nothing. Hiding nothing at all. And this isn’t anything new, and it’s a newborn chick struggling out of the egg, because Bella has seen everything before, but not like this, not here, not after asking, not after cracking open the world’s shell, and Bella’s eyes on her burn.

Bella doesn’t move. But that’s okay. Redana knows how to move. It’s what she’s best at. She doesn’t run, but she pushes her way through the pool, forcing her hips and her thighs through water inexorably, relentlessly, each step feeling it trying to push her away, push them away. And the push is something she can understand. Ahead of her, Bella looms, titanic, dangerous, unexplored, a continent, a nebula, still, allowing her to approach, a knife, a nymph, a fire, a thunderbolt.

A thunderbolt.

She knows without words that she is destructive, that she is a plummeting doom, that Bella can be destroyed in this moment. And her words can’t fix it. Her heart is going to burn its way out of her chest. But all of the other ways she has learned to move, under different names, they know better than her words do. All she needs to do is trust her body.

She presses herself against Bella, her hands going up that uncharted expanse of spine, breaking the water, pulling her close, with no fear of breaking her maid, with no fear of being too much, her skin creating new territories wherever they touch. And she stares, and when she finally meets Bella’s eyes, it is with her father’s hunger in her mismatched eyes.

They tumble into each other like a planet crossing the event horizon of a black hole. By the time that Bella has lowered her head in willingness, by the time that Redana has pushed herself up onto her toes, by the time that the imperial maid’s hand has slipped under the water to help her princess up, by the time that the runaway has hidden her fingers in her huntress’s hair, it is inevitable. But it still surprises Redana, silly little Redana, how hungry she is, and how much that hunger is returned.

Words could never. Only kisses will do for explanation. I need you to stay, they explain. I was so afraid of breaking you, they say in the way that Redana refuses to hold back this time, the way her fingers knot in the luscious curls, the way her body pins Bella against the side of the pool. I have wanted you the whole time, her soft breath says, her refusal to respond to Beautiful’s wolf-whistle, the way her heel hooks around the back of Bella’s leg.

And love is the passing of the thunderbolt from one heart to the other.

And if she is to die today, she will have died kissing her Bella, and she will sink down among the breathless dead in the bliss of this moment.

Thank the gods, though she'd cursed their names hardly any time ago. Thank them, bless them, praise them. For giving her an answer that doesn't need any more words.

The universe compresses all around her. Gone are the endless depths of space. Gone is the massive expanse of the Plosious. Everything that is, that was, that ever shall be can fit inside this single bath chamber. There is the smell of fresh water and of steam, of apple and soft not-wine, of smooth oils and incense quietly being added to the pool and the air all the time. There is the feeling of those oils as they sink into her skin, washing away the grit and the scars and replacing every inch of her with something smooth and beautiful as marble but as sensitive as she could ever remember feeling.

And. There. Is. Redana.

The touch of her skin is lightning. The beating of her heart is thunder. They rush through the Princess and into Bella with a greedy, hedonistic surge that allows no defense. The smell of her hair, even soaked through as it is, is fire. Warmth and spice that seeps into her brain until it feels like she is dissolving, losing control, helpless to feel her ear twitch and her breath draw in with ever greater insistence. More. Give her more. More!

Redana's hands are as rough as shark's skin. Even the water and its many miracles could not soften the callouses inflicted upon her royal hands by the horrors of the journey that brought them here. But even so. But even so. They play music on Bella's spine. They pull sighs from between her lips, when her lips are hers to sigh with. They tingle and they burn and they search as they grasp at the silken cascade of her hair. They pull her straight. They hold her close. They bid her reach her hands out in turn.

Bella's claws are sharp and hard. But she dares to place her hands upon her princess. In this place and this moment, if no other. One hand upon her back, the other on her butt. She tenses. She lifts. She pulls Redana up from the water, just enough to make them equals in this moment. She squeezes. She holds onto the lightning with deep, insatiable greed and pulls it closer, closer, closer, tighter and tighter against her body as if she meant to absorb it into herself. Her body feels as hard as diamond and as yielding as the pool they stand in. Soft. Rigid. Stiff. Warm. Wet. Her claws play across Redana's supple skin enough to test the tension and set her princess aflame, just to the point where she threatened to draw blood but never causing harm.

She has skill enough for this, after all. She has been gifted the opportunity to prove it.

Her mouth closes around Redana's with a hunger built up over a lifetime's worth of longing. Longing without ever daring to actually hope, the sort of awful, gnawing pit that grew and grew and grew inside of her until she became capable of every horror and unkindness she had inflicted upon the crew of this cursed, unhappy ship. Upon the Princess herself. And even so. She tastes those lips at last.

They are warm. Wet. Savory and yet as sweet as the most tempting fruit. The sort that might distract her from a chase and thereby doom her forever. And still she eats. She lets her fangs brush against them, biting down but only softly. Only seeking the noises of acceptance she can capture with her own tongue and swallow them inside of herself. Her fingers play across Redana's skin, as far as they can reach while needing to hold her in place, pinning and pinned at the same time.

But the fire inside of her does not cool. Every kiss, every touch, ever scent only seems to throw more fuel on it until she is near to igniting into a new star. More, she roars with every kiss. More, she demands as their hearts come close enough to share a single beating pattern. More, she pleads as their bodies press and flow and brush into one another. Soon, Princess, I will take everything from you I have ever wanted. Ever dreamed of. More than that, even.

And I will give you myself. Everything you want. Everything I am. And if I must, to satisfy you I will become more. Or less. Whatever I need to convince you to finally, finally, finally douse this heat before it kills me. Because I want this. Because I want you.

Because I have you now. And I will hold you forever, even if the universe itself should be my enemy.

Together, they sink back into the warm embrace of the water. Together, they entwine leg and finger and arm. Together. And even still, they kiss. Because this is the answer the gods have gifted her. A speech her tongue cannot fumble, however hard it twists.

The Tunguska!

The walls have ghosts.

Every surface is a screen, projector light swirling with the dust of aeons. Colours so crisp they shine through the degradation. Smiling faces and beautiful people. Beautiful places, beaches, green grass, white teeth. Now and then they'll stop to drink drinks black as sin. Every so often words or hieroglyphics will cover the screen. Every so often there is sound.

Ghosts of metal and gold, robed in red with domino masks of white:
"Do you remember when Pluto was a planet? We do - and so do the Gods. We at PG&B take your money seriously, which is why we resonance mined Pluto for the materials to make our newest mobile branch office, the Tunguska. Enjoy the wealth of the Underworld!"

Silver eye-contact, triangles of ear and of fang, a streak of black amidst the white:
"Love is war, so don't leave the home front undefended. With Crown&Slate's newest monofilament knives, originally designed for battlefield surgery on the wars of Neptune, you can get the cleanest cuts you've ever seen! Just like Aphrodite married Ares, you can get to your man's heart through his stomach with the meals prepared with the Tactical Knife Set, now available for just -"

Ghosts of squares and power, the solidity of commercial warlords, interrogating a bird-necked victim on soft couches:
"Let's call it what it is, Steven - a golden age. Ever since the Apostasy the Pacific Alliance has gone from strength to strength. And now you're saying that's all going to end?"
"That's right, Tim."
*Laughing* "So you're out there with your," *laughing* "doomsday sign, saying the end is nigh like those monks I see on my drive to work?"
"Oh, I recognize the reality of the Gods, that much is not in question -"
*Laughing* "That's good, we've got enough flat earthers -"
"- the problem is we're not worshiping them properly."
*Laughing, but taking this seriously* "Oh, they talk to you?"
"They don't talk to us - not all of them. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? Some of them love us - you can't drive down Hillside Boulevard without seeing the construction teams converting someone else's garage into a temple to Zeus. But who's building shrines to Apollo?"
*Laughing* "Apollo? He's just a myth, isn't he?"
"So was Zeus!"
*Laughing* "No, obviously you're right. When you eggheads figure out how to talk to him and find out what he's got to offer us, then we'll build shrines to him, same as the rest -"

A soldier, dressed in primitive camouflage fatigues designed to blend in with a lurid alien landscape. In the background his fellows throw enormous crab legs onto a bonfire. He wears shades and smokes a cigarette.
"Mm-mmm! I love the smell of seafood!"
Chemically propelled arrows streak overhead. Explosions in the background. A disembodied voice.
"Fight them in the air! Join the Neptune Legion Air Force!"
More soldiers, cast as heroic despite their scrawny bodies. They are pulling on breathing masks, the kind you might use for vacuum, before jumping into the water. One of them addresses the camera.
"Surf's up everyone!"
A submersible metal ship emerges, cannons extending to fire a roaring volley into the distance. The voice:
"Fight them in the sea! Join the Neptune Legion Navy!"
A strange, cramped, clean white room where people cluster around archaic computers and their holographic displays. A man in a white suit bedecked with medals walks in, and everyone stands at attention and salutes.
"I'm Lance Uppercutt, CEO of the Neptune Legion," he said. If he was genetically engineered for this role it was a crude, brutal thing, designed to appeal only to the lowest common denominators. "And this is my flagship, the Dark American. I understand you're busy, maybe you've got better things to do than take the fight to the squids. But let me show you what your war bonds can buy."
An exterior shot. A spindly spaceship fires a pathetic direct energy weapon into an out of focus target.
"Fight them in the void! Buy Neptune Legion stock today!"
Lance: "Now that's what I call return on investment."

*

Alexa!

This is the Tunguska.

Black stone floors. Walls of ghosts. Recordings and appeals and visions of a past as far removed from the present as the samurai. Sure, the past was terrible in its own way, but seeing it from this distance... it's like walking through a cathedral. Everything that seemed so new to them is so many centuries in the past, so many mistakes played out in full. A ship like this could be built today, but nobody ever would do it. It wouldn't be cost effective, it wouldn't be militarily practical, taste and fashion has moved on so very far since the Tunguska. How do you find it, this relic stuck in time?

Dolce!

"Adventures are dangerous things," said Hestia. "You don't ever really know when you'll get home. You don't know if you'll get home. That, there? That's the door. It'll take you away from everything you've known and loved, everything that makes you feel safe and warm. Out there, you'll discover bigger things to worry about than birthdays. Even if you make your way back you won't ever be the same."

She looks out at the neon pink void of the Tunguska's lights, and the neon pink Rift behind it.

"You don't have to."

The universe compresses all around you.

The Lanterns melt into the steamy mists, stepping back once, twice, and they exist no longer. Your heartbeats will drown out the patter of feet, directed silently to the nearest exit. Trays vanish, leaving drinks scattered around the pool. This one, like a cool mountain spring, to pour down a hungry throat like a waterfall. This one, rich, and just a smidge too hot. Sip carefully, as you catch your breath. Each one resting on the grass no less than the length of one arm, stretched to the full.

Your sisters. Your friends. Each will look up, in turn, and there will be a sheep. He will gesture with perfect clarity. He will carry a sign for those too tired to understand. Blink once to remain. Blink twice for a tasteful, silent exit. Whatever their choice, they will not see him again. Perhaps they are here. Perhaps they are only here, in your hearts. You know them, better than anyone. You will know where they are.

There is but one addition to this world.

The song sneaks in, under the cover of running water, of hearts overflowing, of sounds swallowed whole. Soft. Sweet. It has traveled far; through an open door, an empty hallway, past two rooms, at least. The pianist offers every tender note for love, with love, and so the song must keep playing, for love alone will outlast all things. Every silence will be comfortable. Every note will have its harmony. Nothing will dare compete for your attention.

Take this moment, both of you. A gift, from a sheep, with mice for legs, and mice for eyes, and his own hands clasped tight over his mouth. He will not gasp, or bleat, or some incredible mixture of the two. A good servant is neither seen or heard. And a friend may be there for you, by not being there at all.

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

You don’t have to.

Bit by bit, his hands close around the piping bag. Each flourish removes a little frosting. The volume shrinks. The pressure falls. He must make up the difference. The pressure must remain constant and unbroken.

“You know. It’s nice, when you find something to do for someone that they never asked you for. It’s a wonderful surprise. Not having to worry about it, not having to think about something. Knowing you were watching, and thinking of them. Do good things, as you see them. It works rather well, most of the time. It earned me good marks. At the Manor.”

He saves the bottom layer for last. Bad enough, the dawning realization that you might, truly, almost be done. No need to strain your focus any further with a balancing act.

“I. Know this is different. It’s just me, here. Nobody’s asked me to cross. No one would hold it against me if I did nothing. If I had to say, it’s...I think? I think. I would rather leave all over again. If I had the choice. I’d rather sneak out of the Manor, to hop on a spaceship going heavens know where, feel the hull buckle under Poiseidon’s fury with no idea when or if we’d arrive safely. I wish I could live that over again. Instead of the Rift.”

He has to make his hands unclench, when he’s done. He has to tell them that they can tremble now. His shaking fingers rap and tap at his wheels, grasping at the rims, to roll himself closer to the goddess he’d spent so long following after. One sleeve at a time, he shrugs off the warmest hoodie he’d ever known. His folding is without crease or wrinkle; as befitting such honored raiment.

He leaves it on the kitchen counter, and leans in to hug the honored goddess of hearth and home. An offering, the firstfruits of the loving warmth he has tended in her name. A prayer, that one too weak to stand might yet find strength. A declaration, in her honor, that she never spoke falsely or tried to lead him astray. Even at the end.

“Thank you.” He sniffs, once. “For everything.”

The Tunguska should have been called the Hubris.

How many planets were destroyed to create this? How many worlds, siphoned of resources, stripped mined to the core, all for this monument to vanity? She knows the answer for the Spear--knows how many resources were spent in its sky-blotting construction--and this at least matches that in size.

All for a branch office.

A branch office. A portable bank, coming straight to your door, secure in its readings, confident in its orbital calculations, barren of offerings to see them safe through the void.

It's a temple to avarice, a monument to personal achievement, an enormous, hubristic emblem of glorious, wasteful consumption. Look how much money I have. Look what a building I can afford to construct. Behold my works, ye mighty, and despair.

Pay no heed to the gods. Offer them no sacrifice--not unless they prove themselves, not unless they pony up, not unless they come to the bargaining table and offer some genuine quo for our quid. Fight them as you would any other enemy, force them to surrender to your might, slaughter Poseidon's children as you would the other species you've brought to extinction.

Their hubris would be terrifying, if it weren't so pathetic. To invoke the gods in the name of, of selling kitchen knives?!

The Tunguska is a monument, still, but from the other side of the table. See what they built. See how they thought.

See what we did to them.

She stalks the corridors, confronted at every corner by the neon mistakes of the past, and wonders how it must feel to be so confident, and so fatally, terribly wrong.

Bella!

—and it’s the smell of pancakes that drags you up out of the depths. You’re late. You haven’t been late in so long (if you’ve ever been, you punctual little thing, you). You need to get dressed, you need to bring the Princess her breakfast, you need to wake her up and set out her clothes and it only then trickles in that this isn’t your cot, and this isn’t your job, and it hasn’t been your job for well over a year.

You’re in a bed with dark sheets, which haven’t been changed in some time. They smell like Redana; they smell like sweat; they smell like sex. Let it come back to you. The bathrobes provided by an inconspicuous, somewhat scandalized sheep. The giggling, stumbling through the halls, with wet feet and wet hair, her hand in your hand as she pulled you along, nearly falling over, leaning against walls, catching your breath, sneaking in kisses, who cares who might be coming around the corner, the world is bright and perfect and the piano haunts your footsteps and then you were stumbling into her room, the lights snuffed, bathrobes falling onto the floor, and you made your way to her bed eventually, with the occasional detour involving the table first. And then the bed. And then all of you, you poured it out, you took what she wanted, you made her squeal, you stole her squeals, you dug your nails into her back, you wrung her dry for everything and then succumbed to the dark, tangled in her, buried in the back of her head, sniffing, nuzzling, overwhelmed by the dizzying presence of her.

And now you are here, and the absence of her is a hollow. You may take a moment to feel it like a knife; you may helplessly dig your fingers into a pillow as your stomach contracts and your heart outraces your thoughts— but you are ravenous, the stomach is demanding pancakes, your mouth forces you to swallow down the drool building up before it slips right between your full lips, and you sit up, you brush back that glossy mane, you squint out at the dimmed lamps and the figure waiting for you.

Drag those eyes up. Let your Auspex record the sight. The shined shoes with their buckled straps, as dark as her boots. The milk-colored stockings, clinging to her legs as if trying to conceal the power in them, making them almost dainty. The ruffled lace of the hem, just long enough to hide what is needful, just short enough to invite thoughts of dropping things on the floor. The apron, with tangled flowers in each corner (a standard Alcedi design, easily achieved with a modiste’s stylus). The short leash dangling from the belled collar, the bell is exact, this had to have been commissioned, this had to have been planned. The headdress, and the golden bun peeking up over it, messy, done by hand, done by a girl who is used to ponytails and nothing fancier.

“Good morning, your highness,” Redana says, and curtseys, blushing, daintier than anything she’s maybe ever done, the bell swinging freely as she bows her head, and there are pancakes on the table (when did she have time, did the sheep help her with this) and there is a dress on a hanger behind her the color of the deeps of the sea (garlanded with pearls and flecks of a nebula’s gems, and not sized for Redana) and there are two bathrobes folded clumsily on a shelf (she must have been as quiet as Jil) and behind those bathrobes propped up against the wall there is a burned-out reel (___________).

And Redana stands still and holds the curtsey and waits for you, ridiculous, and there’s an attempt at a bow in her hair holding the bun in place, and she’s wearing lipstick just a little too bright, and the leash dangles waiting to be tugged, and you could be forgiven if you think that you’re being mocked, but then she looks up through her lashes and if she’s mocking you she’s an actress as good as Mynx.

And you are very hungry, aren’t you?

The smells of batter, syrup, and whipped cream are hooks inside her nose. They pull her up when all she wants to do is disappear under the covers and never be seen again. Not that she could. The thread count on these sheets is awful, rendering them distracting, rough, and scratchy to a shocking degree. Wasn't this bed intended for royalty? Who'd been washing it? Had anyone?

With nowhere else to hide, hunger pulls her to the edge of the bed. Shame draws her legs up to her chest. Fury pulls her claws across the matress. Her eyes glare out into the gloom, and lock onto the figure sharing the space with her in its increasingly desperate, clumsy curtsy. Her jaw clenches. Her tail thwaps across the bed in a display of obvious agitation. Her body pulls tight into itself until she's at risk of pulling open the last of her healing wounds.

But every breath smells like pancakes. The pit of her stomach is hollow and howling. There is chocolate in the air and warm butter, decadence piled atop decadence with childish intent that screams Redana, and yet with a degree of skill and subtlety that suggests she had no hand in this, except perhaps to plan it. Who could have made?

It's like being trapped inside a dream. Morning in the palace with everything just the way she remembers it, only with the positions reversed. Her heart races against her will, her nostrils flare, and her claws dig ever deeper into the cushions she's still seated on. No words will come out of her mouth. She can't even think of any, just now. All she can do is glare daggers at Redana, try to cut her in half with a look, and hope it isn't hunger that shines through above everything else.

Stupid. Stupid to think she'd want this, Redana. Want this power, want this reminder of the way things truly were, want this, this... gah, fuck! Every thought comes back to hunger. Of everyone who'd fought that dance, she was the only one who'd taken wounds from all of them. The cuts she'd torn into herself cost her dearly. Now she was burning hotter and harder than anyone. Her body demanded fuel like a glutton without any regard for the feelings of the moment or her head, or her heart.

Bella rises to her feet. It's a boring, basic, perfunctory sort of motion without a hint of playfulness or acceptance to it. But no room for malice, either. She crosses from the bed to the table without acknowledging the maid in the corner. She doesn't reach for a bathrobe or steal the sheet for a cover, or anything. She walks and she sits, in all her glory, and takes the knife and fork into her hands with no thoughts but to clear the air of this maddening smell.

She eats quickly, but with care. Always taking the time to cut a new triangular mouthful out of the pile and transfer the fork to her dominant hand the way a proper Lady is meant to before she brings it to her lips. Every bite is delicate, always moving her lips around the fork so that the act of eating wouldn't smear or wipe away the lipstick she might be wearing at any moment. There are many toppings that might be spilled on this particular plate, but nothing so much as threatens to stain her as she moves.

The taste is sweet as anything. If anything it's even richer and more overwhelming than it smells. There's so much flavor here she almost can't keep her eye from watering. A shiver spreads across her neck three times before she finally finishes. Only the last few bites does she try to savor. Those final triumphant moments the only ones worth lingering on. She chews, and lets her eyes drift shut. She opens them again, and beholds Redana.

She is beautiful. Gods damn her, she is beautiful beyond compare. Trying to hide the power of her body only seems to draw it out further. Where the skirt ruffles up it draws the eye to the muscles of a girl who lived her life for sprinting. Wrapping those iron legs in such delicate stockings is like stuffing a thunderbolt into a bouquet of flowers. Danger dances with beauty in mixture soft enough to want to rest her head against it. The outfit promises, she could demand it if she wanted to. Nothing asked of a person dressed like this could be denied. She knows only too well.

The air, too, is awake with the soft chiming of a bell, jingling with every hopeful bounce of the leash. Bella's shoulders melt at the symphony of it. Her sharp edges round to relaxed curves, more and more with every fresh jingle. Redana is here with her, and once again the room is rich with the music of bells. It has come between them, once again. A new hunger starts growing inside of her, one no plate of food could ever satisfy. To make this silly creature dance for her, to see her spin, see her clean, see her hum a little tune while she bends so carefully to pick up...

Bella sighs. She is not allowed to ask for something like this. Even now, that film reel weighs heavy in her mind, while a thousand memories like knives drive into her heart and demand she blush, demand she balk, demand she at the very least raise her voice high enough to say, 'Redana, what the fuck?!'. There are many nights of heavy conversations that lie between them, still. She knows this. So she should cut off all this nonsense from the start, before it's too late.

But her eyes turn to the dress, hanging there in front of her. The one that looks so much like the thing she tried to make for herself on the Yakanov, only tailored with far greater skill and possessed of a vision that saw far more clearly what it was she failed to capture. All the majesty and wonder of nebulae and stars and even tides. The majesty, beauty, and allure of the True Sea.

She looks at Redana again, and rises to her feet. The blessings of Bella's body take her higher and fill her out more than Redana could replicate even in costume. That dress was made to fit one body on this entire ship. Her lips curl up into a condescending smile, one flush full of sharp, wicked, dangerous, and above all taunting fangs.

"Well?" she asks, and her voice drips with Imperial haughtiness, "How long will you stand around staring at me like that? Are you going to dress your Mistress, or do I have to punish you?"

Alexa!

"Wow!" said Ceberus. "You're a -" "- rayyy~ -" "- of! -" "- sunshine!"

You didn't even notice the Hound of Hell amidst the neon and the chrome. She looks like she might fit onto any of those screens; perfect shampoo'd fur, happy pink tongues comical round black eyebrows. Robotic eyes swirl and whirr and already one of her is sniffing Rusty who is mechanically sniffing her in return. There are at least three of her - individual bodies, but with a singular guiding intellect. You get the sense that there are far more besides. Perhaps all of those hound statues throughout the station - some tall and menacing, some clouds with faces - are part of her.

The heads hand off to each other mid sentence freely, each animated with an entirely different personality. One is bright and eager and in a rush to keep talking, one speaks in short, military barks, and one in a dark and miserable sigh. Their voices have a fascinating harmonic chorus, sometimes speaking in perfect sync but in different keys, sometimes speaking in unison throughout a sentence only to drop out or switch over to emphasize different words.

"Look at you, glaring spit at everything you see," said Cerberus. "Walking around like -" One of the dog-machines made a snarling face and stomped around in a circle. "Who are you to go judging? Was your age really so much better?"

Dolce!

When you next come by your rooms, they are empty. All your furniture, all your clothes, all your gear has been neatly packed up into boxes and carried away. There is a note: This is still a mutiny.

You find Jil on the cargo dock of the Tunguska, along with all your worldly possessions in a neat pile. She is viciously negotiating with some sort of machine intelligence stone statue, carved to look tenuously like a dog. Everywhere above you are lights, lights, lights. Everywhere around you are the crushing whirl of movement that comes with loading and unloading a ship this size. When she sees you, she raises a finger to the machine hound and gestures a pair of Alcedi warriors to fall in behind her.

"Don't make this difficult," she said. "You're staying behind."

Which head does she talk to? Does it even matter, if they're all the same? Does it matter, then, if the same being speaks differently through different heads?

Slowly, Alexa lowers herself to sit on the stairs next to the dogs. To inspect them, to marvel at them, to line them up, profile for profile, against Rusty, and wonder. Same model, maybe? Similar series, certainly. Submodel, perhaps, or an earlier breed.

Without any of her own input, her hands dig in her bags, and come out with a wire brush and a small bottle of oil. She's always done her best thinking with her hands, and surely, one of these good dogs will want brushies.

"If you'd asked me that even a year ago, I wouldn't have hesitated to say yes," she admits. "Of course we know better now than you did then, of course we know what the gods want and how to appease them."

You, the one always sighing. You want brushies, don't you? Yeah, you do. Look at those mournful eyes. C'mere, let's get you cleaned up.

"But then I found out that the reason Hermes hasn't been seen for two hundred years is because I was guarding her daughter. And the Hermetics might have known, and still don't know what she wants?

"And let's not forget that Athena is, apparently, dead. And has been for centuries? And the only reason I found out was because the new war goddess showed up to kill her? And I don't even know her name, let alone what she wants."

Best steer clear, all things considered. Make due offerings if needed, but never draw attention. Bad enough when Athena was her mom, last thing she wants is to make friends with the new one.

"And Beljani was running around with a sword that Bella pulled from… somewhere. Because somebody we don't know answered a prayer.

"So, maybe we're a bit smarter about it. Maybe we benefited from the mistakes your age made. But it's still surprising to be so old and find how little I might actually know."

Redana really thought that she was prepared for anything. She’d thought it very hard when she’d woken up in the middle of the night [1], worked her way out from underneath Bella’s outstretched leg, and made her way down to the kitchens to carry out a scheme she’d had itching in the back of her head for… well, for a while.

Because that’s how it works, right? This is what they need for things to be better, going forward. This is how she apologizes, and offers herself, and balances the scales, and learns. If she wants to kiss her oldest friend, she needs to understand what it is to be a maid. And she already had readied an outfit or two, just so that Bella would be comfortable, just in case Bella demanded this balancing of the scales, even though if Dolce hadn’t been up early making breakfast she never would have been able to finish all of the details in time!

Prepared for anything. For Bella to insist on having a chair. For Bella to set her on chores. For Bella to tug on her leash and ask her if she’d been having thoughts like this forever, and how maybe that could open up how much she’d wanted to kiss a maid, but how afraid she’d been of ruining this, of ruining everything, of making Bella hate her, and how nothing Bella could do back could ever make Dany hate her, not here, not so far away from how awful they’d been on Baradissar.

But it’s one thing to pick out a dress because you want Bella to have something pretty, and it’s another thing to belatedly realize you never imagined her wearing it. And it’s one thing to imagine Bella bossing her around, and another thing entirely to see her smile and want to stare at it while stumbling forward like a snake-charmed bird, right into her claws, and it’s another thing entirely to hear how easily command comes to her, and how easy it must have been for Jil to follow her, Bella, Queen of Space.

“You can,” she says, dreamily, still staring at one of Bella’s fangs, blood racing through her cheeks, just beneath the skin. She can. It’s allowed. The door’s locked on the inside and Redana can handle anything and Bella chased her all the way here, and she’s owed something for that Hermetic station and for Baradissar and for all the places where Dany failed to protect her, and that smile is everything and she’s going to fall into it.

She takes a step forward, teetering on the edge of that condescension, unfamiliar from sweet soft gentle agreeable Bella, but intoxicating, just enough poison to let the mind spin, just like when they’d danced—

And the bell jingles.

Redana takes a step back. Continues to redden. Claps one hand over her mouth. Bella seems taller and her eyes flash amusement. You can? Is that what a maid is supposed to do, Redana Claudius? Is that the example that Bella set out for you? For shame!

“I mean, yes ma’am, sorry ma’am, I’m, I’m, yes!” She curtseys again, which lets Bella see the look on her face again, and, and, and? Is this really the kind of maid she is? The kind who would never be able to satisfy the standards of Bella, maid extraordinaire? The kind who begs to be punished like some sort of penitent villainess? The kind who keeps her Mistress waiting?? Not that she ever made a fuss about Bella, but Bella was always making a fuss for her about being punctual and seeing things done, Dany never would have had to say anything like that to Bella! And!! Ready for anything!

Approaching Bella with the dress is almost overwhelming. All this time, back home, she’d occasionally felt awkward letting Bella help her with her outfits, aware of her maid’s physical proximity, of the pleasant smell of her body, of how gentle and careful her fingers were.

Redana will be just as careful, even if she is not as practiced. She will drape you in the colors of the True Sea and pull its sash snug around your waist, lace ribbons all the way up your battle-scared spine, make you…

She’ll make you look like a Princess, Bella. If you let her. Eyes trying not to linger too long, tongue sticking out between her lips as she ties you off with sailor’s knots, stepping up on her toes as she smoothes out your hair, and if you let her, if you allow her to go so far, she’ll even offer to comb your hair, My Lady Mistress, and she’ll self-consciously flick a stray hair behind her ear, and she’ll lose the battle of self-control stopping her from staring even as she fidgets and waits for, no, hopes that you will let her do this for you. If only this one time. Let her give it back to you.

---

[1]: actually, almost exactly three-quarters of the way through the night. If we’re counting.