The sky is alight with colors. Shimmering clouds of blue and pink float in the distance, dusted with the sparkle of stars beckoning young travelers to adventure. Brilliant rivers of green ripple like giant serpents wrapping themselves across the leylines of the infinite void: where their breath mists out of their nostrils the sea turns a violent shade of purple instead. 

It had been impossible until now to understand the grandness of the vessel she'd set out on. On Bitemark it was more than half in seawater when she boarded it, or else the coral growths had made it indistinguishable from the bed it had slumbered in. Walking around inside of it was misleading in its own right; the corridors were vast but winding, and her thoughts were so occupied with the people inside of it that she'd gotten no real sense of it beyond 'larger than her village'. 

But now Mosaic saw her new home, and it was immense. Standing amidst these massive suits of armor in this space designed to launch them into the infinite void beyond, she could see the mouth of the [i]Plousios[/i] at last. And from the mouth if she craned her neck she could perceive the curve of the bulkheads beyond, and the ants swarming all around it gave it something to be huge against that was not itself somehow larger. Her ship stretched to the horizon. No, it [i]was[/i] the horizon. Infinite possibility, infinite space. Infinite. 

Against it, she was less than an ant. A mote of dust, perhaps. Mosaic tosses her head back and laughs. This was her weakness. Which made it her strength. The air rumbles, the ship groans, and the floor beneath her feet vibrates in emulation of her own purrs. Blast by blast the ship shakes off its coat of sea salt crusted coral. It glitters as she watches it float free and past them. 

Mosaic's hair is bound in ribbons today. Dozens of them, in every color of the Great Sea itself. She reaches behind her back and unfurls the first, the one closest to her tips, and beckons for a nearby Plover to approach. The huge machine, both a knight's armor and her mount, drops to its knee in front of her and the force of the air it disrupts billows her skirts all the way back to her tail. The bells around her neck and through her ear sing brightly. 

She reaches for the wrist of the machine, and ties the ribbon fast. Another gesture, and the plover rises. She crosses the hangar to the next one, unties the next ribbon, and repeats the gesture. On a finger, around a knee, left as a tassel to flutter proudly on the entrance to the cockpit, she leaves her tokens for her champions who would be doing the work she could not afford to take onto herself. All the while her face is pulled taut in obvious discomfort: the hit to her pride is palpable. The level of trust it takes for the woman who stole a mountain to send someone else on a task is not to be underestimated or taken for granted.

She hesitates when she reaches Ember's machine. Her spine straightens as it kneels in front of her, her beloved, her champion, her best and most precious knight. She looses not another ribbon from her hair, but a delicate red and gold sash from around her waist, and fixes it to the tip of her lance. Now she is the standard bearer. Now she is the hero. Now she is marked. Mosaic nods, and turns away.

Her eyes fall on Dyssia. Another ribbon, this one a shocking green and violet, attached to a shoulder. Her glossy hair falls across her back in loose and messy curls shaped by the braids she's pulled undone to arm her knights. Her eyes gleam in gold and purple fire as she watches the woman who fell from a comet and saved her. Her thunderbolt, the gift of Zeus. This trust belongs to you as well, stranger from a strange land. 

"These ribbons," her voice slices through the hangar with the precision of a blade, "Are the proof that I love you. Each of you are irreplaceable. I won't ask you to leave. I won't ask you to fight whatever it is that's buzzing around us and trying to eat our dream. Do what you want, whatever you think is best while you're out there. But you have my ribbons, and I want them back. So whatever else you do, you will return, understood? Bring these back to me. Un. Spoiled. [i]That[/i] is my order. I will be waiting for you to fulfill it."

She addresses the room, but her eyes are locked like a sniper's onto Ember and Dyssia. These, then, are the two she trusts the least. And the most. It's the strong ones that need to be looked after most, after all. They're the most likely to do something stupid in the name of not failing. And so she ties her leash. Now go. Get your asses caught for all she cares. But don't abandon her, not ever.