There was nothing more that could be said with words. Their destination was already set. Maybe it even had been before either of them had been born. Bella neither knew or cared, when what was in front of her already meant more than she could understand. There's little of the touch of a maid attending to her princess in her fingers just now; this grip belongs to Mosaic. The same fingers, the same memories, but the pressure spoke of a confidence and control she hadn't felt even on the Tunguska.

...There are really only so many ways you can cook a crab. Especially without real supplies, a proper kitchen, or a chef's training. Even the variety in the creatures themselves can only do so much before the feast turns into a monotonous chore: just resentful chewing through the same flaky sweetness and fat, fighting to swallow as much as possible before reaching for the drinks to keep the latter from running out before the former. It's a test of willpower rather than an indulgence of pleasure. It's jaw pain and sore throats and an uncomfortable churn in the stomach begging to stop, just please stop.

But Bella eats it all without complaint, for the sake of the journey ahead. The most she does is explain the process of winemaking, and her plans to manufacture something modeled after Nero's distilleries in the Plosious as soon as she could find the time and resources. But even this dies down to nothing so she can focus on the food. Her body needs the energy, if she's going to make it Gaia. 

It's not a big thing at all. It's just that, for the first time since Tellus became a memory, the future feels like it might be more important than the past.

[Bella will Fill Her Belly, and heal Iron]

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

There was still nothing to be done about the ridiculous nature of Mosaic's wardrobe. Bella was running out of tricks and alterations she could make without turning this into her only project, and unfortunately her days of isolated pursuit of hobbies were behind her. So until she finally found a planet that was willing to barter a supply of dresses worth half a shit, this is what life meant for her.

Relaxing today meant putting herself in a very tight black suit with knee-high boots worn over equally black pants that were somehow even tighter than the rest of the ensemble, worn so close to her skin and fur that they were really more akin to leggings despite the material and the deliberate creases pressed into the center of each leg. Black on black on black, with gold filigree in a stylized pattern of unfurling wings spreading across her chest on either side of a brilliant golden tie. Of course this being a Mosaic piece meant the stomach had been cut free from the shirt and jacket both, so even though she'd buttoned them until they conformed to her every bend and curve she was still exposed across the midriff.

It was easier to handle than normal. Not simply for the comfort of being alone, but because she'd tossed a long, crimson overcoat across her shoulder almost like a cloak. Her blue-black hair tumbled down the back of it, the left half in tight braids woven like rows of crops and the right half merely brushed until it flowed like a river. Perched atop her nose were a set of golden frames holding glasses over her eyes, somehow delicate and sloppy at the same time as they kept the vaguely oval lenses where she needed them.

She does not look up from her book when Dyssia crashes through the door. The glasses' work at hand: she'd been given a pair like this for study in Tellus. By Sagakhan, but never let a bitch mother ruin a good idea. The lenses themselves were just plain glass; the very idea of corrective eyewear was so alien to her that she didn't even know that people once upon a time would have mocked her for this. It was nowhere in her histories, after all, and the grand Human works she'd grown up watching or seen painted on the ancient liquid crystal canvases in Hades' palace never lead her to believe they served the Ancients any differently than they did her. The simple act of having them on her face meant she had to direct effort on the words in front of her. A thousand predator/prey instincts and the universe's most overtuned eyes stopped feeding her information that wasn't pertained to her studies when she had them on. Making them again in life had been difficult but worth it, because now when she had a day like this to spend in pleasure she could...

"Useless fucking asshole." she mutters, snapping [i]Silk, Steel, and Heartstrings: A Treatise on Love and Lust, Volume III[/i] shut and squeezing it between her fingers.

She does not glance up when the Azura woman squeaks with panic, nor when she bobbles the door in the act of shutting it and winds up slamming it harder than intended. Bella's ear presses against her skull for a moment, but her focus is entirely on the closed manuscript in her hand.

"I've never read anybody who knew less about love and still turn up with so much to say about it. Honestly, I know the Skies favor constant iteration of a craft until they hit perfection but this fuckhead stopped experimenting with her verse halfway through the first volume. I thought surely the published works would be her selected best, but like. Fuck me. 

[i]"Desperately I yearn to feel her flesh yield beneath my fingers, grasping empty in the dark. To sigh, the song of loneliness and sorrow. I weep into the night sky with Aphrodite's painful arrow my only companion.[/i]

"Idiot's never fucked a woman before in her entire life. If you wanted her so bad your fingers would be so deep inside yourself you wouldn't even be able to pick up a pen, let alone moan about it like that. Ridiculous. She doesn't show the first bit of interest in explaining the intensity of the heart, includes nothing in her songs about the motivating force of the lance that's supposed to be driven through her heart. I can't feel it pulling her even if I close my eyes and put myself in her place. Not even the decency to be afraid of a fire that should be melting her bones from the middle out. Injustice. That's what this is. It's a crime. Was she ever arrested, do you know? I hope this bitch, specifically, got her planet bombarded and was crushed under... whatever, I don't know. Something ironic I guess. Is this why you rebelled against your society? 'Cause honestly, I wouldn't blame you."

At last, her focus shifts. She sets the book on her desk and carefully plucks her reading frames off her face before she sets them down next to it with the care that would normally be afforded to a relic sacred to all of Olympus. Just now, her eyes could freeze a Leviathan in place. Bella sniffs the air, and gives her intruder a polite nod.

"You here to kill me, then? No? Then put that sword down, Dyssia. I've been meaning to talk to you."