In spite of herself, Bella's mouth has turned completely dry. Her lips beg for moisture, and she scans the room for her glass and finds it frustratingly empty. Her surprised swallow catches in her throat. The air is filled with the smell of gasoline and shaved iron, with hot spices and tannin. It makes her nose itch, but she does not dare to scratch it. 

She leans back, folding her arms across her chest in the face of this intruder. Though it is not the shock of her arrival or the threat of her legions that has stopped her heart like this. 

"Y-you..." her voice cracks with longing.

The crowds are cleaner, sweat and swagger and metal, all of the pride and none of the misery underneath the tide of pheromones waiting so patiently for anyone to make a move that they can meet with aggression. Here is gathered perfection. Here lies the shadow that an immortal, perfect empire has wasted precious resources and many of its best ideas trying to biomantically engineer a solution that might at last run it through with light. But that shadow is not named Ceron. It is not even named Nemesis.

It is Tellus. Tellus as Nero dreamed it. The secret wish inside the heart of an Empress.

Bella's chest constricts around the point where she once felt the screams of that divine heart breaking. Tears stream gently from her grim red eye. 

"I, I don't care about any of that," she says, and she cannot keep the reverence or longing out of her voice, "J-just... just tell me."

She reaches out and places her palm on top of the Shogun's.

"Do you see Her? Does She speak to you? Wh-when. Was the last time you?"