The world exists in smears and splotches. Messy, muddy colors that run together at the edges of what might be shapes, but might also just be the shape of the new broken reality where one plane of color fights another for dominance. She would call herself blind if the rising and sinking of her exhausted breathing didn't cause the patches to move with her. Her head lolls onto her chest and the world briefly explodes into a kaleidoscope of sharp edges and sharper pain. She groans, a sound so weak and wet it makes her skin crawl with revulsion.
No, Bella is not blind. But it might be kinder if she were.
She means to lift her head, defiant. She tries to set her jaw and arrange her facial features into something proud and strong. But she can feel the slump of her shoulders and the parting of her lips that mean she's failed in spite of everything. There is a war happening inside of her blood, some sort of fever-bringing disease of a sort that never came to the Imperial Palace on Tellus, and the greatest triumph of her form is that she has it in her to look pathetic. Drained of life, but still breathing. She snorts with frustration; wet snot clings to her chin. That... that must be a new low, even for her. Isn't it?
Every breath is filled with information that she did not ask for. The whining of her ribs is proof against the question of her memories. She was not always broken. Could not have been, because these white hot knives inside her skin are proof that sometime recently, she burned brighter than a sun and fought a war for something. For... someone? Her jaw clenches. This too is pain. But she breathes, because there's nothing else for her to do. Her mouth tastes dust and dryness and rust: this is a place of death which long ago gave up on keeping any sort of proper caretaker. Nobody has loved this place in lifetimes. The air smells of brine, barnacles, and rot: this a tomb that was swallowed by the sea. A thousand thousand troubles have crushed and haunted it for hundreds of years. No wonder the Master brought her here. This place must be Hades' garden. It is a crumbling temple that knows only death.
Her own body is adapted to this new home. Impossible to tell how much of her is left. She flexes her fingers, and in so doing discovers they still exist. Prickling fires spark up and down her knuckles and into her palms. She must have held them like this for a long time, then. Her mutilated fingers feel heavier than the rest, and don't bend like they're supposed to. Somebody has covered up her shame. But they have not given her fresh talons, a sign of trust. Her deadliest claws have been capped.
Her head is too heavy for her neck, and sags forward except with great effort on her part. She makes it anyway: the Master always told her good posture was important. Which Master that was escapes her just. It doesn't really matter anyway, does it? She is seated, is sitting. Her body is heavy in ways that do not account for simply being tired and broken. Her legs are folded under her and pushed crossed apart into a lotus position. Uncomfortable weight and a rough itching tells her that her knees are tied into position with a great deal of rope, and that her wrists have been looped into it. The fur on her wrists is sweaty, cold, clammy. She has been gifted bracelets to hold her still and gentle, a deeper wish than simple ropes can grant alone. She rolls her hips and pushes her feet to the fullest extent her bindings will allow. Her ankles scrape the ground with a sound of heavy chains. Behind her back, her tail writhes like a pinned serpent. Its many joints flow like mercury until it reaches the ribbon tied to something heavy around the tip. Even this expression has been held in place.
This is not a punishment. This is a lesson. A hand touches her shoulder, and Bella's world dissolves in a wave of heat and acid burning. It is wet. It is crushing. It is melting her from the inside out. A disease, a virus, a, a, a, aaaaaaahhhhhhhh! She means to scream, but when her ears bend to scrape up the sound all they catch is a gurgling, inhuman moan. It dies into a whine held over infinite seconds, and then it melts into an even stranger sound she can't recall being able to make. A thrumming, breathy, rolling sort of... ah. But. How? How could that slimy, noxious touch make her purr?
"You, you're... talking..."
Her voice is soft. It chimes like music inside her ears, which seems wrong. But the Master always said to greet the morning's lessons with all the grace and sweetness she could hold inside her miserable, unworthy body? He... she... they said that. Didn't she?
"About Artemis? Mynx said... nnnf, precepts. She said. She said. Ah. What did she say? That... an assassin. It's her, your, the job to, to, only remove the disease, and leave the body."
Bella manages a frown, and tilts her head in spite of what it costs her. Her hazy, unfocused eyes stay stubbornly open, seeking a comforting face amidst the jagged world of endless colors. Her shivers send needles prickling all across her body. Her bindings are so heavy.
"But why are you telling me this? I have served the Crown faithfully. I never questioned your order, or your authority. I treated your pupils as well as I could manage. Did I, was I bad? Am I... going to die?"
*********
Redana!
The room you step into looks like a collage from several splintered points of time. There are broken scraps of unidentifiable trinkets thrown haphazardly about the carpet about the otherwise almost empty shelves that make this cramped room feel cavernous. The bed is pressed and made as neatly as you can ever remember the one you grew up with being back at home. Above the pillows on the ceiling, an outcropping of crystals bathes the room in calming orange light. But everything else is dented, broken, or torn apart. In the air, even your nose can pick up a faint smell of roses, mixed with something else.
Everything except the films set about the room with no clear pattern. The ancient, dusty projector pointed at the barest, flattest wall where the light is more than good enough for a screen. And at the corner of the bed, where your feet finally stop leading you, a single reel of film that feels unnaturally heavy when you lift it. You turn it over in your hands, and you can almost make out the line where once upon a time it had been cut, and where someone or something very deliberately sealed it back together.
A note tumbles like a baby bird out of your hands and onto the blankets. There in dark, expensive ink across the creamy paper a message swirls its way across in immaculate script:
'To Her Royal Highness, The Princess Redana Claudius'
The gentle currents of the air that always blow inside this room to keep the atmosphere adjusted for the activities of its guests catches the slip of paper and flips it over. On the other side, in shaky and spidery plain letters is a single word tucked inside a storm of other scratched out attempts. If you squint you can still make it out.
'please'
It takes several tries to fit the reel inside the projector. You have to turn it over three times to make sure it slots in, and whack it harder than you probably should for such a fragile looking thing. But eventually it takes it, and wobbles on its table as it rumbles to life. There's just enough time to find a seat on the bed by the note before the show begins.
The screen wobbles as it flickers to life. At first the image is nothing but a bright off-white smudge, until it gradually starts fading into a blurry and indistinct grayscale picture of a very dark room. Slowly, details start to pop out: a bed with neatly pressed sheets and an immaculate and warm looking blanket folded into a perfect rectangle at the foot. The side of an ornate, whitish tin sitting on top of the blanket. The dark and spotless floor, and in the very bottom right corner of the frame, the sharp pointed heel of a shoe. The screen stutters, and the shoe disappears.
It must be a very old model to be having this much trouble. It must have known a lot of use to be running this quietly. Even by the oppressive standards of the Anemoi, the image is stifling, still, and silent. The shot sits perfectly still, without stimulus of any kind, when suddenly after a minute the sound of a mechanical clicking comes over what may as well have been a photograph. And then, just behind it, the soft flutter flutter of film feeding through a processor slot. It must be a very special model to remember what colors are after so many years of quietly waiting to be wanted again.
The room itself is no less black for all the triumph of the camera. But the bedsheets are vibrant ocean blue, and the blanket the deepest emerald green. The tin, it turns out, is platinum and covered with gold trim in pattern of crawling vines and roses. The lighting in the room is soft but sufficient, the kind of soothing yellow that begs a body to curl up underneath it with a story or to nap as though it were a sunbeam in a perfect garden, full of--
A single golden cat's eye suddenly fills the entire frame. The pupil grows wide as it flits from side to side, hunting, searching, puzzling. And then with equally little fanfare it retreats, and the cat it's attached to furrows her brow in concentration. The frown covering her face conveys nothing of hatred or aggression, but only a quiet kind of focus. She could easily be fighting a particularly stubborn stain right now, or building herself up to lecturing you about your bad habits, Redana.
"...Is it? Aha!"
Her delight ripples through the room in waves of bright laughter as beautiful as song. The smile it brings to her face transforms her, taking away years of stress and trauma and transforming her from a Praetor to a Best Friend. This is the height of her beauty: her lips painted cherry red and her cheeks stretched wide with mirth. Her teeth are dazzling, and for once their sharpness is cute instead of predatory. Her golden eyes are sparkling as she finally steps back and fully into the frame.
"In the old stories, the great heroes would create records before attempting difficult tasks and challenges. I thought, since my own adventure is about to come to an end I'd maybe try my hand at it. But I didn't know what to talk about, so I..."
Bella glances off frame at the door several times before continuing, suddenly looking very nervous. She takes a deep breath before suddenly breaking into a twirl that lifts her skirts in a wide circle of giddy pleasure. Her outfit is simple, pure black and white, and very deeply frilly. Her skirts are layered waves of lacy black fabric lined at each new descending line with white trim. When they settle, they come to rest just below her knees, covering up the little ribbons tied at the tops of her socks, which are every bit as snowy white as the fur they're covering.
She poses by lifting her arms to either side and jutting out her left leg to show off her shining black lacquered dancing shoes and their 3 inch heels that lift her calves into the most perfect and enticing shape they're capable of. As she gestures with her arms, the wide and open white lace of her sleeves flutters and dances around her hands like falling leaves caught in a swirling breeze. They wind and wrap three full times around her wrists and cover her smooth black sleeves before her dancing pulls them open again. They hang long enough on her wrists to reach the middle of her skirts when she finally brings her hands to rest at her stomach.
When her back arches, it pushes her chest forward enough to strain the oversized black buttons on her blouse, but only just enough to show off the ruffles layered atop the otherwise smooth and patternless design. She is elegant. She is prim, she is proper. If she had her paw print patterned apron with her she would be ready for almost a normal day of working in the palace, albeit perhaps on a particularly festive occasion. She turns to show her back and the many gold laces tying her shirt together, as well as her dazzling and intricate braid. She must have spent hours on it: more than thirty plaits wind their way down her neck and the top of her back in a fishtail pattern complex enough that even a weaver would hesitate before trying to replicate it in their work. Even with its broken chain, her collar manages to look stately and impressive underneath it.
Bella turns and smiles for the camera again before disappearing out of frame for a moment with a series of loud-clicking steps. She comes back with something clasped gingerly in her hands, which she hides from the camera with her sleeves. She hesitates for a long moment, twice lifting her arms up toward her head before bringing them down again before she finally makes the decision and places the ornament where it belongs. The sheen of the golden laurel wreath is almost blinding, even in the low and comfy lighting of her bedroom, as it rests upon her hair like a crown. She tilts her head this way and that, showing how by its own power it stays where it should without ever actually quite touching her. Imperial Regalia... at last a reminder of her station. Of the full degree of trust the Empress has placed in her.
"So!" she chirps, "What do you think? The Princess will love it! Right? She will, won't she? There's no way she won't, I picked it out especially for her!"
Giddy bouncing flutters her sleeves and skirts and bounces her hair, though every piece falls perfectly into place again without a hint of disarray. Her fingers are as clever as they've ever been, apparently. She laughs again, and it's as wonderful as music.
"I really wasn't sure at first, but Mynx said I needed to remind her who I am and... she was right! It's perfect. Absolutely perfect. Oh, I never knew how much fun it was having my own wardrobe! When I get home I should ask the Empress if... oh! I can't believe it! This is finally over! I'm going home! I'll make her understand and she'll come on board my ship, and then... that's it! Just one last trip and we won't have to deal with all this space and danger ever again! I could sing, honestly! I guess I'll have to, actually."
Bella heaves a playful little sigh and sits like a proper lady on the bed. She opens up the tin and tilts it to show the camera: it's full of all sorts of sweets, all classic favorites of Redana. There's candied rose petals and crystallized honey of course, but the star of the show are the variety of colored and snow-covered cubes that are the Princess' absolute favorite: Ilium Delight! Bella reaches in for one, but hesitates before she touches it, and grabs a petal instead. It crunches between her teeth and she squeezes her eyes shut while her ears flutter in absolute delight.
"The Anemoi is no fit place for a princess, but I'm ready for the challenge! I've got her favorite foods and a bunch of her old holos here with me, so I'll just... oh, what's it matter? She's going to love it here! We'll be together, Dany! Aren't you excited? We're going home!"
******
The picture flares to life more confidently this time. There’s a burst of white that flickers and warps unsteadily at the edges for a moment or two, but even though the picture bubbles occasionally it fades straight into color. The whirring and flapping that accompanied filmmaking was quieter this time too, even though the sound needed less time before it popped on. Such a proud machine, to have recovered it’s full form so quickly like this.
The room is just the same as it was the last time. The sheets still neatly pressed and tucked, the blanket still folded and a perfectly perfect untouched rectangle. The tin of snacks is even sitting on top of it again with its lid firmly reclosed, making it difficult to place the shot in time. It couldn’t be more than a few minutes after the shooting of the diary. If it hadn’t been for how smoothly the camera came to life this time it would even have been possible to believe this came before.
The only real difference is Bella. Even she looks basically unchanged: the same frilly, prissy dress. The same elaborate and impractical braid. The same makeup, the same pointed shoes, the same contented swishing of her tail. If she’s left this bedroom since the last filming, there’s no sign of it. She sits on the floor in front of the bed with her knees daintily folded under her and picks her way through a small and somewhat crumpled box that manages to smell of dust even as a projection. To either side of her are small piles of meticulously stacked film reels, the right of which is much larger than the left. She lifts another one out of the box and stares at it in silence with a look on her face that makes her seem like she’s trying to destroy it with her eyes.
“Batrachomyomachia Untold,” she mutters, “She likes that one. Maybe it should stay?”
Just hearing the name is enough to bring back the memories, isn’t it Redana? To the bright and intricately crafted world of an empire populated not by humans and servitors but by tiny adorable little mice and moles and bunnies. A world of adventure! A world of tiny little phalanxes, gritty adventurers, and Evil Cats.
And best of all, the cast of characters is so rich! Literally dozens of protagonists span the full series, each with their own fully realized motivations and goals that don’t always align with the other heroes’! Of course Bella would have wanted to keep this! Together you must have watched at least seventeen of these, each one at least twice. This is a movie filled with fun memories, so… why is she hesitating?
“Which one of these is this, again?” Bella sniffs.
“Ugh. They made too many of these stupid things, if you ask me. How is anybody supposed to keep track of who’s related to who and what’s actually happening? Ha, leave it to Dany. Only she could go white as a sheet if you ask her to name the Seven Hills and then turn around in the same breath to explain who Whisker-shaker is and why it’s important he just took a spear defending Fratley the Iron Tail.”
She laughs, but it’s oddly free of scorn. After a moment, she shakes her head and places the reel on the larger pile to her right. That must be the Accepted Pile, then.
“No thank you. She’s just going to ask where the other ones are, and I’m gonna have to tell her they were lost in a fire and there’s no way she’ll buy that. Again. Let’s just not remind her.”
Oh. Bella reaches for the box again to continue her sorting, but her arm freezes in mid-motion. She huffs a dramatic sigh to nobody, to herself maybe, and plucks Batrachomyomachia from the discard pile.
“...You owe me, Dany.”
After that, she finds Leona Marshall’s Eurydice, a certified masterpiece of filmmaking based on the ancient myth. Every shot is painstakingly crafted, and everybody knows the joke about how Ms Marshall must’ve slept with Hades to get the lighting as perfect as it is. But it was also filled to bursting with catchy songs, all of which Bella knew by heart and could sing to you in her angelic voice before you even finished asking her.
“...Can’t think of anything worse to bring than this. Oh sure, let’s wave the impossible journey to the far end of the universe in her face, why don’t we? She’ll think I’m doing it to taunt her. Pass.”
And off it goes to the reject pile. From the look on her face, it’s not even the best film she’s thrown out today.
“Zahar and the Seven Galax… ies.”
Bella’s face turns scarlet and she clings tightly enough to the film that the sound of the reel cracking starts picking up on her own little movie. Does she know she’s making it? Her arms start trembling as her tail stiffens and bushes to comedic proportions.
“No. No! Absolutely not! Nuh uh!”
And she doesn’t so much set the movie on the reject pile so much as she flings the jaunty tale of Azura Pirates and the slave girls who can’t help falling in love with them on their adventures straight to the other side of the room. She trembles and pulls her arms against her chest for several minutes before she can compose herself enough to continue.
When she does, she stops cold. The film is Around Cloudcuckooland In a Fortnight, which you distinctly remember being a silly cartoon adventure. Even by the standards of relaxing media that you set for yourself, Redana, this one is childish in the extreme. The colors are bright (some are even pastel), the songs are silly except for That One you remember giving you feelings, but you wouldn’t dare go back to it, at least where anyone could see you watch. The ammunition you’d be handing Mynx alone!
But, do you remember? It was your first movie together. You were so excited. It was just after you’d managed passing marks on an important examination, and your mother was in a good enough mood to ask you what you’d like for a reward. You asked her to let you take your new pet into the Big Theater to watch the silly movie you’d heard the Attendants whispering about.
And so all of the benches were empty that night. It was you and your Bella sitting in the front row, in front of a screen so big it felt even grander than the night sky. You sat there, vibrating with excitement, huddled in your soft blankets, and the two of you snuck your little hands out of your cocoons to grab at chocolates and toasted bits of breads and all kinds of other delicious snacks.
You fell asleep before the end. It was so late, wasn’t it? Your Bella had to wake you up after the credits had ended. You’d forgotten until just now, but she had the strangest look on her face back then. You’re sure of it, because she’s got the same one on now, looking at the movie in her hands. Her golden eyes are misty and distant and mouth is hanging just slightly open in an expression of longing she seems afraid to let all the way out.
The funny thing is, you’d never actually gone back and seen it all the way through. The two of you had made such a mess that night that Mom wound up banning you from her theater for a good long while. And by the time you could watch movies again, there were others that excited you, so you never went back.
But in her room on board the Anemoi, Bella swallows a sniffle. She hiccups, and places the reel gently on the top of the left pile. The screen blinks several times before it goes out entirely.
*******
Now you see the hand of an old master at work. The screen bursts to life with a smooth flourish that doesn’t need any warm up. This gives plenty of extra time to notice that it’s been moved since the last time it was turned on. The screen pans around in the edges of a batch of shadows that are stretching toward a circle of quiet yellow-orange light.
It’s a dingy light by any reasonable standard. It’s dull and difficult to see by; there are broken down sections of the Plousios that are brighter than this by accident. But there’s something about the darkness the camera’s swimming in (and as you watch the way the screen sways and flops as it moves, it’s obvious that it’s being carried by someone) that makes that pale light look like the softest and most beautiful thing in the universe.
The camera moves closer to the light on awkward, fearful steps. It peers around the back of something massive, and now you can finally see the shape of the room. The circle of altars shaped in the likeness of the Gods is lit by candles on this ship, but even still every Pantheon is built exactly the same.
"It isn't right..." Bella’s voice is soft and painted with regret.
You can’t see her. The cameraperson doesn’t have the angle. They lean around a corner and suddenly the screen plunges several feet toward the ground. It bobbles in a pair of unsteady hands with sickening vertigo before it’s caught. You can feel them cringe as they pull it steady again, and… there! A sudden motion on the strange, soft looking floor helps you identify a shadow with a distinctive pair of ears atop its head.
"This ship doesn't believe in spices. I wanted to recreate... if I were back on Tellus, I would have made it better. But still. For you."
The shadow dips on the ground suddenly in a posture of kneeling. She stays there, and you can see the telltale flicker at the base of it that means her tail is flicking about in pleasure. Which god is she praying to? From the camera’s position it seems to be lurking behind Artemis, but Bella’s shade is large and indistinct enough that it could be anywhere. Her ears are pointed at Apollo, if that means anything.
"The reorganization of the ship is going well, by the way. Lorventi's gonna be pissed if she ever drags her ass off that infirmary bed, but that doesn't matter anymore. The lanterns are free and productivity's up across the board. I've got this place running smoother than the Kaeri could even hope to... ahem."
This is Bella, but it’s a voice you’ve never heard before. She’s warm and reverent, but also casual in a way she’s never been with anybody you can remember. Certainly not you. She wouldn’t dare be this familiar on Tellus, and since then she’s been… tense, but here she sounds almost like she’s talking to her mother instead of a god.
Is this what she’s like when she’s praying? You’ve never seen her do that, either. Bella has always quietly retreated into the background during every religious ceremony, and was never seen around the palace making her own sacrifices or invocations. But here she is so comfortable and at ease it’s like she’s walked with the gods her entire life. Her laughter ripples like chiming bells, drawing a tiny ‘aww’ from the cameraperson that doesn’t quite last long enough to identify the voice.
"For as much as she was a moron, that pirate woman had her ass parked on an incredible wardrobe. Surprised any of it fits. Do I have you to thank? Never worn pants before. It's... I like it. This whole time I've been running around chasing old memories that weren't worth three floggings. But now, thanks to you, I understand what I'm supposed to be. Watch over me, Protector. I'll make you proud of me, I promise."
The camera nods to itself in satisfaction, and swings toward the darkness. You can still hear the slight sounds of breathing and the rustling of fabric that might mean Bella is bowing or standing or moving in some way you can’t be sure of anymore. Despite the blackness, there’s a sense of motion, of slooowwww creeping into the shadows and the safety of a hallway that feels the length of the universe away, though it must be just a few steps more.
Beneath the camera, there is a sound like an incense stick snapping under a foot. Again, you feel it cringe. Everything freezes. Bella’s voice drips with annoyance.
"Whatever it is you're up to, Mynx, keep it to yourself."
*********
“Praetor, a moment?”
The voice belongs to a small mouse servitor in an oversized leather longcoat that’s hanging off of her badly enough to undermine any semblance of authority she’s supposed to have. She shifts nervously from foot to foot in the dark, making the gaudy collar wrapped around her throat clack and chime as all the assorted knicknacks clipped onto it. She cranes her neck to look up at what can only be Bella.
The girl darts nimbly about a bulky desk and busies herself with setting all sorts of charts and documents across the length of it. Most of the pages are written in the kind of tiny scrawl that a camera of this quality can’t possibly make out, at least not from the angle it’s shuffling about the shadows from and in this low light, but when she lights the candle you can definitely see a star chart that’s absolutely scarred with angry red lines criss crossing from system to system like an angry net.
Two more candles get lit and set in braces on the walls, revealing what must be the most claustrophobic room in the entire ship, which from what you’ve managed to see of it is saying something. The tangled nest of communication tubes juts from one wall next to a cramped table only a few paces away from the one the girl is setting up. Individual stations practically bump into each other where the walls seem to lean in toward the center of the room. Is this the bridge, or a torture chamber? It couldn’t possibly hold more than five or six people at a time, unless they were all as small as the collared mouse. She trembles as she pulls out a chair and stands in front of it with her hands folded in front of her legs. Bella does not sit.
“...Speak.” she growls.
Bella has her back turned to the camera, and she is a study in contrasts. Her entire outfit is either blacker than the void or such blinding bright white you’d be forgiven for thinking she wove it out of starlight. A tight fitting black dress shirt hides none of her back muscles until a waist-length white half cloak covers it and her right arm in its billowing folds. Her left sleeve cuts off at the elbow, showing her silken white fur bound in an ornate leather armguard covered from end to end in markings made of raised little bumps.
Her tail flicks under a long white skirt that wraps around her left leg. Her right is encased, or maybe more trapped, in tight black leather that runs down to the mismatched boots on her feet. Her legs shift with a swishing of fabric; a wide and confident stance. Her shoulders roll inward and she pulls her arms across her chest in front of her.
“Quit wasting my time, Jil. You’re not a mop girl anymore, or whatever the fuck it is you did before. The Kaeri aren’t in charge. Lorventi doesn’t control anything anymore: I do. And I just told my first officer to speak.”
“R-right! Yes, Praetor. I, uh…”
Bella’s hair is wild and free flowing in a way that seems wrong on her. When she lowers her head to sigh into her palm pressed against her nose, it bounces and cascades across her back and slips over her shoulders to her front. She rises again and tosses it behind her with a careless flick of her neck. The single small braid she’s tied into the side of this loose main bounces against her neck and settles last of all.
“...D-damage,” the mouse girl squeaks, “From the Diodekoi’s escape. N-needs fixing. Engine Clan’s worried about their safety. And, uh, everyone else’s.”
“Hrn. Do we have the materials?”
“Not without using your treasury, Praetor.” the mouse girl swallows quietly and makes very careful note of Bella’s feet.
“My tr-- feh. The fuck do I care about that crap? We plucked it off a dumbassed rube’s sorry excuse for a pirate ship. Besides which, I beat one idiot in a plover. You won the fight. Just get it fixed and quit bothering me.”
“Um. Y-yes, Praetor. By your will. But there’s also… ah!”
Bella turns and pounces on her subordinate. She grabs Jil’s arm so suddenly and fiercely that the mouse girl almost passes out on the spot. You watch helplessly from your prison called the future as what will no doubt be a murder starts to play out in front of you. Only, not? What’s going on?
Jil sighs softly, so softly the sound doesn’t even make it all the way to the camera and you have to infer the breath from the way her mouth moves. Her eyes flutter shut as she melts into Bella’s touch. Bella’s fingers expertly roll up the sleeve of her longcoat and massage the skin underneath it with her palm with a series of precise squeezes and strokes that almost look like language. With her face turned like this you can clearly see her golden eye shining with a ferocity that makes the candlelight in the room seem like the brightest chandelier in the Imperial Palace.
The mouse servitor responds in kind. She grasps at Bella’s arm guard and feels every ridge and pattern with her fingertips, first from one direction and then backwards before tracing new ones from different angles. Then with a sudden ferocity of her own she twists the bracer sharply so that she can paw at the soft white fur where the straps leave a long stripe of it instead of closing completely.
And Bella lets it happen. They dance like this for several minutes, a delicate ballet of touches, squeezes, and strokes. Song without sound. Grasping in the dark and whispering truth into what they find there. Bella’s touch is visibly less elegant than her partner’s, but you watch her mask it with overflowing confidence. She is holding Jil’s heart in her palm, and every tiny twist and touch seems to soothe it. They say more in these few minutes than either might have been capable of with hours of conversation between them. Bella finally breaks away and takes the offered seat at last. She plucks a report off of the desk and glances at it casually.
“Omn should be installed by now in the war room,” she says with a wave of her hand, “Run the numbers you need through it and then point the right people at wherever it directs you. That thing was meant to be a gift for Her Highness, you can trust it fine.”
Jil nods for a moment before remembering she has a voice and adds a, “Yes, Praetor.”
“I’ll assign Lorventi and her phalanx to getting the Adepts back under control. They can’t handle Beljani, but she’s still stimmed to hell anyway so that doesn’t matter. The Kaeri need a redemption project anyway, so I don’t have to murder the lot of them for mutiny.”
“...Y-yes, Praetor.”
“I told you not to worry about it, Jil. Hera is with us. Which reminds me, order a new augury starting ten minutes ago. We’re overdue a course correction if we don’t want to lose the Princess’ scent.”
“Yes, Praetor.” Jil bows deeply and moves to leave.
Bella seizes her by the wrist again. This time she does nothing with her hand but squeeze.
“Not yet, dumbass.” Bella snarls.
“Yes, Praetor?” the poor girl can’t keep her voice from quavering.
“When you’re done with all this, go work on your speaking. You’re mine, understand? It’s time to start acting like that means something.
Jil pauses at the door, just in front of the camera, which swings suddenly away from her to avoid being caught. The girl’s face has a look of odd intensity to it as she puzzles through the meaning of Bella’s words, until suddenly her eyes light up and she lifts herself to her full diminutive height. She even rises up onto tiptoes for a second to match the energy of the moment.
“Yes, Praetor!”
*********
The only sight the camera can detect as it flutters to life again is a single blearly golden eye. Its pupil is a small, angry slit that glares hatefully into the screen. A messy lock of blue-black hair flops over it, and the sound of Bella’s frustrated groan follows her as she retreats backwards.
You’re back in her bedroom aboard the Anemoi again. Back on the same shelf she preferred to film from. The crystals overhead bathe the room in the same soft yellow glow as ever. Only, it seems emptier here than it used to. There was a chair, just over there near the closet. There was a set of dainty little figurines on the shelf behind the bed. There was a silver tin, once, filled with all kinds of snacks and memories of home. There was a box of painstakingly selected films meant for a journey you wanted no part in.
All of it is gone.
The bed is the same, but she’s stopped making the sheets. The blankets are in a crumpled pile to the side of the mattress and her pillows are scattered and misshapen lumps. Nothing speaks of care or cleanliness here anymore, not even Bella.
Once upon a time, her hair had always been done in all manner of elaborate styles as befit a maid whose first purpose was always being shown off. Somewhere on this journey she’d switched to a very artfully arranged wildness, but this isn’t that. Bella looks more like she hasn’t been in the same room as a hairbrush in days. It juts from the top and back of her head in lazy tufts that seem more dishevelled than her genes should even allow for.
In all the time you knew her, she wore the most elaborate and beautiful dresses your mother’s vast wealth could buy someone of her station. Every day was new frills and lace, new ribbons and cheerfully chiming bells with the same beautiful collar on her neck and her usual paw print apron keeping it all clean. Somewhere along the line she learned to wear more daring fashions that showed off more and more of her perfect body, or expressed new sides to her personality she’d buried deep inside her for the sake of her job. This, again, is not that. She sits down heavily on the foot of the bed, wearing nothing at all except an over-large and stretched out, moth-eaten t-shirt that drapes around her thighs in a vaguely dress-like fashion. It might have been pink, once. Or yellow? It might have had a pattern on it, but everything has faded into such a brownish gray that all you know for sure is that it used to look better than it does. It droops off her left shoulder far enough to expose the top of her breast. She makes no effort to fix it.
Bella glares daggers at the camera with an expression on her face caught somewhere between the borders of anger, frustration, and exhaustion. As your friend she had the most beautiful golden eyes in the entire galaxy. She must have learned to hate them as she travelled the seas. Her one good eye is hazy with fatigue, and to its right is something out of a nightmare. Her other eye looks like a wound: the iris is a featureless red gash in a sea of milky white. But even as tired as she looks, that eye bores through the camera with so much power it feels like she’s staring straight into you through the past. An Auspex. Did you know your mother’s creation could look so evil?
But then she blinks. She opens her mouth to say something and it turns into a yawn. It’s a gesture full of teeth, but it’s too sudden and vulnerable a gesture to make her seem more threatening. She looks a mess. She looks… tired. How long has it been since she slept? Is it the Auspex? Is she working herself too hard? Or is it something else?
With a huff, she falls backward onto the bed. Her arms sprawl to either side of her body. She pulls her knees together. And for the next several minutes, that’s it. Her tail lazily curls and uncurls around her leg, but to all appearances she might have passed out just like this.
“Fuck,” she observes.
She pulls herself further onto the bed and rolls over onto her side. She pulls a pillow close, and stops moving for a while. It’s another moment you could be forgiven for thinking her body had finally pulled her into the waiting hands of the Oneroi, but then you hear it. A hum so soft that even Bella might not be aware she’s doing it. She certainly doesn’t stir as she sings.
She doesn’t put words to the tune, but now that you’re listening for it, it’s all you can hear. And you don’t need her to sing the words to know them, do you Dany? You’ve heard it so many times before. Her favorite lullaby to sing, because it was your favorite to fall asleep to. The first one she made up all by herself, and the one she turned to to soothe you when your own special eye still bothered you every single night. You know every word by heart:
Hush-a-bye, princess, I’ll give you a moon
all strung with pearls
a bouquet of worlds
and morning will be here soon
Hush, little princess, your Bella is here
all through the night
til morning light
shows you there’s nothing to fear
Sleep, o my princess, and please do not cry
one day you will see
a silly kitten like me
will always wipe the tears from your eyes.
Counting the verses, you can hear her loop through the song three times. With each new verse she grows a little bit quieter, as her body sinks a little bit deeper into her bed. By the time she reaches the last ‘silly kitten’, her song is replaced by something even sweeter. The only sounds left in the room are the gentle whirs of the camera, and the soft and steady rhythm of her breathing as she falls asleep at last.
There’s something magical about this moment. Something tender and vulnerable that might make you want to watch it forever. She’s so still. She’s so quiet. Maybe if you watched her like this for long enough, you’d be able to think of her as your Bella again, as if none of the hurt that’s passed between you mattered at all.
But an unseen hand shuts the recording off before you can find out. The image blinks several times before it finally flickers out.
*********
The image shudders as it comes to life and flares repeatedly with bizarre bursts of static and flickers of motes of light like the after images you see after staring too long at a star. The film rushes in spurts of jagged motion: so still for several seconds that you can’t be sure if it’s frozen or if there’s just nothing to be seen, and then in the blink of an eye every intervening frame seems to happen at the same time and you catch up to the “present” with a sickening leap.
You’re in the bedroom again, staring up at Bella’s shocked face. There’s something more complicated playing across her features, but the jittery footage makes it impossible to discern what that might be. More to the point, you’re falling away from her, rolling sideways, and tumbling ever closer to the ground. She makes the tiniest of flinches toward the camera, toward you, as it and you fall, but she freezes before she can take a single step. Her neck pivots toward the bed, and the emotions you feel pouring out from that little lens are so powerful they almost steal the words out from inside your lips, “Goodbye, Bella.”
It could only have been a miracle that turned this ancient machine on in the circumstances you’re watching now. It is certainly the will of one god, or even several that keeps the picture running for you now. The impact is hard enough that you swear you feel it in your ribs. The lens fractures in several lines branching like a tiny tree through the middle. Some slivers of the picture are missing a color or two, a few others are entirely in grayscale. The sound cuts out instantly and entirely. But the film rolls on.
There is just enough time to catch your bearings down here before everything explodes again. Standing over there is Bella in a fancy suit decked out in golden jewelry and bells tied into a brilliant red (beige? mauve?) sash she’s wearing as a skirt. In front of her on the bed is another cat dressed for the exact same ball, though her chains come attached to manacles on her wrists and ankles. She’s lying helplessly on the bed and trying to gather herself up to do something, but whatever it is she’s running out of time to do it. Even with as difficult as the cracks and static are making it, you’re certain it’s Vasilia you’re seeing.
And if you felt a sense of dread creeping up your throat when you made that connection, it is nothing compared to the horror that shambles into frame now. It moves like… no, start from the most important part. It’s human. Or rather, it was. This thing wears the dark robes of a priest of Hades, which is almost as horrible to think about in light of the rest of what you see as the thing itself is. Its limbs lunge with dreadful power through the air to drag the body along behind them, and every step sheds more leaves onto the ground. Swirls of vines poke out from the sleeves.
Worst of all is the head. It had a face, once. It was human after all. But the green and golden bonsai bursting from its skull has obliterated any sense of what that person might have looked like in life. Its neck lolls hideously to one side, not caring about the pressure it must be putting on its spine. It moves in a way that reminds you of the camera watching it. Stillness into an explosion of sudden motion, an inexorability and a callousness that only a plant could have. The knife in its hand glints in the light of Bella’s crystals.
It lifts the knife’s hand to strike. Vasilia has pushed herself valiantly onto her elbows, but every angle you can read points to the uselessness of even attempting to defend herself. That’s when Bella explodes into the shot again, curving a powerful kick into the trunk of the Bonsai. It staggers, but only slightly. The knife plunges into the bed instead of Vasilia’s ribs by the space of a single knuckle.
Everything is happening in slow motion now. The smoothness of each motion feels just as alien as the prior stutters, the death throes of the camera valiantly struggling to capture everything in front of it as best as it can before whatever borrowed life it has runs out. And this is what it sees: the Bonsai wrenches its elbow out of the socket to twist the knife and slash through the mattress at Vasilia. Bella’s claws meet it at the joint. She slices through the Bonsai’s arm as though the flesh and bones were nothing but dried leaves. Vines tumble free where there should be veins. There is no blood, none at all.
It turns its face to look at her. It does not smile. It has no lips to smile with. A milky white eye stares hollowly in her direction while its free arm bends unnaturally at the shoulder to reach for its prey again. The knife was a courtesy. It never needed a weapon to squeeze the breath from Vasilia’s body. Fingers crush her fragile-seeming throat and lift her up off of the bed.
And for some reason, Bella hesitates. Her back is turned, so you can’t read her face, but she is turned to watch the Bonsai and not Vasilia. You can see the tension play out in her back muscles and in the coiling of her legs. She is contemplating it, contemplating… him? And when she finally moves, it feels twenty seconds too late. But when she moves, it’s over in an instant. Her right arm is death. She cuts the Bonsai down in a single swing that crushes through its skull and tears the body almost in half. There is sap and there are leaves. There is no blood.
Two cats are left alone in a room together. They contemplate one another. Bella retches and looks like she might drop to her knees. She finds a coin instead, and tosses it on top of the dead priest’s corpse. Maybe he was one of hers. Before he was the Bonsai, anyway. Impossible to tell if he was human or servitor before the end. But it’d be just like her to bring a priest along who belonged to a god she didn’t worship, wouldn’t it? Well, it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s just her and Vasilia.
Bella watches the other cat. Your other friend. The screen seems frozen again, and only the unbearable tension of the moment makes you think (or hope, maybe) that this isn’t all there is. And it isn’t. Bella reaches out with her left hand, the clean one, palm upturned to do… something. Vasilia reaches for the knife, and plucks it up from the mattress like a flower.
The way Bella’s tail flinches almost makes you think she’d been stabbed. She stiffly rises to her full height and holds her spot for just long enough that she might be saying something now.
Her body shakes with laughter that even in this silent void manages to seem ugly.
She turns sharply on her heels and leaves Vasilia behind.
Aphrodite bends down to inspect the camera, and puts his cigarette out on the lens.
The picture bursts in half as though cut by a sword. And then, darkness..
*********
...But that is not all there is to see. Divine hands had crushed this poor and loyal camera, and that’s as obvious as can be. And it’s mortal hands that put it back together again, which as it turns out doesn’t make this last and latest vision any less of a miracle.
The picture is blurry, especially around the edges of the frame. It’s also badly splintered: one third in color, one third in grayscale, and one third in sepia of all things, each of which bleeds uncomfortably into its neighbors at random seeming angles. It’s a labor of love, not skill, that gives you this last window into the Anemoi. Whose is a mystery, and the camera gives no clues.
Very little has changed about the bedroom since the battle that happened here, even though a great deal of time must have passed since you last saw it. Every fallen or broken ornament is scattered across the ground exactly as they had been, except for what might be a thin layer of dust coating the lot. A closet door is half opened at the same angle you might have noticed it last if you’d been paying attention to it and not the chaos of before. Only the camera has returned to its typical perch, and someone had evidently changed the sheets on the bed, because there is nothing of sap or blood or gashes visible on them.
You watch the room in stillness and silence for thirty seconds, maybe a minute, before a brief flick of tail enters the frame. The rest of Bella follows shortly after, and suddenly you can feel the weight of time crushing the little picture.
She looks nothing like you’ve seen her before. Her legs are strangely shaped with hard and irregularly packed muscles that don’t feel like they belong on her. Her fur looks matted and uncharacteristically unkempt, as if she hasn’t tended to it in weeks. She’s got pearls strung together in a sort of cap pulled over her hair, which is wild and uncombed on one side and cut ludicrously short on the other.
Bella turns and less faces the camera so much as she happens to present her front to it. The camera blurs for a moment trying to capture all the movement of her dress, which is made from hundreds of tassels covered in thousands of individual beads. Noiselessly they settle on her body again, and while she turns her head this way and that to look around her you have a moment to watch the pattern the dressmaker has woven across her. The colors are, of course, impossible to make out except by contrast but even through the grainy and indistinct footage you’re sure you understand it. After all, how many times did you talk about it? How many nights did you spend on Tellus wondering aloud to Bella about the shape of the night sky? Well here those wonderings are now, patterned across her clothes.
Her lips are moving now, but there’s no sound and it’s too difficult to make out the shapes her lips are making. Still, you’re certain the word ‘fuck’ is in there somewhere. Her expression is hard to get a read on; not angry or happy or sad, not relieved or tense or even a very careful neutral. Not at peace and yet not conflicted either. It’s a private look for her private room that she never thought that she would see again.
She walks closer to the camera, and the whole split-colored mess turns into a blur as her quietly clattering beads overwhelm the poor film. And then a minute later she turns and passes by, and what passes for focus anymore settles on her fingers, softly tracing the edges of the wood behind her as she passes. She flits here and there, sometimes stooping low to touch a bit of broken something or a piece of furniture like she can’t believe it’s real.
She spends a long time staring at the bed. Every now and again her tail twitches, and you can see her shoulders rise, tense, and fall in time with her soft breathing, but otherwise she doesn’t move at all. Then all at once she sits on the edge and leans back with her hands stretched wide behind her to either side. Her neck tilts so she can watch the crystal lights on the ceiling above her. She doesn’t smile, but she doesn’t scowl either.
Bella lifts her legs off the floor and crosses them underneath her body. She folds her hands in the middle of her lap and closes her eyes. Her chest rises with a single deep breath, which she holds for an uncomfortably long time. Her lips part and she lets it go.
For several long minutes, there is nothing to watch but the subtle motions of Bella’s slow breathing and her meditation. Maybe in this moment she reminds you of a statue of Apollo, fashioned into the shape of a Servitor. Maybe that’s blasphemy, maybe it’s not, but nothing disturbs her in any case. You are permitted to watch her for a while, until the image wobbles.
The room fills with the sound of a reel fluttering to its end. The screen flickers once, twice, and then the precious extra moments bought by somebody’s love come to a close. The screen turns dark for the last time. And that is really all there is to see.
