Phoe

Breathless Dead

"You're starting to piss me off."

Bella snorts her irritation as she turns her back to her friend again. Her tail flicks like a whip as she dresses, only calming for just long enough for her to thread it through the hole sewn into her panties as she pulls the lace fabric up around her hips, then one more time when she repeats the motion with her pants. It lashes so aggressively that she has to pause in the middle of fastening her sheer black bra to grab and squeeze the tip until the pain calms her down again. She rolls her eyes and spins around again to lean against her wardrobe as she works the straps over her arms.

"Don't think I don't know what you're doing. The second things start going my way you swoop in here you start inventing problems and magically you're the only one who can sense or stop them. Pretty fucking convenient, isn't it? Suddenly your useless ass is indispensable and you get to tell the Empress that I'm the one who's messing everything up."

There's no snappy comebacks to fill the pause while she stands there, half-dressed. No stammered excuses, either. The look on Mynx's face is so mask-like that it almost feels like a slap in the face. Bella glares through her newly mismatched eyes, but she's the one who blinks. She pulls out a tight fitting black jacket and slips it on without bothering with a shirt, fiddling with the neat rows of brass buttons until the whole thing is completely covering her with the vague Ancient World military aesthetic that Her Majesty also favored for a brief period, once upon a time. She reaches for the light switch, and sure enough in the changing lights her outfit inverts. She shrugs; at least she isn't bringing this back half-assed.

"This is the last time I'm going to tell you, there is nothing wrong on my ship. The Lanternites are under my control, the Kaeri are sulking but handled. And in any case neither one of them has anybody capable of unleashing Her Highness' assassins loose without my direct say-so. Even Lorventi admitted to that. You were wrong about Redana. And you're wrong about this. I won't let you take this from me."

"Bella, that's not what I--"

"Stop, Mynx. Just stop."

But the silence gnaws at Bella's chest. It tears at her with terrible teeth as she lifts the open-fronted red skirt off the top of her wardrobe and ties it around her waist. She swallows and looks away, her tail curling around her leg as she busies herself with a belt that cinches her clothing even tighter and forcefully highlights the shape of her body underneath the fabric. There's not a word spoken between them while she arranges the gold chain jewelry about her neck outside the high collar of her jacket and straightens out the intricate pattern of links and loops about her right shoulder. The longer she works, the tighter her chest clenches. She nearly reaches for her jacket buttons, as though that could fix it, but stops and forces herself to focus on lacing up a pair of dainty black boots up her calves, instead.

She hasn't done a thing with her hair since she got out of bed. She hasn't brushed or straightened it all week, in fact. Her fingers tremble as she hesitantly starts combing through the tangles to one side of her head, just enough to weave a single braid back into her hair, and in the middle of this act something or some god finally lifts her chin enough to look at the bed again.

Mynx is still there. Watching her. For some stupid, unknowable reason... she hasn't left. Bella sighs. Words of apology do not pass her lips. They don't cross her mind, even as she reaches for a handful of ribbons tied to a batch of bells she has no good reason for wearing anymore, and ties them to her belt. Her snarl is a sound of absolute frustration.

"Ok, fine! You win! If it'll make you shut up, then I'm conscripting you to be my bodyguard. You know, officially. Since you won't leave me alone anyway. Just be normal about it, for fuck's sake. Prove that I can trust you, Mynx."

Sunshards

Oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh gosh goshies gosh, that is a... um. It, um. She should not be staring. She should not be staring. But she can't help it! It's just such a nice butt!

Oh gosh no Yue, be strong! You're not like this! You've gone your whole life and barely even noticed that other girls even have... no, wait. Um. S-see, i-i-it's the tails, y'know? How is she supposed to see those tails swishing up there and not have her eyes drawn that way? Fox magic pretty is provocative, and this is not the part that anybody warned her about, so! It's not her fault! It's not her fault, ok? What's she even supposed to do when this kitsune is just... just lying up there on that pillar with her back curved so strategically to point that thing up in the air to be marveled at? Nothing, that's what!

And this is twice, now. Two tailed girls, two absurdly pretty butts. Do you think it's related? That is, um. N-no, no, this isn't the time. Not the time at all. You're right. B-but it's true, though! Just take Hyra's butt (oh gosh wait no I mean not like... oh gosh). Her real one, that is. She's fit and firm but still so full, y'know? Like, a-and not like this would ever, could ever happen, but if she ever decided to sit on your lap, all you'd feel is muscle, but she's so perfectly built that she could sit there forever and ever, and you could hold her all that time, and you'd barely even notice her weight.

"Wh-what? I... eep! No, I! No! Don't go putting wishes in my mouth, Hyra's the one I'm trying toooomph!?"

Yue wriggles uselessly against the red string binding her to this spot. She gives up a moment later to focus on trying to spit out the sudden mouthful of wolf tail cutting off her wishes, but that's even more doomed than her wriggling. It may taste like eating a cattail, and feel about the same, but Hyra is swift and skilled and shaking her head so forcefully that Yue can't manage more than a half-hearted sputtering. Red string. Somebody who cares. If she really fought to break free from those things, she'd deserve every bit of misery that came to her from then on.

Up on her perch, the kitsune shakes with bright giggles, which draws Yue's eyes back to Exhibit B. She blushes and looks away only to have her eyes drawn back to that perfect peach like they'd been magnetized. A-and! Look! Ok? She knows this is not the time for staring! Stop judging! Stop stop stop, please don't think she's one of those... y-y'know, erm, that she's... n-never mind. It's just. It's just! T-the way the fox spirit twists and poses her body, it's as obvious as the sun in the sky that this is where she wants Yue's attention to be! S-so it'd be rude not to notice! If she didn't trace the wide curves that were made to accent those hips so perfectly she would be doing a disservice to all fox-kind! Probably! She looks much, much softer than Hyra, like she's never done more than ten minutes' hard work in her life if she could help it, but that softness is inviting in its own way, isn't it? I-imagine her curling up on top of you and begging for tummy rubs, and... o-oh! Oh gosh. Focus, Yue! Focus!

...T-tails. If there's a more perfect indicator of pure magic, you're lying about it. Wherever nature sees fit to bless a girl with one, it also shapes her body as an act of worship. And yes, obviously Princess Yin was gorgeous without the need for a tail, but she's a Princess, which is its own sort of miracle. If you still don't believe, please cast your eyes to the tailless Exhibit C, presently blushing herself to death and trying not to sneeze and topple over on top of her totally-not-a-girlfriend-slash-wolf-companion, whose body resembles nothing so much as a bamboo pole. Nothing to grab. Nothing to love. And maybe that's another reason why she keeps staring.

"Plsh, hhii nnd ooo... Hhrrhm, llp mmmem trrksh!"

Hyra snarls and interposes her body between fox spirit and village girl. But she also pulls her tail free with a flick like the sheathing of a blade. Yue blushes and spits awkwardly on her way to flopping over on the ground anyway. Luckily, she's built for this sort of thing, having nothing on her body worth crushing into soft grasses. If that fox girl fell like this? She'd feel it, just saying.

"...H-hi. I'm, um. I'm Yue. I'm from! Well. I-I guess you don't really... wow, you're pretty. B-but it doesn't look like you'd know where to find anything to... I mean no! That's not important! I know what you are and I know what you're doing and GranGran warned me about your tricks but I'm asking you anyway 'cause Hyra's cursed and I don't know how to change her back from being a wolf she doesn't like being a wolf and I can't kiss if she's a, I mean no not that either! She's hurt and, and, and, and I need to fix it and I can't be wishing for girlfriends or dresses and I don't have time to play with you I'm sorry! S-s-s-so don't even bother trying to trick me! I'm already, eeeep!"

Yue's blabbering is mercifully cut off by Kat's ticklish kneading of her back and by a protective bark from Hyra. Her eyes go nervously wandering again, and find their usual place at the place of those fluffy, silken, gradient colored tails. If it were possible to break her bonds with body heat, rest assured she'd have managed it by this point. Maybe fox magic is mischief magic, but so what? Some things are worth the risk.

And besides which, another thing about tailed girls is that Yue has yet to meet one she didn't want to trust.

Sunshards

Have you ever seen anything so green? The sun-dappled grass! The canopy of leaves not-so-far overhead! There, look how they're swaying! Even the rocks are grown over with moss and lichens and it's all! It's sooooo beautiful! The sunlight itself is tinted like emeralds, except for where it pushes into the grove in visible, cloudy beams that pool in yellowish patches that turn the sunning rocks to gold. Yue shivers in the middle of her little treasure vault, and sneezes. A dozen lizard heads turn in her direction, and she giggles her apology. It's not so warm in the shade, you know? Not the way she's, erm, dressed.

But what does that matter, when the air is so clean that just breathing it feels like waking up from the best night's sleep ever? And really, it's not like the air is exactly dirty anywhere else, you know? But farmers till the earth and kick up all sorts of things, and the village is filled with heat from the glass blower's, and somebody, whoever really, it's different every time, but somebody is always making soup and as pleasant as all of those things are it's just not the same. There's no deeper, cleaner breath you'll take in your entire life than the one that's surrounded on every side by healthy plants, out on their own and singing their song. Here friends, let's trade, ahaha!

Yue traipses across the scene on the tips of her toes, spinning nimbly around the tiny blossoms where they sprout up among the grass. Little bits and bars of about five different songs hum their way across the juice-stained smile that's parked itself permanently on her face. As if the night could not touch her, anymore. As if the night had not happened at all. She dances and she hums and she makes her way to a huge(ish) column of marble that had been cut in half on an angle long enough ago for the mosses to start overtaking the break. What was it's story, anyway? Did some travelling swordswoman come here and test her edge against this stone, as part of her training? Or was this a wonder of the old world that fell and broke on its way to Heaven? What was it for, anyway? Did they worship its beauty, or charm small gods to their presence with the promise of a perfect home? In any case there were no gods here now, unless you counted big(ish) lizards. Yue offers the King of the Pillar a respectful curtsy.

"Greetings, Your Majesty! Do you think I might borrow a tiiiiny bit of space on your... eep!"

Sunning lizards can be quick biters, especially when they're defending a basking spot from evil intruding fingers (their only known natural predator!). But as fast as this one snaps and clicks its proud little lizard clicks, it's no match for Yue, who snatches her hand and the glass bead she's holding in it out of range with centimeters to spare between her and discovering if this particular fellow was venomous. Oof! She goes tumbling gracelessly backwards and falls onto her butt. She lifts both hands to gather long strands her hair out of her face, and laughs.

"Whoops, hahaha, guess not! That's ok friend, I know you were here first. I was only, well, I guess a fellow sun farmer like you understands! Happy hunting, aha... hm?"

Hromp! Yue squeaks when a mouthful of vicious fangs sink into her arm. It takes several full chomps before she realizes that the mighty huntress currently chewing her to death is none other than Kat, who growls indignantly at the soft smile of her mistress and switches in the space of a single tail swish from angy bite-bites to haughtily turning her nose in the air and admiring the non-Yue parts of the woods.

"Awww, are you still mad at me for putting you in the bag?"

Ha, as if! If you think you deserves talkies after what you did, you've got another thing coming! Kat sniffs dismissively and busies herself watching a Really Cool Bug off in the middle distance. Yue clicks her tongue in a soothing pattern, but it only earns her a tiny bit of curious ear twitching and a few pitty baps from her chocolatey brown vixen mittens. So, so there!

"I'm sorry, ok? I don't know if you noticed, Miss Fussypants, but we had to run from a bunch of scary demons and you have very tiny legs! What did you want me to do, leave you behind?"

Arf, she arfs! Arf arf arf, and furthermore, yip yip arf! You fiend! You villain! You, you... what are you doing with that hand? Hey what no, no uppies! No! Arf arf rrrrrrrr! If you think you can buy your way out of this with ear rubs, then... o-oh gosh, squishies. I mean, no! No no no, you... meanieface! You, oh gosh yes, there there there!

"Uhuh? Uhuh? What else, sweetiebeans? Did I squish your delicate little tumtum? Did I muss up your pretty green floof? Yeah, I know~ You can't be a flooferdoodle without you cutiefloof! Here you go, here you go! Let me fix you aaaalll up!"

It turns out Yue doesn't need two hands to find all the right spots. Inside the ears, under the chin, riiiiiight at the creamy little poof on her chest, yup yup yup! Kat tries her best to maintain dignity in the face of this assault. It lasts all of fifteen seconds, and then? She melts. Her haughty snuffles turn into delirious vixen giggles as she stretches her teeny little body across Yue's lap. Eheh! Ehehehehe! More, more! Rub here, scritch! Scritch here!

"There you go! Whoosa pretty girl, hm? Who's my precious snugglemuffin? It's you! It's you, Miss Fluffybiscuits! Awww, you're so pretty, yes you are! You're so dignified, yes you are! Yue is so sorry she didn't carry you gently, ok? Good girl! What a good girl!"

Wolves, it turns out, cannot laugh. But they can roll their eyes. And, oh gosh, does Hyra know how to stare. Yue smiles sheepishly and blushes deeper than a blood lily. But she doesn't move except to trace her finger in soft circles on Kat's forehead, because she's earned herself the Purr of Forgiveness, and you don't disrespect that by stopping.

"She... she likes it when you treat her like a princess."

Hyra's head tilt is more savage than an entire host of Yin's chanting shadows. Yue flinches so sharply it seems like she'd been hit by an arrow. Or ten.

"Is that... do you not... um. Is this not the way you talk to princesses?"

This is the kind of stare down that poets will fight over to get the chance to write about. Yue stammers and squeaks and very nearly makes the potentially lethal mistake of offering to give Hyra pats too, as if she were jealous or something, but just before her fate is sealed forever, she's saved by the click-click-click of a contented lizard scuttling down from its pillar throne to mingle among the commoners.

It stares at Yue for a long moment. Then it blinks its eyes. And then, the miracle, are you ready? It nods. Yue gasps with joy, this whole little... incident forgotten in a flash, offers the lizard its own grateful nod in turn. She gently lifts herself off the ground and goes to place her beads on the sunlit pillar.

"I, uh, no, I... yeah. I know. I know, but. Just a little longer, ok? The sunlight here is so peaceful that I just, well, I don't know that much about curses so I, that is, I don't want to make promises, but maybe I could, if you could just let me..."

Hyra pads softly over to Yue before she can um herself to death and leans against the girl in lieu of words. Yue flashes her a tiny smile, only a little bit wet, and together they share a moment watching the sunlight.

Breathless Dead

Bella's hand clamps over Mynx's mouth before she can finish another word. The shapeshifter's lips are soft and yielding under the pressure of her palm. The steam of her startled breath is almost as satisfying as the feeling of the contours of her jaw against her fingertips. She scowls as she squeezes tighter and tighter, until she feels bones start to tremble at her touch. Mynx's face is hotter than a stove. Bella holds her anyway, glaring holes through her as she keeps her only friend locked at arm's length.

"Offer to bite me one more time," she snarls, "And you're gonna find out how hard it is to impersonate anybody without any teeth."

She can feel the shiver running all the way through Mynx's body go up into her arm. She watches the way that Mynx's eyes grow wider, and then slack. She doesn't let go even now, but for as tightly as she squeezes her fingers are turned so carefully to keep her claws off of Mynx. She growls and throws the shapeshifter away from her... but onto the bed.

She sighs, and grabs the coffee.

"It's too fucking early for you to be this weird. You know normal people do this thing called sleeping, right?"

She takes a long sip of the hot, bitter drink and lets her eyes drift shut again with a gentle sort of trust that makes it seem like that last few moments hadn't happened at all. And maybe it didn't; the longer she sits there on the edge of the bed, alternating between sips and demure chewing of her breakfast, the more she seems like a different person. It's in the way her shoulders relax, the way her breathing slows, the way her eyes barely ever open, as if she trusts Mynx to do her seeing for her. She winces once or twice as she eats, but doesn't even comment on the taste. She does take the plate and wordlessly offer her leftovers to Mynx before flopping down next to her.

"I keep trying to tell you, nothing is going to happen. Least of all on my ship. All your temple friends are well in hand, and even if they weren't the Auspex is tracking everything better than you could."

"Bella..."

"Yeah yeah, whatever. Look, if you're gonna be this clingy at least make yourself useful. You can... ugh."

Bella shifts and drags herself from the luscious haven of a bed full of pillows, with its own blanket and everything, and gingerly plucks what's left of her coffee off the floor. She drains it in a shot and shuffles over to her wardrobe, tearing her pajama shirt up over her head and tossing it carelessly onto the bed behind her. She smirks when she hears the small 'oof' that means she hit her friend with it.

"Gimme your eyes for a minute, I'm still getting used to these clothes. Are these pants too much? They're the same color as my fur, so I thought it'd be flashy, but... And what do I even wear under these? I just don't know."

She spins on the spot, holding the clothing in question over herself but otherwise wearing nothing. Her golden eye is sparkling as she lazily licks her lips.

Sunshards

A fight like this one between the two peaks the world is built around must be incredibly intense. It'd have to be, right? What with all of the earth shaking and the dimming of the starry sky going on, not to mention the super muscle demons. Gosh. That's what makes it the stuff of legends and not, say, a tea party. Although really if somebody like the Scales of Meaning showed up at your tea party that'd be pretty...

Well. Anyway. The point is, a clash of titans is a very distracting sort of affair. Or at least, it has to be if somebody like Yue can run away from it so easily. Or at all. It takes her several moments to even pull herself together enough to try standing, and when she finally manages it she's not exactly moving like a champion athlete. But they don't notice when she rises, just like they don't notice when she plops back down onto her scrawny little butt. They might notice Kat's frightened yipping, but since that's been more or less constant since Princess Yin arrived on the scene nobody pays much attention to it even when it switches from the frightened yipping of 'scary people are here and I don't want to be eaten or squished' to the even frighteneder yipping of 'I am being betrayed by my best friend and stuffed into a bag, oh woe, woe is I, the lovely Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits!'

If ever there were a time for Yue to drop her sword, this would be it. For as hard as she scrambles about, one hand just isn't enough to gather up her camp site and hold onto her bag and reassure a frightened fox and reassure a possibly even more frightened wolf-who's-meant-to-be-a-beautiful-maiden(?) and fish a spare change of clothes out of the same bag she's trying to hold and stuff everything dear in her life back into. She flinches after she squeaks, but the monsters are too busy to care that her spare dress is in the dirt now or that a handful of her precious glass beads have rolled over on top of it, and in any case Hyra has resorted to biting and dragging the bag with her because a certain silly girl just isn't figuring out that there's more important parts of running away than keeping all your stuff with you.

But even as she yelps with protest and almost falls flat on her face several times within the first twenty or so paces, she clutches that useless, heavy wooden sword like her life depends on it. And that's really the final word on everything, isn't it? If she can do that now, even now, when she's darting off into the night clutching a fox-laden bag to her chest because it's the only way to preserve what's left of her modesty while little bits of her her now wispy and useless dress float away forever behind her, then she's good enough to keep hold of it through anything, at least until she gets permission to put it down again. She owes Hyra so much more than this.

It's important to run far and run fast, but Yue can't help but slow enough to turn and watch the fight as she goes. And part of it is born of fear, that she might be followed, but that would only merit a fleeting glance. More of it is that, as scary as it is, this new contest is even more thrilling, even more worth a song than watching Hyra had been. Forget for a moment that it's happening to decide who gets to kidnap her and the question of why any of this is even happening, how often does anybody at all get to see an out and out Princess fighting? And for all that Princess Yin is wicked and cruel, maybe even unforgivably so, it's also true that she's beautiful. That when she moves, her body is poetry. That she wields magic so easily and elegantly that Yue has to wonder if she spent years just holding glyphs in her hands until she could weave them through the air as natural as breathing. And the romantic part of her heart knows it's a shame to run and leave all that behind her.

But finally, she hits the spot where the flash of a diamond bow and slashes from a katana so powerful that where it passes it cuts scars into the earth and the great gleaming horns of the Scales of Meaning, all of it gets swallowed by the horizon and the treeline. Soon enough, even the sounds of the battle and the chanting of the shadows fades into the quiet of softly running water and the last chirps of evening birdsong and the first tentative howls of nighttime predators, and Yue has nothing to distract her from how much her legs and lungs are burning, of how every slap of her feet on the hard packed earth hurts her all the way to her hips, of the screaming rush of blood inside her body that tells her exactly how terrified she is. Or, for that matter, how chilly the night air is on her much-too-bare skin. When she shivers, she can't tell if it's from nerves or the cold. Oh gosh. Oh no. She can't run into town like this! And they know where she lives! And her good dress is... oh no! How is she ever, when is she ever... oh gosh gosh gosh gosh!

It's all she can do amidst her jumbled thoughts and feelings to lift her feet high enough to avoid the rocks and roots so she can keep pace with the wolf running in front of her. Even transformed like this, Hyra is still the most beautiful thing in the world. For a wolf, she's a little on the small side, it's almost hard to believe her real body is as tall as it is. But her fur is soft and lustrous and the same brilliant silver as her hair. The way she runs is every bit as smooth and graceful as she was back inside Yue's house, and her body is so lithe and perfect that if a hunter saw her pass they'd just as soon drop their bow to the ground as shoot at something so lovely.

The wolf is so deeply Hyra that Yue almost expects her to turn and flash those piercing red eyes and twist her muzzle up into a smirk. But she knows better than anyone that she's deluding herself, because Yue knows the language of beasts. You can't really have conversations with animals, leastways not satisfying ones. Not with most of them, anyway. But they can tell you plenty if you've got ears and eyes to listen, and Hyra is crying with every step. She bounds bravely forward, only stopping long enough to let Yue catch up again, but she can't hide the truth. However born for the shape of a wolf she might be, have been, it isn't the shape of her heart. Who, or what she longs to be. And she knows just the same as Yue that they're running, running, running away from the only person either of them knows who can change her back. Oh, stupid, stupid Yue! Why didn't you stay? Surely there was... was something you could have done! She can't think of what that could possibly be, but even so! She! She..!

She gasps.

Hyra isn't running anymore. Yue comes to an awkward halt just before she would have gone tumbling next to the cliff in front of her. She stands there a moment, and gently lets her still-whimpering bag drop to its natural resting place by her hip (who does she have to be modest for right now, anyway?). And she gasps, because she's never seen anything so beautiful in all her life.

The world stretches out in front of her forever, lit by stars and moonlight and lanterns floating through the rivers and a hundred tiny glows from animals making their rounds. It's huge. It's so impossibly huge it swallows the Terraced Lake with ease, and that the biggest thing she ever really knew existed. The rocks plunge beneath her and the mountains rise up and dip down and back up again in an endless seeming dance and every inch of them seems painted with the canopy of a hundred-hundred-hundred different trees in their soft night colors.

And all of it is so much, and so pure that there's no choice that there's no choice but for Yue to start crying. She sobs loudly, hiccoughing and sniffling with every ounce of her heart for the sake of a whole lifetime's worth of feelings she hasn't quite known to feel, and for the million-million steps unfolding in front of her. For every wonder she's seen today. For every new one she's allowed in this moment to imagine. For Hyra of the wolves, panting determinedly beside her. And for, somehow even now, for the old life she no longer knows the way to get back to.

She cries, and she cries, and she brushes her hair from her eyes as the wind tugs fiercely at it, and she cries some more. Her heart is swelling so full she thinks it'll have to burst soon, and the feeling inside of her is so pure she knows without asking anybody that it could only be love. She tries to speak but only winds up sobbing louder, and somehow that spins her all the way around to sniffly giggling.

And she dares. She dares brightly and boldly enough to reach out her hand and gently run her fingers through Hyra's perfect silver fur. To put her hand on the wolf's head and leave it there, the closest thing that she can do to taking her hand and just... holding it. Because in this moment, everything must be possible. Her grip tightens on her sword, as heavy as it is. Yes, everything must be possible. Possible enough that even a useless village girl like her should be allowed to promise she'll find a way to fix this.

Sunshards

Yue's words of protest are squished out of her by the waves of Y--eeep! P-Princess Yin's curse-magic cracking down across her collarbone. It turns all her breath into squeaks and whimpers and forces her down, and down, and down, and down, until she sinks to her knees and curls in on top of herself and pulls the monstrous weight of Hyra across her back.

And it's not like she's a stranger to pain! She's been pricked by thorns and sewing needles, burned her hands in the fire while baking bread, bitten, clawed, scratched, and even trampled by frightened animals that needed her help but didn't know how to accept it. She even knows the hollow pit that opens up in your insides when the big sister you adored and thought would be around forever disappears over the horizon one day with barely a goodbye. But not even that measures up to the feeling of your body betraying you, to having your muscles twist and spasm on their own and your bones shift in big wet crunches that you feel more than hear as your body betrays you and turns you into something that you're not.

Yue doesn't scream. To scream, you need to breathe. You need to want to be heard, and all Yue wants is to curl into a ball and cry. Her hair falls across her face in a big, heavy clump as the powerful waves of magic pick their way across her body and pluck things off of her that they don't like. Her dress takes the brunt of it, rotting and fraying just like her washcloth did that scant hour or so ago until it's barely more than threads hanging off of her body. Hyra's fur covered body quickly becomes the only thing protecting her modesty, and the way that she scrabbles and shifts on top of Yue, she isn't much good for that either. Yue shivers in the night's chill and the wetness of wolf spittle spreading across the pale skin on her back. How much longer would it stay that way?

Shrink, the curse tells her! You are low, go lower! You long to be beneath notice! You yearn to be taught your lessons! You realize now how little you deserve to be special, so give up, give in, and shrink!

A-and she would, see? It's not like she doesn't want to! She's never been so miserable in her whole life, and those piercing black eyes won't stop staring at her, and you're telling her she could make it all go away just by giving up and losing? Yes please and thank you very much, just tell her where to sign! Except... except there's a weight on her back. Except Hyra's screams have turned into howls, and even horrible canine whines. Except the hands that held her so gently, and then so harshly are slipping away from her and dragging rough footpads across her skin in their place. Except the last thing those perfect hands ever got to do was squeeze her grip tighter and command her to hold on to her sword.

"Stop it!" she screams, and her voice is shrill and trembling, but it's undeniably her voice and it's so loud they might have heard it all the way back in her village, "Stop it, stop it! Can't you see you're hurting her, what is wrong with you?!"

Yue's eyes force themselves open. Her muscles burn as she pushes up against the weights pressing down on her until she's in a sitting position. And even with Princess Yin's fingers swirling their spell so elegantly and all the power of the magic compelling her to change, she stays who she is. Her eyes aren't fierce, except maybe in the way that a kitten's might be, but they're bright and shining and looking up, up, up at the Princess on her magnificent stag without flinching, even as they run over with tears. Her legs are shaking so much that even trying with all her might she still can't get any further than sitting there on her butt with her knees turned in and both legs splayed at awkward angles. And in spite of everything she finds the time to blush with her entire body, and it's much too obvious that she's doing that and, and, and, wh-when she lifts her sword it's really more to cover herself in at least some small way than getting ready to actually fight.

But so what? She's Yue! Even when the wielder of a sunshard would rather she not be, she is simply Yue. She twists her body so she can shift Hyra's bulk more toward her lap, and she doesn't give one shred of thought or care to how dangerous a thing that might be to do. Her heart hammers inside her chest, and for once that feels more like an act of passion than fear.

"Y-you know what you are? You're just a... a big jerk! You bully! What gives you the right, huh? She fought to keep me safe from a whole army of demons, and you just... y-you swoop in here like, I... how dare you?! You might be a Princess, but... you, I, you! J-j-just because you're pretty doesn't mean you get to be so mean! S-so what if you're rich and powerful? Hyra's worth ten of you!"

Yue's voice is shaking and cracking too much to keep the string of words alive. But she sets her jaw as hard as she dares, barely even quivering her lips, and she tenses for whatever comes next.

[Yue is Defying Disaster with Spirit at an 11. I want to say she's not at a point where she can help Hyra with a roll like this, but she's here to prove she belongs in this game]

Breathless Dead

The gods have long made themselves clear. Others pray. Others make grand ceremony and offerings, and even ask the gods for favors aloud. But this is not for Bella: her ceremonies are flawed, her offerings are unworthy. Her voice is not to speak the names of the divine, only her body is pleasing to them. If she wishes for the favor of Apollo, she must lead. For Artemis, she must hunt. For Aphrodite, she must...

Bella squeezes her eyes closed and takes the deepest of breaths to center herself. Her nostrils fill with the wafting aroma of gently sautéed steak in sage butter and mushrooms. The warmth seeps through the plate into her palms as her new high heeled boots clack across the marble floor of the Pantheon. Only here does the Anemoi permit sound. She sniffs again, and her mouth waters in spite of how far short it falls of the memory of Ambrosia that still follows her every waking moment. She solemnly walks past the many altars and kneels before the statue of Hera. She sets the plate down as carefully as if handling a priceless treasure, and slides several steps backward on her knees.

It's been so long since she's cooked for anyone.

"It isn't right," she says with a soft voice tinged heavily with regret, "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."

A moment passes in the gentlest sort of silence, the kind that seems at odds with the oppressive quiet that permeates the rest of the ship. Bella lifts a hand to the soft, loose braid on the side of her head that marks where the Queen of the Gods' fingers touched her and runs her own across the plaits. Her ears twitch excitedly atop her head. Her tail flicks with merriment behind her. Her red eye glints as it catches the telltale threads of the presence of the divine, and her face breaks into a wide smile.

"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."

She quickly casts her eyes toward the ground, but the posture of her tail betrays her sense of pleasure anyway. Through the scent of her own inept cooking, she picks up full bouquets of flower scents that fill her with a calm more powerful than the stars themselves. Rose and crocus and jasmine, lily and lavender and orange blossoms, and still more exotic fare that nobody had seen fit to teach her the names to, though the Auspex could now, if it cared to. This is a scent that demands humming and lullabies, that makes her fingers bend with desire to reach out and braid hair, the absolute safety of the garden where even the things that wished her harm would at least wait for her to leave.

"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."

Bella bows so low her forehead touches the ground, then rises in a single motion that sees her pivot on her knees. Her ears perk and bend toward the sound of shuffling among the shadows and a clicking that reminds her of her camera. She scowls and sniffs the air again, and then all at once relaxes and rolls her eyes.

"Whatever it is you're up to, Mynx, keep it to yourself."

Sunshards

The kindest thing you can say about Yue is that she doesn't drop her sword.

She's not a warrior, poised and ready to strike. She's not a magician full of clever tricks, or a cultivator filled with strong Qi. She's not a Princess or a princess or even a handmaiden who might command the respect of one those others. So what is it, then? What's the source of her worth? She doesn't manage to scream Hyra's name, not to protect her or to let out her feelings of betrayal at the gentle, perfect hands that suddenly are holding her the way the river demons would have if they'd caught her.

She doesn't twist her way to freedom, or even really squirm ineffectually. Instead she trembles and she shakes and she quivers, which is a peasant's sort of reaction. Fitting for a peasant girl. Unbecoming of a treasure. She tries to twist her head to look at Hyra. Just to look, you know? Just to see. Just to... to find out if those hungry red eyes still look as beautiful when they're being worn by a devil. 'Cause if they do then that would mean that some part of it was real, see? Some tiny piece of her magic spell was more than just a net being woven around. But those same sharp clawed fingers that thrilled her at their touch just minutes ago twist her back around and force her gaze back to Princess Yin. Because another thing she's not is strong.

The power of love doesn't surge through Yue's soft blue eyes. It doesn't fill her with fantastic new powers or imbue her with the will to fight, or really do more than gasp and gape at the otherworldly sight in front of her. Of course it doesn't! And if it did, would somebody like Princess Yin even notice? No matter how you're kidnapping her, Yue is just... Yue.

But she's still holding that sword. Her silly wooden sword that she doesn't even know how to swing, that doesn't even have an edge, and would probably horrify her if it did. She squeezes it anyway, even as she's dangled and lifted and crushed. She fingers grip the hilt through pain and through terror, when all the other muscles in her body seem to have forgotten how to work. Because Hyra told her to, and for some reason that feels more important than it has all night.

Does that make her special? She doesn't know. She can't even say as much, for all that she wants to. What makes her so special? That's a good question! She'd like to know too! It's not like she's been doing anything different lately but now all of a sudden there are wanted posters and everybody under the suns is chasing her and when is anybody going to notice there's been a mistake? You've got the wrong girl! But one look up at the shadowed face of Princess Yin is enough to lock all of those words inside her stomach where all of the worst sorts of secrets and lies go. Princess Yin! Princess Yin! Disappoint her if you dare!

Yue doesn't dare a lot of things, and this is not about to become one of them. She's not special, not even enough to survive explaining how not special she is. Oh, what a horrible party to get invited to! Darn whoever made those stupid posters! Hope you get, um. Not, like, hurt, but... y'know, if you stubbed your toe tomorrow morning you'd deserve it! Yue's heart is doing flips inside her modest little chest and it hurts, and the hands that squeeze her waist and wrist hurt too, and as her eyes stare at a sunshard for the very first time in their life they start hurting, too.

There's nowhere safe to look. The shadows are full of eyes and shapes, except where they're not which is somehow even worse. The stag is huge and terrifying for all the ways it doesn't move like a stag at all, and impossibly beautiful in all the ways that it does. She'd never known an animal to wear crystals like this so boldly, unless it was the sort like the diamond throated pheasant that grew them as part of its plumage. That by itself is enough to impress. The control that Yin... erm, Princess Yin must have is, is...

That. That woman right there? That's what it means to be special. Yue's never seen a Princess before. And it's incredible how far her imagination fell short of what it was actually like. The flowing of her dress! Not white like Yue's white, the white that took on stains and washed itself with light and really let's face it never quite worked its way all the way up to white on its best days, but white so bright she might as well be the moon. And, and maybe she is! If, if she's what Hyra's chasing then... it's no wonder that she... that... that!

"H-Hyra... please!"

Yue's eyes are wet and leaking. This isn't right. It isn't right! The hands that hold her squeeze and twist her body in ways it doesn't want to go. She needs all of her breath for crying, now. This isn't right. Do all Princesses cast such terrible shadows? Are all Princesses so cruel? How is anybody so amazingly beautiful and so terrible at the same time? A-and if... if that's what it takes to be special, maybe it's best that she's only Yue after all. The thought stings like an arrow through her heart, fired from that great diamond stringed bow.

Yue holds her sword, through shaking, sobbing, doubt. She holds her sword like she was told. Isn't that enough?

Sunshards

Yue moves as if she's being pulled on a string.

And maybe she is. When the sun flashes its golden goodbye, she's usually already snuggled away in her home doing nothing more adventurous than baking sweet seed cakes with her special lavender-honey syrup to share a special nighttime treat with Kat. When the lanterns burst to life, it's a time for sitting next to grandmother's old chair with a blanket and a book, not for racing out to see what the changing of the lights has caught. An adventure in the night is something that you do in town, skipping through the streets to get close enough to the travel lodges to hear their drinking songs perhaps, or else to slip into her secret garden to teach Sis' songs to the grasses and flowers and see what new friends would sneak their own way in to share in her bounty of treats and head pats. That's the measure of the girl called Yue.

It must be some new type of magic, then, that makes her feet so light she barely feels them touch the ground. It must be somebody's spell that broke Hyra's and turned her silly sword so light again, even lighter than she can remember it being. It's definitely magic more powerful than even the Threeshard Princess could muster that guides her sword arm through the air and places the wooden saber in a perfect guarding posture, because the clumsy stick arms of a silly village girl have no business knowing that kind of posture or power or poise. Let alone actually achieving them!

But here she is. With her free arm held protectively across Hyra's body. With herself as a shield between the wolf girl and danger. With a sword in her hands pointed toward shapes in the dark that her eyes aren't quite sharp enough to catch but her heart tells her aren't any of the animals she knows and loves.

"Wh-who's there?" she calls. Her voice is strong and sharp enough that you could almost ignore how much it's trembling, "Stay back! I'm warning you, you can't have her!"

As though Hyra was the one they were here for, if they were here for anything at all. As if she was a delicate treasure in need of a strong warrior to protect her, as if Yue was that warrior! As if any of this was not ridiculous and backwards, which of course it is, and yet she's here and she moved faster thank blinking, faster than thinking, fast enough that anybody who saw her and did not know her might even believe it.

Hyra's hand is on her shoulder, pushing her away. Yue's body starts to tremble, and suddenly she can feel the weight of her sword again trying to drag her arm to the ground like shackles. Her knees knock together, but it's not because she's cold. Just the opposite, she's burning to death in the heat of her shame. Silly girl, stupid girl, what are you doing? You're making her job harder, is what you're doing? Stop it, put it down, find somewhere safe to hide before you get hurt! Before you hurt her, you, you... dummy!

"I... I mean it! I-if you're hungry I've got plenty of food to share, b-b-but you'd better be nice about it! 'C-cause if you're t-t-trying to kidnap anybody I'll... beat you up! Don't think I won't!"

Oh now she's gone and done it! Hyra's going to be so mad at her! And what if whatever's out there is actually really nice? And, oh no, what if they're not! She said all those things, and, and...! Oh no! Oh gosh oh no oh gosh! She hasn't shaken this badly since that time she lost her keys in that snowstorm and Sis made her go back out and find them as punishment and she had to walk back and forth across the lake three times when it was freezing and that's it, that's the only one she can remember right now she's never trembled this much in her entire life.

But she doesn't move. Blushing and shaking and squeaking apologies under her breath for all she's worth, she doesn't move. Because when she turns her head she sees Hyra there in her aspect as the hunting wolf, and she's... she's known wolves before. None with such kissable lips (oh gosh nononono what) before, or hips that made her want to (stop it stop it stop it stop thinking about it Yue), but all the same. She's known wolves. She's heard their songs of beauty and their songs of pain and she's looked into their eyes before and...

Well, it's just. Farmers chase them off, you see? And hunters trap and kill them. And village children tell each other stories about being gobbled up and then when a howl crests over a distant terrace they quiver with fright. Nobody ever takes the time to care how they're feeling, and... really when you get right down to it, they're not that different than the little fluffball taking shelter under her dress right now, are they? The ones with fangs, they...

It's why she tries to smile, now. Even though her lips are quivering horribly and she must be the ugliest person in the world right now. Every wolf ought to know there's somebody looking out for them. And Hyra is too special to lose to whatever weird monsters are creeping about tonight. Not the ones in the dark, and not the ones in her blood.

Breathless Dead

Thin wisps of smoke curl slowly off of Bella's palm. Her fingers twitch slightly as they shake off the aftereffects of tearing an ELF generator in half. She sneers, and lifts that same hand to her shoulder to tug her shirt back into alignment. Her hips sway provocatively as she glides down the corridor past her Lanternites to meet her prey. Step and swish, step and swish. Her Auspex burns with ruby light in the dark corridor.

"I guess that means your stuff wasn't worth shit then, huh? But then, my hermeticians were tripping over themselves to get at your gun so we know that's not true. Ah, let's think... it's you, shit for brains. You lost because you're weak."

Her arms swing casually at her sides with every bouncy, silent step. Every muscle in her body sings a song of confidence and safety that draws followers into her wake. She raises a hand to halt them where they stand. This battle is already over, there's only one person who hasn't figured that out yet. Bella pauses a half step out of the serpent girl's range. She stretches her neck, and glances down when her stomach rumbles irritably. Gods, she could eat an entire feast by herself right now.

"Let me ask you, do you know where you are? Do you know who you picked a fight with? This is The Anemoi, you stupid cunt, Her Imperial Majesty Nero Claudius Tellurian's very own dagger among the stars. We chase greater prey than you could even imagine if we gave you a year and a picture book to help you along."

The knife comes at her in slow motion. Bella twists out of the way with a simple pivot on the balls of her feet and snatches the blade out of the pirate's hands as if she were the snake, not even caring that she's grabbing it by the blade. She flips it over and snatches it again by the handle just before she lunges to seize her opponent by the head and throw her roughly against the wall. Bella clicks her tongue with the air of a disappointed teacher as she watches the other woman flop silently to the floor and shake her head to clear the impact. Bella's eyes flicker over to Athena as she carefully watches the war goddess for her reaction.

"Now, I'm willing to chalk this little misunderstanding up to a lack of education. You can't have any good schools so far out here in the sticks, or else... well. Let's fix that, shall we? War's not about stuff. War's never been about 'stuff'. Molech had the Spear of Civilization and Her Majesty crushed him and took his empire just the same."

She scowls. Memories of the museum were all attached to a certain Princess. She flicks them away with the tip of her tail before the name can crawl its way all the way to the front of her mind. She lifts her claws to the knife and shreds the blade to the point of uselessness by way of demonstration, and in that moment she's forced to handle another charge. Bella snarls and snaps a vicious kick across her worthless student's face. The impact ripples down her leg, and when she matches it to the vibrations of the bone impact in that cavernous skull, her Auspex registers an almost certain concussion.

"...We'll make this simpler, then. I'm a stronger than you are, you stupid fucking scum sucking parasite. You're as outmatched here as you are stupid and ugly. Quit wasting my time. I'm offering you your life, dipshit. Pull your head out of your ass long enough to fucking take it already!"

Bella flinches. Despite her best efforts, a memory rolls to close to the surface of her thoughts for her to ignore it. She knows what she's supposed to do here, because she saw her... saw the princess get chewed out a hundred times for forgetting it. So she covers for Redana, just like always, and dips into a courteous bow.

It's wasted on this cretin. But the next attack would be the last, Athena can't ask for fairer than that.