Phoe

Sunshards

Yue is very deliberate and quiet as she pulls the tray of cookies out of the oven and sets them on the counter. It takes her a minute because she has to navigate around Qiu the whole time as she's using the door of the oven for Dramatic Leaning, and it turns out that quietly reaching for the door and then retracting your hand when it isn't noticed is not a very great way of getting stuff done, especially where Princesses are concerned.

But she can't speak. Tyrants don't get to help make cookies.

She has to open several cabinets before she finds the one that has plates. And then she almost makes a noise and ruins everything, because of everything she might have expected to find, a plate with a beautifully painted calico kitten was at the very bottom of the list. But she ignored the help to find the cabinet in the first place, so she's strong enough to keep stoic and silent as she lays the kitten plate on the table and very carefully piles it with warm cookies.

It didn't have to be this was. But tyrants don't get to help plate cookies.

Now she very carefully and precisely takes the top of the pile into her hand and bring it to her own mouth. That's right, Princess Qiu, she (a guest!!!) is eating the first cookie! Watch her, she's gonna do it! She's bringing the soft brown confection to her mouth right now! Ohhhhhh, her lips are parting! Look at her teeth, so small and just the slightest bit jammed together, as they part to invite the spicy-chocolatey goodness inside! And then, she, bites!

And she frowns. And she sighs. And she (stoically and quietly and powerfully) fetches the sugar back out and mixes it with some cinnamon before she unplates her treats with a flourish before she paints them with a bit of butter and then dusts them with the sweet mixture. She piles them all back together and pushes the cookies across to Qiu along with a cup of Ceylon. All the while, a fire is building inside her eyes. When Qiu finally reaches for the snack, it reaches the kind of blaze that would freeze a veteran soldier in place.

"Y'know," she begins icily at first, "I've tried my best to be polite about this. 'Cause I was worried about hurting your feelings. Silly me, right?"

She tries her best to keep herself calm and level, with the kind of quiet fury she imagines whenever she pictures the woman who wore this dress before her. But the more words tumble out of her mouth, the more they explode into furious squeaks until her voice is less "demon swordswoman" and more "very yippy fox". Owners and their pets always wind up resembling each other, don't they?

"You... jerk! You stupid jerk! I trusted you! I wanted to be so nice about letting you down 'cause I thought you needed it! I thought, 'oh, there must have been a mistake, no way no how does Chen try'n drag me over here if you were like Y-- Princess Yin! But you are! You're just the same! You see something you don't like and suddenly ohhhhhh, better try and snuff it out! And even worse, you lied to Chen! You jerk! You big... um, jerk!"

Yue stamps her foot points as rebelliously as it's possible for a girl with a hand covered in cinnamon sugar to point.

"Well guess what? I was happy bein' a sun farmer and I was fine livin' out on my own! It's only cause've you that I ever went'n'did anything amazing! Goin and sickin all those demons on me, and now I purified a shrine! And I've already got sword lessons from a beautiful ghost, so there! So I'm walkin out of here today and not a, excuse me, darn thing you say or do is gonna stop me! I'm gonna leave and I'm gonna practice my butt off and when I come back here I'm gonna kick your butt and make you say you're sorry! So... s-so there!"

The length of several deep breaths pass without a response. And that's when the magic powering her anger deserts Yue all at once. She blushes, noticing the cookie-induced smile on Qiu's lips, and storms out of the room before she can say or do anything to ruin her perfect rebellion.

One. Two. Three. She stomps back in.

"Forgot my sword!" she shouts, stomping back out.

"And, and you should... plant some peach trees out front. And add some ponds and a little two-level pathway in there. It'd really help you with welcoming guests."

...

"A-and I'm sorry if the cookies are too spicy."

This time she more melts into the shadows of the door than anything else. In the space of a single long sip of tea, her head pops back out into the light again.

"Oh, I washed that knife already, but... t-to be safe you should douse it in some plant oils before you use it for anything else. A wool towel cleans best, and, um... I left the shānzhā seeds over there in that bowl. In case you get indigestion.

"Thank you."

"Goodbye."

Sunshards

"Oh wow, this is waaaaaay nicer than my kitchen back home! You've got a whole room for it! Y'know, mine's just the spot next to the sink where the oven would fit, and it's just on the other end of my chair and my baskets and the table that I eat at when it's not full of stuff. Wowies. Gosh this is... oh wow! Cabinets! You are a Princess!"

Yue dances around the kitchen just to revel in how much space she's got to work in. Sure, compared with the craziness of the rest of this place and that big open dueling whatever ground that's so desperately crying out for a makeover this place is downright cozy, but at the same time how could she not be excited? She could cook in here with three bowls of ingredients at once! And still have room for a cutting board! She can move her arms without knocking stuff over! If she was, like, five or six wishes deep into some particularly wild Cyanis deals, this is exactly the place she'd end up.

She turns and offers Qiu the sincerest smile the would-be conqueror has perhaps seen in her entire life, maybe probably. It's not a friendly smile, at least not exactly, and not a familiar one either. There's no seduction to it, not even the accidental kind that comes from natural confidence. It's not even an especially pretty smile, as these things go, unless you've got a thing for very plain and scrawny girls in the middle of realizing they're caught between needing to make something special for a very important person and needing to make that special thing with the special person's ingredients so they can't use up any of the important or expensive stuff or they'll be a rude bad guest and a terrible person. And, like, if that's your deal? If you're all spun up thinking about that? Then, hooooooo, you probably need a minute right now, because Yue. Just, Yue.

And that's it, right? That's the thing that makes this such a rare and special smile. There's a certain magic in being so over your head and smiling anyway because you found a tiny thing to be happy about. And then an even bigger thing after that. And then, oh gosh yes! Her smile turns as dazzling as a jar full of sunlight and she goes frantically digging through her bag to find a tiny pouch filled with dried out peppers she's not entirely sure she knows the name of, come to think of it.

"Kay then, I see your flour and your sugar there and... no wait, over there, but where's your knives? I need about two of 'em and, uh, how's your chocolate situation? Your eggs? Your fats? Ooooooooh, ok! Ok! You're gonna love this! Probably! You don't mind spice, right? 'Cause these are... oh yeah, a glove would be super... oh! No wait never mind, I've got one here. Ehehe!"

Whatever her deficiencies in swordplay might be, Yue is a talent with a knife. Her strokes are simple but powerful, and radiate so much confidence that if you didn't know better you might think she was the one with a bunch of sunshards to her name. She dices the peppers into a fine mince before she flips the knife around to crush the result into a powder with the handle, smiling in complete obliviousness to the danger of the blade now pointed at her face. She flips it back and sets it gently in the sink as she grabs a fresh one to start cutting butter and chocolate into easily meltable cubes. Swift and precise, the work of a master.

She stirs them together over boiling water, humming while she works the whisk with the kind of quiet grace you only pick up with hundreds of hours of practice, the sort that's so baked into you that it disguises how much work went into getting there. She grabs the warm bowl and pours it into a well of dry ingredients on the counter. This is not a time for tools, fancy or otherwise. Yue is a master, and a master is all the help she requires.

She twirls the sleeves of her dress around her upper arms and ties them into delicate bindings to keep the whole thing clean. She gingerly plucks the glove off her hand and gently drops it next to the knife in the sink before washing them along with her hands. And then she goes to work. There is deep power in the way she works her hands. Yue stands on her tiptoes to maximize her leverage over the forming dough. There is artistry in the way her hands twirl. There is precision in the way her body moves with every roll and motion. Put a sword in her hands, and the power of her hips as she rolls them could cleave mountains in half. She scoops and rolls her dough into little balls with the sheer arrogance of someone who doesn't bother to measure it.

And then she spots the fruits sitting on the far end of the counter.

"Oh. Oh gosh. Oh gosh gosh gosh! Do you have any idea how hard it is these days to find someone who keeps shānzhā? Ohhhhh my goodness, ok ok ok ok, no no, I... oh gosh. This is a cheat day. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but we have to. Today's a cheat... do you, er, do you diet? Or cheat? Y'know what, I don't care, today you do. We're... ok, sugar sugar sugar, need some skewers, ohhhhhhh gosh it has been forever since I could make tanghulu! C'mon, we're stuck waiting for your oven to heat itself right anyway! Eeeeee!"

And there is a universe's worth of love in the way she moves her knife, now. In the way she harvests the seeds and sets them so delicately to the side. In how she fills the fruits back up with sweet paste and sticks them on a set of needles. She vibrates with excitement as she dips and holds them in the molten sugar mixture. Her smile this time is pride as she offers the first crunchy hawthorn treat to her hostess.

"Um, but... s-so anyway, I guess we're just about... I mean, the sweets are kinda just a conversation starter, right? Cause, we... mmmm. Hhhi ffhnk hhoove... oh gosh, sorry! But, like, I... I really don't understand what it is you've heard about me. Have you got any idea how much you scared poor Kat with all this nonsense? What gives?"

Yue folds her arms across her modest chest for exactly one second before realizing how completely messy they are and also how completely precious her dress is for her to be touching it like she is. She unfolds with awkward and astonishing haste and settles for awkwardly dangling them away from her body, instead.

Breathless Dead

More, and more, and more, and more. Bella feels the shifting of the beat underneath her skin, changing from a fiery bolero of steel and battle to a twisting, winding thing that whispers lust and yearning into her twitching ears. As the song changes, she changes with it. Her heart dances like fingers on a flute, her fur ripples with the need to be touched and underneath it the music makes her skin feel like a thousand tiny needles are prodding every inch of her with secret pleasures. Her eyes flutter with a shyness that brings a blush to her entire body just to feel it pushed upon her, and in the span of a single shaky breath the song in her blood has turned her from an invincible creature of battle to a lovesick maiden.

The rush of adrenaline is incredible. She dances, and it feels even better than the fight. More, and more, and more, and more! Letting go feels so good, so good, so good!

Bella's claws slash through the empty air with choreographed slowness so that Khitava can pivot on her heels and skirt so dangerously, flirtatiously barely just out of the way. Together they tell the story of the cat who fell in love with a woman too beautiful, too perfect, and too important for her to hold. Bella chases Khitava first one way and then another through a writhing sea of Coherents on dazzling and intricate steps. They move perfectly in synch but always a step apart; where one twists the other turns, where one advances the other retreats, where one leaps the other ducks, around and around and around again.

Bella's vision blurs. An image of flawless golden beauty stands in front of her with hair flowing in a breeze she cannot feel. Her breath catches in her throat and becomes a collar wrapped soothingly around her neck. She can feel the comforting weight of the chain dangling behind her underneath her hair. She reaches behind her to touch it, to caress it, to pacify the ache inside her heart, but the exaggerated tremble of her fingers pulls her short.

The figure gestures, and she reaches for it with renewed desperation only for a Coherent formation to bend in front of her at the last second. Their bodies cross over each other like a web, or a wall, and for all she has the power to tear through them and for all her desperate longing to do so, all the dance will let her do is reach her arm through a small opening in the group and stretch until she can almost reach the hem of the figure's, of her Princess' dress. Her talons twist and curl through empty space, and she slumps backward in defeat. Her arm lifts again by itself to cover her face. Her eyes are open wide enough to drink in every little detail as her talons drag their way across her cheek and nose, leaving shallow gashes in their wake. The Auspex guides her fingers around the edges of her worst lines, but it does nothing for the pain.

More, and more, and more, and more. The music shifts again, and Bella and Khitava tell the story of the cat who was punished for daring to love someone far and away her better. The music swells and swallows Bella with the invisible fury of a riptide, dragging her backwards and down no matter how hard she fights it. The roles are reversed: now Khitava pursues Bella with light and confident steps that carry her up and over the formations of Coherents that are pressing down on Bella and hemming her in. As a unit they pull on the air that represents the chains that bind her tight, and Bella stumbles forward onto her knees. They tug sharply and spin away, releasing her to roll forward onto her knees, face now level with Khitava's stomach.

Bella's gasps for air keep getting interrupted by her need to spit the blood trickling down from her face out of her mouth. The Princess in her vision is so blindingly white that she can barely make out the lines of her hips. Her face is completely obscured by the spotlight, but her smell...

The bouquet of flowers. The underpinning of laser tying it together. The garden. The vial. The bedroom aboard a ship that would never keep her safe again. Re--

Khitava pantomimes a shove across Bella's face that sends her sprawling backwards, backpedaling on her hands and pushing with her legs against the ground to scramble away, away, away from the danger. Her skirt catches under her heel and tears in half with a loud rip. Behind her, more Coherents in all blacks form a fence for her to pin herself against, and Bella is stuck hopelessly, helplessly waiting for what comes next.

Khitava kneels overtop of Bella. She reaches down and slides her hand just centimeters above Bella's leg from calf to the inner part of her thigh, drawing a deep moan from her and then pushing the leg straight before shoving it to the side. She sweeps Bella's body around with gestures, lifting her onto her other knee and arching her back and lifting her chin until her neck tips backwards and her blue-black hair spills across the ground in rivers. Bella's arms dangle limply at her sides as she sits suspended in this impossible suggestion held aloft only by the music and the suggestion of Khitava's hand underneath her back.

Her breathing is growing faster and more desperate. With every beat they climb nearer to the end of the story, and as they approach it her body sucks in the air more desperately than ever to keep her alive. Khitava clenches her hand into a fist and pulls, repeating the gesture several times over Bella's jacket. Chimes ring out, the musical cue for the buttons on her jacket to fall free and clatter to the ground. A fingers does as well as a kinfe to start carving up her undershirt. Her soft stomach twitches in the cool air as she's exposed up to the middle of her ribcage.

In the depths of her mind, the thought swims lazily through her that she is being prepared for ritual punishment. Maybe even sacrifice, if she's been a bad enough girl. And she's been a very bad girl, hasn't she? Just look at all the chores she'd left undone. A Princess vanished into the sea of stars. The Empress grieving every day while she slacked off and played her silly, stupid games. A human, a priest of hades, murdered under her protection. And still, look at how she gasps! Watch the way her lips pucker, and those silly, needy noises slip out from inside her! See how even now, she trembles in her suspended state and begs with her half-lidded eye for a treat she does not deserve? Such a bad girl. Such a disgrace of a Praetor. The Empire would be well rid of her. Though maybe...

Bella shoves the buzzing stream of words away, and swims deeper into the music. What's it matter, what they're planning? What's it matter what they want to do to her? Let them. She feels so good right now. So deliciously, impossibly good. She feels her core tighten, the spark of divine energy filling every inch of her and easing all her worries. The Auspex hisses steam around the edge of her socket. She closes her eyes and pushes her chest further forward, and waits for what comes next.

[Bella attempts to Overcome, but Blood is damaged so it's with despair: 5 2, 2 = 4. Tenacity Incarnate: she gains Vigor until her next roll]

Sunshards

What... was that?

It sang like a whole chorus all by itself! So soulful and mourning and... and old! Princess Qiu danced like a dragon up there, like she was caught on the wind and lived inside of it, and that frenzied dance on all those buttons and pedals made a whole wall sing for her! Did she, did, did she capture a whole bunch of wind spirits and trap them in those tubes?! Or even, um, e-e-even ghosts??

'Cause the music is so pretty and impressive, but it's also loud and scary, but even that can't quite hide that it's kind of... sad? Like, the happy notes sound like sad notes, and the sad notes sound like tears turned into music, and how could anything make a noise like that unless it was old enough to have seen the world when it was brand-and-shiny new?

No, she's being silly. Silly Yue! This is just like the time she found that cave when she was little and thought the wind was made of demons. But, but still. But... still. It had to be very very super old, if this music wall thingy could make noises like that. And it must be very hard to play it, too, 'cause Princess Qiu... the Princess Qiu, by the way! The one everybody's supposably been working for this entire time, who threw that very lovely parade through all the villages of the Terraced Lake when she took it over, the one absolutely everybody who was anybody (including the people who were nobody at all!) talked about like she was some sort of super-monster that all the regular monsters told campfire stories about to scare each other... that Princess Qiu, looked like she...

She made it look very hard. She made it look like playing was a thing that took her years and years to learn, she made it look like that might not even be enough. She made it look like every note took sweat and effort and it'd never, ever, never-ever be easy for her even with the power of three or six or however many sunshards she was supposed to have. But, even then, the other thing she did was make it look... fun? Or, um, what's the word? Like it was something that Yue could do herself if she got lessons and had just a little bit of determination to not quit right away.

It almost makes it seem like anybody could be a Princess if they really wanted to. Yue's jaw hangs very obviously and impolitely open in awe. Princess Qiu must be the most powerful creature in the world if she can manage that bit of magic. Yue startles when she hears the first sharp slapping noises reach her ears, and when she looks down, is surprised to see that she is clapping her plain and boring heart out.

"Oh wow! That was, I mean you were, um, I mean! Gosh! Goshies! How did you do that? Can you do it again? Can you t-- eep! N-no I mean!"

Yue, you dummy, you're in the presence of royalty! Sopping wet, jumped out of the bath just for you, looking so cute and snuggly in her bathrobe royalty! Where are you looking, you silly girl? Where are you putting your eyes? No, not there! Oh gosh not there either! No just, do the, just turn your head to the, oh no no no, now you look disinterested! Just... isn't there something you're supposed to do in moments like these? She turns and looks at Hyra, who huffs loudly and makes the wolfish equivalent of a shrug.

Is she supposed to bow? She's supposed to bow, right? Or, or um, the other thing, the... kneeling? Dogeza? Is there a dance or a special gesture or a... oh ok she's waving, she's waving now, that's a thing she's doing welp too late to take it back you wave and you watch and you smile like you mean it, Yue Just Yue The Sun Farmer!

"R-right! I mean, um, hi! Hiya! I'm Yue, pleased to meetcha! Erm, uh, i-i-t's an honor to make... n-no, meet your... oh gosh. Y-you're very, um, very pretty and... er, n-no I meant, I'm sorry to interrupt! I love your robe! I love your... uh, your thingy! With the music?"

Yue is retreating. Slowly and tactically, one tiny little baby step backwards at a time so that nobody will notice until she's already over the next hill. She buries her face in her hands and whimpers, 'cause it's hot all of a sudden and she's being such an idiot and she hasn't even said any of the stuff she came here to say! How she's supposed to do this when everything's all backwards spinny yip yip? Yip Yip? N-no Kat, get down from there! You don't belong on... ohhhhhh gosh she's gone to introduce herself.

This isn't how this was supposed to happen! There was supposed to be, like, servants or something? And she'd sit in a prettily decorated room being served tea? Waiting to be called? And Chen would tell her what she was supposed to do with her body to say hi and then she would and she'd get asked what was going on and she'd say what was going on and she'd be so respectful to the powerful and beautiful super-princess and then there'd be nodding and more nodding and hmm-I-see-I'm-sorry-to-hear-thatting and yes-I-know-I'm-sorry-to-say-it-too-but-maybe-next-time-don't-sick-a-bunch-of-muscled-oiled-up-demons-on-me-and-just-send-a-letter-like-a-normal-personing and then she'd get throne in jail or let go or given a hug or something somewhere in between the three of those things she's not sure she ran out of paper when she was drawing the plan.

It was such a simple plan! But she can't remember the barest of barely bare steps right now. All she can do is squeeze the hilt of her wooden sword (which she's still barely put down except to practice the magic spell) and swallow much too loudly while she tries to conjure something like dignity and not embarrass the original owner of her dress into dying all over again. Or worse, swooping down from her happy place in the heavens to pluck her into the sky and lecture her until Yue's ears turned blue.

She swallows. If there's one thing she knows for sure, it's that it's rude to let Chen do all of the explaining. Yue came here against Rosie's advice just to say it all herself. She can't get swept up in first impressions, and her mind hasn't changed, as much as she's trying to convince herself that it has. It's true; she doesn't want to be anybody's handmaiden. There's so much more to see and do before she's ready to call herself anything but plain ol' Yue. She lifts her silly wooden blade to the sky in a grand and sweeping gesture that makes her dress feel cool and soothing against her goosepimpled skin as she does it, because this is what she needs to do to make herself brave enough to cut to the heart of things and tell a Princess 'no'. To her face, even!

"I, um... I came here to say..." she falters, and lets the sword drop to her side. She sighs, "I'm sorry, may I please come inside and use your kitchen? I don't have any cookies. In my head I was supposed to do all this over cookies. Do you have time to wait?"

Breathless Dead

Bella's never sung a song like this before. On Tellus when they trained her it was all histories and propaganda and big, complicated ballads that proved the quality of her pedigree and her pitch control. At the palace she'd mastered lullabies, and then after that love songs became the popular thing (plus Redana was going through that romance phase), so that type of sappy and synthetic electronic rhythm had become what she thought of when she tried to consider music.

The Coherents' war music surged and swelled in ways she therefore wasn't prepared for, but it settled inside her heart like it belonged there the entire time. The beats replace her pulse. The tune swims inside her blood. The Auspex picks apart the secrets of the lyrics hidden under the flow of music, and all that's left to do is let her body relax and melt into the dance.

And the dance that goes with this music is as familiar as it gets. Here she ducks low, so low that her legs have to bend into a split to accommodate her. Her chest squishes into her as she slides it across the ground, and this narrowly avoids the arc of lighting that tears above her in anticipation of her move. She pushes up again and kicks back onto her feet just as the grand note that marks the end of formation setup bursts across the field, and she rushes at the lot of them as if she too were nothing more than a projectile fired from a gun.

Every impact of her legs on the ground sends pleasant shivers along her body. She hums along as she moves and swishes her tail to the beat. Her hips sway from side to side as she pivots into a series of spin moves and corkscrews to avoid the various things flying at her with increasing intensity. Sometimes she steps backwards when a gout of flame or a swarm of birds or a billowing cloud that smells exactly the same of death cuts across her path. Sometimes she's forced to the ground again, and other times she has to make great leaps straight into the air to keep from being vaporized. This is the nature of the dance, and having so many partners only means she has to work harder to take the lead.

Now she advances, now she retreats. The music shifts into a long series of percussive beats and she taps her toes along with it while the Coherents wordlessly shift formation. Bella casually sweeps the room again, and it's easy to see what's happening. They've boxed her into a corner, the little shits. If they cluster together and shoot all of their little miracle science guns at once, even her Auspex can't perceive a path around them all.

Bella sucks air in deep, greedy gasps that roll her shoulders forward every time she exhales. Her arms dangle in front of her with her claws still itching with need to be used, as if she's caught between wanting to lift them up again into some sort of rude gesture or just dash across the ground on all fours. Every breath drinks deeply of the air, and among all of the ozone and cinders and smoke, there's a whiff that makes her grin with savage delight.

"Do you guys jerk around every girl you dance with, or am I just special?"

The smell is fear. They're soaked in it, and she's not. They are weak, and she's not. Because the lot of them care about whether or not they make it to tomorrow. And Bella's free from having to.

She rushes forward and it feels good. The air fills with the sounds of weapons discharge too loud for even her sensitive ears to pick the music out from under, and it feels good. She feels a hundred chunks of ice and claws and bits of sharpened metal slice across her skin and tear a hundred different holes and gashes in her suit. It feels g o o d. The blood dripping from her body is the release of toxic pressure she's kept inside of her for far, far too long.

And she's among them now. In a formation this tightly clumped there's no more room for them to run, no way for them to shoot without hurting their companions. And when her talons start carving into their lines, their weapons, and their fucked up miracles of bodies... yeah. Yeah, that feels good, too.

[Bella damages her Blood as the price to reach her prey]

Breathless Dead

Everything that belonged to Nero always smelled of roses. It's a truth at least as old as Bella: to live and work in the palace, you had to learn to love that scent, the sweetness of her favorite crimson petals and the laurels that cut across them. When she was a child, Bella thought it smelled like tea. She even tried making it, once, but it turned out it didn't taste as pretty as it smelled. She hadn't known better, back then. She still cared too much about seeing smiles.

Bella drinks deeply of the air, and sure enough the rose-and-laurel is unmistakable now. It's headier and more intoxicating than any of her favorite wines; this version of the scent is cut through with a tender, savory meatiness she can't quite place. It's like petals garnishing a steak, or perhaps flowers growing from a sun-baked corpse. Her mouth waters more with every whiff of it she gets, until she has to wipe her lips with her thumb to keep herself from drooling. Remember, Bella. The smell is always the best part.

Her body feels light and loose and powerful as she glides through the corridors chasing that luscious, beautiful smell. It's almost as if the chaos of the Yakanov and its strange mix of industry and cleaner and science and sweat and sparks had been set up like a maze just to trick her, a series of walls to keep her nose from the truth of what they were working on. They should have known better than to think it would be enough to hide from her. They should have expected her to be able to pluck something this beautiful from a bouquet of millions.

Ahead of her there are Coherents scrambling this way and that to assemble themselves into a line capable of stopping her. Her lips twist into a huge, feral grin. Good. Good! Her ears and tail are twitching with delight, her arms and back are singing with power! Her legs and hips shift and sway to the song of battle, ruffling her skirt and bouncing her hair with the beauty of the dance she'd been built rather than born for. Come. Come! Her fingertips are itching, her claws need sharpening. Come! Maybe they'd send that Khitava bitch at her. Bella's body ripples with drunken laughter. She flicks the bells now as she walks. Can you hear her? Come on!

Her Regalia has never felt so light on top of her head before. No more strings. No more expectations. No more worries, no more memories, no more connections past following this smell... and breaking the cage they've built for it. For the first time, her neck doesn't beg for the weight of a collar. For the first time, the name of the princess isn't pushing its way into her skull and dragging a dozen memories up with it. For the first time, her breath comes freely and easily in a place that isn't Tellus. She could even sing right now, if she had the mind to.

Her eye is blazing with delight and lust for the coming battle. She is powerful. She is beautiful. She is a Queen. She is free. Ah, she should have made this decision years ago. All it's costing her is everything she used to think she wanted.

Sunshards

Inside each living creature there are hidden pathways that connect them to the Universe. Call it what you will: chakras, qi, your cosmos... it's all kinda the same thing in the end, y'know? It's a bunch of mystic bibbledy blorp that means that you, yes you, can do incredible things. It's the thing that makes magicians! It's the thing that Yue thought she wasn't special enough to have!

But finally, finally! The absolute terror of a near-death (and by "near-death" I really do mean a cat's whisker away. If you're writing this story later, let it be known that Princess Yin was nowhere near as big a threat to Yue's life as Zatoichi the Blind Samurai) experience has finally unlocked the pathways to power inside her! She can feel it rushing through her as she scrambles madly out the door and onto the Stones of Safety! What else could she be but a magician? If she could just remember the shape of the fourth form in the middle of all the buzzing in her head right now there's no doubt she'd be able to fly. She's one with the universe, connected with all living things and sharing their energies, she's...

"Hoooooooorrrrgghhh~" she horghs, "I th-think I'm gonna be sick."

She's flopping over face first onto the grand fields of Princess Qiu's home, is what she's doing. She's valiantly, heroically turning onto her side so that her panicked coughing doesn't choke her to death. She is... dizzy? And, and crying, just a little bit? She's... oh. Oh dear. Oh gosh. Oh no... ok no, no no no, she's done. Yue would like to get off Mr. Universe's Wild Ride, please.

"No more... no... n-no more cars, please. Can we walk? For the rest of our lives? Pretty pretty please?"

Or so she tries to say, but since she's mostly mumbling it into Kat's kindly offered Sympathy Floof it's really anybody's guess how many of those words mean anything to anybody. She's useless. Overwhelmed. A lump, really. A lump on the lawn of the most beautiful palace in the entire world.

But palace go spinny. Spinny bad. No spinny, palace. Nnnnn, Kat stop... this is no time for kissies, sillyhead. Nnnnnf, blerg. Eyes go shut now, kay? Sleepy time. Time for dream bout be happy for be alive. Time... time for...

Slowly, she becomes aware of her surroundings. Example: she is presently being nudged and prodded by a very soft nose attached to a large and beautiful muzzle. Or, well, she has to assume it's beautiful. She can't see it, but she can tell who it belongs to, so unless the Demon Car currently shrieking away from her mangled Hyra beyond recognition on the way up here, a very beautiful wolf is what is trying to roll her over onto her back.

And honestly even if that did she must be beautiful, because Hyra's one of those people who just seems like she'd take to scars really well, y'know? Like, with her build and her smile if you cut a big ol' slash across her face or (oooh, gosh) her tummy or her chest it'd only make her more beautiful. Just imagine the rough, pale line all shining in the light of the full moon, and her shirt's tossed so careless-like over a wet rock (and her hair is soaked, just so sopping and clinging to her bare back, because it was raining earlier so there's still all these dark mysterious clouds in the sky, that's reaaaaaally important ok?), and then, and then, she reaches out and touches your chin, and you reach out and brush your fingers across her scar, and she pulls you closer until your face is full of her, and she asks you if you'd like to kiss it, but you're a naughty girl, aren't you, so instead of your lips you use your tongue and, ehe, ehehehehehe~

"Oh gosh!"

Yue shoots up into a sitting position with her face just as pink as an apple. She stretches to cover her embarrassment, but that just gives her a handful of Hyra fur, and that's only making things worse and um, so um, um um? Distraction? She, uh...

"S-say... don't you, e-erm, d-d-don't you think this place could use more, more flowers? It's, this place is beautiful, but it's so... empty. She could really use a garden here, don't you think? She could put a peach tree here, and here, and a row of poppies over here, and... w-well, it'd be so much more welcoming, y'know?"

Breathless Dead

The blackberry bursts inside her mouth. The rough flesh of the tiny fruit tickles Bella's tongue as it passes across it, carrying the taste of tart juice sweetened to impossible degrees by more sugars than could possibly have fit into such a tiny thing. It's sweet on top of sweet on top of sweet, piled over the vague suggestion of something natural and good until she can feel it rotting her mouth just from the contact. Her mouth is filling up with saliva, and her saliva is the juice of the berry replicating endlessly inside of her. It gushes in endless rivers of cloying fake flavor and no matter how much she wants to spit it out, how is she supposed to refuse a gift from a god? She swallows, but there is always more, and more after that, and more after that and...

The berry is washed off of her tongue with a glass of the floral wine she'd ordered brought to her ship. The sensation is relief, of course, though her tongue is so numbed to sweetness that she can only notice the faint bitter notes of the alcohol and a grassy note that she hadn't been able to detect before. For some reason it makes her think of honey. But even now it's calming and soothing, she needs more, her mouth is so full of pain and this will fix it, she swallows but another mouthful rushes in to replace it faster than she can breathe. She sputters. Her entire universe fills up with flavor.

There's an acid sweetness in her fingertips and a metallic tang rippling through her kneecaps and the oily orange blandness of her most comforting wine is twisting in great whorls with the miracle of flowers she'd declared to be the greatest treasure of the Yakanov until these, the most wonderful and perfect flavors she can recall experiencing across her life both at once turn to the wretched taste of vomit that's burning inside her spine.

She can't see. She can't hear. She can't--

There's a sensation of teeth on her ear and they bite and painpainpainpaineverythingispainithurtsdon'tgrinditpleasejustletgonopleasestopwhatdidshedowhatcanshedopleasegodpleasepleasepleaseletgoshecantthinkcantbreatheneedairneedairneedairbutthenthere'sfingersonherchin and they're lifting her head and soothing her hurts and it fades. Bit by bit, it fades. The pain pulls back and her senses rush back in to blessed normalcy. Hera offers her a smile.

She is vaguely aware that her foot is standing in a pool of vomit. She doesn't need to wonder where that came from. She grits her teeth, which are somehow still there, still perfect and strong and exactly where her instincts expect them as they squeeze together. Ignore it. Ignore all of it.

Through the hall, her Lanterns shine. Row after row of armored servitors gleam before her, and promise her their strength. The menials fill in the gaps and stare at her with awe, their perfect queen. Their eyes grow wide and shine like tiny motes of starlight in the dark of her beloved ship and they promise her their love. Her ears perk up at the sight and even though her stomach is churning with the sensations of leftover sickness, her muscles coil and release, tense and relax, flex and then unwind again with such smoothness and strength that she might as well be feeling better than ever before.

Her eye is watering. She lifts a hand to brush her cheek, and her talon comes away soaked.

nected all through like this is the universe here you go look forward see the shine of that
white dwarf it’s minting gold in there r
ight now you know and this dust connects to this yellow sun and
over here a planet with so many leaves and ants and flowers you’ll die before
you count them all you’ll die you’ll die you’ll die
you’ll look so pretty as part of

buried your head in her hair and you sniffed and
you dragged and it was warm and soft and clean it was
cinnamon but dotted with lilies and
it was her and it was her and
it was all of her and you
have never known happiness like that and
you will never know happiness like that
stupid bitch you stupid bitch you cursed yourself forever then and there and now you’re---

Ivory Smile floats in front of her vision, hands too ruined to hold the coin she'd given him. His goreless face is too mangled for her to tell what sort of expression he watches her with, and when she opens her mouth to breathe his name he vanishes into the dust of the lamplights.

She is alone, among her people. Her chest won't stop squeezing and her heart won't stop pounding and her eye won't stop leaking and she's so strong, she's so strong, she's so strong that nobody can help her at all. The warmth and the wet creeps about the Anemoi again. Something wet and rotten sloughs off a wall and lands on the dampening floors with a pop loud enough to make her wince.

They can't help her, but she can help them.

Bella shuts her eyes. Her claws wear ugly grooves into her palms that will require new surgeries to correct again. All the pressure comes oozing out of the wounds like puss deserting an infection. All her anger goes dripping out with the little drops of blood. Breath after deep, slow, breath, she empties out inside. What's left is hollow. Fit for growing bonsai.

She sighs. It did not take a genius to figure out where Nero's daughter had gone. She opens her eyes again, her golden eye so dull and listless it's become a perfect match for the inhuman calm of the Auspex. She walks painfully slow steps among her people. She has to force her shoulders up. Be strong. Be proud. Be a queen. Bella's tail droops low enough to brush the ground. Every motion and every muscle begs her to go and rest. She scoffs loudly; there's already somebody in her bed, you idiot.

"Listen to me!" if she tries she can make her voice as clear and strong enough to echo through the hall. If she tries she can almost forget how dry her throat feels, "Get the ship ready to depart immediately! And the second you finish, fuck off into space and don't come back here. You useless bunch of assholes. Get the fuck out of my face!"

Her strides are powerful, now. Her body crackles with the renewed strength of someone who has figured out her purpose at long last. She makes it half a dozen steps before she feels a hand clamp down against her wrist. Small, gentle fingertips brush against her fur. Stay, they plead. Where are you going? Take us, take me with you. Bella wheels about, snarling, and stares into the soulful eyes of Jil of the Bridge Clan.

"Let go before you lose that arm, you fucking disgrace. You stupid fucking waste of air, I said! Let! Me! Go!"

It's like throwing a child. No resistance at all. No capacity to do the thing. She simply twists her hips and she feels Jil's small body lift into the air, and suddenly the sounds are the squeak of surprise that the girl couldn't keep inside her mouth where it belonged, and the rattling of her ugly and absurd totem necklaces as they clattered against each other. With a thump and a clatter ten times too loud for Empress Nero's great gift of a ship, she smashes into an unprepared knight and they both go bowling over.

Bella spits on the ground, hissing at everyone stupid enough to try and placate her. She lifts her hand in the air, claws already tensed in threat.

"I'm so sick and fucking tired of you little shits slowing me down. I'm better off alone. I've always been better off alone."

Something in her throat hitches, but Bella ignores it and stalks through the passageways like a stalking panther. The Anemoi swallows her every sound, like a parting gift to its Mistress. Good riddance. Ugly fucking boat that it was, it was still the Empress'. It didn't deserve to blow up with the rest of the Yakanov.

Breathless Dead

do you remember when you you were young and
you walked into her room it was morning
it always smelled like gasoline and disinfectant so
sweet and sharp and stinging and sour sour
sour so that you couldn’t tell you always trembled back then you were so worried no confidence in
your cooking you couldn’t smell it couldn’t tel
l if it was good and you were only barely clean
enough of dirt for her not to notice but this
time you made pancakes with gooseberry jam and
the tang made your ears wiggle and your step was bouncin
g you were so confident and sure this time
but you came in and everything was wrong she was slick with s

metal rends and tears itself in half and when it do
es it screams like a maiden giving up
her virginity
to a soldier she does not love yes that piercing hollow shriek
that is the precursor to another dozen tears just like it let them fill you up and burst
back out of your mouth and die out into dull ringing ah your poor ears
must feel so overwhelmed focus smaller please so you can hear
the splatter-drip of blood and coolant pattering against the hard floor
the vent is hissing steam of some kind the pressure in this room is something you can almost f
eel isn’t it this really seems like an emergency there
should be more sirens ah yes there they go my darlings
listen to them blare the word for this not that you’re smart
enough to know it is klaxons
and they howl like hunting wolves first there is the
rising pitch and hold until vibrato just until a body can bare
ly stand the wailing and then suddenly it dips again and
fades into a memory but it’s a wave and

the forest is vast and alive and all around you there’s
a word for this
the word is verdant
the forest is so filled with life do you see it do you see it
let us count the leaves together there is
one and two and thirty seven thousand six hundred and fifty three and the
bark is smooth like rubber but that doesn’t stop the an
ts from crawling up it do you see do you see their bulbous
heads hold mandibles fit for war they could be a phalanx no they
are a phalanx their twisting legs are carrying them to war
but what are you on about this is your ship isn’t it
your ship could never be a forest but you know all
about gardens don’t you this is a garden I have made it
a garden look at how beautiful and precise my bonsai are not a single twig or
leaf out of its destined place do you see your
mice are trembling do you see they’re soil

like a wave it surges again
with the sound of a tide pushing
and pulling and
subsiding and
emerging
just as loud and shrill as you can stand and oh by the way
there’s shouting all around you but it all seemed
so hard to pick up on since it’s all so small and human but let’s listen why
not let’s really listen to what they have to say this one
says “fuck you” and that one goes “you’ll never get away with this” and over hear this
quivering little number whimpers “b-b-but you promised!
you said we were in compliance!” and this one over here i
s asking you what you did to Birmingham and do you see they’re blaming
you these are the sounds of a people blaming you
for all their problems which to be very fair you caused and it’s
all so very human of them isn’t it but now bend your
little kitty ears and listen closely you do not want to miss this
there it is

for my garden do y
ou see the light is bright
here and everywhere is thorns and wings
and dust it’s hard to see through isn’t it
I’m so sorry
let me add more here’s some glinting armor
no duller now duller pit it all with rust time
will conquer everything you love ah you have an aus
pex do you wonderful love then let’s look a little bigger
here are the pores in the plastics of your ship
do you see how they are not smooth at all don’t
be deceived by your stupid little fingertips these ridge
layers are what swallow all that
sound now go past them here is the main support
it weighs three tonnes and cost more than your life is worth to build
there are eighty three thousand secondary beams
crossing through it look don’t they seem so much like
spider webs you know another thing that’s con

weat and lying there in bed with no energy
poor thing
her musk reminded you of clay and alkaline and flowers
but she carried the sickness smell
so rank like death
was she dying you brought her the wrong food you idiot
she needed more liquids and you panic
ked and squeaked and she said your name she
said it like butterfly wings she said it and
you came to her you said you were sorry
you would go and make something else but she grabbed you
and the pancakes fell and the jam mixed with
everything she pulled you so close there was no choice
no choice no choice at all she was delirious
couldn’t tell what she was doing never gonna
remember so you had no choice you

Sunshards

"So I just... I put my hand like this and then, uh... oh gosh, eep, eep, EEEEEP!"

The air is filled with the sounds of panicked flailing as Yue learns (again) that you can't perform complicated gestures with your hands while also holding an ancient, slightly worn down scroll of magical wisdom. She holds it in her trembling hands for another minute or two and then flops over onto the ground with a loud and maybe kinda-slightly-just-a-little-whiny-if-you're-really-gonna-call-attention-to-it-and-be-rude-like-that sigh.

"When the lady said it had detailed instructions I didn't think she meant this detailed!"

To her left, Hyra flops down on the ground next to her with a judgy-sounding snort. Cyanis giggles and takes advantage of the new angle to snap another dozen selfies. Just look how great the lighting is from down here! Ooh, ooh check it out Yue! If she holds the phone like thiiiiis it like Hyra's tail is one of hers!

"I... w-well I know it's better for it to be too detailed than not detailed enough, but... still! Y'know? I get to the end of one page and I can't remember how the first one started! Seriously you must be some kinda genius if you figured all this out..."

Point of fact, this is technically not Yue's first time learning a spell. It's actually her third! Although in a much more real sense, this is so much her first brush with learning magic that it might as well be her zeroth. That makes sense, right? See, 'cause Yue's first magic was learning how to prep stones for holding sunlight. She found the book describing it gathering dust when she was looking for something to hold up the leg of a wobbly chair one day and, well... it just looked too interesting to not try it. Then of course the second thing she learned to do, obviously, was actually capture the sunlight.

And those two things are definitely magic! There are, like, circles and stuff! Prayer slips and words you haveta say to get it all to work! But they're also not... th-this. This is more... actually does the scroll have a name for, oh gosh gosh gosh goshies gosh no. Nope! It is a mistake to go looking, believe you me. Ok, uh... words, a word, what'd you call it? Let's call it "You Magic", how about? Y'know, like, magic that's about, uh... you. And stuff. Where you do the gesturing with your own body and the, y'know, the uh... the chi is drawn from inside yourself instead of the earth or the air or the water or something sensible like that. Truth is? She'd always thought she didn't have anything like that.

Well... no, that's ridiculous. If there was no energy inside of her, how could she be alive? Doesn't make any sense. But, like, if you think about it another way, it's pretty easy to look around and see that not everybody grows up and becomes a wizard. Right? Honestly most people don't. If Yue's ever seen people practicing You Magic then she definitely didn't realize it at the time. And definitely nobody's ever flown, or even jumped a little too high. And maybe it's just 'cause it turns out this stuff is annoyingly complicated and it's too big a pain to put in the effort for what could easily turn out to be a party trick, but the way that she's always seen it is, the fact that there aren't flight scrolls sitting around all over the place is proof that only special people can learn it in the first place.

And it's not like she's ever had a very good reason to think she was one of those special people! Most days it feels like a lot of effort just lifting a tiny little fox! She's never felt the mystic energies of the world flowing through her muscles. Sometimes she get cramps, is that close enough? So until now, until these last couple of days...

"Aaaiiishya! I'm goin' about this all wrong, aren't I? What if I just... hmm. So I move like this, and then my thumbs... brush my fingers? How in the world? Ummmmm, well, never... yeah, never mind filling all the conditions. Today let's just see if I can get these hand sign thingies down. Or at least the first one! Yeah. Yeah! I think I can do at least that much. Hyra, could you... hmmm, oh! Yeah, I know! Bark if I do it wrong, ok? No? You... oh. Ooohhhhhhhh. Right yeah, sorry. W-well, what if you shook your head? Ok, great! Thank you, you're the best!"

The simple joy of fluffy hugs brings meaning to this autumn afternoon that the drudgery of learning magic simply can't fulfill. A moment later the hugs become slightly fluffier when Kat realizes there are snuggles going on and she's not getting any, and the moment after that it gets plain awkward when Cyanis squeezes her way into the middle of everybody by way of rewarding herself for being so helpful! And it turns out? The real magic was--

"Hm! Ok so in the first picture I put my hands together and put my thumb... here?"

"No no no no, Yue you dummy you have to bend it the other way! See, it's going behind the hand!"

"I, huwha? Um, but that doesn't... oh! Oh yeah you're right! Haha, thanks, Cy! Ok, so I just--"

Three. Two. One.

"OWWWWW! Owowowowowowow owwiieeeeess! Cyyyyyyy, my thumb doesn't bend that way I'm not double jooooooinnnteeeeeed~"

"Ahahahahahaha, you should see the look on your face! Actually, ooh! Here!"

Click! This one's going in the scrapbook for sure! Or at least the cloud! Yue can't help but giggle as Kat tries to kiss her poor mistress' hand all betters, but the really funny thing about it all is that even in the middle of the pain, she can't stop smiling. She tries to match the pose for two whole hours before tummies start getting too growly and it becomes necessary to break for a meal, and in those two hours Hyra never got to nod her head in approval even once. She got close, once! There was a bit where it looked like Yue really had it and she tilted her head half in amazement to see it. But then it turned out she'd cheated by folding her pinkies together and she had to switch quickly to another shake of disapproval.

And still, Yue was smiling. Because, like I was saying, the real magic was that Yue believed in it. The miracle was not the promise of flight (or at least crazy hops), but the willingness to hope that all this work was going somewhere, after all. And after all, why shouldn't it? Hyra believed in her. Kat super believed in her. And Cyanis? Well...

"Wow Cy, you've really mastered your duckface! Could you teach me sometime?"