Phoe

Breathless Dead

"Hmph. That's rich, you're gonna lecture me about being from 'the reaches'? You're so far out in the middle of nowhere I had to get lost to find you! Do you have the slightest idea who you're talking to? I'm, hahaha, I'm..."

She wants to throw her head back and laugh until this entire joke of an office cracks in half under the weight of her ego. Her throat itches with want to spill titles, accomplishments, and especially lineage like venom to melt this pathetic, pretentious ass into sludge. Her muscles twitch as though about to lift her off the couch with such grandeur that it'd send mortal creatures sprawling to their knees to worship her like a queen. She'll roll forward and rise to her full height, she'll stretch with such luxury they'll pay her triple just to keep looking at her, please, please, Your Highness, I!

But her neck tips slowly toward the table, instead. She sits forward, but only to lean and hunch forward with her elbows on her thighs. Her eye flicks across the pamphlets, full of words and pictures and ideas she doesn't know. They smile at her. Of course they're smiling at her. She shoots a nervous look behind her, expecting to see Him sitting in the corner in a lotus stance with his horrible and infinite smile. Her only company forever. But there's nothing. This room is just a room. What makes it amazing is that it's someone else's room.

Bella does not laugh. She does not boast or stand or prove the majesty that took dozens of generations of careful breeding to produce. She doesn't turn her claws or her regalia or her Auspex on this stupid, hapless rube. Where did any of that get her, anyway? Here. So deep inside the the backwards half of reality that they stopped measuring themselves by their distance from Tellus... from home. In someone else's trashy, fake, scam of a room.

She sighs, and shakes her head.

"...Trēdecima. That's who I am. My actual name. Never mind the rest. You wouldn't understand it anyway."

Her heart twists itself into knots inside of her chest. She squeezes her claws into her palms and snorts in shock when some instinct that shouldn't be inside of her stops her before she can break the skin. So much pressure. No release. She needs to vent, she needs to get it out, she needs to tear something into little pieces!

"Your coins are stupid," she says haughtily, "They're meant as passage for the Ferryman for a reason. With eighteen hundred of them I'd barely be able to move around. And these are how you get food?! Stupid. Insulting. Stupid. Is it all like the trash you left sitting out? Nobody would pay for that, not even with favors. Your plan is stupid, too. The Order of Hermes will just shrug and say it's a shame it didn't finish me, after everything else. And if Her Imperial Majesty hears that I let--!"

Bella goes silent. Her eye stares with hollow, ravenous emptiness at the pamphlets in front of her. But for the slight flaring of her nostrils, she barely seems to breathe. When she finds her voice again, it's hollow too.

"...If it's supposed to take a week before I can fend for myself, then what the fuck did you expect me to do in the meantime? I just finished flushing the chlorophyll from my system, I am not turning green again just to help your fat ass out."

Sunshards

She doesn't see it.

When Hyra spoils the fun of blameless little vixens by jumping onto the bed so that she'll notice what Kat is up to and then tackling her as she wrestles with her pet, she doesn't see it. She takes a thwack to the thigh and she fills the Prison Room with squeaks, but she doesn't see it. She sees a kind heart looking out for her and keeping her out of trouble by making sure jailors don't find out she's let their bed get ruined, instead.

When Hyra runs around behind her so that she trips when she tries to spin to match the movement, she doesn't see it. She takes a lick to the face and she fills the Prison Room with breathless laughter, but she doesn't see it. She sees a beautiful soul who isn't so caught up with winning that she forgets to check and make sure her partner is still having fun, instead.

Her swordplay is sloppy at best, even by the standards she set for herself while she was purifying that ghost. She's not creative with her movement and she doesn't follow the forms as she was taught them, like this then like this then like this, finishing like this. She's slow to the point of standing still, which is a courtesy born from the fact that she's much more scared of cutting Hyra on the sharp edge of her blade than she's even kinda sorta interested in winning the duel.

It's not like she doesn't try, y'know? When Hyra's on the offensive she's much brighter and smiles a whole lot more, running through whole routines where she parries, spins, releases, catches the hilt with her other hand, and grins right before she falls victim to some new trick or technique. But she blocks like a champ, my girl does, and after the twentieth or so thwap to her poor red thighs she catches onto the idea that she can use the flat of her blade too. Which helps! A bit. Maybe. But even then the slowness and the nerves creep into her style and she never lands a single touch.

And she doesn't see it. Hyra has a million ideas about fighting that she's never dared to dream about, and she falls for every single one of them. Sometimes, like with the coat-rack? It works four times before she figures out how to catch it without exposing hers--- meeeeeeep! Thwap! Ow! Ahem. Five times. Without leaving an opening, please and thank you miss. And a block's as good as a hit as far as she's concerned, 'cause she's fighting Hyra of the Wolves who is by definition the bestest and most skilled swordswoman ever to grip a blade.

But she doesn't see it. When Hyra gets in real close and plants her front paws on Yue's shoulders, she doesn't see it. She loses herself in a pair of piercing red eyes that for a moment forget to be hard or taunting or any of that because they're too busy looking into a pair of vulnerable, wide blue ones, and right when there's maybe a spark of something so real and beautiful it makes her want to cry it ends with Hyra ducking low and thwap! Thwap! Owies! And she doesn't see it. But she feels her heart flutter faster, and she's pretty sure it's not 'cause of all the working out she's doing just now.

When Hyra crouches low on the other side of the room, she doesn't see it. When she waits there, cautiously and patiently and a buncha other ly's, she super duper swooper doesn't see it. She sees a stubborn wolf who's too good at this, gosh darn it, lift her tail and wiggle it like a finger to tease a poor, sore, sweaty girl and from there it doesn't matter what she sees because something tweaks inside of her and Yue goes rushing headlong into the trap, just for the chance to wipe that smirk out of her eyes. And she... well, I mean, can't you guess? She doesn't see the trap until all that momentum catches on a paw and she goes tipping and YEEPing into a full jacuzzi bath.

She doesn't see it. Not just yet. She sees that she's sopping wet and that her frizzy hair has drooped all clingy to her back. She sees that her gorgeous and wonderful dress is stuck to every scrawny inch of her body, and she'd expect it to stop looking beautiful so that it could make her look as silly as she feels, but for some reason her reflection doesn't show her that? Instead it's beautiful, like someone made it to be wet, and only now is she allowed to understand how wonderful she can look. Especially when she's at her worst. And she sees the bubble jets turn on, and goshy goshing goshies does she moan, because a body full of sore muscles and over-thwapped bruises in warm massage-y water can't help but do anything else now can it?

She wins the fight against the bath though, give her credit. She doesn't sink into the water and just bubble about until she falls asleep, even though that's half of what she can think about and it sounds so super good, doesn't it? It's just the other half that makes her fumble about the jets for her sword and (oh-so-carefully!) grip the hilt again so she can leap out and charge again before Hyra's got time to think of a new angle. Her charge is swift and silent. Her strike is sure.

She doesn't see it. Her hands are too busy hugging every bit of wolf she can get them around, and her eyes are busy drinking in every little detail and all twists and knots of muscle, the clumps of fur and dirt, and every other wonderful tiny little thing that makes Hyra the most beautiful person on earth, even when she's not... y'know, a person just now. And she feels her heart squeeze itself to pieces and her breath choking in her throat and her hands let go of her sword. She braces for another smack. She knows it's coming, she blew it.

Just... not before she sneaks in her first good shot of the night, yeah?

"I love you." she whispers, and flushes pink with the effort of never having actually said those words out loud before.

"I love you," she says it louder, fuller, so it can't be mistaken for anything else. Come on girl, give us a shout, "I love you!"

[Figure Out a Person: 6. This is happening with blades crossed, so even though she fails she still gets to ask, "What do you hope for the future?" This nets an advance, and I'm open to suggestions]

Breathless Dead

Some cruel god or other must have filled her with mercury while she slept. Her body feels heavy when she stirs though not in the way it had the last time. Her muscles are smooth but sluggish, and the effort that would normally buy her feet only manages to roll her over on the hard and somehow also jabby couch. Where she shifts, she feels her center of gravity move with her, pulling her unsteadily in the direction she tries to move until it flips her over and sends her crashing back down again.

The headache brownie tray drops to the floor with a crash louder than King Jaso's thunderbolts. And, oh! It turns out she can move as quickly as ever with the proper motivation. See how her hands fly to cover her ears with the reckless speed of a void skiff? She moves from lying to sitting straight up to hunched over with her head between her knees and her eyes squeezed shut against the blinding light of the room while seeming to skip the frames of motion in between these poses. She groans, or rather she whimpers, from the pain.

But like everything else in this little room, the danger here is a lie. She holds still, and her breathing steadies. The sounds of the room quiet to obnoxious murmuring and rustling with the occasional 'click' she can for some reason feel in her teeth. The knife-sharp light dims until it's safe to open her eyes again, and even flickers often enough to threaten to plunge her back into the familiar dark. The smell is cardboard, plaster, and cheap scented oils to cover all the dust, which tells her exactly who's office she's in without having to look around.

The muscles in her back come unclenched, bit by torturous bit. Her ears lift on top of her head, tentatively at first, but then to full perk. Bella rises to a proper sitting posture, and her spine keeps curving and loosening until she flops backwards onto the back of the couch with her arms splayed to either side of her. She lifts her head back up to keep an eye on Thelis as she moves about the room. This is a stance of triumph.

Bella scowls. Not ten seconds to rest after the effort of lifting herself and she's already expected to move and respond to something. She'd forgotten how much she hated dealing with other people. Just how stupid and impatient they could be. She leans forward with the grace and control she'd normally associate with the end of a whipping and grabs at the cheap cup full of pills. By the way her new talons tear straight through it, she notices that she is still wearing them and that they have not been plucked off her hands for scrap metal while she slept. She lets out a breath.

"Whatever."

A gaudy blue and yellow pill rolls about the palm of her hand for a moment as she stares at it without comprehension. How was this supposed to help, exactly? There wasn't a single nanite or a whiff of regeneration-inducing pheromones in the whole fucking container. Nothing of food or wine, either. What was it meant for? What did it do? She drops the cup on the table and lets the contents spill across everything while she eyes the 'food' with equal scorn.

She did not consider herself a master of cooking. She was good enough to be Redana's favorite chef, which was good enough to not get punished on a daily basis, but Redana was an idiot who thought that pancakes were the height of civilization so that didn't prove anything. To be a master you had to be dedicated entirely to the craft so you had time to absorb all the subtle nonsense that elevated high cooking from low. Bella had too many jobs to do in her old life to ever develop those skills. But even by her low standards, the offerings in front of her were lazy to the point of insult.

She picks up a sandwich half and sniffs it. Her entire face wrinkles with disgust. Stale, plain bread with such poor texture that it was surely baked by some sort of drone instead of a person, and weeks ago at that. If she was lucky. And what kind of dipshit made sandwiches with only peanut butter in them, anyway? Sticky and disgusting overly sweet garbage... nobody could possibly eat this willingly. Could they? She lifts it with the intention of throwing it atop the pills, but the hollow pit at her center pulls her hand without permission toward her mouth instead. It tastes even worse than it looks: the top of the bread has gone crunchy but somehow underneath that was dense and chewy trash that reminded her of the cup of drugs. It clung to her mouth unpleasantly even without the help of the gloopy filling, which wasn't made from nuts so much as some dumbass' idea of nuts held together with glue and syrup.

She devours all three in a moment, without asking if she can or should. The egg follows, unseasoned and slightly sour in a way that makes her stomach churn the more she thinks about it. She gulps the milk down greedily without bothering to taste it. The film that covers her tongue manages to be tart and unpleasant anyway. She holds her head in her hands and winces, which is how she notices her beret is missing. If she's being charitable, it must have died in the crash. If she's not...

"What the fuck are you trying to do? What the fuck is all this? What the fuck do you think I... what the fuck?"

She'd eaten the food because she was starving. But she'd kept going even though it wasn't helping, because it meant she was doing something with her mouth other than talking about payments. Money... Bella had a dim awareness of what it was, borrowed from Redana's old pulp adventure novels. Azura pirates flitting about the universe burying troves of treasure. On Tellus it was useless. If she needed something for her work it was simply given to her without transaction, and her position didn't come with compensation. On the streets outside the palace they dealt in strange and shoddy coins, but that was the desperation of a bunch of mangy, dying servitors unfit for duty and the boredom of the humans in between bouts of mutilating themselves with ink. None of it made any sense.

But this... Bella feels the vague sense of creeping dread of a person who's about to get ripped off for something she wasn't planning on selling in the first place. Money. She'd never thought about money. As a Praetor she received tribute from every system she visited just to avoid her (Empress') wrath. She was never supposed to wind up here. Never supposed to leave the zone of her Regalia's protection. But here she was, and now she needed money if she was going to get out. Probably?

"Eighten hundred," she repeats unsteadily, "Is that a... trove? Or just a chest?"

Sunshards

Maybe Yue didn't understand enough about prisons.

It didn't look like the kind've thing she'd imagined a prison would look like. There weren't any bars or chains or hard stone floors or, or uh... racks? Prisons had racks, right? She's pretty sure. And whatever those are, this room didn't have them. So that's a knock against it right there. In terms of its Prison Score, you see. Anyway she wasn't sure about this? But it did seem like from the way people wrote and talked about prison cells that they'd be... y'know, smaller? With no soft beds covered in super fluffy pillows and the coziest blankets you ever did see?

Then again maybe not. But they definitely didn't have bubbling jacuzzi baths or room service where they brought you delicious dumplings and soba and a frankly astonishing array of traybakes too numerous to even try to name. Oh, and they definitely definitely didn't let you bring pets and girlfriends (meep!) in with you. Unless they did? Maybe she just hadn't seen any good prisons. Or any prisons. Or... y'know. It had to be something. There had to be an explanation.

'Cause for as nice as everything was? She still felt trapped here.

"Ohhhh, what am I gonna do, Hyra? I can't fight my way up an entire castle's worth of rankings! I don't even know if I can fight in the first place! The duel is supposed to be about the duel but now I'm supposed to be stealing strength from someone? And a lot of someones, at that? Goshies, Hyra, this is too much! What am I doing here? I shouldn't be here!"

And Hyra did not answer her, because Yue did not give her time to take a breath.

"No I know, I know! If I go I'm leaving all my friends just when I got finished meeting them. I shouldn't. I should stay. They'll be so upset. Maybe duels, like... leak extra strength into the air or something? And I just breathe it in? Is, is that how it works? That wouldn't be so bad, but I, augh! Ohhh, I can't I can't I can't, I can't do it, Hyra! They won't even let me make tea! All my leaves are gonna go bad and it's been sooooo long since I've got to harvest any, and, and my good sun spots are probably all taken up by lizards now, and I bet all the animals are just freaking out without me, and, and I... I miss home, ok? I do! Is that so wrong?"

And Hyra did not answer her, because the full moon did not shine in the night sky.

"Yeah I know they don't want me to leave, but they've all gotta go to sleep sooner or later, right? I'll just... sneak out, and, and uh... I dunno, there's probably a rope ladder somewhere I can climb down on and, oh what do you mean it's not going to be long enough to reach? Of course it... oh wait no, you're supposed to fly up aren't you? Ok new plan, I climb the rope ladder part way down and then I wait there until I can ask a big enough bird to carry me the rest of the-- oh, but that would leave you behind, wouldn't it? Ok no, we'll steal a basket, right? And then... Hyra, are you even listening to me?"

And Hyra did not answer her. Because she is a wolf. Are you stupid?

"Look. No, you're right. I'm sorry. But I can't do this. I don't wanna, and I can't. I can't, ok? I'm just gonna apologize and tell them there's been a mistake, would you mind flying closeish to home please? And I'll go back to my cabin and that'll be that, and Yi-- PRINCESS Yin'll uncurse you 'cause I'm not there anymore, and you can be happy again too. So, so just... move, please, so I can go find someone to tell and we'll get all of this-- h-hey! Give that back!"

Yue reaches, but too slow. Her fingers close on empty air, as Hyra plants all four feet firmly on the ground between Yue and the door to ordinary freedom. Her red eyes shine with fierce determination against the ceiling lights and the evening air. In her mouth, clenched between her sharp and gleaming teeth, is Yue's wooden sword.

"Hyra, this isn't funny. I made that sword myself, give it back! What're you... h-hey, don't point that at me! What do you think I've been trying to... NO I can't do this! I told you why! I don't care if you believe in me, I'm getting out of here and that's, ow! Ow! Owies!!"

Thwap! Thwap! Thwap! Three times, with perfect lupine form no less, does Hyra bring the, er, "blade" down on Yue's thighs and fill the room with frightened and pained yips. There's more of fox in ya girl than she realizes, don'tcha think? But Hyra's snarl cuts through all the philosophical quand... uh... thinkies of the evening, and she gestures sharply toward Yue with the tip. And then over to her bag. To Yue. To her bag. Yue. The bag. Yue.

"...Huh?"

Did you know it was possible for wolves to make frustrated snorts while holding swords in their mouths! I didn't! But now I do, which is neat. She rolls her eyes and pads softly over to the bag, sure to pause and gesture sharply with the sword several times in case Yue gets any bright ideas. She doesn't, she's too busy sniffling and rubbing the welt on her leg, but it's good to be prepared, y'know? She paws at the bag, and kicks it across the floor with a thumpafwoppafwippaclank. Wait, clank? Yue gasps as the pristine, glittering blade of the Demon Swordswoman clatters on the floor at her feet. She's so surprised she picks it up without thinking.

"Wait a second... no, Hyra. Absolutely not! This isn't fair to you, come on!"

Undaunted, Hyra brings the wooden sword up into the air and taps it on the side of Yue's proper one. She settles into a dueling stance, or what passes for a wolfish version of one at any rate. She's at least six... no, seven times more sure and graceful than Yue's panicked and half-remembered reply.

"That's a wooden sword, dummy! This one's real! I'm gonna hurt you and I don't want... I know you're way better than me Hyra, but you're a wolf! You don't have hands! There's no way for you to-- ow! There's no way you can, OW! Owies! St-stop th-- owwwwww!"

Yue leaps a full foot away from the next strike and parries it with a sweeping circle motion. She doesn't quite disarm her opponen, maybe 'cause she's got no arms, but it's close enough to get an appreciative wag from the veteran. Yue's stance is just how she remembers it from the shrine, which is to say she's bobbled it and she's too narrow by half a foot. But her bow is perfect. And the little smirk that plays across her lips? Oh, divine!

First Opponent: Hyra of the Wolves
Technique: Wolf Holding a Sword Style
Special Moves: ???
Secret Weapon: Is Literally Yue's Girlfriend (...Meeeeep!)

Fighters ready? The wheel of fate is... hm?

Come again? What of widdle Kat, you ask? Whither Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits, our bright and shining superheroine?

Well. Not to brag or anything, but while these two sillyheads went at it? A certain darling cutiemittens went and stole the best spot on the good pillows. And now she's good and comfy and chewing on a feather that doesn't belong to her and nobody's stopping her or even noticing her doing it, so honestly? Whatever happens here, there's your real winner.

Anyway, fighters ready! Beginify!

Breathless Dead

"What do you think, Bella? Are you any good at pretending to be sick? Do you need me to poison you? Because I could... Bella? Bella! Can you... Bella? Are you listening?"

Despite her very best efforts, she was. Bella stood with prim and proper posture, as rigidly as she could get away with while still being able to reach the next in a seemingly endless pile of freshly washed white sheets. She set herself to the task of smoothing out the next one across her table so she could begin ironing and folding it, a supremely difficult task that took every ounce of a Servitor's concentration to get right. Her golden eyes burned with focus. Her lips stayed set in a very careful, placid smile that betrayed no interest in the conversation, or any emotion other than satisfaction with her lot in life, as was proper for an Imperial Pet. Her arms moved in swift and practiced patterns as she fought the last remaining wrinkles the way a phalanx might fight a band of heroic pirates.

But her damn... AHEM. Her gosh darned ears! They gave the game away! She couldn't keep them from perking up at the sound of Mynx's voice, and even worse, she felt the little traitors wiggle and bend toward her friend, and now no amount of diligent ironing would be enough to pretend she was too involved in her work to hear anything. There was an edge to her voice that caught Bella off guard. Mynx was a creature of total confidence, that tinge of nervousness didn't belong in her scheming. Unless that was part of the trick?

She stepped away from the laundry so she could look up. Mynx's scales rippled across her face as she hid behind her tented hands. Her eyes looked deadly serious, which had to mean she was smiling like an idiot where Bella couldn't see. But the thing that really got her tail all bushed up was the fact that Mynx had her attention and wasn't doing anything with it except... waiting. She sighed and rolled her eyes. Her lips curved into a tiny scowl, which she quickly forced back off her face before anybody could punish her for it. She ran her fingers over the smoothness of the sheet, and made to fold it.

"Hmph. Troublemaker."

"I knew you'd understand! Dany's actually starting to catch on to some of the usual tricks, and I just don't see how I'm going to pull this off by myself this time! Oh thank you Bella, thank you thank you thank you!"

"H-hey I didn't say I'd!" Bella squeaked as she fussed the wrinkles out of her skirt and apron.

"Oh good point, maybe this would work better if we mussed your clothes up a little bit. You're good with a sewing needle, right? So you wouldn't get too mad if we maybe cut that little skirt of yours up? Just a teeny bit?"

Mynxed hopped down from her perch on the shelf. She wasn't bothering to hide her grin anymore. She advanced with bouncy steps while Bella retreated, clutching her apron like a shield. She fought as hard as she could, but she was losing the war. She couldn't keep the smile on her face from melting into a picture of flustered horror. She couldn't keep the rose from creeping onto her cheeks, when everybody knew that roses were only meant for Empresses. She swiped at Mynx, who caught her by the wrist with a soft smile.

"Wh-wh-what does any of this have to do with?? A-and I didn't agree to!"

"Right, so if you can't fake it, I'd better give you a light dose. When Dany hears you, or better yet sees you, she'll find you all faint and weak..."

"M-Mynx, what?"

"...and then right when she's thinking it a trick I'll make sure she sees me..."

"Mynx, please!"

"...So then she'll know it's real, or well, not really real, but for our Princess what's the difference, right? And she'll run up to you and..."

"MYNX! Stop!"

All at once the energy in the room popped. Mynx blinked with obvious confusion, in that slow and incredibly off-putting way of hers, and tilted her head.

"Why Bella, what's the matter?"

"I... I will not," it took all of Bella's willpower not to show her teeth. A Lady was polite. Demure. Unassuming. She took tiny little breaths in and out of her nose, "Be part of such, such... silliness! Leave me out of it! Please!"

"But Bella! Sweetie!" Mynx's face was a mask. An enigma, even. The glitter in her eyes could have been malicious amusement as easily as it might have been determination, "This is for you! I'm just helping you get what you want!"

Bella froze. She swallowed nervously, fumbling for her voice. It was a long and awkward moment full of heat and fidgeting before she found it again.

"What I... want?" she winced at the way her voice cracked.

"Well of course! It's obvious to anybody with eyeballs that you're completely nuts for her, but we'll never get the Princess to figure out how much she likes you back without a little mmmphrble!"

Zeus herself could not have spotted Bella take the pillow up from under the laundry pile even if she'd been watching the conversation with her full interest. But if she had, she'd certainly be proud of how much like a thunderbolt she'd managed to throw it. The second strike was even deadlier, and the third was certainly overkill, but the sound of her flustered squeaking was still being drowned out by merciless giggles, which meant the meteoric rain of sleep aids couldn't stop until the traitor had been well and thoroughly murdered for her crimes.

***

Bella's head is stuck inside a clamp. Every bit of blood that squeezes past her skull crushes her with blinding pain. Light exists only as a sense of nausea, and sound for dizziness. Her lips are dry and cracked when she opens them to yell at... whoever the fuck this is, but the pounding against her brain steals her thoughts from her before she can turn them into venom. She could be birthing a new goddess from her temple right now, and not even notice the difference. Her scowl is filled with teeth.

Every breath she is tainted by the overwhelming smell of mint plastered over faint traces of rot. Onion. Garlic. Vinnegar. All swim in the stinging ocean of sugar-soaked mint. This is the monster come to kill her: a sweaty sack of who crams her face full of candies to hide the fact she couldn't be bothered to pick her lunch out of her teeth or wash herself clean after. Disgusting.

The growl in her throat feels drowned out by the one in her stomach. It makes her skin crawl to think this puffed up suit full of death and bad ideas is sparking her appetite, but she also hadn't eaten once in the entire span of her journey, which for all she knew could have taken years. Even the muscles she's certain still work like they should feel heavy and devoid of power. She moves to lift her arm, and it's like trying to carry the sky on her back. Every inch takes a mile's worth of effort and then some.

That doesn't stop her from grabbing Thellis Thist by the collar. That doesn't stop her from yanking her close so that the Azurite had nothing to look at but the dead, red gleam of her Auspex, or her neat and glistening teeth if she was cowardly enough to try.

"The fuck're you trying to do to... me..."

The weight on her neck is unbearable. It presses down against her spine and pulls what little energy she's got left out of her body. Her face goes slack. Her claws clench blindly. She pulls herself free from the wreck, just to tumble onto the grimy, scuffed up floor with a lazy, exhausted flop. Her ears droop uselessly against her still screaming skull as her tail flops dully alongside her. She is vaguely aware that her eyes are closing.

And she sleeps, for the first time since Apollo woke her. And this time he lets her.

Sunshards

How come she's crying? It's not like Yue's a mind reader or anything. She's not even that good with faces! One time on market day she paid three times the usual price for a jar of red beans because she'd misread the seller's surprise for disappointment and accidentally haggled her way up instead of down. So it's not like... it's not, it's not like she can see Rosie's dream, right? It's not like, it's not, it's, it's... stop it stop it stop it Yue! You're being so, so..!

It's not like Rose said a word about anything one way or the other. She could be thinking about a perfectly baked loaf of bread (with nuts and seeds and spirals of cardamom baked inside!) as easily as she could be begging for her life. Maybe? But the Countess isn't scary any more than Jessic was, and she was a dragon carrying her across the endless skies. There's just, just, just no reason!

But the fact of the matter's that she's crying just as surely as she's blushing. And she's blushing as surely as she's shaking. And she's shaking about as much as she's swallowing, as if somewhere in the air she's gulping there'll be some words for her to spit back out that'll do what she needs them to do. Which is what, exactly? She's never been so confused in all her life, unless you count the time that Sis asked her what the sound of one hand clapping was and then shook her head when she tried to make it.

"I..."

She's not sure where she's trying to take that 'I'. Where's it supposed to go, and where she wants it to, and if either of those two things are different from each other. What she's sure of, though, is that Rose is big and strong and scary in a way that Yue never can be. And that she's the one who's making those eyes that remind of her Kat's, that she's not making threats or standing up or brandishing the... uh... what was it again? The Consillyuhsomething Blade Or Other? She's not using that to break anybody out, not demanding anything at all or doing any of the stuff she's pretty sure Hyra would be doing in this situation. She's just looking. Like that. So vulnerable. So quiet.

It's beautiful to Yue, even if she can't figure out why. Maybe it's not beautiful to anybody else, but for her it's just... it's weird, y'know? It makes her wish she was every bit the knight she was dressed as. It makes her wish she was a master with her sword and that she could fly like a princess already and carve glittering circles through the air with the sword she'd inherited from the shrine. It makes her dream of a world full of maidens just like Rose offering kisses and adventures and doe-eyed looks just like this one to wanderers who look a lot like Yue.

"I don't..."

She forces herself to stand up to the full degree her fox-wounds will allow her. She wipes her eyes on her sleeve even though her sleeve is overlapping plates of metal right now and ow. She sniffles loudly as she accepts the touch under her chin with the closest she can manage to polite acceptance instead of total flusterbarassment.

"I don't know." she says, with an oddly tinny pitch.

Yue folds in on herself like a paper fan in the hands of a courtesan. All the effort of pretending and feeling and thinking and realizing and wondering scorches its way out of her body and leaves her with nothing but frazzled nerves and a dream thumping inside of her chest with insistent power that she's got no idea how it got there. It can't be hers, can it? Gosh, it'd be nice to just... just have like a, uh, a hot bath and a cup of tea and get to sleep in a soft bed tonight. Wouldn't it? Don't ya think? It'd be nice if there was a way to ask for that, too.

The tears on her cheeks are so warm and soft that they're making her smile. She must look like a complete moron. Might as well sound like one too, y'know?

"I'm not good for much of anything. I'm still learning how to hold a sword. Oh, and uh, and swing it too. I don't know how to... oh, I'm an ok cook, I guess? Princess Qiu seemed like she liked my cookies, at least before she chased me in that helicopter and, um. N-no, I mean, that's not..."

She swallows one more time. Come on words, help her out here.

"I just wanna, I just. I, uh, gosh. Ahaha. I wanna keep my friends safe. I wanna be strong so they can be soft instead when they wanna. I wanna save my girlf-- um!!! M-my g-g-gahhh very special person from a curse! I wanna, I wanna... I wanna belong up here! What... d'you want me to say, t-to make that happen? Where do you have to put me, to pay for all've that?"

Breathless Dead

Snuck in among the blazing kaleidoscope of colors is a thin ribbon of golden light that threads the galaxy between Alced and a point somewhere still in the middle of the infinite depths of the sea. It is not a powerful light, nor a bright one. Even a talented and invested observer would struggle to look here and see anything other than the galaxy as it should be, as it always was: rippling, powerful, alive, and alone. It is no proof at all of the blazing strength a mortal defying Fate or the gods, though for that matter it barely counts as a manifestation of their will.

It is thin and translucent. Where the solar winds blow by or chunks of rock cross through, it melts away into bits of ragged sparkles. Sometimes the trail is straight and decisive. It cuts through the sea with the confidence of a sword thrust or the stroke of a pen. Other times it is cautious and clever. It winds long and winding loops around obstacles and gracefully serpentines between chunks of asteroid and fragments of old discarded hulls as if it knew they were there all along.

Just now, it is playful and capricious. It zips about in a corkscrew spiral and bends upwards into a series of loops for no other reason than because it can. The golden ribbon is speed. It is control. And more than that, it is Bella. Here and there the sparks break in such a way to prove that the pattern of her thread is not perfect. There are erratic jerks in her movement toward debris, toward stars, toward storms that would crush her to pieces and burn those pieces to ash in an instant. It would be simplicity itself to let those errant moods take her over. She would become the flaw, and be perfect. Her arc would carry her into a lethal obstacle, and she would disappear from the universe without pain. Everything she dreamed of for months on end, granted in a single instant that needed no effort or the slightest bit of will. All she needed to do was fall asleep.

But she corrects each mistake as it comes, as easily as she might swish her tail. She does not consider why she does this. It's simply natural to move. It is natural to swim through the sea and it is natural to move forward and it is natural to to seek a destination even when you do not know the place you are heading toward or what might be waiting for you there. Motion is the gift Apollo has given her. There had been a Bella who thought that being calm was the same as being still. But this Bella understands the serenity of motion. This is the secret that Apollo painted on her before he sent her on his secret paths.

She banks. The void skiff is surprisingly simple to control; all she has to do is make sure she's got the controls gripped tight and from there it's as simple as flexing her wrists. But in the act of flexing her wrists, she remembers that she has them. She remembers the soreness. She remembers the burning of the acid in her muscles built up from weeks of perilous spaceflight where she hasn't been able to move her arms more than to briefly and unsatisfyingly stretch them for fear of becoming the kind of nothing she'd rejected while riding the wave. She remembers how cramped her feet are, and the numbness in her legs that tell her the vibrations of a sighing star have turned her into a useless paralytic lump. She can only tell the muscles in her calves still work because they're desperately squeezing together hard enough to force a grunt from her throat. It's the first sound she's made since she left.

Her spine is crawling with flaming ants, and the small of her back is a block of uncomfortable marble. Her hair and her dress are soaked with sweat, and her ears feel so limp she can't imagine they'll ever regain their proper perk again. Her fingers itch, which piled on top of everything else feels just as bad as dying. Voidskiffs weren't meant for the kind of journey she's putting hers through, and here in the middle of nothing she is proving why.

But the work is not so bad. It's straightforward and surprisingly mindless, for all that it's uncomfortable. Keep her hands on the sticks that bend the sails. Sit up straight. And pray for her next decision to keep her alive, and the next one after that, and the next one after that, and the next one after that. There's no time to second-guess herself at this speed. There's no time to plan a course, and even with her Auspex no chance to see more than one in a dozen problems coming before they happen. It might think at those speeds, but she can't. There's no room to think up here. Her mind does not wander, neither to worry or to reminisce. In its way, void sailing is much the same as sewing a new dress out of ten thousand hand-crafted beads, and she thanked it for that in her heart.

Prayer is easy work. Prayer requires no song and no words from her. Prayer requires no sacrifice except the ones she's making with her body. Prayer is movement, just like freedom. If Apollo put her on this ship and sent her to die in space, he's certainly had his chances to finish her off. So she prays, with every flick of her wrists and every second she holds her arms forward in defiance of her aches. She prays with every twist and turn, and she prays with every action that carries her further from anything she knows. You put her here, Apollo. You shared your wisdom. Now bring her home.

Her landing is not a comfortable one. The voidskiff isn't meant for landing, either. It doesn't seem to be made for much except helping Poseidon kill crazy idiots. When she touches down she immediately bounces off of the landing zone off the back of sheer momentum. Her muscles clench with every impact. Her bones rattle inside her body and send shocks of lightning up into her brain. She smells the acrid tang of something burning, but there's no time to figure out what it is. She wrenches the controls with every ounce of remaining strength in her ragged body. She snarls, because it's better than screaming, as her tiny ship skips across the length of a dock built for landing the kind of behemoth Odoacer would send here before slamming into the railing and tipping over onto its side.

"Ugh... fuck."

It takes her minutes, or maybe hours to pull herself out of the skiff. She's not sure; time's so much harder to count than she remembers it being. Her legs touch solid ground for the first time in centuries, and immediately betray her and turn to jelly before they dump her on the floor. Her blood rushes through her furiously and fills her skin with millions of sharp needles as it brings her back to life.

She smiles, just before a wave of nausea burns her throat. She manages to cough up a bit of spit, but after that she rolls through endless cycles of dry heaves squeezing her lungs, squeezing her stomach, and wrenching her neck. But she smiled. Because she noticed as she looked that her skiff looked better after landing than the last one she'd found so very far from home.

Sunshards

Y'know what's funny? For most of her life, Yue assumed she was afraid of heights. It was just, well, trips to the top of the waterfall were so scary! And any time she had to climb a ladder she got a sense of vertigo, like her stomach as a knot and a hawk at the same time and was twist-swooping down into her legs and blurrgh arrrgh flegh. So, like, yeah. What else was she supposed to think?

But when she was flying with Hyra, she was was so amazed to be up there, seeing what birds see that she just sort of... forgot to be scared. At first she thought it was because Hyra was holding her, and those wonderful, beautiful arms were making her feel too safe for the rest of it to catch back up with her brain. But then the demons came and she was definitely scared to be up there floating all by herself, and with so much... everything going on she couldn't tell her heart from her butt, if y'know what I mean.

And even that'd been her home, right? Those were her trees, her river, her house off in the wayyyyy distance, her grass, her flowers, even her demons, sorta kinda maybe. They say starting the journey is the hardest part, but at this point she's gotta wonder if they haven't heard about continuing it. So many paths look like the way home if you squint at 'em hard enough, and when your legs are aching and your stomach's empty and the longer you think about it the more you realize you're about to run out of good tea and, goshies, when was the last time you even got to run around gathering leaves? Yeah, the longer you think about it the more those roads home look mighty tempting. Every choice you make to keep on keeping on is a tiny little sliver of iron will those sillies with the fancy pens keep forgetting to write about. And maybe in the meantime you try to master a flight spell to keep yourself feeling like you belong, and you don't stop to think about how scary you're supposed to think that is?

But now she knows. Now she knows. It wasn't heights that scared her, how could it be? She's being carried HOW far up? Tangled up in a net? Being carried by a dragon? And she's not even shaking! Well, maybe a little bitty shiver, but that's on account of how much colder the air gets up here. She's just, it's so, everything is, is... wow! Wowies!

This is so much farther than she ever dreamed of going. Sometimes she worries she's repeating that thought a lot, but then all that stuff about bitty little slivers happens and she takes another step and, sheesh wouldn't you know it that's a new personal record all over again. These are not her trees, her river. Those certainly aren't her sunshards. Her eyes turn to liquid with wonder and delight as she gazes far below her the the grand... no, ruins wasn't the right word, was it? Signposts? Monuments! These beautiful shells of pure art and love that call back to a time when, they say, a Princess declared there were too many suns.

And the cliff face! She never knew that rocks could be so red! Oh gosh, Rose! Rosie! What plant is that down there? What... ohhhh, a Firebird! For true? Yue wriggles into the net for the first time all journey, trying to wave at the marvelous creature. Oh, hello there! Hello! Thanks so much for stopping by, friend! Love your coat, would you mind treating us to a little song? Oh, you're busy? Haha, that's ok! Safe journeys and pleasant wings, friend! Byyyyeeeee!

She never thought she'd see half of what she's seen just this afternoon. And if flying and being up all high and stuff was what brought it all in front of her, then how on earth could it be so bad?

And... and that's another thing, ok? That's another thing! This whole time, her whole dang life she looked up at the sky and thought it couldn't belong to her. She'd been kinda slacking off on her practice for just that very reason. Well, plus she's been a bit busy, but now? Even though she can't really bring her hands together properly, she's moving them like this. Then like this. Then like this. Finishing like this.

And it's 'cause of what's going on above her. Power turning into fire turning into speed. Turning into flight, yeah? Yeah! Yue glances up at Jessic and smiles with the deepest sense of wonder she's felt the whole trip so far every time she does it, 'cause... 'cause... she knows that power. Shut up, she does! She's got maybe more in common with this dragon than a single person in her little hometown! Even Sis, just maybe! She's got more in common with a dragon than any person she's ever met.

'Cause that up there? That's work. Effort. That's practice, for something so completely normal and obvious that nobody would ever guess you needed to do it. And that's... that's her! That's her too! What's Yue ever been good at in her life? Nothin', 'cept what she put all the work her body could handle into. And all've that was always such silly, petty things that nobody ever really gave her credit for it. But sometimes she sees Jessic shift her tail or a muscle twitches and sends a ripple through her powerful body and Yue and her two good friends go bumping and giggling into each other, and...

Oh gosh! Oh goshies and goshlings! Do it again, please! Make a mistake! And then keep going! You're incredible Ms. Dragon! You make flight look like hard work! You make it look so, so tricky! You make it look like years and years went into this, and years and years'll come after to finish getting it right! You make it look so pretty! So real!

'Cause if a dragon has to work so hard to ride the winds the stories all say she was born to? Then it's ok for Yue, Silly Stupid Yue Just Yue The Sun Farmer to have to try so hard at everything, too. It feels like, like, it feels like a journey with an end? Something she can achieve, y'know? So just watch her! Watch her, Rosie! Watch her, uh... o-oh, maybe Chen won't be watching much of anything right now. But she'll tell you later, ok? She's gonna do it! Why couldn't she be like a dragon, too?

Just a little, bitty bit?

Breathless Dead

To the east of the repair bays the dock opened up to a view of the planet... whatever the fuck it was, the horrible ball of blue churning death, and the wine-stained, endlessly swirling and sparkling reaches of the universe reaching out to grab her. The colors looked even brighter here than she remembered them. The painted spirals of red, yellow, and green reaching out across the field of blue like grasping fingers stretching painfully across a wound that was always visible in the night sky no matter who looked at it or from where.

Funny, how she can't pull her eyes away from it. Funny, how for the first time in her life the sky was the least terrible thing she could be watching. It steals her eyes from her and turns her head without consent so that she can see more and more and more of its gaping maw, and instead of a shiver down her spine and the crawling sense of dread, what she feels is more, is almost like a, can only be described as.

A hole.

In the middle.

Of her heart.

She watches. She stands there and she watches, until the whims of gravity spin her away from the planet and there is nothing to see but Poseidon's miracles. She sits down, and she watches. Her tail twitches. She watches. Her legs tingle under the weight of supporting her body as they sit folded up beneath her, and she watches. They turn numb. She watches. They burn. She shifts to let them flop out beside her. And she watches. She watches the colors, and the vast ripples of motion that make space feel so sickeningly alive. She watches the tiny twinkles that hide the wrath of stars burning with the full might of an imperial starship. Do all them smile like jackasses too? Her eye goes wide with wonder and narrows with fury as she traces imagines paths across the stars.

She would have found this one pretty. This one blazed with the heart of adventure, Bella! Over here she'd test her might against the legends of the Azura Empire, before coming to rest by the pools that were hammered into place by Heracles himself. And she'd say it all with the dopiest of smiles on her face, heedless of the danger, confident that every adventure was another holonovel she'd worn down to uselessness in refusal to put it down in favor of her textbooks. Those stupid old rags with their exotic veiled warriors wearing bits of cloth and Starsong Privateers trading jabs between volleys of gunfire where she saved some helpless useless cunt of a princess and got a kiss and a golden apple for her troubles, every single time.

"She's got no fucking idea how dangerous anything really..."

Redana. Bella's mouth flops open so that she looks almost as stupid as the princess she's grousing about. And she watches. And she sees it. Aphrodite's Rift. The one place more beautiful and more dangerous than the entire rest of the sea. There's no other place her princess would be heading but down the ultimate cliff in pursuit of her useless shitty little girl dreams. The weight of realization sinks in her stomach. Did she swallow rocks with her food this morning? She turns away; suddenly the voidskiff is the less terrible thing to look at.

"This is stupid this is stupid this is so stupid! I'm gonna die alone in a tube in the middle of nothing and it's all your fucking fault, Redana!"

She scowls as she passes Apollo on her way to the tools. These are familiar. ELF welding clamps and grease smeared spanners, drills and belts for grinding, the long series of delicate little knives and needles that assisted clumsy servitor fingers in performing the delicate operations that sealed all those thick plates of alloy seamlessly against one another. How many nights had she lost in the docks fixing plovers with no instruction manuals to guide her? This was simple, by comparison. Child's play. There wasn't even anyone waiting for her with a whip if they didn't like the job she did. She grabs a visor and sets herself against the skiff.

She puts the tools down and slinks away. This is not defeat, she swears inside her head as she races through the corridors away from the hateful thing. Her feet ring loudly through the corridors, stomping at first, until she breaks into a run. And then a mad sprint. Her throat feels tight. Her eye stings and waters, but she knows where she's headed. Of course she does. The library will have organized information on the building and repair of personal spacecraft. As stupid of an idea as that was to begin with, the Order of Hermes was stupid enough to make it sound smart somehow. They'd know what the fuck they were doing. And one of them would even have managed to spit it out as something other than a rant or a song or a double-secret code to trick her enemies.

She passes another window on her way, and all her momentum comes to a crashing halt. Again, the hollowness claws inside of her. Again, the... the ache takes hold. Because she is alone. No. She's so good at being alone. She's been alone her entire life, hasn't she? The Empress was too far above her to care. The other servitors were too far beneath her to connect. Mynx was a lying, scum sucking whore who couldn't keep her stories straight in her own fucking head, let alone to anything or anybody. And Redana...

Bella howls and smashes her hand through a table. The library comes to life with the sound of splintering wood-analog and the thud-clatter of a hundred different books and tools slumping downward after it to roll whatever ways it pleased the gods to make them go. Her shudders wrack her body with waves of paralyzing spasms. Her breath is a thing of ragged, seething groans. She does not cry. She does not cry. She is doing this because it is her job.

Yes. She was given a job to do, and it's unfinished. A good girl does what she's told, and finishes every task without complaint. An idle Servitor is a mistreated Servitor. And that is why this empty, hollow castle full of leisure and safety feels like a dungeon. She has to fix it. Fix it, find the Princess, and drag her back to Tellus. Then she could go back to work. Then everything would be fine. Forever.

So she reads, when she should be connecting power supplies. She flips through schematic after schematic, tossing hundreds of complicated, convoluted sketches and boring, impossible treatises on the forces of physics and known space and shut the fuck up you stupid bastards, blah blah blah. She reads and she learns nothing she didn't already know, because Tellus was the source of all knowledge in the universe and it was only natural that the tasks it would set before her would be equal to anything the backwaters of space could demand.

"Waste of time. I'll fix it myself."

Hours pass, or maybe days. The skiff lies untouched. She puts the tools down, and slinks away. This is not defeat, she swears inside her head as she limps lamely from shadow to shadow as though missing her Anemoi and shunning all light for some semblance of its silent embrace. She just can't focus. Every time she moves to try anything the damn window catches her eye and she loses it all staring at space again like some useless fuckwit. She could name six without trying.

So that's why. That's why she's heading there now. Her feet carry her back to her nest where the projector waits like loyal pet. Chan-barra-chan-barra-chan. She grabs the mannequin with her final dress and drags it to the repair dock to slam angrily near the back of the voidskiff. An irritated huff. A twitch her her tail. She slinks all the way back to bring the movie here. The third trip to wheel the projector. The fourth for her blankets. The fifth for her snacks. And the sixth just because she might have forgotten something important.

She simply needed the distraction. Something so drilled into her brain that she didn't need to pay it any mind, just mindless noise that she could tune out with zero effort. Tuning it out would destroy the rest of the universe with it. Chan-barra-chan. Her third failure is instant. Her fault. She hadn't actually watched the film in a long time. She just wanted to see it again. Full focus. The second play would go better.

She works. The smell of sparks and melting metal stings her nostrils, but the visor blocks the worst of the light. The sound of alloys screaming smashes full on against the keening of sharp blades bright enough to save the universe, even from itself. This foil needs adjusting, but her hands know what to do. This plating wouldn't hold up if she kicked a rock at it. She tears it off and sears it on again, thicker.

But in the end, she makes precious few changes after all. There is a sense to the design, after all. To be lithe and quick enough to move out of the way of everything and stay alive scratched a very special itch among her instincts. Cutting her way through the sea, a lone dervish amid a storm of brutes, that's how everything always was to begin with. She could trust herself to be delicate and precise. She could trust herself to be perfect, because she knew what waited for her if she wasn't.

She could not trust herself to be strong.

So she works. She spares glances to the smiling god. Even dares to scowl at him before she returns to the infinite job ahead of her. But even work that lasts forever someday has to end. Even she has to admit eventually that a voidskiff is as perfect as she can make it. It's not like she deserves a better tool for her redemption, anyway. Nobody here to beat her, didn't she say that? Don't worry, Your Majesty, the gods have done it for you.

"You're not, not coming. Are you?" She eyes Apollo suspiciously, "No room. Find your own way. Something better. This one's mine."

A voidskiff is not a pleasure vessel. It's barely even a kayak. There's hardly room for anything, once she's crawled inside it. She peels her dress off the mannequin and folds it to make it fit. She grabs the pearl headdress she made to finish it, and sets that on top. No food. No wine. If she took the time to use either, she would die anyway.

Bella turns to the sound of a film reel flapping as it winds down to stillness. In her ears, it always sounds so satisfied with itself. Wasn't it loved? Wasn't it cherished? Wasn't it a wonderful film, if it could convince somebody to play it, over and over and over again? You might call it her best friend. You might call it her lover.

Bella reaches for the projector. Her thumb brushes against the reel with a touch soft enough for the bedroom. Her eye turns glossy with the flood of memories. She plucks it from the machine as carefully as she would hold a kitten.

She drops it to the floor. Her eye glints with horrible determination as she watches it roll around on the floor, around and around and around on its lip until it runs out of energy and wobbles stupidly to a stop in front of her. It must have been so love. It must have done such a good j--

Bella's boot crunches as it grinds through the case. The film whines pitifully under her heel. She drags it back and forth, back and forth, and then with a final wrench and a stomp, she twists away from its corpse. A lone frame capturing Prion Paula with her sword glinting in the stagelight against the backdrop of a thousand savage opponents flutters in the air behind her, but she doesn't spare it a glance or even so much as a single twitch of her ear before she climbs aboard the skiff.

Breathless Dead

"...fucking... stupid."

Her voice is still strained and gravelly from underuse, but she drowns her throat in an angry swig of wine straight from the bottle to keep using it anyway. There are offenses in the world too sharp to lash out against with only your thoughts, even when you're all alone. She hisses at the ugly sound and wipes her lips dry with the back of her hand before gesturing vaguely toward the blank wall that had offended her so much.

"Dumb fuck. Thing. Who wrote. This? Morons! Never seen such. Garbage costuming!"

Her hands tear the pillow she'd been hugging to her chest into shreds and bits of fluff. She grunts when the words get too hard to form, and her tail lashes in furious assent. Her back aches after she'd been tensing it through the final half hour of the film. Her body is slick with sweat. She glances down, fumbling for more words to through at this clusterfuck of a masterpiece, and spots her wine bottle again. This is one of the poorer vintages she's found in her time here; the mulled spices drown the delicate flavors of the fruit and sting her tongue like hard spirits when she drinks it. But damn everything, she doesn't have anything else to do with her hands. She snatches it up with another hiss and a spit, and upends the bottle down her mouth with a sharp toss of her neck.

She gulps down the warm, vaguely burning drink in huge and noisy gulps that feel like tiny claws marching their way across her mouth and down to her stomach, except for the thin trickles that run like dark-red waterfalls down her chin to splash across her collarbone and drip down her chest to meet the rest of her. She doesn't stop until the bottle runs empty.

"Real life doesn't work like that!" she seethes, "Real stories understand that! You don't just... rrrrgh! There aren't real heroes out there! Just run out and save the girl with a swordfight, why don't you? That'll fix everything! Chan bara chan bara fucking chan. What the fuck made me think this was worth my time?"

But the wall doesn't have any answers for her, and the projector's fallen silent. And it's not like the smiling, jackass god is going to suddenly open his mouth and enlighten her either, that asshole. She glances around for another drink, but like a dumbass she's only brought the one vintage to her nest. She sighs and scratches at an ear before she laboriously rises to her feet with an enormous stretch. She glares death at the reel of film as she passes out of the room, not even realizing she's betraying her plan in the process.

Her feet carry her to the showers before they find the wine cellar again. She bathes, despite the utter pointlessness of it beating her in the face even harder than the water. When she returns, she's carting an assortment of snacks she's cooked up after several hours of melting sugars along with the last create of flower wine that she could find. She respools the film and presses play before settling in again.

It had just... felt so good to be angry at something again. She wanted that. Just one more time. She'd set it on fire after, Hera hear her prayer.

***

The scent of metal shavings fills her room. Her foot shifts carelessly and knocks a pile of abandoned attempts at hand-made talons clattering all over the place. She grumbles and shakes her head, but leaves them lying there. The ones in the vice on her little table are more important. She carefully carves, then files, then sharpens, then files again, blowing across the silvery metal jewelry so she can watch her work take shape. They're crude efforts compared to the ones the temples had made for her work, but something about the etchings still makes her chest flare with pride.

Chan-barra-chan-barra! She glances up in time to see Prion Paula's dramatic pose of surprise as she crosses the threshold into the maze of mirrors where the evil Djemento's most insidious trap is waiting for her. The door slams shut and swords are drawn before the noise is even finished reverberating across the reflective surfaces. Chan-barra-chan!

She knows how every part of this battle plays out. She's seen it twenty times already. In another few hours, she'll have seen it twenty-one. It's an impressive technical achievement, actually. The mirrors capture swords clashing from something like 3 dozen angles almost all at once, a dizzying kaleidoscope of violence, and even when she turned the Auspex on the spectacle she hadn't been able to see the camera's reflection in any of them. That kind of care and precision was worth respect, if nothing else.

She hesitates before she slips her fingers inside her latest work. She lets out a quiet sigh, and her ears twitch with mild delight atop her head. The metal is still a little warm and uncomfortable atop her skin, but they fit. She flexes her fingers, and the joints only click a little bit as they bend with every gesture. This, she can fix. She taps her claw tips against the table, and the talons match their height perfectly. She drags them across the surface of the table, and the sound of screeching as she carves her marks across it sends giddy shivers up her spine. She slips them off, and carefully threads them through a silver chain necklace.

"I'm impressed you made it this far. But now you die, Prion Paula!"

"You are mistaken! A blade as dull as your heart's could never cut me down! Prepare yourself! I'm taking the Priestess back with me!"

She mouths the words along with the movie, not even glancing up at the screen. She rolls her eyes and goes hunting through a box to find another block of material good enough to carve into her second pair. She'd probably watch this stupid fucking thing another twenty times before she could replicate the first. Not that she cares. The excitement of the anger died down a long time ago, even the memory of it is barely a flicker of irritation. There's just... nothing else to put on. And she doesn't trust the music around here. So it's this or nothing. And working with nothing but the sound of grinding silver in her ears makes her fur stand all up on end in protest. So it's this.

She huffs. Forever feels so much duller than she remembers it being last time. Chan-barra-chan-barra-chan!

***

Prion Paula bleeds from a dozen claw wounds inflicted on her by the evil Daimyo, the last and most unexpected opponent. It must be hard to fight when the whole world is turned sideways.

Tears run freely from Bella's eyes as she sprawls across the floor and looks up at the greatest hero of the rebellion bravely defying her destiny and her many bloody wounds to capture the happy ending that feels so inevitable now that she's here. Bella doesn't bother to wipe them clean as they run across her cheeks, even when they drip into her nose and make her sniffle and sneeze with hideous volume.

She doesn't move at all, except for a slight thumping where the tip of her tail rises up and smacks against the floor. Her arms and legs are sprawled in front of her, and her ribs hurt from lying her on her side for so long, but she doesn't bother to move. It's so pointless, when she has so little. Behind her, amateur attempts at paintings and jewelry and aborted attempts at food, now filed down to mostly raw ingredients sit in great project piles alongside hundreds of sloppily piled up tablets full of incomprehensible wisdom.

Her breath comes in a messy, snot-soaked snort. The credits are rolling. She doesn't move. Every beautiful thing makes her heart ache with longing, but her hands can't reach through the screen anymore than they could reach across space and grab anything worth having. That ache is a poison spreading across her body. Why had she missed these tears? Why did they seem so important to have again?

The music comes to a stop, and the room slips into darkness. The flutter of the reel spinning down reaches her ears, and then nothing. Nothing but the sound of her disgusting breathing. Nothing but the feeling of her heart stomping in her chest despite all her prayers that it should stop. Nothing but the dull thwack of her tail on the ground in the dark. Nothing.

They have everything, and she has nothing. And that's the way it would always be.

***

Chan-barra-chan-barra-chan-barra!!

Bella hums along, so far past needing to pay attention to feel every beat moving through her. The muscle memory of each piece of the choreography and stuntwork is burned into her muscles. She doesn't need to watch to know exactly what's happening. Her mouth moves silently to every line, but her lips capture the intonation perfectly.

It's the first time she's watched in a little while, and she's not really paying attention at all. But it's soothing to have the pattern to fall back on. And this time she wants to finish that dress.

Most of the work is already finished. Just a few more beads to tie in, and she'll be done. The plunging v-line neck and the delicate shoulder straps will mold to her bust perfectly, and even through the tassels the fit of it will hug her hips and show off the soft muscles in her tummy. The hem of the skirt should just fall short of her knees, not counting the tassels. But the tassels are the selling point. The whole dress is made of them, in fact. Swishing, swirling, flapping bits of motion that capture every little thing she does and turns it into dance, all strung through with beads in metals of so many colors that she could capture the raw power of the galaxy itself. The stars. The nebulae. The patterns that told the first stories of the universe, all captured as best she could remember them.

It's a simple design, actually. Embarrassingly simple. All of the work is in the pattern instead of the stitching. But the skill of it makes her ears flutter almost as much as the sight of it makes her teeth clench. A doomsday dress, if ever there was one. Could anything be more perfect to have, if she ever got another chance.

The movie rolls on behind her. Bella's hips shift and sway along with the motion on the screen as she finishes her work. The last project she can think of. The last thing worth doing on this stupid fucking graveyard of a space station. This is where Prion Paula strikes against the oppressors. This is where she bleeds for her hubris.

And this is where the final showdown takes place, after hours of teasing the tension to its peak. The final duel has such different energy and intensity than the entire rest of the movie. Most of the other fights are carefully coordinated explosions of martial might that was no less evocative for how little sense it made. She'd long learned to stop questioning why there weren't any phalanxes fencing the heroine in, or how anyone could tell a story without invoking the gods even once. That's just what made it special. This silly little dream that someone had. But here at the end it was all different. None of the complexities and showiness that mark the first few hours of the movie.

Instead the tension tugs at the air until it starts to tear. Instead the two last combatants stare at each other from across a field of grain. Why there should be a field of grain is besides the point. They are there, swords undrawn, glaring into each others' eyes to kill with their intent. The fight ends in a single, explosive motion. The world turns to black, and then to red while a burst of blood gushes everywhere into infinity. So much more than a body can even hold, but it's here because it sells the perfection of the strike. Good triumphs. Evil perishes. Nobody questions which is which. The credits roll.

Bella sits there for a long moment, staring at the mannequin. Her muscles burn as she stands up to stretch for the first time in six hours. The sound of the projector winding down again feels like the explosive slash of that strange, curved sword. Is she going to burst into an ocean of blood, too?

"...Fuck me. I can't do this anymore. I want out. Let me out. Let me out!"