Phoe

Breathless Dead

It's like stepping through a door into a dream. One moment she is running, suffocating and trapped, and then her hand pushes through a portal and she is tumbling into a space so open and strange she should want a ship to navigate it. Tellus would call it a crime to waste this much area and material. For XIII, it's a miracle.

She sits down next to the river, in a spot just cleaned by the ghost maiden. She does not stop to watch her work, or wonder why she does. These acts are not a mystery to a palace servitor, especially when compared with the freely rushing water. This too would not be allowed on Tellus. Nero would never permit a river to exist inside her paradise. Where it must run, let it do so in rigid channels, pumped slowly forward at pre-approved speeds. But this is... fast. Wild, inconsistent even. It churns itself into a frothy white mess where two or more currents smash into each other, and it runs so slowly that it almost seems to sit still near the turn on the bank. It moves as it will, on a path it carved for itself, perhaps on the whim of some bored, drunken God but certainly not by the design of any mortal architect.

She is enraptured. She watches it flow past her from her perch with an intense expression carved onto her face, not curious or angry or afraid, not peaceful or happy or contemplative. She watch the water, each fleck of white drifting next to her seat and then disappearing under the bridge and around the bend, with the same look she used to get when she watched her princess preparing for an athletic contest. And for once not a single thought catches inside her brain.

An hour passes her by with only the sounds of the city for company. If you can actually call it that. The river bubbles, the wind rustles through grass and stone. Glass crunches and scrapes across the ground at odd intervals without ever really drawing farther away, as if to prove the pointlessness of the woman's task. Maybe once or twice a minute there'll be the whisper-brushing that passes for Azurite walking as some citizen or another crosses the street. It's quiet the way a dream is quiet. It's closer to the Yakanov than it is to even the Imperial Palace, let alone the reaches of the city-planet itself. There are no wailing songs fighting each other for dominance, no whirling and clicking of great and constantly operating mechanisms or tired grunts and heavy, many-tiered footfalls from people with places to be and work to be done at every hour of the day. A city should be thriving, teaming, writhing, so full and loud that it gave her a headache if she tried to listen to it all at once for more than a moment. And this is... not. It's like if someone tried to build a model of one inside her-- i-inside the Anemoi.

She stands as if jolted by the spark of a personal ELF. She whips her head about to look for Apollo an his smug, insufferable smile, but of course the god is not here with her. His interest was only to lead her here to this broken place; now that she was here he had no further use for her. Typical. Heat rises in her cheeks and her ears flutter in a very definitely pouting way. Moron. He was there, what the shit made you think that meant he cared? How often had the gods proved she was beneath their pity? If Hera would not visit her, then...

Suddenly her feet can't carry her fast enough. She doesn't challenge the bridge, but she cuts through streets and people's paths with reckless urgency until the smell of baking bread pulls her short. She takes deep sniffs of the air. It's warm and hearty and full of life in a way that makes her chest tingle. She sniffs again as she approaches. They use a different grain here, or they grow it in some weird new way (probably with djinn dust and enough terrifyingly casual power to make her stomach churn). It's flaxen and bright where it should be earthy, and filled with all sorts of extra things that make a proper city's worth of noise for her nose to make sense of.

She reaches the bakery and watches the armored woman inside work with the same kind of mesmerized expression the river had given her. Things were different here indeed. This bread was dark brown where her own was golden, and baked in rounded tins where XIII had been taught to shape it into bars by hand. But what set this place apart more than the basics, more than the loneliness that stabbed through it all, more even than the pointlessly huge quantity (how could so much of something even exist? Was this tribute for... but no, Thist said they didn't do that. So then how? How could anybody have so much more of something than they needed and still look so drab and ignoble?), was the variety. There were playing breads and unleavened ones, ones baked with strawberry cream and ones crammed so full of vegetables that the crust had turned orange-green. There were small ones and large ones and ones cut into the shape of leaves, and more entrancingly still several attempts to replicate the structure of their weird spiral-circle patterns that gave the Endless Azure Skies a majesty she couldn't brush off no matter how much she tried to assure herself that this was a broken place after all.

The baker moves with the kind of stately purpose she would expect of a high priestess. She gestures, and huge trays of uncooked doughs lift themselves atop a storm dust into grand stone ovens with heating elements so deep inside them XIII can't see how they manage it here. The baker/priestess turns her attention to more finished loaves, her body twisting like a dancer as the trays move to her will and rhythm over to teeming, empty racks to cool. Her every move is purposeful. No action is wasted. No words are necessary. This is the work of a master. This is the highest form of artistry. This is a palace, a theater, a temple, whether the Azurites would call it such or no.

She makes no notice of XIII no matter how obviously she watches or creeps closer. Not until her bag of coins starts jangling does she get a sharp stare and a nod of acknowledgement. Neither of them comments on how long the other has been there. The entire transaction takes place in total silence. XIII purchases a large dome of bread still shimmering with heat and stuffed so full of melted cheeses it makes her palms feel greasy just to look at it. She fishes coins out clumsily, one at a time with an uncertain glance up after each until she finally gets a shrug and a hand wave. She leaves with the distinct impression she's been ripped off.

The bread is warm in her hands as she leaves, even through the paper bag it's been wrapped in. XIII carves a careful chunk from it as she walks and pops it into her mouth. Instantly she realizes her doom. She could never manage flavor like this. She could study for years and not achieve this texture. It chews and it melts somehow at the same time,and the burst of sweet and salty flavor rains down her throat without mercy. She has never been permitted this kind of decadence. This is art. It is an act of worship that she's eating. This is a miracle, born out of a broken planet that wouldn't understand the uselessness of continuing to move forward through the ashes of its own corpse.

She climbs to the top of a building from the outside, picking her way up the masonry and around the hanging tapestry with it's unknowable circle patterns so she can find a safe nest among the tilted roofs. Her tail swishes solemnly behind her while her bread burns her lap, and she watches the sky through the shapes of the distant towers, and the brilliant violet glow that burns them all.

Sunshards

One day of rest.

One day to let the bruises heal. One day to let tired muscles knit themselves into new strength. One day to build her energy back up, one day to find some kind of reserve, in case she needs it. One day to get as ready as she can for the first real duel of her entire life. One day to think about how she's doing it with paws.

One day to remember why it's worth it. One day to sit on a hill watching out over the edge of the castle, where she can see the rivers and the valleys float slowly by underneath them. One day to miss it all watching Hyra watching them, instead. One day to lose herself in the shape of her lips and the contours of her chin. One day to notice how cute her nose is, actually, and all the ways her beautiful girlfriend still looks almost as wolfish as she does. One day to wonder how it'll feel if when she finally gets to kiss those lips. One day to not notice her tail wagging while she imagines those teeth nibbling all over her. One day to notice Hyra noticing her, and blush hotter than a sunshard.

One day to notice all the little miracles that weave the world together. One day to see the children playing, and scamper (yes, scamper!) out to join them. One day to come prancing back and feel the blissful tingle of fingers massaging through her scalp. One day to hear music that she's never listened to before, one day to learn songs that even Sis probably doesn't know. One day to smell bread baking and marvel at the ancient wonder pulling fresh taffy, one day to weld her jaw shut trying to eat her share all at once. One day to watch a people adapted to life up in the clouds and all the little ways their lives were about flight and freedom and the open air. One day to wish she had words to tell them all how beautiful they are. One day to realize she wants to show them her waterfalls and flower fields and the old cherry tree at the top of her hill in exchange.

A whole lifetime to finally notice that adventure could only carry her to new beauty, and not more. But one day to be grateful for it, anyway. One night to chase the moon without having to leave the confines of her Prison Room, and smile in her heart to see it's just as uncatchable as ever. One night to let her eyes drift closed and listen to the beating of her girlfriend's heart. One night to sleep nestled into her taut, perfect arms. And then, one day is finished.

Yue throws the weight of her neck onto Hyra's shoulder in her best attempt at a hug while she ties the kerchief tight. She's never felt so loved in all her life. Or less ready for what's coming. The portcullis clicks open. She barks a bark of determination, though it might have been a bark of nervousness instead. She's still not entirely used to using her voice like this, y'know? Hyra smirks at her and holds up the wooden sword that's been waiting for her to use it for something for years now.

"Don't worry, this is plenty for what you've got to do. And so are you."

<<Woof!!>>

She chomps the handle in between her teeth, and can't help but notice she's getting pretty good at holding it like this. It's kinda surprising, given she didn't practice yesterday. Someone once told her that you actually learn lessons a day after you're taught them. Is this what they meant?

This is it. One moment to pad softly into the arena. One moment to sniff the air with her big, sensitive nose. One moment to realize she doesn't really understand how to interpret the smells she picks up. One moment to feel silly for trying. One moment to wonder what kind of person her opponent is. One moment to hope somebody will be cheering for her. One moment to wonder if she can win. And one agonizingly slow moment to wonder what's supposed to happen to her if she can't.

One moment, and none of the rest of it will matter. Because the duel is about the duel, right?

Breathless Dead

"Why did you bring me here? What was the point?"

She sits with her head in her hands while her tail droops limply across her thigh. She squeezes at her temples, careful to press with her palms to keep her claws from breaking the skin. There is so much pressure building inside of her. But the old releases, even just the thought of them, makes her stomach fill with crawling legs and butterfly wings.

"No reaction, no impression. Not to anything. I don't matter? Is that the lesson? Easier to let me die. Should've let me die. I wanted you to... nngh."

She is not speaking to Thist. She isn't bothering to keep her voice down for her, either. She squeezes her head and ignores every offer of tissues, of nuts, and of information and advice. Her arms start to tingle with the force of her blood squeezing inside of them, and she lets them fall away from her head. She doesn't tilt her head or look around for an answer; for all the time he spent fucking around inside of her head and twisting her into whatever hollow mess she was now, he'd never felt the need to offer her a single word of explanation. Why would he start now?

XIII snorts. She shakes her head. She stands as if someone lit the couch on fire from underneath her, though not before snatching the bag of daric with one hand. She clutches it tightly as she stares at the everything in the room except for the woman helping her with the kind of gaze that suggests she wants it all to burn. Out. Out. Out out out out out out out! Air. Need air. No more words, no more lessons, need air!

"Fuck you," she snaps, "If you're so smart, you figure it out."

She moves with the careless grace of a person who long since forgot what it meant to explain her comings and goings. For countless days, or weeks, or months or... she couldn't think about the possibilities beyond that, there had been nothing in the way of her urges to wonder except walls. And those were nothing but suggestions left behind by a ship she'd killed herself. It's only an even older habit and the strictest of training that makes her walk toward the door at all.

Even still, she pauses in the frame. Even still, she turns her head to look at Thist with her good eye. Even still, she nods.

"I won't," she calls from over her shoulder, "Break my promise. I'll never. Just... get to work."

She's through the door and gone before another word can follow her. Out. Out. Out. Anywhere. Anywhere but here. If there's a reason for all this, then show her. But do it somewhere else.

Sunshards

Start... starting from?! Starting from scratch? Starting from scratch?!? Ah, gfhb... psssshyeah no foolin' she's starting from scratch! The sword's in the other mouth!! D'you forget about the paws, or didja just not notice? Start from scratch. Might as well just try scratching, for all the good she's gonna mmmrble bmmble wmmf whff brrk!

So, uh, um... pros: a day's worth of running everywhere that physics would let her has left Wolfy Yue feeling a lot more agile than she remembers being in her own body. Even with all the soreness and tired she's built up with all this exercise she's still got zips and zigs and even a few zags that would've had her falling on her butt for sure just two days ago! Plus, she's a lot shorter like this (which is still weird, thanks for asking) and while she never exactly mastered the art of the duel the Demon Swordswoman did teach her well enough for her to be pretty sure this'll let her safely ignore a whole buncha different angles of attack. And something that Hyra taught her just the other day is that it's surprisingly difficult to guard your shins while you're fighting, so that's another advantage in her poc-- er, her uh... m-mouth? No, that's where her sword is. Wow, this is harder than she thought.

And, y'know, cons: she's got a sword. In her mouth. She's gone back to her wooden training sword because honestly she does not trust herself to use the pointy one right like this, but seeing as it's still magically enchanted to have the same weight as a proper metal one that's not doing her a lotta good now is it? There's just no getting around the fact that these things are designed for people. People with hands. And two limbs they can freely move around however they feel like without falling onto their faces because they don't need them for, y'know, walking. And centers of gravity a good foot above where her head is right this second. The weight's all to her side and she's gotta fight to keep it from tilting her neck until the tip jabs into the ground. The handle hurts her teeth if she bites it too hard, but if she doesn't bite it hard enough then she's gonna drop it or oh gosh gosh goshies if she hits or parries something like that, then... well, you wanna talk about tooth aches? Yeesh.

So there's, um, y'know, challenges. To be overcome. Before we actually get close enough to the hurdle of 'Hyra is fighting differently than she was before' to curiously sniff at it. We're not even talking about jumping over that hurdle yet, ok? Starting from scratch. Starting from scratch...

The first thing she tries, of course, is fighting like Hyra. That's her whole model for Wolf Holding a Sword Style, after all. But what's that mean for her? She's at a loss. Before she even tries going for the furniture her head is filled with images of being made to sit and pose for pictures with a sign around her neck that reads "I was a Bad Girl and broke the Prison Cabinets" and she freezes so badly she winds up on her face again with her back paws wiggling comically in the air behind her. And in any case that wasn't gonna work in the first place because Hyra cares more about the fight than she does about being polite all the time. Which TO BE CLEAR makes her cool and sexy, not a jerk. But it's a dead end approach, is the real point to be getting at here.

Yue runs and leaps as Hyra plants her feet and goes sailing to the side of her so that she can rip... uh, ripos-- erm, bounce off the bed all fancy-like and come at her from a surprising angle after she's planted her feet in response to the first charge. Her sword clacks harmlessly into Hyra's and all she can do is hang in the air with a determined look in her eye for a couple of seconds before she drops back low and has to try Plan C, which is spinning around like she's chasing her tail to take a good swing at her girlfriend's thighs. There, how do you like it when the spankies are on the other paw, huh? Well, it turns out she can blunt the blow by stepping into it before it gets to her. That's a neat trick! But all Yue's got to show for her new lesson is a tiny smile on Hyra's face. Did she... did she do a good?

...she's really out of breath right now. That's bad, huh? Not the least of the bads is on account of when she runs out of breath like this her body kinda wants to pant? But that involves tongue, and tongue need stay in mouth 'cause sword am still there. Blurgh. Cons, +1. Is it quitting to fake a tummy ache so that she has to postpone her first fight and give Hyra more time to work on that fix she's promising?

Yeah, it is. Darn it, that sounds really nice right about now. And come to think of it, fighting Hyra like Hyra fought her is quitting, too. She can't try to beat Hyra, as cool as that would feel, she's gotta try and fight this Sure Footed Mountain Style or whatever's going on here. That's the whole point, isn't it? To get her ready for her big fight. Sillyhead, what were you thinking?

Yue's tail starts wagging in spite of the fatigue. In spite of the ouchies and the grumbles and all the negative emotions of a person who keeps having to start from square one every time she turns around. It's not like she ever thought of herself as capable of mastering all this adventuring stuff, y'know, but after everything she's been through it's hard not to want to cry when you're all the way here and you feel like you've done so much but you can't see what skills you've got to show for it at all. But she wags her tail, even while that thought spirals inside of her brain. She's happy, fighting like this. She's happy, dodging, ducking, blocking, slipping between those iron, shapely legs and thwapping her useless fluffy appendage against them as she goes, because everything that's happening in this prison cell today is what Love looks like.

You're so great, Hyra. You're so strong, Hyra. Thank you so much, darling. Heart. Cutie. She promises, ok? It's a slobbery promise made with muffled barks, but it still counts! She's not gonna let you down.

Yue runs. She darts all around the room, because this is the one thing she's sure she's got down. She feels breathlessly fast, graceful, beautiful, and a lot've other smarter words that city folk probably keep up their sleeves for moments like this, but she's a simple country wolf from the Crescent Lake so you'll have to forgive her not rising up to meet this moment like a poet. She's too busy doing it like a warrior. Wherever Hyra turns, Yue runs the other way. Whenever she gets cornered she boldly darts through the kind of opening a human body can't clear but that are hard to cover up entirely unless you're constantly accounting for how much of your opponent's body mass is floof. She leaps out of the way of every strike as she winds her way around the room like an exceptionally small typhoon.

All waiting for the moment when she gets to pounce. She's got Hyra's back at last! Her body's better at turning, her blood's better at not rushing to her head, and that makes her better at spinning around all over the place without getting so dizzy that she falls over. When she leaps, her body surges with so much extra strength it seems to her that she's somehow accidentally cast a spell. Is she flying right now, or just jumping very far? Hyra pivots to meet her, but she's already entered the handmaiden's zone. Yue's form is a perfect poumce, a special technique that Kat taught her, though of course the esteemed Miss Fluffybiscuits never intended it to be a lesson.

Yue lands on top of Hyra with a joyful bark. She boops that beautiful nose with the crossguard of her sword, which is as good as a deathblow for everybody here. She drops the weapon on the ground and promptly flops into the arms of the most amazing person in the entire world. There's a lot of kissing that needs to be done right now, you see. Don't worry, it's all part of her training <3

Breathless Dead

The bottle is warm in her hand. Not the welcome sort of warm that suggests a hot thermos of coffee waiting to push her on after a long day of freezing her hands fixing coolant lines. And not the tingling sort of warm of the nape of a certain neck that she could touch all she wanted while she lost herself in braiding luxurious golden strands of hair. It's just warm. It's warm because it's been sitting forgotten in a desk drawer for who the fuck knows how long, and tastes just strongly enough to suggest that it'd go down better if it was chilled.

She squeezes it. Twists it around with her wrist to watch the liquid inside slosh lazily about. The material is smooth, and feels hard against her fingers. It disgusts her. She's taken with a sudden urge to hurl it into a wall, or simply shatter it against her claw tips, but the gnawing emptiness inside her won't go away. It's been so long; she is so very hungry. She takes another slow and careful swig, instead, and watches Thist through her hollow golden eye.

"...Empress Nero IV Acontecimento Azurius has reigned for two hundred and fifty years."

XIII pauses to brush her fingers against her throat. Her voice sounds funny in her ears. Tight. Clipped. Straining. She lingers on the space where even now her skin is paler from the years it spent hiding under a collar. She drowns a cough in another shot of her drink, before it can unmake her all over again.

"In her wisdom she declared the reaches of space were dangerous," her face twists into a scowl. What's the matter with her? Did she spend all those years memorizing the lines from the museum just to recite them like a broken gramophone now? "...That the storms and distance had made enemies and strangers of what should have been family. She, she constructed the... throne world Tellus to be her seat of power. She has. Ruled there ever since. Humanity has been safe ever since."

Her cheeks burn with pink, which only makes her frown deepen. She chugs the rest of the industrial fluids without breathing. What the fuck is wrong with her? Her blood is becoming iron chains inside her body, squeezing every joint and organ until the act of sitting here and watching Thist not react hurts near as much as a whipping. Her vision swims. She stubbornly keeps her lid shut tight over the Auspex. Her fingers massage her scalp again, harder and more desperately. The unseen hand the keeps correcting her posture and teasing new words from her lungs now grabs her wrist and squeezes before she can claw the veins that are crushing her to death open. Which god? Which god keeps tormenting her like this?

She barks with laughter. Broken, pitted, fake and ugly for how obviously forced it is.

"The value of civilization is measured by its distance from Tellus, cretin. D-don't blame me that you were stupid enough to crawl around on our scraps and call it conquest when we couldn't be bothered to swat you back off of it! And yes, there is a Princess!" here at last she puffs out her chest, finding the pride she'd been chasing this whole useless fucking conversation, "She's the daughter of Empress Nero and no less than Zeus herself! And she's... a fucking moron. She's a drooling, useless jock bitch who's sitting on the power of a monster who could crush everything in your empire to bits."

Her red eye forces itself open. XIII sits on the couch with her spine locked painfully straight all the way down to the tip of her tail. Her breath is thin and forced through her nostrils in such shallow bursts that anyone would have to be inches from her face to see that she was breathing at all. The Auspex burns cold inside her socket as it watches Thist's coins, whether she wills it to or not. XIII sneers with the dismissive and absolute triumph of a person who has at last puzzled out the weak point of her opponent.

"I don't know what kind've bullshit your philosophers and textbooks have been feeding you," she preens, "But you're even dumber than those old novels made you look if you really think you're the superior species to Humans. They're perfect, down to the least one of them. And you've built an entire civilization around the same table scraps a reject servitor like me uses for worship? That's pathetic."

She opens her mouth to laugh, but the sound doesn't come. She watches Thist with caution where she should want triumph, and doesn't even notice the tear running down her cheek.

Sunshards

She's running. She's running? She's running! Oh goshies, <<bark bark>> goshies, she's running!! Just look at her go, she's never moved so fast in her entire life! This is amazing!! Do you see her, Hyra? Do you see her, Kat? No! You don't, because your silly little legs aren't fast enough to keep up for once!

The wind is all... woof! Er, wh-whoosh! Blowing through her hair fur like a gale and it feels so nice it doesn't even matter that the air is so thin up here or that she misses the tug of a long ponytail she always imagined a moment like this would have, because that stuff is folded up into a ball and wound so tightly with excitement that she doesn't have time to hardly notice it! There's no time between steps to think about what she's doing, and more to the point to overthink what she's doing. All she has to do is feel the rhythm of her body in motion, like a song Sis might sing for the husband she's almost definitely got by now: her muscles bunch up underneath her and all her weight gathers at an invisible point in the center that pulls all four of her legs together, and pap pap pap! Her paws touch down and the ground shivers underneath her and powie! She's stretching, bounding, leaping, uncoiling, somethinging forward as her body gets ready to do it all again!

It's... it's powerful, like she never thought she could be. It's, it's graceful, in a way that even being held and controlled nobody could force her to be. She's speed! She's agility! She's got no idea how to stop and today that's only half as terrifying as it is exciting! Yue throws up her head as she runs and calls out to the world around her with a joyous howl.

"Awoo!"
"Awooo~!"

Over yonderwise in a grassy little park a couple of children (a brother sister combo! probably! they smell pretty similar, and isn't it weird that she can tell that?) are trying their little kid best to howl back at her. And if she tried to smile at them the way she would if she thought about it? Probably it'd be terrifying! All toothy and too close to snarling and stuff. But this far in the zone, her body takes over and she flashes them a goofy puppy look instead. Her eyes sparkle and her tongue bleps and she jumps several feet into the air and she lands so heavily that she goes rolling over onto her side and then around and around and around a third time before she finds her paws again. And when they laugh it's like the warmest hug inside her heart.

And even that doesn't stop her from running! As soon as she's upright her body is filled with zoomies and she's off and bounding up the hill into the park to zip around the younger sister's legs like a sillyhead. She scoops the girl up onto her back, because the weight will help with her training or something sure why not, and then she's off again, leaving Older Brother to come chasing after her across the outside of the sky castle! Come on, come on slowpoke! Aren't you gonna rescue your darling little sister? Hey there silly, quit giggling! You're gonna give the game away! How's he supposed to be a hero if you're over here laughing like you're having the time of your life? Gosh, it's like you've never been kidnapped before!

Yue runs a little slower now, and more gently by half so that those bouncy, shaky, breathless peals of laughter don't stop for anything. Zip zip, zip! They go darting agilely between grand flag poles and then zoom! It's off at top speed to run around a windmill, which's close enough to a castle for a young up-and-coming knight to come and fight her in, right? She circles merrily and waits for the boy's aching legs to finally catch up, and yelps her very best Surprise Yelp when he tackles her to the ground, though neither of them are paying enough attention to realize that if he'd really gotten her then Little Sis would be a Little Pancake. Which is a lot less delicious without the chocolate chips, y'know? Still, the role of every good monster is to know when they've been beaten, and Yue's read enough stories and been in enough villages (or... well, the same village enough times) to not miss her cue. She gives the both of them a big wet silly kiss and then goes zipping off at top speed again, following the call of her heart.

She's running. She's running? She's running! The air's so thin up here that just a couple days ago this kind of activity would have downed her for a good several days, and yet! And yet! She's running! The song in her heart says go, and the faster she gets the harder it is to stop. And so? She doesn't? It's magic, and it's music. It's training, but it's play. It's the new most beautiful thing she's ever seen in her life.

She runs nearer to the outer ring of the grounds, now. To her right it opens up to the sky and the lazy tufts of cloud that refuse to get out of the castle's way as it floats above the world. Beneath her are trees, rivers, valleys, hills, and glints of more spectacular things besides that explode with color and delight her shimmering eyes like she can't remember happening before. Which is funny, 'cause she thought the same thing when she was flying up here, and shouldn't it be the same view? Maybe it just feels fuller when she's less scared of falling, or maybe they've gone to some new and somehow even prettier vista while she was busy? Maybe it's love that helps her see the true beauty of the world, even for somebody who was always trying her best to find it under every single rock.

Or maybe... maybe it's because it finally feels like she's the one who's flying. Her body is sailing over the ground and she's moving like a bullet. Or a train. Or some kind of... bullet/train hybrid, even (what a silly thought!), and she's not being carried. She's not riding anything, she's not even pedaling a bike! She is running, and the great big beautiful earth is opening up beneath her, and if she never turns back, never has the fingers again to finish learning her spell, it'd be o...

She whimpers, though she keeps on running. No. No it wouldn't be ok. Even for Hyra's sake it wouldn't be. She's not a wolf, ok? She's not a wolf. She's Yue. She's in love. And she's never managed to kiss her girlfriend at a time when both of them had lips. They've never gotten to hold each other with hands. She's never gotten to find out what it's like to press her body against someone who's just like her, to find out where she yields and if a bony, scrawny, unpretty thing like her has anything about her that'd squish softly and pleasantly like Chen must feel all the time, or if her silly twig arms could make a lover feel safe the way that Rose must do for everyone she's with. She's never learned what it's like to trust somebody with your body, just you and them, no darkness, clothes, or secrets (or fur!) between you.

She's never known that. And if she's a wolf, or Hyra's a wolf... she'll love her just the same. But she'll never know it, ever. And that isn't fair. And that isn't right. But that's how come she's training, y'know? That's how come she's zooming around the outside of the sky castle even with a bunch of sore bruises and burning muscles that are starting to whine at her to please please please remember we're at altitude Yue! She runs and she leaps through a puff of cloud vapor and she's straight back to grinning again.

And y'know why? Because she might not be a wolf, but that's not gonna stop her from being the very best one that she can be. There's so much to learn now, so many new things to practice! And every single one of them's a treasure! Every single one is a little tingle and a thrill and this... this adventure is more than she'd ever dreamed about even after the long night's chase and her stumble across that fateful shrine.

Actually, where the heck did Cyanis get to, anyway? She's been awful quiet for a long time, considering how fond she is of... oooooooooooooh!

The thought's chased right out of her skull by a pair of gossamer rainbow wings lifting up over the side of the fence beside her. Up they lift, and up! The sun catches the material and suddenly the whole world is bathed in a prism, and a woman with a shocking pink mess of punk-as-heck hair poking every which way out of a headband and goggles gives her a grin and a brief thumbs up before she leans back on the bar of her hang glider to turn deeper into the slipstream and spread her rainbow all the way into the depths of the outer market.

Yue yips and leaps to celebrate this bold artist and turns down the road to roam for a while with a pack of cyclists out for an afternoon stroll. They shout words of praise for her coat and her extremely silly smile, with so many words of encouragement she can barely pick them all out from the noise. She woofs her best Agreement Woofs and follows them up with a few Encouragement Woofs to return the favor. Which manage to draw a lot of fawning 'aawwwws' as they all break away on their own separate journeys again, but for some silly reason she's not sure she really got through to them? Gosh, she wishes she was at least one of those magical talking wolves.

She's running. Running in an infinite world without end. She's running, as if it's all she's ever known and it's all she'll ever do. Until, suddenly? She's not. Yue yelps with a sudden burst of delight/panic (two emotions that are very close to each other, believe you me!) and suddenly puts her entire butt into instantly learning the Wolf Backpedal only to learn this secret technique does not exist yet, and she winds up slamming extremely inelegantly into the shins and eventually the chest of Hyra.

Wait, Hyra? Did she really make a circuit around the entire castle grounds?! She melts into a series of gentle scritches up and down her spine, and flops her head across her girlfriend's shoulder. And everywhere that Hyra's fingers find, her exhaustion seems to catch up. She mroofs, which as we've established is Not A Wolf Noise, and settles in for a long and well deserved rest, because surely there can't be more, right? She's earned a Forever Rest, because no part of her body will ever be capable of movement again, gosh gosh goshies. Except, apparently, her tail. Thump thump thump, wag wag!

"That's my girl."

Breathless Dead

"You don't... drink wine?"

XIII's mouth falls open. Her hands pluck stupidly at her dress, as if there were answers to be found in the fabric and not loose threads that burned her cheeks with the shame of her own shoddy needlework. Because she needed another reason to feel inferior on this obscene nightmare passing itself off as a spaceport. Her stomach feels like it's shrunken three sizes in the past few seconds. She's going to vomit again. Her eyes dart over to the fragments of the coin she broke, not even remarked upon.

"That's, what? Impossible. That doesn't make sense, wine is the underpinning of civilization! When... when Empress Nero invented the first servitor wine it lifted the last class in the entire galaxy up to being true citizens! Everybody knows this! How can you just let it sit in random buildings? How do you toast blessings? How do you pacify the gods? What do you... what? What?"

She sniffs the air. And again, and harder this time. But Thist doesn't have any of the smells she knows to look for that help root out lies. Sweats have so many aromas specific to different emotions, but this lout only smells like dust and... cucumber? She can't place it. Her nose is useless. Her education, however borrowed it is, is useless. Alien. Unknowable. Only her posture and facial expressions seem remotely familiar. It's like being blind. How could they not drink wine? Was it like that cigar? Is everything this different, here? Is that why the food was so bad?

XIII holds her head in her hands and massages her scalp with her fingertips. The difference in feeling between the side of her head with its close-cut hair against the fullness and luxury she's used to when she plays with her hair leaves a hollow pit inside her chest. Her stomach gnaws at what's left of her insides; Gods, she's starving.

And Thist just sits there, smiling. Like she's just waiting for XIII to finish her outburst so she can answer every question at once to make herself as helpful as can be. It's something she's pulled on humans for as long as she's been alive. What the fuck was wrong with this woman? How could somebody with as much power as she's got be so servile? Was the whole damn Azura Empire like this, just slithering up and down the chain of command as it pleased them with no consequences? How was she supposed to know where she stood with any of them, then?

She swallows air. Her mouth feels so dry. She licks her lips, and swallows again. Slowly, she brings her hands to her sides again. She smooths out her dress, and then turns her attention to her tail, until she's got every bit of fur pointing the way it should be and every bit the picture of beauty it's supposed to be.

"...Sorry," she says with another fake smile, "Culture shock. Bad reading materials. Long trip, nothing to eat. Or drink. I've only had Apollo for... never mind."

XIII can feel her smile opening to show too much teeth, her own most telltale sign of hiding stuff. Maybe Thist would miss it. Redana always did. Maybe she was just as much of a puzzle for this place as they were to her. But she feels a hand press on her spine to lift her straight. And when the fingers press into her sternum, they push truth out from between the teeth that would hide it.

"I'm after the Imperial Princess, Redana Honorius Claudius. I don't care where I'm going, as long as I get there before she does. I made a promise to her mother, and I'm going to keep it if it kills me."

Sunshards

"...Mroof."

Ok. Being a hundred percent fair here? This is not a wolf thing that's happening right now. That was not a wolf noise, ok? That was a I Am Sore And Tired And I'm Very Glad You're Full Of Energy Today, Hyra, But If You Will Recall SOMEBODY Thought It Would Be A Good Idea To Use My Butt As A Lesson Planner So Now I Can't Move And Also Do You Have Any Idea What Time It Is Right Now It's Like Wait What How Can It Be Ten Thirty Already Hwaaaaaaaa(?!) kind of a noise, y'know?

In her defense, Yue didn't really sleep all through the night. Not quitting means not quitting, all right? She snuck out of bed not too long after everyone else fell asleep so she could practice padding around in the dark. It was pretty easy, y'know? Well, it was hard. You don't understand how much extra brain work goes into walking on four legs until you suddenly have to do it. Crawling's not remotely the same; this way she's gotta do it while her brain's telling her that she's standing up, only there's two more feet involved and just... woof. Right? That's a wolf expression, by the way, you wouldn't understand. Anyway! Surprisingly good night vision. That's how come it was easy.

Plus, this was before she realized just how sore she actually was, see? Like, ok sure, she got slapped a bunch on the thighs by a wooden sword and her wolf body didn't really feel less ouchie than her human one had, but there's... there's pain, right? Ouchie ouchie pain. And then there's the stuff that comes after, where it sinks deeeeeeeeep into your muscles and becomes a whole other demon. That's what she's got now, on account of the two hours of walking practice and the two less hours of sleep. Plus, she couldn't figure out how to get comfy with the whole "curl up into a ball" routine because she just couldn't accept it as good posture so she wound up just sort of sprawled out on her side which didn't really help the sore butt for at least half of her.

Anyway, that's how come Mroof. You'd make that noise too, if your girlfriend came in wielding chocolate pancakes and coffee before you were ready for wakeies, if you had the kinda night she did. Can't even say if it was worth it right now, she feels almost as ridiculous as she looks high stepping with four exhausted paws. One, two, three, four and one, two, three, four there's a good girl, think about each of them and you can do it!

But when she makes it to Hyra? Oh, she's such a good girl! Kissing involves a lot more tongue than she remembers, but she covers her girlfriend's (yes!!) beautiful face with them the best way she knows how. And she lies down and waits very patiently for her nail to be painted with a magic spell, even before she understands what it's for. And then? Oh gosh! Goshies, Hyra! Wow! Jump, Yue! Jump for joyowowowowowiessss.... flop.

But flop in front of pancakes. Still a win! She sniffs the air with her silly nose and... oh wow! Oh wow! Do you have any idea how good melted chocolate smells when you've got a sniffer this sensitive? No, you do not. You do not know, because you are not a wolf. I can tell because you're reading this. But ohhhhhhh goodness goshy woof woof! It's strong and sweet and somehow it even smells gooey, y'know? You don't. We just established this. Not a wolf. But still. Y'know?

Her attempt at a first bite does not go as well as it should. Yue opens her mouth and brings her head down to her plat but she... can't... how does? She fit this? In there?? Um? Hyra? She licks the fluffy disc and, oh!! It's good! She wants it in her mouth please! But every time she moves to bite down she can't get the angle right and it's like somebody gave her an impossible koan. What is the sound of one wolf eating pancakes? Turns out it's a lot of frustrated whining. She gets her face smeared with chocolate and not much else.

Method number two doesn't go much better. Yue you sillyhead, what made you think you could hold a fork with paws? How were you planning on cutting this up, exactly? W-well it's just... w-woof! Shut up! Mmmmph. Maybe if she just... kinda gave up and shoved her face in there? No no no, it's no good it doesn't feel right. Her fur is covered in sticky chocolate and sweet syrup and as nice as it tastes when her tongue laps against it she's gonna need a bath now before she's ready to face the day and her tummy is still all grumbly complainy empty-like.

But this is not a sad story! This is the story of Hyra, the perfectly astonishingly amazingly cutieful oh-so-good-with-fingers handmaiden-turned-angel who smiles and laughs with all kinds of teasing energy that's still completely empty of mockery. There's just no room for it inside of all the love. This is the story of the woman who picks up utensils and in a flash of truly superior swordsmanship has converted breakfast from an impossible enigma into a series of proper (dainty, even) bite sized chunks of delicious pancakey goodness.

The riddle solved, Yue chows down with gusto! The noises she makes are as embarrassing as they are happy! She barks between almost every bite and her tail! Won't! Stop! Goshies!! The coffee is bitter, but sooooo nice as it slides down her throat, a perfect contrast to the sweetness of her breakfast that fills her with energy and determination in equal parts.

But she's still a mess, isn't she? Well darn, guess she's going to have to bathe. With Hyra. W-w-w-w-wait a second oh gosh!!!!

Breathless Dead

The coin is lighter in her hand than she thought it would be. Colder, too. She watches, enraptured, as the swirling dust inside floats around in a helpless, endless circle. Her finger traces the surface of the containment ring, but even the sensation of touch betrays the secret of the power hidden inside it. Her skin touches its smooth, almost slick, vaguely oily surface before it slips off and brushes against the many tiny bumps and ridges that make the etchings on the coin instead. She sniffs the air but it's tainted with the thick and acrid stench of the cigar with only slight traces of some sort of sweet peony and a tiny bit of silver tang underneath it. There is nothing to suggest the kind of power that's held inside of it. Nothing she can find with any of the senses she was so proud of. And yet.

This is a place of miracles. It must be. Miracles beyond the scope of even Empire, if somebody as low as Thist commanded this much so freely.

XIII stiffens as she sets the coin back on the desk. Her cheeks burn as her tail bristles with obvious discomfort. Shame. Her muscles twitch. Shame. Her ears droop low. Shame. Inadequacy. Shame. Her fingers reach into the purse and pull out an empty containment ring. This one is even less remarkable to look at and touch than the filled one. Still, she squeezes her eyelid shut over her Auspex and observes the daric through a permanent wink.

Her fingers tremble as she brings them closer and closer. She feels pressure build against her fingertip where her talon touches the surface. Her lips part uneasily, showing the clench of her sharp and perfect teeth. She squeezes her eyes shut, and feels rather than sees her hand drag across it. Her claws and her talons tears deep grooves into the surface of Thist's desk. She opens her eyes again and lifts her hand to find the ring has split into three neat pieces along the lines she left. XIII lets out of a breath deep enough to make her shoulders sink in relief.

"Gave you my name," she hisses, "Never. Call me Reacher. Again."

She stands still for a long second. Lighting strikes of embarrassment strike her brain like spears while her skin crawls with hot pinpricks up and down her arms and legs as her heart seems to drop into her stomach at the same time. She breathes, and the air is danger. She snatches the purse up with one hand while the other nervously tries to smooth out the gashes she's left in Thist's desk. She doesn't even feel her legs backpedal toward the couch; she simply retreats backwards without thought and the next thing she's aware of she's sitting there with her hands folded demurely in her lap.

"Don't 'Zeus and the Path' me, either. I'm not stupid. Lie to yourself. Not to me. My ship's worth more than this bag and you're pocketing the rest. You promise me riches if I sit here and ask nice. But I won't see a tenth of what you wind up with, if it even works. And your Shah or whoever will reap all the benefits of raking the Order over the coals. None of this is for me."

XIII smiles with the sort of plastic precision she hasn't needed since her childhood when she had to charm potential owners. She forces her body into a maid's prim and rigid posture, and then a moment later flops over with the drama of a dozen fake and imagined injuries.

"That's fine. I'll allow it. Grift me as much as you want, I'll play along. I'll be the quietest and sweetest guest of the Azure Skies, just for you. Because you're going to help me, aren't you? That's why Apollo brought me to you. You're going to find out where the person I'm looking for has gone. And you're going to get me on a ship that'll take me where I need to go. Aren't you?"

She winces with the pain of sitting up again, bringing her hand up to gingerly brace her ribs. Her tail swishes merrily behind her.

"And while you're at it, you're going to tell me what this place does for wine."

Sunshards

What kind of wolf is she? That's a silly question, she's not a woof! Not a... woof. Not a, ahaha that's so funny. She's not a woof, ok? Woof! Woof. Grrrr! L-look, just check out her paws! Then you'll see, she's not... wait. Wait wait wait. Wait wait wait wait. Does anything look a little, y'know, bigger to anyone else? No? Oh, phew. Wait, wait.

A trembling, nervous Yue glances down at her hand as she lifts into the air. It's heavier than it should be so already she knows she's not going to like what she finds. But even still, she has to see it. Right? She's gotta look. It's not real unless she looks. So she gathers up all the courage she's got left, and she bends her neck to really see. Which is also weirdly awkward and a lot harder than it should be, and that's not a great sign either, is it?

She smacks herself in the face straightaway. It, um! H-hey! D-d-don't laugh, it's not her fault! They're not su-supposed to be this close to each other, ok? It looked weird so she brought it closer but then her nose turned out to be sticking out way farther than she's used to and before she knew it, whap! She yelps with fright, and the sound of that yelp's not her voice either, which only brings on further yelping, which helps even less than the first one! The Yelpy Loop is a dastardly trap, indeed.

B-b-b-bu-but maybe it's a mistake? It's not. She looks down again and makes to wiggle her fingers, but she's got no fingers to wiggle and all she does is shake a bulky gray paw like a silly girl. She whines, maybe with frustration or maybe with despair. She's not sure right now, ok? Ask her later. But right there, in the middle of her pitiful whine and the sad drooping of her tail (wait, what?), she is saved by the feeling of soft and warm fingers massaging her head.

Yue looks up. And up. And up. She tilts her head like she's ready to howl, and she finds the red eyes and the beautiful and oh-so-perfect smile of Hyra. All human. All herself. All just the way she should be, except the way the sparkle in her eyes looks more like pity than delight, but perfect just the same. Yue feels her heart explode with love all over again, which for some reason feels a lot like a perking of her ears atop her head and a rapid thump-thump-thump of a floofy tail she's got no control over. Her jaw opens up into a big goofy smile that's just filled with sharp teeth, and a long pink tongue lolls out with something kinda like happiness. Oh, she's drooling. Haha, whoops! This is hard!

...Ok. Ok. Ok. Wait? Ok! This isn't... no, it's still bad. She's supposed to be training to become a warrior, darn it! Or a, uh, y'know a... more goodful fighty person or something. But a person! A person! Herself! Yue! And she's not and it's. Well. It's worth it, for Hyra. Maybe she'll get lucky and Cyanis' work snuck over with the rest of the curse, too. Maybe when the moon goes full again she'll have hands and feet and she'll only need two of those to stand. It'll be a lot slower learning everything she wants to like that, but she could still do it! She was just figuring out how fun it could be! And if... if it took that extra time and bought Hyra all this extra to be the beautiful woman she was meant to, then that's a price she'd have paid on purpose if she could. She thinks. Probably.

Woof.

"Yue? Are you all right?"

She nods. Then she takes a punch on the top of her head.

"Then what were you thinking!? That was so stupid, Yue! Why'd you have to go and do a thing like that for me, you... you... dumb, beautiful girl?"

<<Because I love you>>

She wishes she could say it with words. She's got no idea if Hyra knows animals the way that she does, if she can decipher all the meaning of their language. For that matter, she can't really tell if she's even saying it right. Everything's all weird. It's trying to be human and animal both at once and it's like squeezing her brain into two jars at once and it's weird. But she feels the hand that punched her switch to patting instead, and she sees Hyra kneel down to pull her into a hug, and even though all she can do is flop her silly fuzzy head on Hyra's shoulder now, that seems good enough for a start.

She glances down and startles to see her dress pooled around her paws. Well, it makes plenty've sense that it'd flop off now that she was a completely different shape and all, but she kinda thought it'd've... nah. Of course it wouldn't succumb to some silly ol' curse. Not [i]her[/] dress. She snorts with pride, and steps out from on top the pile of fabrics.

She goes toppling over with a pitiful yelp before she finishes the first step. Legs go every which way except the ones she wants them to, or... maybe they do? But the way she wants them to move isn't the way she needs them to move, in any case, so here she is bouncing off the Prison Floor to roll helplessly onto her back in a pile of gangly wolf limbs. She can't blush like she is right now, but she feels her body heat up in embarrassment anyway. Hyra helps her to her feet. Fwump! Failure number two, thy name is Yue.

She rises shakily to her feet, and decides to try and master sitting, first. Slowly now, careful girl, just lower those haunches (wait, what?) and... hey! Yeah! Good girl, Yue! Good... g-goshies! Woof! A-a-at least this gives her time to look in a mirror.

And there she is. Yue the Wolf is a creature with beautiful blue eyes, which is how she knows it's her looking back if she ignores the part where the reflection-wolf tilts her head at the same time and in the same direction that she does. Her legs feel a little overlong for her body and her paws are massive and heavy and end with very prissy looking useless claws that don't know a thing about the hunt and the wild. She might be slightly smaller than Hyra was, maybe. She's not sure. It's hard to tell under all this floof. Which makes sense, doesn't it? If Yue had one particular quality she'd define herself by, it was the frizz of her stupid, rebellious hair. And that's stayed with her in the form of thick, super soft mottled gray-and-black fur that runs through here and there with patches of warm cinnamon, especially across her back.

She looks less like a mighty huntress and more like a naughty pet who's wiggled out of her collar. But the awkward pile of limbs called Yue is gone. Yue the Wolf fits together much better. Her tail is pristine, her triangles are wonderfully perky, and her muzzle ends in a soft, wet button of a nose. Somewhere in that frame, there's power lurking deep inside her. But mostly she is scared that if she tries to move again, she's gonna fall on her face again. Most of the rest of her is trying to come to grips with the fact that she is, technically, naked.

But, still. She stands up and makes to pad her way across the room, and goes scrabbling and screeching back onto her stomach. But still. She stands again. She makes it a step or two this time. Again. She's finding it hard to count the attempts, but she walks over to her sword, and paws somewhat ineffectively at the hilt.

Ya wanna know what kind of wolf she's not? A quitter.