Phoe

Breathless Dead

"Oh darling," Mosaic's grin splits her face in half, "I already have."

Tension in the air, a taste like chili paste. Heat without the need for fire. The pressure of that gun barrel is like a tidal force, pulling, pushing, crushing, then pulling again. The polychromatic flare of its charge up sets the hairs on the back of Mosaic's neck to full standing. There is danger here.

But she stays standing tall and proud and planted, regardless. Her spine is straight, her shoulders set, her arms relaxed, her claws still covered in mountain dust: the only kind of blood she'd come to shed. Feline eyes meet feline eyes, pride glaring into pride, and no one watching could say which was lesser.

All the same. The tension shifts; the air turns sweeter, as if some mischievous demigod or another had crept into the battlefield just to dust everyone with confectioner's sugar or honey. The jaguar draws a breath, and her finger twitches over the trigger instead of pulling straight away. That is the margin of victory.

Mosaic's foot crushes down on the stone beneath her. The mountain groans, briefly, and then it roars. The earsplitting snap of stone shearing along fresh fault lines echoes down the valley for minutes all around, as earth rises in columns and then falls, and rocks large and small go tumbling down the side. The place they had been standing on shifts, and then it falls. It jostles the barrel of the great, strange rifle, only enough to turn a perfect shot into one with a whisker's width of error. Mosaic steps into that margin with her fist in front of her.

She hits like a thunderbolt. The gun falters, bones and armor both wince and roll away from her, the mountain yields. With a whoop of victory, Mosaic sets her feet in a surfer's stance and rides the great slab of stone down, down, down, down, back into thicker air and safer territory with elated laughter building in her throat as she descends. She turns and offers a wave and a bow to the stone tribesmen above her, and as she dips her tail flips playfully across the jaguar's chin.

"Sorry friends, but my need was greater! Remember, war favors the prepared! Next time have a plan, and better yet have twenty warriors ready for me!"

She snorts and turns to face the direction of her momentum again. Her body shifts perfectly along every little bump and jostle, feet never leaving the "ground" even when it hurtles into the air for fifteen meters at a time when it crashes into a large tree and trades shards of rock for freshly cut lumber (imperfect and mangled though it is). She pays no attention at all to the cacophony all about her: her ears are bent solely toward the companion riding down the mountain with her. Her face is calm, amused more than exhilarated, and in her eyes there is no readable intention or desire to pounce again. She has won. She is queen, here, until the ride ends. The whipping of her hair in the fierce wind that buffets them on the way down is the only indication she is not somehow living inside a tiny, invincible shield bubble.

"Not that I'll be back up this way any time soon," she calls over the noise of her escape, "Much too much to do, and it's no fun to take what I don't need besides. Hey. You any good at construction, friend? I kinda suck at it myself, which is a damn shame because I've got maybe a night and part of the morning to turn all this crap into a new neighborhood. Gotta move quick before those poor dumbasses get their requests denied.

"But no, what do you care right? Your pledge is back up there. No worries, I'll help you pick a path back up if you want. I think this one's getting a bit too dangerous for travel, ha!"

Her arm's find the jaguar's shoulder, and then her waist. Four paws, lifted from the ground. Together they fly, before their sled can crush them against the trunk of an ancient tree. Mosaic smiles as she sails through the air and lands as lightly as if she'd hopped down a single stair. Her heart is calm. Moments like this are a treasure beyond any depths that meditation could bring her.

(Finish with Courage: 14)

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"Mira of the Fisher Clan," she corrects, "Whose star name is Whispered Promise. 'Mirror' in the modern alphabet. An undefeated pilot who has expressed discontent with every single one of her matches, in actual fact. You do your research, Adriana Teresio, but there are limits to your network. You may tell your spies I have enjoyed the chase."

Mirror dips into a low, sweeping bow, kicking one foot out as if to physically brush aside the 'unusual control structure' comment. Unnoticed. Utterly beneath a response. Look elsewhere, Consortium Queen. Look elsewhere, Uncrowned Princess. The pair of you may look anywhere on the Whispered Promise except that singular phrase. It does not exist. Behold her body, her fur, her spots, these ribbons, this crown, this exhibitionism-to-the-point-of-ridiculousness. The tension in her body that has nothing to do with her exposure. The opening of her eyes, visible even through her extensive modifications.

She sniffs.

"They will not come. The [Children of Hybrasil]. Because you are dressed as a Bride, Adriana Teresio. You are being handed to a Goddess, though which I could not say. You have chosen sacred garments for a sacred ceremony, and they will not cross into your miasma for love or conquest. Because you are anointed in [Nectar]. It is harvested from a flower that grows in the Empire's core worlds. Breathing it will open your eyes. Imbibing it will open your mind. Religion. With [Nectar] we can see the meaning of our star charts. Of the stories. Your eyes are closed, I see. But perhaps for a Terenian, our sacred drug opens the pathway to the heart?"

Mirror shrugs, and the gesture ripples her ribbons like waterfalls. We are both of us sacrifices to the intentions of Mayze Szerpaws, she says inside that gesture. Is the challenge to your liking? What kind of woman runs the Terenian Empire, really? Might we be friends, given the opportunity? But the motion of her shoulders comes to an end, and with it the chance for a reply. Her eyes like deep, yawning pools move from the woman who owns everything to the girl who owns... well, hm.

"Continue the lesson. Adriana Teresio. I have interest in the rituals your species uses on the education of your kittens. I will wait my turn to dance with Miss Isabelle Lozano."

The name drips like honey off her tongue. Strange emphasis, with importance placed on every single syllable. Slight slurring at the edges, where the vowels fight with the chirping of her native language. She is looking for the star name inside the Consortium construction. And what has she found?

Breathless Dead

"Then by all means fight! Defend! Defy! I respect it. But I'm not running anywhere, and I'm not telling anyone shit. The Royal Surveyor? Ha!"

This is a vision of loveliness. Her mask glitters in the sunlight, blinding flares as tactical as they are gaudy. Her fur luxurious and her muscles sublime, every piece of her a love letter to the ideal form even where the flesh is overtaken by metal and her breathtaking curves leave behind the realms of men and enter something much like a god. She smells of silver and of harsh, chemical cleaners. She is pure. Divine. One of the five loveliest visions in all of Bitemark.

Mosaic smiles, a thing of genuine love and vicious intent both. She wears no cloak she can discard to reveal her glory in greater heights. She wields no sacred transformation or a weapon she can brandish beyond the flicker of her claws and the burning of her skin. But her blood quickens with the thrill of the hunt. Her tail thrashes with the force of a gale behind her back. Her breath falls calm and even, the predator hidden in the brush before the kill.

There is no sound when she moves. There is the sensation of squeezing, of bones and muscle and organs being compressed into a space the size of a bottle, and then she is gone. The breeze sings its battle song, hollow and uneven. The flowers sing their battle song, fragrant and laced with the pheromones of half a dozen Servitors prepared to perform the sacred dance of war. The earth sings its battle song, patient yet groaning.

Mosaic sings her battle song, the barking laughter like gunshots and a whistle worthy of the kind of movie you might call the greatest ever written. She descends from on high. She rushes from a boulder on the right. She springs up from the gravel underneath the jaguar's feet. She comes all of these ways at once, and more besides, and where her claws pass the air itself wails in pain and terror. The force of her hand is crushing, all consuming. The twisting winds that pass in its wake are enough to tear a large gouge in the jaguar's death mask, but the feeling of the full blow is a tale that only the mountain can tell.

Her fist sinks into the stone. She splits the earth beneath her like a fault line as she plunges her entire arm up to the triceps in rock and dirt and sweet smelling minerals. The impact shivers through her bones. The sting in her fingers is heaven. Shuddering, shivering, sharpening delight. Her tongue darts from her mouth of its own accord as she tenses her legs and leaps back into the air, wrenching her arm free in a sleeve of stolen mountain stone.

She punches the air and it snaps. Shards of shrapnel rain down against that thin and perfect armor and accomplish little beyond adding a percussive beat to the symphony of their building fight. Mosaic smashes her feet back onto the ground as more stone splits and shatters all around her. Her spine crunches and pops with the relish of uncurling, of unfurling, of rising once again to her full height (which is no less impressive for standing in the middle of a crater that she's created).

She tilts her head to look over her shoulder. Her purple eye is fixed with red, and fixes directly on her gorgeous, perfect dance partner.

"If the Skies are going to fall, let them fall. If the price of stone needs paying, then pay it. Nobody asked me to come, but I'm here. So boast, little kitten. Mew your threats and show me your claws. But do me a favor and leave the Royal Surveyor's name off of my lips. I would much, much rather have yours, instead~"

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Mirror holds Matty close as the crowd parts and the sound and attention filter away toward the demesne of Zaldarian politics, leaving the pilot alone with her family once again. The younger engineer clings tight, nestling her head in between Mirror's neck and shoulder and purring out of sheer nervousness as much as excitement as much as the comfort she derives from being in this position with this woman.

For her part, Mirror wraps her arm around Matty's back and envelopes her completely as she traces one blunted claw along the length of her neck. She is tense enough to be mistaken for steady, alert enough to be mistaken for protective, strong enough to be mistaken for in control. Only a twitching of her whiskers and the rigidity around her knees reveals the truth.

Is she being that obvious, do you think?

"Yes I know," she soothes, "That was a very scary dragon indeed, wasn't it dewdrop?"

"Uhuh..."

"But also very pretty, right?"

"Y-yeah. Super pretty."

"Do you... understand, then?"

"Nnnnnnf."

"..."

There is a moment where everything almost shatters. Mirror can feel eyes on her. On her back, on her chest, on her head. She sucks in a breath through her teeth, and squeezes her eyelids shut.

"Mattara Swimmer. Are you going to keep me safe?"

"Eep! M-mo-mommy? K-keep... you safe?"

"Solarel is strong. Solarel is unpredictable. Solarel holds my heart in her hand. Solarel has defeated me countless times already."

"M-m-mew..."

"And yet."

"A-and yet?"

"I am going to win. What is different?"

Long silence. Eyes on her back. Eyes on her chest. Eyes on her head. But this time the pressure's missing. Matty's face brightens like a kitten at a tuna buffet.

"You mean..?"

"Yes," says the Whispered Promise as she boops Matty's nose, "You. You are my key. With you I cannot be defeated."

"D-does that mean that I--?"

"Yes, sweet dewdrop. It does. So then I ask of you: how shall I defeat the strongest pilot ever? What would you do?"

"M-me? But I! Well I!" Matty squishes her own cheeks before she arranges herself into what she hopes is a Serious Thinking Face. But it's hard to make those when someone's clever fingers keep stroking your spine, "I guess if it was me I'd ask for help. But you're asking me, so I..."

"You know, dear heart? I think. You are exactly right."

"Sorry, I'm just not a fighter and I-- huh? I am?"

"You are. I need help. And I think... I see where I should ask for it. Stay here, kitten. Work with Slate. Work with Kiriala. Our work is beginning. Our work has begun. Are you ready?"

"Yes, mommy! I-I've got this, mommy! Just you wait, we're gonna wow you so hard you'll be speechless! Er, i-in the good way!"

Mirror simply smiles, and lets her brilliant little engineer go to stand on her own feet again. Already her gaze is tilting upwards, along the spiral. Already her path is leading her toward the smell of roses. It is nothing to slip past a pair of Empresses in the dark. It is nothing to leave Solarel to her own plans, and not tip a paw at all.

She arrives in silence. Adriana Teresio. Isabelle Lozano. And a handful of drones, blowing [Nectar] in her face. Her eyes flow like rivers as she watches. As she stares. In silence. In power. In victory.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Impossible not to follow the eyes. Impossible not to notice where they turn. Impossible not to catch the spark. Impossible not to feel the fear. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible.

Mira's whiskers twitch. Her shoulders stiffen. Her tail flicks at a subtly different rhythm than it had before. Her hand makes the tiniest of motions toward Matty, but that is for her kitten's benefit alone. She makes no attempt to stop what is happening. She makes no attempt to understand it. Understanding is impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible.

Easy to want something. Easy to dream of it. Easy to long for it every night in the safety of the dark and the quiet. Easy to believe her heart and its needs were something other than what they were. Other than ugly. Other than selfish. Other than greedy, grasping, possessive, dominating. That her heart would not flinch when she got exactly what she told reflection that she wished for. But the wince is inevitable. To not is impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible.

She is frozen in place. Caught between desires and Desire. She is tumbling into an abyss and cannot say whether she wants someone to catch her. Whether she needs someone to catch her. Whether it is safe for her heart to race this fast outside of her cockpit. Whether her fingers should be moving this much or this fast without a control panel to burn the inputs on. Whether she should be doing more. Or less. Whether she is a disappointment or a revelation.

She slips her gaze through Solarel's, into Slate's eyes. They share a long look, the three of them, without ever looking at each other. Mira frowns, and Slate sniffs. Her offer to Kiriala is a shrug, unconcerned. Think what you want, do what you want, it will not break your promises. She watches Matty with her arm out just far enough to allow the smaller cat to seek shelter there if she needs it, without implying that she should.

No one is told what to do. No one is told what to think. Something is happening here, now, the ground is shifting underneath her feet. She cannot sleep again if she does not let it happen. If she cannot absorb this moment then the only thing left for her to do would be to quietly leave the party and destroy the Gods-Smiting Whip before anybody could clock her location. But doing that would kill her. Doing that would be impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible.

So she lets them make their choices. So she wraps a hand around Solarel's waist and gives her another squeeze before letting go without a look. So she shrugs, and opens her mouth, and closes it, and opens it, and closes it, and opens it again but only breathes until her breath becomes the words ringing inside her ears finally escape.

"First time. Eighth time. Thousandth time. Doesn't. Make a difference. There will. Never be. Another. That is. Your hint. That is. Your warning. That is. A promise."

Because if she cannot win this time, there is no point in trying again. It would be. Impossible.

Breathless Dead

This is a very specific kind of assault. The sensation of being hit by the same fist on two different sides of her face is disorienting. The burst of pain is nothing, but she doesn't know what to do with the feeling of the exact same grooves in the fingers, oriented in exactly the same position, connecting with the exact same part of the knuckles before folding into the heaviest, flattest part of the fist with the exact same timing, but on opposite sides.

The smell is even more difficult. The same pheromones and the same emotions, the same skin and flesh and even the same chipped stone of the same age from the same soil all stacked on top of each other is enough to cause physical pain on a level this girl could never hope to even with all five of her natural companions working with this same degree of synchronicity.

They feel wrong. Smell pixelated. Look unreal. Mosaic's smirk is lopsided, almost drunk. Her arms lift to block the hits that come for her face, and drop for the ones that try to weaken her body. Her posture drops into a crouch to help her shift and tumble away from what is simply too much to block. The three (two) of them dance for several long seconds around the stone block and over it.

Her mind is filled with the color yellow and the memory of the smell of cleaner. With bronze and red wood in a long, thin shape that seems more like a spear than a rifle. With a name she does not know and never knew in the first place, but that she is nevertheless certain is connected to a dozen different memories she can't quite hold onto. Together it leaves very little room for fighting.

"That's good, that's good! I think that counts for enough of a handicap, don't you? Good enough for one anyway."

Mosaic lifts her arm to the sky. Her body remembers heat, enough to melt the mountain beneath her feet. Her body remembers rain, enough to raise an army out of nothing but belief. Her body remembers power. Her claws shine on the tips of her fingers. She pulls them together, snatching at the air.

And she vanishes. For a moment there is nothing but confused looks around the space that she had been, but then her laughter echoes from the sky. She falls as if fired from a rail gun, fists raised above her head and hair whipping in the tempest she has created. A shame to do this, but there are spares.

The sound of the impact is loud enough to be heard back in Beri. Mosaic tears through her prize in a single blow. It shudders under the strain of her impact, and then explodes into a shower of shards and splinters. The ground craters in her wake, and trembles like an earthquake where it does not give way. The dirt and rock are blinding, the sound is deafening. It is simple shock and awe, no different from an SP barrage. But it's an assault with godly force behind it, and she did it with nothing but her hands.

She rises from the crater and steps out into a cloud of smoke and steam, digging at her ears as if she could pull the ringing out of them. A tiny spur of bone sticks out from her wrist; she plucks it from her skin with casual disdain.

"My name is Mosaic. I have come here for the mountain. But I have not come here for myself. Send an army, if you must. Make one, if you dare. I promise here and now in the shadow of Mars, I will not lose."

Breathless Dead

The weight is heavy in her hands. Her palms burn where the sharp edge of the cube scratches them. An ache is beginning to creep into her arms from the strain of holding something so ruinously heavy this high above her head. Not pain, just dull weakness pooling in her triceps and leaking up the rest of her as the blood drains down into her body. Even still, her arms barely twitch.

A weight like this could be a deadly weapon if she only dropped it carelessly enough. A weight like this should be a liability, slowing her movement until she's barely faster than the mountain itself. It is neither of these things: it is a shield. With a battle cry like laughter, Mosaic lunges forward and lets the massive stone block fall behind her where it shakes the ground as the footfall of a passing titan.

The sudden shifting of such a great and dangerous weight sets the pack behind her scrambling, but Mosaic pays them no mind except to bend one ear in their direction to keep track of their movements. She is already lunging forward, arms hanging down at her sides with her right foot raised up to head level. Her foot connects with a stone mask, and the sound of splintering echoes across the battlefield as one champion sprawls and bounces their way backwards a full ten meters before skidding to a halt.

War can be a complicated thing, but its principles are simple. If you want to overwhelm a coordinated assault, start by applying pressure to a single point. She pivots on the ball of her foot, and swings the other leg around to the side and land another crushing blow to the side of a second combatant who's caught between charging and setting themself against one. There is thunder on the mountain without Zeus there to guide it. Stone is strong, strong enough to absorb Mosaic's force and keep the brave fighters protecting their own from her safe. If bruises and lacerations count as safe.

They do not use their claws, so she does not either.

Her blows fall heavy and erratic. Sometimes she swings around on the great stone block, sometimes she lifts it again and moves it away some distance to establish a new battlefield. Sometimes she drops it, and sometimes she merely lets her body shift to put it in between herself and a fist. Sometimes she catches those blows and crushes them between her rib and her elbow. Sometimes she takes them full on, strikes hard enough to push her backwards through the soil. But every time, she laughs. Bright and happy, unconcerned and always without pain or struggle. If this lasted through the night the only issue would be the lack of houses she is supposed to be building.

But the smell of cleaners sneaks through the rock and sweat and battle lust. It floats over top of Tactics and strikes her nose with the power of a god. Mosaic twitches, only for a moment, but it crushes her between two heavy blows that she forgets to tense against. The smile on her face grows wider. The smile on her face grows softer.

And tears start running down her cheeks, unnoticed until they drip and splash messily against her chest, her arm, her thigh. She drops the stone again, this time to no purpose whatsoever. A hand wipes at her face. Her thumb pushes her nose back into alignment.

"I know you," she half giggles and half sobs, "I know you, but I don't. Who are you, and where? Come! Come out! If you overcome me, I'll put the entire mountain back!"

Her grin is wide, playful as it is confident. But it is also wet, and there is no drying it today.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Mira shivers to be touched. To be held. To be guided. To be seen. To be spoken to. To be loved. Words ring in her ears and they pull breaths from her mouth in little panting gasps for want of other language. Her fur is sleek, her tongue is just visible, her posture is languid, her ears are pivoted, her tail is curled tightly. She speaks, and speaks, and speaks, and speaks, but nothing comes from the one direction she wanted to.

"Whole." she manages at last.

Solarel is using the word in a different way than the scholars intended. Not incorrectly, if it is at least on purpose. But still. Different. It pulls her short. Mira's heart is a bird locked inside her ribs, fluttering desperately and trying to escape. Her tongue is dry. She hears velcro; it makes her twitch. Retch, even.

She tilts her head in question. And then she takes one hand and softly strokes Matty under the chin with it.

"Whole." she says again.

Her hand passes by the energetic young hybrid, over to Kirala. She puts it atop a shoulder and squeezes, with a nod.

"Whole." that word again, sharper this time. More of the richness of her voice creeps into it.

She moves again, to Slate this time. She wraps both arms around her oldest partner, and drapes herself overtop of the mechanic's protective body to stare at Solarel.

"Whole." every time she says it, the word grows. What had been a tremulous whisper at the start has lifted itself into a full purr: pleasure, safety, vulnerability, reflex.

She detaches from her retinue and crosses the distance as though walking a tightrope, her arms stretched to either side. She brings them forward, brings them up. She takes Solarel by both sides of her face, and pulls their foreheads together.

"Whole," she whispers, and the word is more intimate than it's ever been.

Whole, Mira's hands slide down the scales of Solarel's neck. Whole, caress the shoulders. Whole, over the breasts, just the barest brush. Whole, holding her hips. Whole, whole, whole, whole, the embrace is hotter and brighter than any light show, any mecha, any goddess, any star.

She lets go. Two steps backward, both measured. Her eyes fall to the floor again.

"Fractured," she tries this time, "Necessary to be whole."

She spins, and her hand gestures to everyone around her.

"Cannot. Give. Oneself. Without. Having. Pieces. To. Offer. I am. I am. I am. I am..."

Whole. She doesn't say it this time. Her entire body is shaking with the effort of standing here. She ignores the worried looks from her family, ignores the fluttering of her ribbons against the motion of her weakness, ignores the toxic smell of the flowers on her head.

"...Ready. To give you the gift. I have been preparing. Since we parted. I. Understand. Now. Do not lose. Solarel. We must... fight. One more time."

Breathless Dead

Stone was the best surface for running on, and that was a fact. The impact of the hard, rough surface on the sole of her foot as step after sure, sharp step cracks against it. The way it doesn't yield under her weight the way so many other things do while walking. No spring or squish here, just pure hard push and a fight to see which of them could take more pain in the end.

And of course there was the sound. The snap! The crunch! The clattering of small pebbles on the larger stone as she passed by! This was music that the earth played for her, and no less special than the gift of the Lyri. At every step the mountain fought her, and that made it the most exciting place in all of Bitemark (which was saying something, if you knew where to look).

Mosaic is still but for the unsteady rising of her chest as she pants with a runner's exhilaration. The breeze plays with her hair, but only she can move the rest of her. She does not turn her head to acknowledge the people struggling their way up the path after her; her gift to them was slowing down enough in the first place that they could keep up at all. The air is full of the smells of a dozen different rock types, each with their own specific mineral aromatics that make this just the same as visiting a garden, after all.

This is not a moment that would be improved by Projection Mining. But then, maybe the happiness of a planet was worth more than the feeling of conquest by hand, the sweat beading on her iron muscles and the heat of her body standing against the coolness of the mountain breeze, the view that overlooked at least seven villages at once, and the adrenal jolt of knowing that very soon her life would be coming to a fight. Maybe all of these things were less valuable than the convenience of an instant pile of raw materials and impossible plenty.

Her lip curls. The thought dies with her smirk. Her foot crashes on the stone in front of her, and Mosaic leaps high enough to clear Dolemon twice over to land with an almost dainty grace on the first massive stone block she has marked as her first prey.

"I HAVE COME!" she bellows with a voice made out of thunder, "I AM HERE!"

Mosaic spreads her arms wide to either side of her as she steps closer and closer to the edge of the stone cube she's perched on, walking calmly toward a steep drop and certain peril. She spits, and clears her throat.

"I have need of works, Stone Tribe. And before the night has taken us, I promise I will have stolen this mountain right out from under your feet. If you're going to send a champion, better send six! Minimum! I don't want any complaints later that the costs don't measure up to the ritual!"

And she laughs, in that careless way that has defined her for as long as she's been alive. The mirth of the invincible. The delight of a challenge. A joviality that bends its way to equaling respect.

She falls, and the air whistles through her ears as she hurtles toward the ground. Her legs strike with the fury of a Solid Projectile barrage. The sudden crater is more than enough of a handhold to lift the entire block above her head: the heist is underway.

She'll need to do more than this. There's a host of challenges to overcome if she's going to make good on her promise, but those are lost in the thrill of holding a shard of a mountain heavy enough to bury a village with, instead of building one. Right now she is a thief, but she will at least be a bold one.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

No detail is forgotten. All are marked. All are filed away and kept close. But none are responded to, none followed up on. Not just yet. Because these are ancillary pursuits compared with her real reason for being here. Her unpredictability necessitated covering every base. Everything needed to be perfect for her. For

Solarel!

Mirror has handed you a rose, and that is a victory. She was holding it, though it did not go with her outfit, and under the pressure of your stare she gave it away without thinking. Without even a word. Flowers as a gift is on the whole a very Terenian custom, but in Hybrasil giving away anything when you have very little is considered a declaration of love on par with a wedding proposal. And it was not planned; you can see that by her snatching fingers just after, that she covers by quickly busying them with her ribbons. Long strokes.

< Go ahead and look. It is all for your benefit. >

Now her fur darkens in her equivalent of a blush, where your eyes alone hadn't quite shaken her. She had not intended to sign in this conversation, but she defaulted to the stiff and over-rushed language she learned while she was your slave. Your comfort and your rules before her, and all because she lost a staring contest. You put your eyes where hers can't follow. She does not know what to do with that.

Speak Not, you told her. And she complied. But she has so much still to say.

< Yes. For your benefit. Because it is all your fault. What am I meant to do? I owe. I owe. I owe. I owe. I serve. I serve. I serve. I serve. I cannot seem to fit my dreams inside my hands anymore. They have grown, and I have not. >

She has surrounded herself with other cats. If you have been keeping tabs on her in any way, you will know that these are her family. But plainly, none of them understand the language she is using to speak with you. Anything she expresses will be a secret kept from them, unless you chose to break the spell. That too is a victory. You are in control. She cannot help herself around you.

That's why she's never won. Not ever, at least in her mind.

< Are you. Doing well? Are you. Excited? Or are you. Like me? Because I >

Her hands go quiet, folding themselves placidly in front of herself. Fingers tucked in, claws politely hidden, a kind of meekness that's unbecoming of the woman who calls herself Mirror. Mira Fisher, however, was like this all the time. She has a secret. Or more accurately a concern.

And she would like you to pry it out of her, if you can.