Phoe

Breathless Dead

To hunt a crab is to hunt the sea. Sometimes crabs are small, mere mouthfuls and hunting them is as simple as spearing them with a claw tip. This is akin to robbing the surface of the water of its least treasures, the flotsam and the seaweed. Sometimes the crab is more spine than shell, and to claim its life takes practice and careful dedication, but little in the way of specialized skill. These are the moments where someone (looking to say they had an adventure), dives down to a shallow barrier reef and plucks a single gorgeous pearl to bring home to a sweetheart.

But a true Battle Crab will never succumb to something as paltry as the loss of a single claw. It has another, and ambition to crush what even its full healthy body might not have. To fight this is to know the sting of jellyfish armor, the wrath of the tides. To dive deep, deep, deep into the blackness in the middle of a storm, where once the craft of some inventor had dared to face Poseidon and failed utterly to please him. The bone crunching pressure. The all devouring currents. The equally perilous journey back to the surface, to success but not safety.

Mosaic's arms are burning and sluggish. She has retreated backward, to the waves of high tide, out of respect. The water soaks her body, and though she stiffens at its lash she is calm. Her shoulders are low and loose and her claws drag through the foam. Her tail curls behind her and strikes the waves as a whip. Her challenge is a song, not the pounding beat of her morning ritual but a high and lilting call to the moon that radiates through the water and sends schools of curious fish darting this way and that to be clear of her path. Their scales shimmer in the light of the night with all the seeming of rent armor as their clusters split further and further apart, and dim as they sink too far below the surface to keep shining.

She does not forget who the predator is. She rises against a high wave, and pulls her hair back down over her back after it slaps against her. One more move. One. Her feet sink into the sand; the squish is pleasant against her toes. She is a silhouette against the backdrop of the stars, seeming large enough for a moment that she might walk out to meet them as friends.

She leaps. Her song is laughter now, her body is an arrow launched from the bow of a goddess. She flies straight with one outstretched arm to test against the thrusting of one good claw. The crab open the pincer, revealing lethally sharp spines growing out of clusters of shell harder than the strongest metals of the Skies. They catch her at the shoulder, they close and paint the ocean with her blood. But her hand has found a sweeter treasure still.

She falls to the beach again. The smell is salt and the sweetness of fresh flesh. The sound is tearing carapace and a shower of wet sand flopping into a retreating wave. Six armored legs tremble under the weight of her blow, stagger, and collapse. Splayed and still. She tears the other arm off as she rises, and wrenches it free from her own.

A deep breath, held. Meditation. Thanks. Her body glistens in the moons' light, no less beautiful for the colors that run down her now. Her eyes close, and she holds her hands aloft.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And only on the third verse does the world return to her.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"Would even a goddess make no mistakes? I wonder. They do not always agree, after all. And the very basis of our language (which they gave us) is the belief that there is always another way to say something. Regardless, you are correct: it is impossible for any of us to be so perfect that we do not hurt anyone, and it will remain so until we are at least as old as the stars are now. You have hurt people, Kiriala, though I am certain you did not intend to. And you have hurt people, Isabelle Lozano, and I hope that that was unintentional as well."

She pauses and gives the girl a long look that says the recent match against Ksharta Talonna is not far from her mind. But she dances on beat and lets the moment pass without so much as a shrug.

"I have also hurt people, quite intentionally. And I have failed to hurt them, unintentionally. I have in fact made every mistake it is possible to make, and I will make them all again before I die. Solarel? She has hurt many people, yes. But none of them more deeply or more cruelly than she hurts herself. Forgive me, but in the Consortium is it not the custom to pay large out large sums to acquire outcomes you deem desirable? Why should saving the soul of the most beautiful woman in creation not fetch a commensurately exorbitant price?"

The music shifts, becoming slower and more intimate as if in stubborn resistance of the commotion happening all up and down the great spiral of the gala. Mirror presses herself in closer, finally adjusting the rhythm or her motions to be more akin to a heartbeat rather than a deliberate act of semi-rebellion against the local conductor.

Her body is warm. Her fur is soft. Her eyes are half-lidded, but looking up. A show of trust mixed with caution. Her tail flicks behind her and brushes her Squire's cheek as a reward for her boldness.

"You asked a question. 'Will anyone be hurt?' Yes, I imagine so. In the first place it is very much my intention to drag that so-called 'fashion designer' into the light and skewer her in front of everyone. It is also my intention that this message be broadcast specifically overtop the middle of my rematch with Solarel. This will functionally blank out a chunk of whatever we do. I imagine it will get several people fired.

"I consider this irrelevant. Jobs are plentiful and the specifics of who one works for almost meaningless. Those who can acquire them will do so again and again with minimal effort. Those who cannot will hear my message and realize it is them I am speaking to. And then there is me. I will be harmed, yes. I hope to guard against even greater harm by doing this. If you wish for cleaner hands than the ones you have, I cannot help you. You must quit playing at being a pilot and retreat to a garden where you may tend the flowers in peace. But if you yearn for..."

She stops completely. Stops even dancing, her feet locking in place. She opens her eyes all the way once more, and cranes her neck to pierce the eyes of the genius super-prodigy some call undefeatable.

"No. I am going about this backwards. Hmhm, my Squire has so little left to learn from me already. She will graduate to becoming a knight before I am ready. I suppose I must make ready to become a Queen of some sort before her metamorphosis finishes. Very well! You speak, Isabelle Lozano. Tell me about your troubles. Tell me about your hurts and who gave them to you. Tell me about your loves. It will be easier to see my heart if you show me yours."

Breathless Dead

Under the cool caress of moonlight, she discards her shirt. Even this light tanktop is too much for the moment. All of the sweat and the dirt and the dust she's caked it in today has left the fabric damp, clingy, and itchy. It is a distraction, and worth less than nothing as protection. And in any case a hunt against one of these superior crabs typically turned into a bath in the sea. Salt and silt were terrible for the skin on her back (her curse, Mosaic supposed), but it was a minor irritant at best compared with the agony of soaking a cloth with the stuff and leaving it against her all day. Nothing would be better than that. So it is Nothing that she wears.

She does not hide. It is not in shadows that she hunts, but in light. Sunlight, Moonlight, Starlight, Lamplight. It's all the same. What matters is the feeling of it on her eyelids, the pressure the seeps through her skin and adjusts her breathing to the shock of someone who is Caught. What matters is the subtle bursts of color that splash across her fur. The crab retreats, slowly. She follows with large, single steps.

Her hands are in her hair. She smooths out the tangles. She ties it all into dozens of tiny, crisscrossing braids. Creating order from the chaos. Fixing what had broken down in the morning brawl and the afternoon construction. She hardly watches the crab as she works. Forward, backward, clack clack clack. When it shifts from being hunted to hunter, she will know. She will respond in kind. Her breasts lift up as she stretches to tie the final ends in her hair. Sweat soaked, slick, they glisten in the pale light of the paired moons.

Her lips are closed, and turned up into the shape of a quiet smile. They part slightly to allow her breathing, but no word passes through them. Her challenge is in silence. Her prayers are in silence. The clacking of crab claws, the squirming of tentacle armor in the salty night air, the churning of waves and the clattering of shifting rocks. These are her language, and her song.

She lifts her hands higher, above her head until her back arches in line with the rotation of her shoulders. She is a constellation, fallen to earth. She is a bowstring, taut and bending backwards, waiting to be plucked. One by one, the sights and sounds and smells and sensations of the world disappear from her sight. The beach shrinks and the ocean retreats. The moons shine only on her and on her foe, but do not exist in the sky. There is no sky to begin with. The smell of a wolf hidden among the rocks vanishes completely.

Her world is the hunt. Nothing else is important enough to be acknowledged. The clacking of claws is slowing. The creaking of carapace replaces it. One massive pincer lunges at her like a javelin. Mosaic relaxes out of her stretch, and empties her lungs into the breeze. Her tail twitches. Her arm snaps forward, whiplike, to strike the joint behind the knuckle.

The best meat on the beast for you, Lady Artemis. This dance for you, Lady Artemis. Not a scratch on her body or she will cease the hunt immediately. All for you, Lady Artemis. May her efforts please you. May you find her worthy of bathing in your night airs.

May you smile. Like your brother.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"Not lucky. Not lucky. Family is not luck."

Mirror shakes her head. Her tail reaches up from behind her shoulder and presses its fluffy tip against Isabelle's lips, as if predicting a possible interjection.

"Not skill, either. Family is not skill. But, deserved. Hard work. Family is... effort. Reaching out. Connecting. Growing. Changing. Expanding. And sometimes... contracting. Cutting off. Because family. Is not blood. Often, yes. But sometimes you must choose. Between the family that will have you and the family that assumes you. I have made this choice. Before. I have walked away. Debts are not forever, Isabelle Lozano."

The dance continues. Mirror is a very stubborn instructor, though she is fluid in the way she moves there is no budge in her when it comes to the nature of the dance. Her only two forms of momentum are the one that she controls and the one where she doesn't move at all. On the surface, a control freak. But that information's at odds with the group she's surrounded herself with, and the way they look at her (and feel free not to, just look at Matty getting sucked deeper and deeper into her own little world). There is a point to it, then. Possibly. Or she just thinks this girl needs permission not to think.

"It is maybe difficult to contemplate. I do not know. Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers. These may ensare us. Or enrich us. Or one and then the other. But if they harm us. They cease to be family. Because. Family is effort. Family is hard work. Family is earned. Ada Smith, Unseen Goose knows this. It is why she defeated you. Not because she outsmarted you (though she did). Not because she outpiloted you (though she did). You lost because you were lost. And she was not.

"She is a pirate. This you know. Are you aware of what that means? Mother. Older sister. Wife. Power. She is a protector. Of things, of people, that cannot thrive within the main systems of your society. Consider this: existence where work is impossible. Existence where all the parties feel... askew. Like you cannot belong where they are. Existence where your talents are not valued. Because you need special consideration to thrive. Consideration that is not given. Because it does not occur to others around you that you might be struggling."

Here, she smiles. There is a genuinely pleasant memory at the forefront of her mind, and her body radiates warmth and healing vibrations from the strength of it. The dance mellows considerably, and Mirror is content to follow the beat exactly, if only for the moment.

"I am a mercenary. This you may also know. A different. More limited path. To the same end. I have contracted to Unseen Goose before. A favorite client: she pays me in paper. Very precious. No one understands. Are you aware of how she operates? To live on the edges means to be free of rules. But free of help, also. And there is... mm. There is a tradition in the Fisher Clan. One which Huntresses scoff at. When we sense a hungry mouth. We forget to guard our meals.

"Do you. Understand? There is pride. In being hungry. There is compassion. in offering the sport. There is dignity. In giving up the chance to have more than you need. That is our way. My way. And it is how the Unseen Goose lives as well. Were her pirates the sort like in the animes, she would be dead twelve times over. Stronger than me. I hope for my sake she is defeated before I reach her. Or I will disappoint Marcina Villajero. Who is looking forward to me eating her."

A lick of the lips. A curious stare, up into the eyes of Isabelle Lozano.

"...Hm. You are not. You do not. You would not. I see, I see. You are more effort than that. There are few in your life who might measure up. Isabelle Lozano, whose star name I have seen to be Thirteen Citallic. Your destiny is crushing you. I give you a new name. A gift. In the tradition of my people. Of my people. You are Distant Gate. A pathway to extraordinary things. To new discoveries. To, mmmmmmmmm."

She walks two fingers up the length of Isabelle's arm, teasingly indicating the spots she'd seen handle those drones from earlier.

"To 'unusual control schemes'. But the walk to you is long, and difficult. And not many have attempted it. And so your heart is lonely. And so your path is quiet. But if you close the distance... I see the potential for many things. Some I love. And some I do not. This name is my gift. If you wear it you need not be Thirteen Citallic any longer. Need not heed your destiny, but make a new one where its corpse lies. All this. A much longer road to say:

"I will not tell you my wish. You must take it without knowing what it is. You will learn it! But I will not speak it aloud for the first time here, of all places. And in the spirit of your greatest business animes I offer you this job. To be part of a team. I have assembled. Am assembling. To deliver a message. To broadcast it over whatever might be happening at the time of my choosing. I assure you it is quite illegal. Fun, yes? Fun, yes! My goals. Twofold. One: to destroy the villain Mayze Szerpaws, and expose her lies to the galaxy. Two: to make the Zaldarian outcast known as Solarel my family."

Mirror stops dancing entirely. Her body is electricity and tension. She almost seems as if she might glow, release some radiant blast of energy from her breath in the way of that people, but she does not. Cannot. She is just a Fisher, after all. Now she heaves a sigh, and for the first time consents to be lead to the beat of another person's heart. To let Isabelle take her where she will, or to let her go entirely.

"I love her. And I will save her. Whether you help me or no. Though I offer recompense for your services. Naturally. The wish is not your payment. The wish is merely information that will be revealed by the job. My offer is this: Hybrasil barter. One favor begets one favor. I ask this, I give this. However humble. Or impossible. The task. I will perform it. I will knit you a sweater. Or I will shatter the chains that shackle you to your wealth. I will make you a pirate. Or a traveler. Or a Queen. It is within my power. This tournament cannot give you everything, Miss Isabelle Lozano. But you can find them here, regardless. Winning matches is unnecessary for all but one. It has. Always. Been a distraction."

Breathless Dead

Mosaic's hand stretches toward the setting sun. It's a tiny thing from here, so small that her fingers can close around it and her fist is enough to blot it from the sky. She cannot reach it. Her fingers close around nothing but air, nor do they take her to visit the horizon. Even wholly closed off inside her fist, the sky shines on in brilliant but slowly fading hues, as if her desires meant nothing to it whatsoever. One more show for the planet, and then the stars will shine in earnest.

In the morning it will rise again, whether she holds her fist clenched or no. Such a stupid thought. Was that really all the better she could do? Childish observations and sloppy construction, a pile of scrap every time she gets frustrated? Mosaic, demigod, strongest ant on the stick.

Her legs tremble when she tries to stand again. She shoots a quizzical look down at her feet before flopping back down and looking up at the stars again. Her shoulders are twitching. Her lips curl back and flash fangs. Her grin widens, and she throws her head back like a Ceronian taken by a howl. Her laughter builds and builds until it's a roar that would make Gemini's hot little piece of ass (Taurel? Is that what she calls herself?) jealous.

"I'm... scared? Ahahahahahahaha! That's the funniest fucking thing I've ever heard! Look at me Quajl, I'm shaking from head to toe! Me! Isn't that hilarious? Hahaha, ahaha, HAA! Ah, gods thank you for the joke. I feel better already. I'm afraid to leave. Afraid to leave! That's why it sounds so new! Hahahahaha!"

Her heart hammers wildly against her ribs until every part of her is vibrating. Between the fits of laughter, her breath comes faster and faster, shallower and shallower. Her fur rises on her limbs, uneven and bristling, and she trembles all the way down to her finger tips. She is afraid. She, Mosaic, is scared to leave the safety of her little town and her useless backwater planet. It's not that she lacks a ship or a destination, or even that there are people she'll need to bring along before she's satisfied. She's just... scared. That she'll turn out to be less than enough. That there are other, bigger, stronger godlings and monsters that she simply will not measure up to. And that even if she manages through everything else...

Even if she goes, there won't be anything there. That this is the pinnacle of life after all. That she is stuck, forever, miserable inside her secret heart but all the vast wonders of the universe around her nothing but hollow shades and ugly mockeries. She can feel her heart shrinking at the thought.

"No," she says to nobody, "No. Fuck that."

She stands, and finds her legs are strong again. She flexes, and her body crackles with power that she knows down to the tip of her tail is Enough. She smiles, steps forward, and returns to digging foundations. Shaping stone. Building supports. Each new house she builds looks just a little bit prettier, a little bit nicer made than the one that came before it. The night is upon her, and there are promises to be fulfilled. She could never leave otherwise.

So what if Quajl doesn't help? Let her watch. So what if the stars are distant and uselessly silent? Let them watch too. She is Mosaic. She stole the mountain, she took an old friend's name, and come the dawn she will have built a neighborhood from nothing. Before she leaves she will steal Ember and Gemini from their pack, pluck Dolce and Vasilia from their happy little niche, and carry Vesper out on her shoulders.

Oh, and of course she'll find and kill that crab. The one that got away. Lady Artemis always comes first, right?

"You know, I think I'm gonna punch out the Crystal Knight before I go. Everything I've ever heard about her makes me think she's a stuck up bitch. Besides, she'll be good practice for the real thing, right? Whatever words I find, figure I owe you that much for the advice."

Huntresses of Hybrasil

.

Breathless Dead

"I can't say that I've ever really thought about cracking the Skies. You're a very interesting person, Quajl. I wish that I had learned more about you back from the place I learned your smell. Oh well! I know you now. We can be friends even if I can't convince you to stick around."

It is cruel to end the embrace so quickly, but she must. Mosaic's body is already burning up from the build up of unfulfilled oaths; any longer and she would be a danger to touch. Her spine tingles in a way that feels like she caught lightning, her skin itches and begs for her to claw it off, and her eyes have begun to sting when she looks anywhere but the pile of materials she needs to start turning into housing.

Her claws rake across the stone, and where the sharp points touch she splits down roughly even lines. The heat of her palms is enough to melt rock, and she presses them at the corner to make rough fuses, just enough to get the shape of it going. Something she can lift and carry to where it needs to be before she starts hauling lumber to give it actual structure. On and on she goes, digging foundations and building these rather crude shapes one after another, doubling back regularly as she notices she has enough stone to add a room here or there to make space for all of the people that need to live here.

The work falls into a pattern. Carve, lift, support, expand, dig, lift, set. She can't chase more than a vague shape as she is, so she models everything she builds after the little cottage she lives in. Three rooms and an alcove, a flat roof. Not small, but not large either. But even still, her concept of home, recreated the best that she can. It isn't much. But what can she do?

"They're kicking everyone in Rosedam out of their homes," she explains as she works, back always to Quajl, "That's why I needed the mountain. Though they did a whole thing recently that makes me think there won't be a mountain for too much longer, either. The Royal Surveyor's got plans I guess. What can you do?"

She shrugs. With an entire roof lifted over her head, it gives the impression that the planet is shrugging along with her.

"Lately, I've been wondering if I'm not doing enough. You know? I'm up to my ass in work and promises but shit just doesn't stop breaking. Some days it feels like I've almost got it, but then I wake up and..."

She slams the stone down on top of the latest building, her third so far. Cracks form all along the walls from the pressure of her power, and with a loud snap and a rumbling like a small avalanche the whole thing comes down around her. Mosaic grabs a chunk and hurls it in the direction of the ocean. She doesn't stop to watch if it makes it that far or not.

"There's gotta be more to life than this. Kidnapped siblings, sick sisters, and nothing to be done about it. Parties every day and songs when I go out, all this sweet air and food that's better than anything I can remember eating and it all just! It makes me itch. I have to get out of here. I have to do something. I'm so strong. I'm stronger than anybody! So why do I feel so stuck?"

Mosaic's feet give out from under her. She slumps against her own ruined handiwork, and watches the sky. For the first time today, her shoulders sag. The work is catching up to her, and she looks tired.

"Tell me that, Quajl. Tell me that and I'll crack the Skies in half for you. Even if it's impossible. Even if it's wrong."

Huntresses of Hybrasil

People say that cats are always smiling. Silly, stupid, insufferably smug, the corners of their mouths are just permanently turned upward in a way that makes it seem like they know a secret that they are refusing to tell or that the look of confusion on another person's face is just so funny to them that the smirk is glued onto their face forever. Bastards.

People say that cats are always frowning. Glum and glowering, nothing ever makes them happy. And the way their eyes narrow after they've been around company for a while is the most insulting thing of all. Such an antisocial lot that loves nothing, cares for nothing, and in fact are incapable of either. The merest thought of sharing a dance with someone respectable feels insulting to them. Bastards.

People say that cats are always begging. Pleading, prodding, pathetic. They want what others have and all they see when they walk into a room is credit chits on legs. Their large eyes are the work of a race of con artists and tricksters, creatures who expect it easy all the time and know the fastest route to plenty is what those around them have already earned. Those eyes of theirs may be large, but they are empty. Soulless. Disgusting.

People say that cats are aloof, that they are snide, that they are condescending and conniving.

Mira Fisher is a cat.

Her face is borderline unreadable, whatever angle it is viewed from. Is that the hint of a smirk she tosses at Marcina Villajero? Does it stay on her face after? Or is she coldly dissecting the entire room with an expression like pure ice? Is she looking for something, or does her sudden obligation to wrap her fingers around a Terenian's wrist and waist and lead her around a dance floor fill her with some manner of revulsion.

Is she simply sad? Is something weighing on her mind that's crushing every other thought and emotion out of her all the time? Is she hungry? Is she sick? Is she happy? Why don't her eyes stop running? What is she thinking when she half closes them? Why does her breathing feel so rapid? Is that her heartbeat? Doesn't she know it's rude to show fang at a party?

"Isabelle Lozano," she's still saying it with a strange accent, but her voice is supremely calm for somebody whose face might be registering every strong emotion in the known galaxy at once on it, "For a very long time I have wondered about you."

She leads on the dance floor. Any attempt to take control of the rhythm of the dance is met with a strange, shadowy melting of form, as if she suddenly stopped having bones and then started again right after the balance of the moment had shifted out of control. Sometimes she plants her feet and turns out to be stronger than steel, and steadier than a mountain. No, she leads. She is respectful with her hands and gentle with her guidance, but she is following a beat inside of he one the music is playing and will not allow anyone or anything to drag her back to the main melody. Easier by far to follow along willingly. Possibly even fun.

"What kind of person you are, what you like and what you dislike, how you compare to me. If you are a threat, and how I might kill or defeat you if you became a threat to me and mine. The price of being a famous name, Miss Thirteen Citallic. Your pathway leads you to a lot of criticism and an endless parade of strangers telling you who you are and what is the matter with you."

In this moment, the grin on her face is unmistakable. So that's what it looks like.

"And so I have come as well. Initially I thought I might sabotage your machine. Or I thought I might have someone break your legs before we could have a match. But I do not see the necessity any longer. You are... how do I put this? So you will understand? I perceive that you are a dreamer. There are things that you love, perhaps, places you would like to be, a person you would like to be with. There are things in life you would like to accomplish, before the path written in your name hits an end and you are pulled back into the universe to make more stars. In short you have dreams. Plenty of them I'm sure, and pretty enough. I will not insult them by trying to name them."

One two three and one two three and one two three four five two three, she sways not with the music but inside of it. Many of her footfalls and her slow and quiet twirls are outside of the main beat, but they match again, over and over at different points of the song that to anybody paying attention can't feel like anything but intentional. She must really love to dance if she's dug into it this deeply.

"But," she sighs, "You have no wish. There is not a single thing you would or could ask another for. Do not deny this. If I ask you why you risk yourself in this tournament, you will tell me some ridiculous story about how winning will make you the Queen of your Consortium. Absurd. Without defeating the current Queen? Without besting her in any way? Whoever's plan you might be following they are even more of a child than you are. I perceive that you are here for no reason. None at all that may be granted by the powers that dwell here.

"That is why your matches have no spark. Your technical ability is unchartable, I think it goes, but your fights are lazy and boring. You move from an assumption of superiority and so dismiss your opponents out of hand before you've met them. That is why you are caught off guard so frequently. It is why your Queen is lecturing you, like I am, instead of praising your record."

She squeezes a little bit harder, pulls a little more insistently to continue the dance where she seems to be thinking it will try to end. She cuts off the first retort by standing on her tiptoes and touching her forehead and the flower crown resting on it to Isabelle's lips. Hold two three and one two three and go two three four five. She shrugs.

"I am not here to insult you. I am not. I am simply stating that you have dreams but no wish. I find this superior to a wish with no dreams: it is an important distinction that you should remember. And so I am no longer interested in defeating you. In fact, I have come to offer you my wish instead. Ah, look at me! So transactional just now, just like in your animes! This is very fun, may we continue the dance? There is a lot that I can teach you in a. Very. Short. Time."

Breathless Dead

Ember's scent is never far from her nose. After all, Mosaiac has smeared it across almost every rock and blade of grass and grain of sand she's ever crossed. It doesn't linger long, at least not recognizably but the memory clings forever.

Ember gives off what could very generously be described as a bouquet of aromas. The soil caked into her clothes, the mortar under her nails. The smoky, just-burned tinge in her fur, the brine in her hair. The heady musk of her pack all over her, every smell but Gemini's. The salt and the steel and the faintly sweet-ish trace of old meat. But the most special part of all, the part that makes the smell Ember's and nobody else's, and the part the most concerted efforts of the Silver Divers and their little training techniques could never quite bury, is the smell of roses.

Holding her is like lifting a garden to the sky. She is everything in Bitemark and more than could be contained in the vast seas beyond it. She is elementally beautiful, which is why her scent is everywhere. It is here, too. Mosaic has held the little Ceronian in the same spot she holds this jaguar now, hearing her name moaned in the same tiny, desperate voice. She closes her eyes and drinks the air around her. She can almost, almost smell roses on the rubble.

But there are new things here as well. The sharpness of freshly shattered stone and flecks of acid where Stone Tribe claws had begun to worry at it. Churned grass kicked up in great clods by the power of her descent. The ocean, new fur that has never known sweat, and the very particular tang of brass that is almost as wonderful as music.

There is weight in her arms, and a lightness in her chest. Mosaic's muscles tense and coil, but do not strain. Her fingers find the back of this helpless sniper's neck, and she bends her claws toward delighting the spine into shuddering, full body tingles. There is a smile on her lips, and victory in her teeth.

Everything is stillness, the quiet of the world in the moments after battle, except for the two of them. Memories jump like lightning across her mind with every fresh touch, and every one of them brings that little trace of rose to the tip of her nose, the taste to the back of her tongue. The feeling of fur on fur and sharp edges made soft again with nothing but the curling of her arms. Tails entwining, and the sound of her own name in her ears like a prayer to some forgotten god.

Mosaic's body is soft. Her breasts are pillows for a weary, defeated head. Her arms are a blanket. Her breathing is steady. The heat of her body is the sun, the motion of her fingers the sea, and her eyes the stars. She could stay like this forever. She could drown in pleasure and victory and chase her little Ember through her memories until the mountain crumbled down around her forever and Beri and Rosedam became nothing but forgotten fragments on the edge of reality.

If only it was just a little bit stronger. If only the work was not so important, there might be time. She sighs, and plants a kiss on her defeated friend's forehead.

"Yes," she purrs, "That is my name. Now give me yours."

Even still, she does not relent. Her legs are valleys that split the sky and earth and beg for some brave adventurer to map them, to know every delight and secret. But when they shift and part, it is only to turn around and face the mountain one more time. A sigh builds inside her throat. The song is ending. The scent of the world is just itself again. And there is so much to be done.

"And then tell me: up or down? Are you gonna go back to your work, or stay and help with mine?"

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)