Tatterdemalion

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Dolly!

Valynia knew what she was doing, marking her prize. It meant that even though she could toss said prize to the jackals, she could reel the prize back in. Getting too fresh with the new meat would be an implicit challenge to Valynia (probably the name, based on context, based on compliments, based on comments while she was being squeezed and weighed up). So she’s spared her most lurid scenarios of what might happen with eight Hybrasilians, two aliens, and a captured high priestess.

But when she’s sat down, she’s still huffing hard through that red scarf, and her hair is frizzing in her face, and she smells like half a dozen pirates cheekily getting their scent all over her. Her eyes are a little unfocused, and they widen when the soup comes in front of her.

Oh. Of course. They have to prove that they can handle the heat, because that’s how they maintain their face among their peers. And if you complain, you might get nothing.

All eyes are on her as Valynia ties the scarf around her throat and tucks it neatly behind her. Even more marking, more claiming, more attempts to provide her with what Jade can give her in spades. (Except Jade won’t give her half a dozen pirates rubbing their cheeks on her while she squeaks, won’t give her the taste of new cotton in her mouth, and won’t make her parade around a brand for everyone to see.)

She picks up the spoon. Puts the spoon down. Brushes her hair out of her face one-handed, ignoring the pirate who whistles and asks if her highness needs a fancier spoon. Freezes as Valynia drags her fingers through her hair, hits a knot, tugs just a little bit. Feels her scarf-covered throat exposed, a flash of yellow above the red.

“Go ahead,” Valynia says, tying a ribbon into her curls. “Unless it’s too much for you~?” Implied in the trill: an amused threat. Things will get worse if she refuses the soup, not to punish her but because Valynia is playful. Dangerously playful. Not constrained in the ways that even Jade is.

“You’d be surPRIsed,” Dolly says, her voice cracking like frost under her feet in the pre-dawn morning during that one really cold winter snap. Her fingers are already most of the way to her mouth by the time she checks herself, which has the small-spotted gremlin sitting on the table to her left going into hysterics. To salvage the situation, Dolly bravely stuffs a mouthful of soup into her mouth.

And then her nose starts running.

“Mmm! Mmmm!!” She sticks the spoon messily back into the soup and starts waving it in her face as her tormentors burst out into a cacophony. It’s so hot! It’s so hot! It takes a moment for the mouth to catch up! And then it’s!! Would Angela burst into flames if she had this??

“Awww, good girl,” Valynia purrs, dragging her claws up the back of Dolly’s neck in a way that makes her bang her knee into the table because there there there that’s where Jade lingers, too, and thank the goddesses that the table’s thick and the soup’s barely disturbed.

To her credit, she makes it halfway through the soup before she’s too much of a mess in every direction to finish. And to Valynia’s credit, she only threatens to soak her gag in the leftover soup.

And to Dolly’s credit, again, she is keeping the intense, intense forbidden moans under control. No making just-for-Jade noises in front of a room full of pirates watching her and making fun of her but in a way that’s much more visceral and, and hot, maybe because Jade’s going to come and pluck her away from Valynia once she’s finished her seduction of the mean rude handsy possessive (possessive, oh no, mmmpfh) pirate intent on embarrassing her in front of a bunch of other pirates, but in a way where she insists on having control and being the final authority on how far Dolly gets pushed, and the kittenish ribbons in her hair, and the occasional tug on the scarf, and let’s be honest, the soup isn’t the only reason her face is on fire.

(But Jade will harbor no competitors. Even if she needs Dolly to be a seductress, right here, right now, somehow twisting Valynia around her little finger, which would probably be easier when she’s not got her nose stopped up and her eyes full of spicy tears, because she doesn’t look seductive at all, and that’s ridiculously unreasonably distressing— even if that’s so, at the end, Jade will still take her treasure back. And that treasure needs to protect her heart so that she doesn’t prove unfaithful, even while she is, tactically, being a seductress.)

If Dolly was cool, she would have told Valynia to “save the leftovers.” That would have been so cool, so composed, and she’s going to be so angry when she realizes she should have said it later tonight. What she ends up saying is more like “I’b forry, I can’f, I can’f, pleaff…”

[Dolly is Smitten with Valynia hitting her guiltiest pleasures, now that she’s lowered her emotional defenses on her Holy Mission. She also rolled a 6 on eating hot soup, but as that is not an actual move, she gains no XP.]

---

Smokeless Jade Fires!

Upside-down. The whole world is upside-down. This minx, this diva, this legs-and-stretches, this fish-climbing-waterfall, is telling a story even harder than Jade herself can. Is. She could. She’s just worried, is all. Hot flashes of arousal. Mewls melting into a thick mouthful. Eyes on her, eyes on her, eyes on her.

The thing is Jade that Jade knows this story Jade~ or this kind of story oh, oh, Jade~! and this one is dangerous, snakewise, a coil of rope. The one she needs. The one she needs.

She pounces. The arc of it, the shape of it, is awkward. And when she has projected herself close, she cannot help but feel that thighs tensing she has somehow gotten it wrong. Hands on the pilot, but unsteady, tenuous. Her off arm feels full of needles.

“I shamed the Red Band. I! Out of an empty sky, my fire!” the red band, the red band, the red band— “I, struck, fell swooning— and they, shamed, stole my—“ prize “prize!”

(Not a prize. It’s the wrong word. Not won. You can’t win Dolly. Unless she’s playing for the prize every waking moment. Heap her in pleasures, rain gifts on her, beg her for the shining facet-ruby of her mouth heart.)

“I turn to you. I do not care for your peril. You will do.” Her hands are not where her hands should be. The dress is a shifting terror field of hungry dead-star-wolves. a guilty hunger for hands. “You will. I need you.”

The words hang in the air. They are crystals, glimmering, bright. Piercing.

“If I do not have her returned to me, I will die. I will devour myself and hang in an apple-tree. And if your refusal costs me her, I will drag you down myself!” down on knees and cheeks and hands “I do not bargain, daughter of Fishers, wave-dappled! I will give you what you want, because I am generous, I am indulgent, I am—“ a pleading look, a kitten’s kneading, a throbbing heat “—obeyed!”

The whole world is upside-down. The pilot-she-needs has three weapons: her impossible smile, her terrible control spike, her intoxicating dress. She is a goddess. She is drowning. She is in control. She is bones. She is to be obeyed. Her skull is set in the branches. Dolly is a fire made of hands and want.

She draws herself up, huffs, stretches arms (and arms, and arms, and still it does not help the phantom feeling, no matter how many ring her as a halo). “Beg forgiveness, and I will overlook your impudence, Whispered Promise! Deny me, and I will devour you, and the glory of my service will pass to one less suited for the task!” Her eyes are terror lights. And yet she still feels smaller than the rest, the crowd, hot, present, on all sides.

What does she want from the pilot? Immediate obedience, so that she can have her Dolly again, as soon as possible. Deference, because she is a goddess, and that is the cornerstone of her self-definition. It would be better to have asked what she does not know that she wants: someone to touch her in the ways that Dolly does not dare, to actively want her, to help her make sense of the lust roiling through her. Dangle Dolly in front of her, treat her like a goddess and claim yourself to be a myth in turn, or rather do not deny her either Dolly or divinity, and you can lead her by a leash wherever you please. And would it not be pleasing?

How can her focus be caught? Ropes, to convince her that she is held. Touches, hunger, kisses. Convincing her that she is in a story about a goddess and that it has a happy ending no matter what indignities befall her. Promising her that the only way Dolly can be saved is to follow exactly as you say. Presenting yourself as a sage, someone who knows more and whose strange commands have an underlying meaning. Or simply asking her to bless you, and to be sure that her pilot-blessings are thorough and intentional.

What does Smokeless Jade Fires come to believe you love most, Whispered Promise?

Breathless Dead

The statues are draped in night, and milk-white pearls, and the stones of the underworld. They stand guard, faceless, with their courier’s satchels hanging from one shoulder. This one covers its head with rose-colored satin; that one has blue canvas fitted tight against its frame. Beneath their eyeless watch are relics from a bygone age: untailored clothes, unfitted to a specific body, their hues and compositions permanent and unchanging.

Well, except for this dress, which changes its hue depending on where you look, from what angle. And this dress, which Dany swears is blue and Bella swears is yellow. And this, here, where— pass your hand over the sequins— there is one image, and then another. Creativity. Problem-solving. When all that creators had were base, simple materials, and so they had to use tricks to make the most out of what they had available to them.

It sprawls on and on, stairs rising into the glass-partitioned higher levels, and here and there there is a change, something different, something out-of-place: a chamber full of trays containing mechanical cartridges, a display of ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DOLLAR plates and small decorations of the Tunguska, a bubbling fountain, a room full of empty cages.

Once there were lights here, presumably. But they are all gone. It is as heaped in shadows as a Kaeri feast. It is a world of sound, and texture, and outlines provided by Auspexes. It is a world of exploration, of hide-and-seek, of sudden discovery. Not “come look at this,” but “come feel this.” And then, stepping out into the grand corridor, where faint starlight trickles through a high vaulted ceiling, and revealing what was hidden.

(The statues do not look away from their changing. They do not blush at what the girls get up to in this dark, in lace, in a fortress of last defenses. But even they can only debauch so much, these two, when there are more treasures to be found. Is this, then, yet another of the vaults of Hades?)

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Mirror!

“I told you to come as a pilot!”

The goddess is having trouble coalescing. The edges of her are blurred, wisping into fractal smoke. She is taller— no, she is cheating. Her feet do not touch the ground. They are vagueries. Nothing about her is entirely solid. Not her eyes, which are roiling molten sea-under-empty-sky-at-dusk, lit from within. Not her attire, which is halfway an archaic warrior’s regalia and halfway a pilot’s jumpsuit. Not her fingers, which have the suggestion of sharpness more than actual claws. One arm is pulling a yellow cloak in tight against her frame, curled fingers resting against her breastplate. Her tail(s?) serves as background, inkbrush smears on the world. No, the world is collapsing into smears, the light eaten by the irritation of a goddess.

“What is this? An attempt at— ah. Ah.” She sharpens perceptibly. The danger of her eyes dims. She brings the other hand up and laughs behind it. (She acted before she thought. She is not as patient and calculating as she presents herself here. Not unexpected, given her matches.) “Oh, of course. Do excuse me. I— I neglected to consider that. Of course you would. How could you not dress to please me?” The fuzziness refuses to leave entirely, but as she works herself down from her initial venting of frustration, fine details slowly begin bleeding back into existence.

The hand lowers. (The one that does not hold the cloak. The one that does not correspond to her idol’s missing limb.) “You look… acceptable. Whispered Promise.” (The growl suggests that is not the word that she had on the tip of her tongue. The rumblepurr of the bass, a plucked string. Fashion is a weapon and your cast has struck true.) “Yes, you will serve nicely.” (Her voice doesn’t have the reverb you’d expect from the speakers. It’s likely that she’s speaking directly into your mind; that nothing has been heard by the crew.)

She turns her head, and cold blue fires burst into life, two by two, marking a passage through the dark. The ones floating in the air are obviously marking the staircase up into her guts. It would be easier if she wasn’t cutting down the already-low ambient light.

“We leave immediately,” she declares. (As if the mecha is in fit condition to go anywhere.) “My pilot must be retrieved.” Her voice is a husky, staggering scrape against steel. She desperately does not want you to ask questions or to ask what is making her so full of tension. Both kinds of tension. The anxious kind and the fun kind. (She is aroused and thinks she can hide it from you if she keeps you running after her commands, too eager for headpats to question her. As if she can simply outrace the Whispered Promise who thought herself greater than a goddess, in need of a handicap to be on an even playing ground.)

---

Dolly!

Her? Really? Her??

But it’s a sweep. Like pushing furiously on a door to keep it shut, only to have the person on the other side jump back and let you swing the door out from behind you, knocking yourself onto the ground in the process, and this is a good analogy even if most doors do not in fact work like that, because the moment when pushing stops being a challenge and instead becomes dangerously easy, when your feet slip out from under you and your stomach lurches, is exactly how Dolly feels as it sinks in that Jade… wants her to succumb. Or, no, it’s like sitting at dinner and feeling very good for refusing to even look at the sweet dumplings you want, only for your big sister to scold you and tell you that until you eat those dumplings, you don’t get to leave the table, because it was making her feel good, struggling and being such a good girl and being so tough and strong and refusing to succumb to temptation, only to have Jade push her with murmurs and a plumping-up of her chest, which means that… she’s… supposed to. succumb. to the temptation. And the fact that she feels so much confusion counterbalances the excitement, so it’s definitely not, absolutely not her assuming… not when she’d been so good!

She lies very still, not squirming, even though it takes so much concentration, even though the scarf is tugging up against her nose with every inhalation, even though her mind is going to go pop like a bubble if it works itself up any more. Then, obediently, tip of her strapped-down tail curling, she nuzzles her mouth against those fingers, letting out a soft, stuffed mrrrrp.

Oh, nyo, you got me, she tries to say with no way to use her body to explain for her, just drooly chirps and tiny purrs and this little bit of head movement. Please, tell me more about the city you’re going to found for my goddess. I’m such a good girl. Surely good girls don’t have to be tied to beds? Surely good girls can privately work on seducing their captors on behalf of their goddess without having it dragged out in front of a bunch of rude, rowdy, handsy pirates? And surely you won’t make following my girl—my—my goddess’s orders absolutely mortifying??

Because, pirate-whose-name-she-doesn’t-even-actually-know-and-who-she-just-thinks-of-as-hot-handsy-disrespectful-pirate, she. She forgot. Where she was going with this. But you don’t know what you’re getting into! Sure, she somehow accidentally seduced… is that how seduction works? If you’re just living your life and your goddess falls in love with you for some reason without you ever being aware until she kidnaps you? But now, oh, now she is going to be! Intentional! So you might as well give up! As soon as you help her up from the bed, even if she has to hop, she’ll seduce the heck out of you! With! Her eye flutters that you just can’t see behind her sunglasses! And her wide range of noises that she can make with her mouth full! And her… jiggles… in skimpy outfits… you know, if you have any around! You might as well convert right now, it’s basically inevitable! She’ll even! If she has to! You know! Show you what she’s learned from Jade! In bed! So there!!

(The thought of working over a hot, bossy pirate for an expectant Jade nearly makes her inhale her gag stuffing.)

[Dolly. Dolly, Dolly, Dolly. You still have -2 to Entice. 6, sweetie.]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

That little nugget of Blue Lore is something 3V seizes upon. Oh, she does not say. Oh, she does not say. Blue (teasy, conflict-demanding, interesting Blue) is the one who wishes she was not human. What does that say about who she was before? Not romanticizing the digital nature of being an android (the way that Green does), but a body she used to have. And that’s hashtag relatable. Every change you make to your body, isn’t there a part of you that wonders whether you made the right choice at all?

Particularly because, for November, it wasn’t a choice at all.

She lets the statement hang in the air. It’s very tempting to deflate it. She’s got a line on the tip of her tongue, a quote that’s close, but it wouldn’t serve any purpose but to briefly trigger dopamine for referencing a thing. So she lets it hang. Then she gives November’s shoulder a squeeze.

“Everything is hard. That’s why we’ve got to stick together, especially when the rent is due.” And that shakes a thought loose, clattering down her spine. “Speaking of— Euna, I need to ask you a few questions. There’s something that’s been nagging at me lately, and I’m trying to tug at it, see if there’s anything on the line. Do you have a moment to talk about real estate? Because I gotta know how you got the property in the first place.”

Breathless Dead

Amphitheaters

Down in the dark, in the mouth of death.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Dolly!

Sure, the Banders did tear the purse out of her hands. Certainly, it’s why she’s strapped down very securely to the bunk right now, only able to move her head and flex her extremities. And, admittedly, it might not have done much. But the sound of the purse smacking into the side of the pirate’s head had been so, so deeply satisfying. That was something she could hold onto. A little defiance. A little bit of heroism. Because everything else suggested that she was helpless, doomed, and out of her depth.

This wasn’t even her first kidnapping! Jade had insisted on having her snatched up off the street by the huntresses who had first seen her and heard her demands, her first requirement from the world: bring me Dolly! But this was different, because she had a frame of reference. She knew who these pirates were, sort of, and they were much more interested in her.

Or, well, at least one of them was.

Maybe this wasn’t so different, if you ignored that Jade had been watching her all this time, and this pirate had known her for, what, a few days? Unless she’d been spying for longer? Unseen, covetous, just like Jade, trying to be the flesh-and-blood answer to the goddess— but if that was the case, surely she could do better than this. This was just…

What’s the word for it? Ticklish. Making her fruitlessly strain against the straps, trying to get away from the claws running furrows through her skin like animals chasing each other through a hydroponics field, unable to squirm away. Helpless. Her toes curling and her heart racing. A voiceless, shapeless tension building inside of her. Glaring through chic sunglasses because Jade isn’t silly. She’s the furthest thing in the world from silly. Insult her, sure, whatever— but don’t you dare, you handsy flustering tantalizing smugly grinning pirate, insult her goddess!!

(How fragile is Dolly’s defiance? Even she doesn’t know. It hasn’t been tested yet, pushed, beyond making her melt in public. Her captor probably hasn’t even thought about what she could tempt Dolly with. Not like Jade, so thoughtful, so indulgent. Anything that’s working for Dolly, at least thus far, seems to be just a coincidence, something that this arrogant Bander happens to enjoy herself. And nothing she’s done is something that Jade couldn’t do.)

So unseen glares, and helplessly heaving breaths, and wet, angry mewls through that scarf, are all the order of the day, even as she struggles and fails to squirm underneath those maddening claws. Not yet afraid, and not yet tempted.

---

Smokeless Jade Fires!

The holiness of her fills the idol. A hundred eyes open and stare, all throughout its systems. Instant comprehension. The arm feels odd, this time: a dull ache, a soreness when she tries to move it. But she still has her own. Removing parts from the idol does not strip her of what she is.

Her Bride is gone. None of the eyes can see her waiting for her goddess’s return. Her tail wraps around one leg, pulling tight. When she closes her eyes and reaches out for Dolly, something is—

wrong

“Where is Dolly? Where is my Bride?” Her voice echoes through the hangar, over the sound of drills and hammers and torches. Akar? No. It cannot be Akar. The trace of claws through fur. Dolly’s voice, deliciously, achingly muffled. Incoherent words, a honeyed tone. Defiance. But distant, far distant, through curtains, through interference, and no matter how she screams, her sleeve will not respond.

Something is wrong something is wrong something is wrong. She needs a pilot. A failsafe. Someone who can join her in battle against whatever star demon stands between her and her Dolly (because the idol was built for a pilot, because interfacing with the idol directly is clumsy and unacceptable, because these goddess-slaying weapons exist and her Dolly must be recovered). Ksharta? (no, what if she is not ready, what if she is overwhelmed, what if she is HURT) unsuitable. Angela, not yet broken in. Likely to fight, to be stubborn. Who could possibly be skilled enough to be worthy of piloting alongside the goddess, but be disposable enough that Jade would feel no hesitation in putting her in danger? Who is here now, who can be called at a moment’s notice?

The tease. The pilot. The off-marked. Talented. Unbeaten in the tournament. A stranger, but one who owes Dolly a kindness.

---

Mirror!

Whispered Promise.

The hangar is moodily lit. The mecha is half-covered by a vast tarpaulin, draped like a cloak. Indicator lights pulse; it is drawing in power. Guzzling it.

Present yourself before me as a pilot. Speak of this to no one; destroy this. You will be rewarded as I deem fit, until you are satisfied.

Terse, hand-delivered from Seven Quetzal’s team to your own, printed out on stock. Characteristic of the haughty goddess who has won two matches, one by the barest claw— and has just received a humiliating, scandalous draw.

Is this an audition? A divine booty call? The latter seems unlikely; gossip would have informed you that she approaches other pilots through her own. But perhaps she is looking to level up. To discard the pilot who failed her. Is that what you have come to see, Mira? To see if Smokeless Jade Fires thinks she can steal you from the God-Smiting Whip?

Cameras gleam in the half-light. Something that calls itself a goddess is watching you. Present yourself, and you will be offered a bolt of memory weave. (Not a glove, like the cute jaguar priestess wears. A very recent purchase, from the looks of it. Never used before.)

You are summoned. But the power of the response is yours.

[Smokeless Jade Fires has attempted to use Same Wavelength to inhabit Dolly’s senses, and has failed with a 6. Why? And how does this make their position more perilous?

As a consolation, she ticks to 5 XP and picks up Help Me~~! for both of them. But mostly Dolly.]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

“Everyone’s having a lovely time, aren’t they, Dolly?”

The pirate squeezes her tighter, closer. Dolly’s heart is racing; she awkwardly pushes against the oddly familiar assailant. It’ll come to her in a moment. With a condescending click of her tongue, the pirate (the same one from the bay, the one who pounced on her, how dare she) hip checks her against a clothes bin, leverages her position, pins her in place. One hand squeezes stuffed cheeks, fingers dimpling the scarf, just like she’d done back in the hangar. If she could just wiggle out, she’d be out of the aisle. She could run for it. Go for help.

“But that’s because this is the easy way,” the leopard says, tilting Dolly’s face up. Dolly glares furiously through sunglasses knocked askew, puts her hands on the Bander’s stomach and pushes uselessly, feels the hip grind into her stomach. She can’t even make a sound. Her breath is gone, and she’s panting into the scarf, feeling it flutter against her nose. “You and me are going to have a walk, girlfriend.” She cups Dolly’s chest, squeezes, grins at the way Dolly’s eyes widen and at the sharp inhalation through the scarf. “Nobody needs to get hurt. All these shoppers, having a nice day out… you wouldn’t want us to have to bring them along, would you?”

Her gold tooth is so arresting. A flash of metal in a hungry smile. “Because then we’d have to make such a mess. Then we’d have to sort through them, figure out who’s worth keeping, set price tags… but you don’t want that, do you?” Her head is turned from side to side, jostling her sunglasses more. The Terenian is keeping an eye out at the end of the aisle. Nobody’s coming to help her. “Not when we could have such a nice night in. So behave and everybody wins, and they all get to go home tonight.”

There’s no way of knowing how many Banders are here. There’s no way of knowing if they would take half a shopping mall prisoner to be ransomed off or added to their collections. But more than that, the thought of panic, chaos, innocent bystanders getting caught in the trap they’d laid for her…

“So are you going to be a good girl, Dolly dearest?” The Bander’s voice drips with venomed honey, drizzling all over Dolly. A thumb presses firmly against her swaddled lips. One leg threatens to buckle underneath her. Her ears flatten, and her treacherous tail curls between the pirate’s taut thighs.

“yhff,” she says, small and cute, most of the sound swallowed up by her gag. Her hands droop, and she tucks them in close to her chest, fingers tugging at the taut fabric. She wants to be a good girl. And if the only way to protect everyone here is to not make a scene, then she’ll be meek, and obedient, and quiet.

(How long was the leopardess planning this? Since before they met? Or was it having Dolly underneath her that made her have to do this? Was it even her plan? Was this punishment from Erys for humiliating her?)

The leopardess slides the sunglasses back up Dolly’s nose, hooking them properly behind her ears. “See? You are a good girl, Dolly. We’re gonna have so much fun~” She pushes a purse into Dolly’s hands, closes her fingers around the handles. “Now don’t let go of that. If you let go, even for a moment, I’ll brand you.”

Outside, there is sunlight shining through glass and the babble of fountains. There are kids running around, shrieking, giggling. Two students on leave sit on a bench and eat ice cream together. A fellow jaguar works on something behind the panel of a storefront’s display. The Bander nods to a fur-painted tiger flicking through purses across the walkway and squeezes Dolly’s hip, followed at a careful distance by the Terenian.

There are multiple Banders here, Dolly notes, and they’re casually falling in line as the leopard passes by (making her some sort of lieutenant, maybe even the pirate queen herself??). She catches glimpses out of her peripheral, on the left side, because the right side is just the leopardess, midriff bared, jacket unzipped, the subtle muscles firm when she pulls Dolly closer. Nobody else knows what’s happening. Nobody knows she’s being kidnapped by pirates. Nobody even knows she’s completely, totally gagged. The Bander, her kidnapper, is slowly kneading her hip, and an insistent throbbing is making itself known in a way that makes her shamefacedly lower her ears even deeper into her hair.

It feels like everybody is looking at her. Like she might as well not even be wearing the scarf, or her top, for that matter. That everybody thinks she’s easy. Strutting around, pretending to be a pirate’s girlfriend, melting into her side, hands in front of her clinging to the purse, and every time she feels it slip against her sweaty fingers, she clenches tighter and tries not to imagine a pattern worked into her fur by the sting of a brander slowly burning hairs down (like Jade has done for her before, Jade, Jade)— on one breast, or right above her tail, or just above her increasingly, distressingly wet—

“Here’s our ride, Bride,” her kidnapper says, and then lowers her head, and she doesn’t figure out what’s going on until it’s too late. Lips, pressed against the scarf; lifted up by the hip, until her feet are barely on the floor. The pirate’s tongue squirms out between her lips, and the squeal is only for the two of them, because someone’s going “aawwwww” in the background, and she’s such, she’s so, she’s fighting not to wrap her legs around this pirate because of how embarrassed, how humiliated, how dominated she is, and she brings one hand up just to touch—

The purse handles slip from her clumsy fingers.

Her heart stops cold.

“What did I tell you~?” The hot breath washes over her face. Someone claps for the chivalrous leopardess, already bending down, hooking her girlfriend’s purse with one claw, helping her take it back. The temptation to bolt and run is screaming in the back of her head.

But she’s protecting everyone here. Jade would understand. Wouldn’t she? So she pretends to be a bashful little sillyhead (which isn’t hard), hiding her face in her shoulder, wagging her tail, praying that she looks like a butterfly-brained girl in love, aware that now the leopardess, her kidnapper, can rub her face in this, too, can point out how eager she must be, how excited, how ready to be kidnapped.

When she gets in the waiting shuttle and out of sight of innocents, this pirate had better have backup, because Dolly’s going to brain her with the purse if someone doesn’t grab her immediately. Yes, even though her kidnapper is strong, and rude in a way that is secretly really doing it for her, and is promising to treat Dolly to her darkest fantasies made real. And isn’t that pathetic? That she’s not dreaming of escape so much as she is showing her kidnapper that she’s not a simpering, helpless, defenseless prize? Terror and arousal embrace each other and kiss (with squirming tongues) as she is pulled into the waiting, yawning mouth of the Red Band, already gagging on its hot and heavy breath.

---

Here, then, the parliament settled in the branches of the apple-tree, and picked the bones of the goddess clean; and beneath was shining stone, the flesh of the gods. The red lacquer they poured down her grinning throat; greedy she guzzled. The drink of Grandmother Hunger they offered her there, where her firefly-flickering bones hung in the tree.

Then the owl on the branches, whose name was Rojja, said: let her be crowned again. For she has come by the road that is white, and by it she must return. The mirror they hung before her, that she might count her countless teeth. This, then, was a sign given to her, for the owls protect those who come and go. The crown of plumes they placed upon her head; her bones they wrapped in the soft flesh of the papaya, as the first children of mud and reeds were by their Mother.

Then Rojja spread white-spotted wings before the apple-tree, and performed the dance of the worm and the grasshopper. The goddess leapt from the embrace of the branches, and chased Rojja this way and that, drooling the red lacquer. This she left as a trail for any who have the eyes to see, lost in the dark.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

“I haven’t even had the full-spectrum experience,” Threevee says, stepping in smoothly. “It’s sort of like how you’re a different person around different friends, but more literal. It’s also,” she continues, wrapping an arm around White’s shoulders and giving a comforting squeeze, “an amazing way to get to know someone. Every part of November is wonderful, and I think you in particular should meet Pink sometime; she reminds me of Sara at her best.”

And a little bit of you, she doesn’t add. The willingness to be silly; the sudden intense focus on things that most other people would let slide. The joy. That would be too sappy.

“Actually,” she adds, turning to Dess, turning on the smoulder just a little bit: “why don’t we set up a full-spectrum date sometime? I promise I can take it. <3”

Breathless Dead

The seat divider was in the way. Bella fixed that. Now there was just one seat, with a little dip in the middle, and the two women shared it. One bucket, too, full of the wisps of grave-food, shared between the two as if it were Zeus’s jar of fortune.

It had been difficult to find a real love story. Most performances had a moment or two, a kiss at a moment of danger, but that was all, and that certainly would not do for Bella’s purposes! Not if Dany had anything to say about it. Which meant, well, marching along, trying to find anything marked with a sign of Aphrodite. There was that one hopeful one, about the girls who fought for love, but a real one had been requested, and so they continued on their search for love, hand in hand.

(The more she stroked her thumb along Bella’s knuckles, the tighter Bella held onto her, as if afraid Dany would let go. So Dany kept doing it.)

Then, oh, that helpful shade! The perfect performance, right this way, ladies! It didn’t make much sense at the beginning, up until Bella realized that they were just showing opening acts, and tossed puffs at the screen, demanding they begin the real performance at once instead of showing them improbable chariots and previews of other stories.

And then the show really started, and somehow, Redana ended up snuggling against Bella while watching the story of a princess who meets a rascal from her home country while traveling. They bicker and go through misadventures, realize they have only fallen in love when they have bid each other farewell, the rascal must follow her back to their native country to win her family’s approval before she is married off, and the songs, ah! She can’t help but hum along and wiggle closer.

Everything’s going to turn out right in the end. It has to. It’s this sort of story, where love overcomes everything. Good hearts found in unusual people. That’s been the story she’s been in all along, hasn’t it? Vasilia, Dolce, Alexa, Lacedo, Mynx, Epistia and Beljani, and…

And her Bella.

Fingers interlace. Hand in hand. The touch of her soft fingers, the prick of her sharp ones. Each one hers. Each one loved. Bella, Bella, Bella.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

The loneliness is there the whole way to Akar Prime. Her fingers run nonsense traces on her mesh sleeve until she starts to worry that she’ll somehow rub right through it, that it will unspool underneath her touch and fall apart. But it won’t. Because Jade— the part of her that inhabits the AI, that infuses it with her essence— Jade is alive. Jade is safe. Jade is…

Not with her right now. For the first time in… well, since forever. Even when Jade’s busy, she’s just a prayer away, and the sleeve’s not so much a piece of clothing as a piece of her at this point. It’s what lets her feel Jade curling up against her at night, what lets her share her whole world with her goddess, and being without, being separated, is an ache.

But Jade is alive. Jade is not hurt. Jade should probably reinforce the storage cores. But not divest herself. The thought of Jade pulling away, shedding the body that she dwells within, is intolerable. Maybe she’s selfish, but it’s true. That indwelling is probably why she’s so present in the world, and that idol is the only thing worthy of being infused with her power, so if she left… she’d be more distant. Wouldn’t she?

But her spirit dwells inside of her body, too. And if that body is pampered enough, maybe she’ll be better able to hold onto the fact that Jade will be back, and she’ll actually be able to enjoy some enforced alone time. For such a reason, her first stop on Akar Prime is a Hybrasilian full-service spa.

Soaking in warm water. Having perfume massaged into her fur. A hair trim and oil treatment. The hot stones and the cold stones. Her blinks are long and slow, and the contact with spa staff helps soothe the feeling that she’s alone, more alone than she ever was in university, with her sister and friends all around her. The body is treated to luxury, and the mind is pulled into the pool to relax.

She’s even able to smile by the time she leaves and makes for her next stop in the mall: the fabrics emporium. Well, intended to be her next stop. First, she stops by a little stall and buys broad-lensed sunglasses with a tortoiseshell frame; she stops in a store that sells Terenian sun hats, and picks one out with flowers all along the crown; she ducks into a lingerie store and comes out with some surprises for Jade, adorable and lacy and slim enough to be worn under flight suits; she applauds a Zaldarian musician playing some sort of lap-based string instrument, and leaves a tip; she eyes a mint dispensary and rocks on her beans until an employee makes eye contact and she scampers away embarrassed. She even stops to dart into a computer cafe and sends Ksharta and Angela messages, asking her fellow harem members if they’d like to get dinner, no pressure, but she’d love to see them tonight?

The thought of nuzzling the screen makes her feel vaguely ridiculous. Besides, she’ll get to nuzzle them in person (if they show up, which she hopes they will, even without Jade’s presence).

Despite those thoughts, perhaps because of them, by the time she makes it to Staszk and Jessica’s, she’s humming snatches of Blue Rain Dance, tote bags dangling from her forearm as she flits from dress to dress, display to display. Ribbons, for her hair, and to tease Ksharta with; a shawl, intricately inlaid with long-tailed Terenian myth-birds; athletic shorts tailored for Hybrasilian physiques, and—

The top is black. The cobalt is paint stamped onto the top, and its messiness is part of the aesthetic point. Beneath the idol’s head, in profile, is simply: Overcome Everything. The fabric stretches enough that she’ll have no problems with it, even if the head might end up a bit distorted.

She puts one hand to her mouth. Sniffles a little. Her tail swishes like she’s an overstimulated kitten. Then she takes it, stuffs it in her bag, and scampers over to the changing stalls in the back of the store.

---

The game is the game. The yoke settles about the hips; the bracers are oil-shining. The ball that the gods use is a painted skull. Sharp its teeth, deadly its bite. Its name is Eight Black Death.

Dishai served then the ball to the yoke of the goddess, and where it struck the ground, it crashed about the entire court, howling and biting. Light her feet; quick her leaping.

And did you learn this from your doll, Manikin, asked Dishai. Strike the ball, show us your yoke-skill. Do you show us Irtana’s first avoidance? Do you not wish to play the game?

The goddess bared her teeth; the goddess stood her ground. Before the eyes of the Grandmothers she would not show fear; before the assembly of the gods she would not be shamed.

Thus she was defeated.

By the yoke was she thrown across the ball court; by the yoke did Dishai undo her. Deep within her lodged the teeth, and her bones were sent shivering across the court. By this means did the goddess of the high mountain and the avalanche subdue the goddess.

Yet still the bones leapt up and formed her form again, and at this defiance, Dishai relented. Even dolls strive, Dishai said. Will you yet save yours, doll-of-dolls? Mu Ysha smells her incense burning on the ships; Irtana wears her peril-face. If you do not protect your doll, you will be condemned to the Six Dreadful Houses while you yet live.

So saying, she plucked up the goddess and hung her in the branches of the apple-tree, to serve as a lesson to those who came before and those yet to come.