Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

Rise and fall. Rise and fall. Lift and swing. Flick. Pant. Lift... and swing.

For a while there, the journey spooled out to her schedule. She pushed herself up to the brink and then would call for a stop, for pacing in place, rotating her arm, taking water passed up the line. The dead, spiteful crunch under her boots. The netting lying on her limbs, caught in place just below her chin. The whisper of hot breath, as if the nettles were alive, were resentful, were wishing them all ill. If they were to turn around (but of course they cannot turn around) maybe the nettles would have closed up behind them, netting them in place, knotting them in place. Brown and black and muddy pink.

She is a direction two-in-once. She is forwards, never backwards, stumbling forward even though her body is aching, even though the burrs are getting everywhere, and the poor lamb is going to need a shearing, isn't he? Keep going. If she stops, really stops, she'll be too tired to keep on. It'll be too tough to get up. That's what her body is telling her. Just keep going forward. Don't fall asleep among the thorns. This is like... it's like something. She's been tired like this before, hasn't she? Somewhere. Circles. Was she running in circles? Round and round and round. It slips through her thought like smoke and is gone.

But she is also towards her. She orbits her like a satellite. The beautiful tributes, the raiment of a queen-in-exile. And yet, and yet! Her body is a thunderbolt, is a wonderful thing just like hers. They're two parts of the same movement, and even if she insists on eating all standing up and glancing towards the green-pole-speckled horizon, it's her that lets her come close enough to stillness to be able to slip back out of it. After all, it's not like Alexa's there to carry her.

What an odd thought.

Alexa: (n), the idea of being carried in safety, of resting your head against a shoulder and feeling the steady pace of footsteps, not jarring, not timid. The number four? Four corners? A square? A square, then. Geometry-security.

I'll Alexa you, she tries to explain, through a mouthful of sweet apples. I'll do it. Just watch me!

Breathless Dead

Of course she was the first one to find them. She has been insatiable. Like a hound-servitor trapped indoors, staring out the window, yearning to run. So she does. She runs. She climbs. She clambers. Yes, she clambers— up and down and over. She is, ostensibly, a scout. What she is more often is an adventurer. The nature of this valley is such that wherever she goes, she can look around and find something new, interesting, intriguing, underneath a shining pink sky.

It must be what she was made for. Her sword swings in a scabbard slung over one shoulder. Her bare limbs burst with freckles. Her gloves are sure, her boots grip steady. She catches herself running her fingers over the dust-catching scarf, which feels… right. In its right place, just like she’s in hers.

When her satchel is empty of ration bars (and full of interesting rocks and sun-faded trinkets), she navigates back to… to security. To a scowl and a wagging tail-tip. Look at these stones, she offers; look at this pin for your shadow-hair, look at this scarab-ring for your soft-finger. Let me give you the way forward; let me be your guide through the valley and the mire, up the shelves and down the stairs. Just give me a kiss. Just tell me I did good. Just wear my gift, just once.

Tell me that my body is useful, and I am good at using it, and what brings me joy is worth doing.

So of course she finds them first; she approaches them with her sword in her hand, at first, and then sheathed once she comes close and sees the mania. The smiles, the sweat, the exhaustion— but without the joy. Just the obsession. Just the labor, and not for its own sake. And above them all stands Desire.

She offers her honored enemy an emphatic apotropaic gesture.

Then she is going here and there, there and here, jumping over ditches, steadying a handcart, offering a steadying hand, asking: do you want to leave? Do you want to come with us? I can’t quite say where we’re going, but it’s dreadfully important— don’t you want to come? (But wanting is the whole of it, and dooms her to failure.)

Finally, one stops, and considers a moment.

Not yet. Not after all I have done to remain. When the harvest is done, he promised… I will have my reward. Everything I ever… everything. And that is enough to drown all the rest of them. Petty. Grasping. Unworthy. I alone am worthy, was ever…

…but thank you. Good luck, and here—

They offer her the weathered cloak-clasp. Jagged Ceronian bronze, the wolf’s head over clouds (unless they are the backs of sheep). A statement, and a weapon, and an impossibility. She closes her fingers around it, and they stand a little straighter for it.

Let it see starlight again, and battle, and glory. Let the Azura remember who made them tremble. Let the universe remember me, who changed the course of stars and determined the fate of trillions with the lifting and lowering of a fan.

Their teeth flash, and she takes a step back despite herself, but, no, they are already stooping, lifting the grave-dirt onto their shoulder again. She touches the brooch to her breastbone, and presses a point into the skin, enough to dimple, as she watches the conqueror, the ruler, the insatiable, make their way up the pyramid again.

But their tail wags, tired but sure, and she clips the brooch to her scabbard. She has done what she can. Now all she can do is make it to the other side for their sake, too.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"Are you sure, High Priestess~?" Six Stones' voice is playful as she unfolds the ritual cloak in her hands, the closest item of clothing that happened to be at hand. Broad bands of color; fringed tassels whispering on her fingers. She does not yet hold it out to her superior in the cult. Rather, her eyes linger on the idol towering above the both of them, her teeth bared in amusement but her tail carefully tucked behind one ankle. Teasing, but remembering her place. Holding it just out of reach, to make it so that Seven Quetzal has to choose to come and take it.

"Why wouldn't I be?" Dolly sputters, not quite sure where she wants to put her hands. There's a lot of her to cover up, and she's blindingly aware of the burnt mark in the fur on her shoulder, so close to her neck, the rabbit in the huntress's teeth, and, and, the thing is, she's been in this situation before. This exact situation. Minus the pirates, minus the stares, but... she likes to play, and Jade likes to see her squirm, and she's been paraded out before the cult wearing nothing before. It's just that everyone else could still see her clothes, then, and she could just enjoy the thrill of experiencing public nudity without, actually, you see, subjecting everyone else to it. The plausible deniability, the attempt to hide what only she's experiencing, the...

The Jade. The Jade part of it. That's important, too. If she were to lift her hands over her head and try to tell the engineers who follow her goddess to drink in the view, she'd feel selfish, demanding, dangerously audacious. Vulnerable. If anyone were to complain, to tell her that she was acting in an inappropriate way, that the high priestess of a goddess should conduct herself with more dignity, she'd fall apart, and not have Jade there to catch her. Jade is her safe high place, covered and unlit. In Jade, no one can see her secrets.

(But if there is anyone she would share her secrets with, it would be... Angela doesn't count, and neither does Ksharta, because she's seen it. And Valynia would just take charge like Jade does, and would, peel her, out of her, clothes, and, and then, mmfff, and she needs to practice her sacred seduction so that she can fulfill her goddess's command next time. But the cult is safe. The engineers are trustworthy. They follow her and probably don't daydream about usurping her place, and even if they did, Jade wouldn't let them, not after what she's done today.)

Her tail's tip twitches agitatedly.

"I just supposed..." Six Stones trails off, and then offers the cloak, sheepishly. Dolly steps forward, mouth dry.

"Supposed that I wouldn't want to cover myself after the Red Band tore the clothes off of me? Groped me, tied me so tight, marked me, and told me that I would be their trophy? Told how I'd be used to steal the goddess from all of you and instead make her their goddess? Mouth stuffed, mmm mmmm, unable to talk back as they, they kneaded my......." Her hands glide over the cloak, palms resting on Six Stones' forearms, as her brain blanks on trying to find a word that's not going to make her spontaneously combust. "Bosom." That was incorrect. Mayday. Help. Jade?

In the depths of the Idol, Jade stretches her jaw, lets her limbs expand to the full extent of her temple-room, still feeling more solid than she has in her entire life (outside of the underworld). Dolly is bright in her mind, but she's been that bright the entire way back. For once in her life, the goddess needs to recover, to catch her breath, to... to consider what she wants to learn from what happened. How she can take the sword that Whispered Promise knows how to wield and make it her own.

"I'm sorry," Six Stones says, and as far as Dolly can tell, means it. See? See? This is why! This is why she shouldn't! Jade would have known exactly how far to push, and Dolly would have... she would have been squirming and trying to soften that fantasy, not going full speed down the track! And now here they are, the two of them, in a tangle of paws and tails.

"Well!" Dolly says, and pulls the cloak off Six Stones' hands and around her shoulders, fumbling with the clasp. "I! Forgive you! Because you are a good girl, Six Stones, and just because! You weren't thinking, that doesn't mean, and you are very different from those pirates, all of you, and besides, I feel safe, around all of you, and..." She pulls the cloak tighter, against her, regardless of how it strains. "I don't blame any of you! Only Whispered Promise could have piloted through those dangers, and Smokeless Jade Fires chose her well! So!! I, will attend to the goddess..."

She should just leave it at that. It'd be good! She's got her way out to scamper back into Jade's arms, to hide in her safe high place, to bury her face in her hands while her goddess teases her about how badly she wanted all of her cultists to treat her just as roughly as those pirates did, and goodness, you even lied to them about how you lost the rest of your clothes? But she's still talking. Why is she still talking?

"...as soon as I have offered thanks to the goddess at her offerings. Please, join me!" She walks forward, past Six Stones, and as she does so the cloak opens ever so slightly, and it's the only thing she's wearing, and if anyone wanted to stare they, they could, in the brief flashes as her thigh pushes it to one side, and she will be prostrating herself before the idol of the goddess and her offerings, and the cloak might, it might hike up, and she doesn't know who'll be right behind her, and she's power walking to the shrine, and the cloak is the thickest and the thinnest thing in all of existence.

(Later, Jade will be with her. In the shower as she cleans herself off. Tracing the shape of the brand with one claw. Showering her back with possessive kisses and nips. Offering her whatever she needs to feel safe, protected, owned. And Dolly will fall asleep, exhausted, loved, and bound just as snugly as Valynia kept her-- no, moreso, when she wordlessly begs for more, for Jade to be even more possessive, to punish her and reward her in the same breath, to reassure her that she doesn't secretly need Valynia and those impudent, territorial, musky pirates. But that is not yet.)

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Kalaya-phraya!

“And then! And then! Who should show up but my delinquent of a little sister, dragging a poor lost priestess behind her! Can you even imagine what the poor dear must have gone through? But then the goddess sent me a message— or, at least, I thought she had, but then the fox vanished, leaving me out here, in the middle of nowhere, and it’s just so much!”

She buries her face in her hands, elbows on the table, and bawls. There’s been a lot of buildup, and she’s finally lost the last bit of her composure— one might well assume. Certainly, this isn’t ordinary priestess behavior.

“Ever since I tried to get that spirit to banish one of the rakshasa, not knowing that it was even worse, that it was base and vile and… is that it? Has the Sapphire Mother of Lotuses abandoned me? Every step of the way, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve tried to do the right thing, and… what am I supposed to do now? I’m supposed to know! That’s my job! Just like you’re supposed to be strong and do swords good and, and…”

She crams the palm of one hand against her messy face. “Don’t even look at me,” she groans, suddenly embarrassed at how completely she’s coming apart in front of the first stranger to show her kindness in… probably some time.

---

Fengye!

“I have rights,” the mud-spirit complains, sullenly. Its fists are terrible maceheads, its back hairy with roots and stems, its face a squarish approximation. “Rights to not be treated like this. I know my rights. I’ll put in a complaint. Go back to where you came from. Not here. Not our land. I have rights.”

A delicate hand briefly bursts forth from the muck and smacks its side, furiously, before being slowly dragged back in, uselessly clawing at yielding mud.

“Our Thorn Knight will fix things,” it continues. “Send them all back. All the outlanders who don’t treat us right. The Dominion and their gods, all gone. Sapphire Mother’s crown and daughter, retuned to her. Out of the way, speck. Go home.”

---

Giriel!

The warlock draws her sword. It’s a smooth whisper out of its sheath, but even a whisper can be menacing. Her breath is rattled; you’ve struck a raw nerve.

“And what do you know? Idiot witch!”

“Not an idiot,” Peregrine corrects, still behind you. “Dependable. Conservative. Not likely to help. Come on.”

“I will not be insulted,” the warlock yells, and it rhymes with the lessons she’s learned from her tutors. The Broken King cannot endure mockery or questioning. He demands subservience and respect. “Keep her name out of your mouth and get out of our way, hag!”

“Not in our… mmm.” Peregrine runs through a mystic calculation of symbolism and demonology in her head, gauging relative impact on her sorcerous project over any other concern. “No. You’re right. Demand satisfaction.”

Evidently, she thinks that having Ven back down would be bad for the purpose. If that’s the case, your intuition says that Ven losing decisively would wreck her entire project. Even odds on her being furious or simply shrugging and taking it in stride.

Ven herself is… well. Clinging to anger, embarrassment, letting her own emotional armor dig into her wounds. The comment about Kalaya really got under her skin, didn’t it?

Breathless Dead

The tent’s small. Barely fits two. The tent’s damp. Nothing really dries out here, no matter how she tries. The tent is humid. The warmth of their bodies fighting against the cooling rain on their skin, the livingness of them filling it from corner to corner.

She lies there, sometimes, for a while. Right after waking up, or just before she falls asleep. The color of the tent is blue. It is streaked like a tiger’s flanks with rain. If she reaches up, presses her fingers against it, then the water soaks through, trickles down her fingers.

This is a holy place. Here, where the air is thick and her partner uses her arm as a pillow. Here, where the only sound is rain striking the tent, the wind rippling the sides, their breathing in and out, and far-off roaring. It never lasts forever; her companion will sit up, grouse, start pulling on damp socks, start out into the light before dawn. Or she will succumb to exhaustion and sleep without dreams.

Outside the tent, the world is wet and unclean. It’s not a judgment, just a fact. Grit sticks to the fingers of her gloves. Her leggings are impossibly smeared with mud. Even where the rain kisses her, it doesn’t wash away the sweat and the grime. And at the end of the day, she enters the tent, muscles aching, fingers numb, absolutely spent, and she peels off the outer layers and drapes them over a bag, and she works her way into a different bag, and she lies there in the midst of holiness.

Once, she asks a question. Does the question itself really matter? Her companion tells her to shut up and go to sleep. She watches the rain, and listens to the rain, and says something— inconsequential. Sound leaves her.

Her partner rolls over, presses a clammy palm over her mouth, hisses. She kisses that palm and holds it close, cold fingers trying to be gentle, tracing over the knuckles. They’re holy, too.

The next morning, her lover slowly wakes, lifts her head from breastbone, yawns with a flash of white and luxurious red. Stares down. “…idiot,” she murmurs. “We’re going to be late.” But she still stoops to undo the shoelaces around thumbs, fumbles with the almost-iron knot in the kerchief.

The waiting wasn’t hard. It was holy.

On a different time— after the rain change— after, in the shadows of angles, in a tent pitched within yellow flowers—

She kisses those cheeks dry, as best she can, and holds her beloved’s head against her chest, one ear to the heart, one ear to the rain. The rumbling running through her is as beautiful as the thunder that rumbles against the top of the mountains.

This is another thing: one night she is not there, and the sound of the rain comes to find her, to come up behind her, to embrace her. She is lost. There are lights blinking up on the mountainside, red, as far away as the moon. Every step she takes leaves her just as far away. She doesn’t know what she means, and that empty not-meaning is the leash that tugs her along. It takes the sound of the rain and the thunder to take her hand and cover her eyes and lead her back to the tent, where she can sleep, where she can forget the far-off pulse of lights promising that if you come close enough, we will have a meaning, and you will understand, here, under the moon, under the stars, under no sun.

Somewhere, a crown exists only to be proof that it was forgotten. Maybe it lies, impossibly, at the base of the tower which holds the lights.

Breathless Dead

It wasn’t ever a conscious choice. Not really. It would be nice if it was, wouldn’t it? If Redana had a moment where she tried to hold onto everything, but found it all slipping out of her grasp like sand, and had to choose what was most precious to her?

No. She’s always been herself. And she doesn’t even notice what slips away. She is the strain of muscles, moving trunks out of dry-dust Plovers at awkward angles. She is the rhythm of a march back and forth, the plip-plap of feet striking the ground over and over and over as one thing after another is ferried from one place to another. She is the hand that helps lift a corner, and she is the work-song of the Coherent rippling up and down the line.

Everyone here is hers. A company, a conglomerate, a crew. The names bleed away easy. They are sensations, images, connections. A warm meal. A proud roar. Advice from below. A birdlike chirp above the crowd. The bell hanging around her throat.

Maybe it will be funny later that nobody really notices her losing her name. She’s listening for the inflection now, the attempt at getting her attention over the din of the work. She doesn’t even notice (it was so easy before, after all). It’s gone. It’s noise. It’s three syllables rising and falling. You could say anything to get her attention, sweat bleeding through her clothes, teeth flashing white through ruddy lips; she’s in the runner’s high, the elation of her body, the need to turn her shoulder to the wheel and make it turn.

Does it matter who anyone is? She holds on to what they mean. Warmth. Friendship. Loyalty.

Love.

She loves the anxious little sheep who makes sure she takes breaks, who pushes a thermos of hot tea into her travel-roughed hands, whose voice is soft and full of care. She loves the lioness who competes with her, who pushes her to work harder, who rallies labor around the toughest jobs and takes position at the front. She loves the woman with the red eye, the sternly hot one, the one who provides a rhythm to her life (a finger tapping a bell, a wagging tail, hushed laughter). She loves her companions, one and all, who she is grateful for, who are going to make it to the end together. She doesn’t need to remember who they were; she remembers who they are now.

(And by night the bells are close around her, and whisper a rising-falling-rising mantra: re. da. na. RE da NA. re-da-na. a pretty three-part meditation. It marks time when they lose themselves in the now, in the ways of move-like-this, in the mouths-and-limbs dance. A name is nothing. Wipe away all signifier and what is important still remains.)

By the time the vehicle is ready, she is the sensation of labor for others; she is the joy of service; she is the vessel of orders rung out from bells. Her colors are red and yellow; she is anxious as she watches the horizon, itching to move. She has to keep moving forward. She’s not going to give up, even if she has to carry everyone to the end. She is a sword, a wheel, a vehicle, a lover, a beast, a thunderbolt. She is all things for her companions, as necessary— and for the sound of bells most of all.

For her, anything. Everything. As long as it is not here forever.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

”Autograph? I should demand your head from your shoulders, you impudent, impious whelp!” Smokeless Jade Fires, victorious, clutches her high priestess closer to her powerful body, and rests the tip of her thunderbolt lance beneath the chin of this pirate rogue. One nail taps on the shaft as she considers venting her wrath, before she instead slips the tip past the pirate’s neck, forcing her down onto her knees.

“In fact, I think you must be shown humility. At length. You will come with us and you will take up the duties of a handmaiden for the lustrous high priestess you dared to defile with your lusty, greedy paws. You and your former tyrant queen, who I have only not destroyed in my fury because my beloved, my bride, my treasure has convinced me she is better as a dumb pack iguanadon.” The overawed pirates crane their heads past the goddess to see that pathetic little minx, hobbled and groaning under the weight of her ill-gotten goods: necklaces heaped around her neck, bags full of gold straining on her shoulders, a ruby the size of an egg strapped between her lips.

“I’m sorry for everything I have ever done to offend you and your bride,” the half-lioness cries, groveling on the floor. “Thank you for your mercy, O Strider Between The Earth And Stars!”

“Mercy? It is not my mercy,” Smokeless Jade Fires sneers, “but that of my priestess, whose kindness is as bountiful as her breasts and whose generosity overflows like her wet mouth into these unworthy rags you have crammed between her plump, mewling lips!” Dolly squeals, blushing, heart racing, kicking her bare bound feet in total flusterment. “Know that she has my permission to ravish you as thoroughly as you have molested her, that I will carry out her every desire, and that only by satisfying her can you ever hope for freedom, for I will give you no mercy but by her pleading! Now, before we embark, remove your mangy uniform. Yes, in front of your compatriots! It is time for you to learn what it is like to be humiliated, helpless, and drooled over, you wicked little slut!”

---

It would have been much better if she was the one down there, not this, this enigmatic, teasing, restrained mercenary, this hero-pilot who refused to unsheathe her claws, who is just letting these audacious and irreverent kittens prance away without a care in the world! Not even their leader, who is clearly the one pulling the strings. The brute they’d faced together? Clearly some brute of a lieutenant, meant to soften them up for a carefully masterminded plot— and now she’s free to begin scheming again!

Jade fumes, and rattles her chains, and growls under her breath. Her body (her body) throbs like Dolly’s usually does. She aches, impossibly. Her jaw strains! It has never once strained in her entire existence! Only her vast pool of experiences from Dolly reassures her that this is… natural. For someone tied up. Like she is.

Of all the ways to feel like she had a body! A thousand dooms on your head, Whispered Promise! Only to be rescinded after Dolly intercedes (at length) on your behalf!

(What would it be like, for this to be natural, to have a body? Not the awe-inspiring idol, but one that could, could feel without calculation, could release various chemicals from its pores, could hold Dolly and be held?)

Ngh. Ten thousand dooms, Whispered Promise. Half of them onerously tactile and odoriferous. And another one for each pirate you let go.

---

Whispered Promise stands at the hatch and snaps her fingers, almost smiling, and with a furious groan, Smokeless Jade Fires opens her cockpit like a good girl. She accepts them both into the space, both of them bearing her fabric, her mark of initiation into her mysteries, into the temple that Whispered Promise molded into shape. She hangs, helpless, unable to cover herself up, unable to look Dolly in the eye, fuming and seething and—

Dolly wriggles out of Whispered Promise’s arms, onto her feet. Before the hungry, lustful mercenary can catch her, she’s hopping like only someone with lots of practice can. “JDDH!!!”

And Dolly flings herself at her goddess, bouncing up as close as she can, pressing herself against Jade’s almost-body, which can’t snake around her, which can’t yield or firm on command, which can’t run simulated fingers through her fur, which has to just accept…

The feeling of Dolly pressing her soft chest up against her wiry frame. The warmth of her body, felt through the link. The strong, almost-and-should-be unpleasant smell of the lusty, sweaty pirates, the kind that she can’t properly give Dolly, not like this. The sensation of their bindings and their gags, melding together as Dolly rubs her gag-swaddled cheeks across her goddess’s face, purring, insistent, headbutting her gently, leaking muffled drooly giggles, and over their connection, Jade feels and knows:

Jade Jade Jade Jade you came for me I missed you I knew you would come Jade Jade Jade Jade pirates hot and sexy and stink horny but you you you LOVE YOU you did this for me you let her tie you up for ME because you wanted me back I’m safe I’m here I’m back I’m yours I want my scent on you I want this musk on you I want to fuck you I love you I need you Jade Jade Jade Jade Jade!!!!

And Smokeless Jade Fires, who doesn’t understand why she’s crying, rubs her cheeks on Dolly’s gag, and presses her body up against her bri— her wif— her— her Dolly, and strains against the chains and wills them to break so she can wrap herself around Dolly a hundred times— no, if it means she can have a body for her Dolly, she’ll do it the once.

But the chains don’t break, and they keep her like this. Solid. Almost real. Wet. Needy. Taking breaths of Valynia, who I couldn’t seduce for you, I tried so hard, but maybe she’ll do it again and I can practice with you, you can show me what to do, maybe she wants an exotic dancer to entertain her crew? and Milk Tooth, that’s her nickname, she’s the one who was squeezing and bouncing my breasts and left handprints all over and The One Who Looks Like A Fox whose name I don’t know but who was the one who shoved my face down her top and The One Who Kept Pinching Me And Telling Me How Sexy And Breedable Thicc(?) Girls Are and Jimmy Rat, I don’t know why that was her name(?), maybe because she smelled so strong much.

…dooms rescinded, Whispered Promise. If you take them back home. Even if you pull Dolly into your lap and make her watch the piloting. She’ll whine and beg for you to be nice, you know that, don’t you? She’ll volunteer breathlessly, wordlessly, to accept “punishment” in her goddess’s place. She’s the bravest one in the room.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

It.

It wasn't a good squeal.

Because, because it was too breathy, too wet, too earnest, too awed.

She's very sorry, Whispered Promise, you deserved a good squeal! You really did! That was, it was the best fight she's ever seen! That's how characters fight, in stories, but you're the actual thing! How could Jade, even Jade, ever--

(an indignant thrashing, drool-wetted fur, fists clenching)

...mmmmaybe Jade could. No, of course Jade would! It's just that Dolly is silly, and doesn't, can't, doesn't see how... but Dolly's not the fighter, so that's all right! That's all right?

(a chin lifted, a huff that leaves an imagined plume of hot breath, a lip pulled back from sharp teeth)

Please, Jade, she's not the fighter. That's you, Dolly thinks as hard as she can (but she gets all mixed up with that dress swirling, and, and the brand) (the brand???) oh, um, she visualized that brand too hard, didn't she, and Jade can, she's definitely feeling how Dolly's clenching her legs and, and, and Dolly is a silly little kitten trying to tuck her tail between her legs and think beggy thoughts at her incredible and powerful and temporarily inconvenienced goddess--

Whispered Promise chooses this moment to cradle Dolly in her arms, pressing that gag-buried face into her shoulder, fingers playing with the outline of the brand as if she can tell exactly what Dolly was thinking about, and her other arm's in the crook of Dolly's bound knees, and Dolly's, well, her ass is dangling without support, but that both makes her feel oh-so-helpless and thinking about it being... touched. (squeezed; hands clenching, desiring, wrists straining against chains with the NEED of it) The look that Whispered Promise gives her is impossible to read, but it makes Dolly's ears go back in mortification. Her eyes dart everywhere, trying to find somewhere safe to land, but there's absolutely nowhere, and, well...

How would it make Jade feel if she rescued someone and that someone tried to hide how they felt? If she hid her feelings (like she's sitting on the entire box of feelings about mean rude bullying possessive pirates and that's going to be a talk later)... if she hid her feelings, wouldn't that be ungrateful? Wouldn't that be unworthy of the goddess she serves and loves and is going to be reunited with, and it's Whispered Promise and her incredible swordplay to thank?

She heroically forces herself to look Whispered Promise in those watery pools (that river, that dam, that bursting, that hunger, and her toes curl and she almost looks away like a coward unable to meet the gaze of a goddess when they first met) and she mumblewhines her thanks, ears submissively low, taking deep breaths through her pirate-stinking gag, aware of how every step Whispered Promise takes vibrates through her, aware of how those teeth would feel, aware of how wet the outer layers of her gag are, aware of how even Jade was (tricked? blackmailed? defeated? for her, for her, *for her*) bound by this mercenary, this creature-of-contracts, this Whispered Promise, and names really do have power, don't they?

Thank you, she says through moans and shudders. For bringing me back to her. My Jade, my goddess, who would do anything for me. (a huff, a lifting of the chin higher, but the tip of a tail wagging, wagging, wagging) I'm helpless. But doesn't that make you want to take pity on me? (pirate-ruined clothing torn apart, peeled off, a very NAUGHTY high priestess left on full display all the way back!) Doesn't that make you want to take PITY on me, and, and my goddess, who is, is sending a lot of sensations and wants, through our connection, and that's adding to the squirming, because, being naked in someone else's arms would be a lot, Jade, and just because-- pirates-- see-- if they'd-- if they'd-- maybe Valynia, definitely maybe Valynia, and walked her around the station on a leash, and...

(the absolute damned certainty of naked torments for VERY NAUGHTY HIGH PRIESTESSES)

[Oh, Mirror, even while Insecure, Dolly's offering you a 7 on Entice. If you want. If blushy submissive kittens trying to thank you incoherently but oh-so-earnestly is your sort of thing.]

Breathless Dead

A name? If it needs a name, it is Redana's. That's the one that sticks to it. Oh, that plover? It's Redana's. She's been in its guts; she's played with its muscles and traced her fingers along its spine. It's the one she keeps mounted on the side of the bay she always uses, the one with the seat just how she likes it, the one that hums its name back into her spine. It's weathered and not ornamented, not decorated, not personalized outside of how familiar its grips are beneath her gloved hands. Redana's roars like a lion as it leaves its cables behind and falls into the sky.

It's always been this. The placid blue is unnatural, but Redana's will adjust eventually. What's one more unearthly color when it's been kissed by every one that Polychromatikí had to offer? It's always been falling, over and over, tumbling out every time into the tumult and the tempest. There's no storm that its pilot hasn't seen and then, grinning, dived into. It taps its deeper energy stores, the ones designed to let it keep a d-scythe burning as Redana makes her way up and down the Plousios.

Everything's packed, right? Bags stuffed into the floorboard, the nagging feeling that something must have been left behind, but beneath her the world opens up and the thought of turning back seems wasteful. Her seat hums in agreement. The only way is forward, to see what hasn't been seen, to discover what comes next. The wild rush beneath her (like water, like a river) is just encouragement to clench the grips tighter, to brace her feet harder against the pedals, to squeeze more speed out of Redana's until it's like she's looping the Olympic sprint over and over again, and everyone else is straggling behind, except--

Except for Bella. For a moment, she catches a glimpse of black and cyan in her periphery, and her first instinct is to bring the D-Scythe to bear, but she checks herself, and Bella crests like a dolphin breaking free from a nebula-spur, and then she tumbles back down to earth, to claw at the ground, to try to keep up. And Redana doesn't doubt her for a second, even as she rockets forward, and the entire world unfolds underneath her mountain by mountain, river by river, flag by flag, and she can go searching for quests and lost treasures later, because right now she just needs to accelerate until she's left everything

everything

everything behind her, in the trail of her thrusters, in the echo of her engine, in the wake of the prow with which she cuts into the unknown. And nobody's here to hear her laughter, nobody except for Redana's. But that's fine. Bella's keeping up. That's all she wanted in the first place, isn't it?

Breathless Dead

The dress is the deep red of rubies, or of living blood. It fountains down from her left shoulder. Beneath it, the undershirt clings to her like a second skin, black and gold. It pours itself into the grooves of her shoulders and her back.

At the shoulder, a brooch gleams: the thunderbolt of Zeus, swan-winged. It blazes where the lights strike it, limned in gold, shining adamant. It is the shadow of the tiara on her brow. If you could catch starlight, hammer it into place, make it cool until it hardened, and then string it on lace— that would be the tiara of Redana Claudius.

Here, then, is the prize of Odoacer. Here is the daughter of Hermes, with suns strewn in her golden hair. Here is the daughter of Zeus the Thunderer, who set the wheel into motion, who speaks with authority. Here is Bella’s yearning and Dolce’s hope and Alexa’s catalyst. Here she stands, small in stature, but beautiful, radiant, treasured.

For Bella’s sake, she holds her head up and does not look away. And that makes it easier to notice that this is not one of her mother’s court dinners, at which she is meant to show off her poise and fine manners. And it strikes her that here, at last, is the reason. It’s not to get a passing grade, it’s not to earn a reward from her mother, and it’s not because of her title. It’s because everyone is looking to her, and they see the Imperial Princess, and they long for her to be more than she is. So maybe, just for tonight, she can be.

“Friends,” she begins. She’s calmer now than she was earlier, when Bella was helping her with the dress, with the rouge, with the lipstick, when she felt small and clumsy and steeped in peril. Now the dress (flowering down her body, ending in skirts like petals) feels like a new kind of armor. “Sailors. Comrades. If I may speak.”

The cheering is honest. She parts her lips and then closes them around the half-formed words. Her eyes are hot and she has to blink them clear. “We have done the impossible already. Now all that remains is doing it again. No one has survived crossing the Rift— but no one has defeated the Master of Assassins, survived the perils we have faced, or gathered such an auspicious and determined crew!”

Her hands aren’t shaking. Not after she got all the words out of them. “I cannot promise that I can match the blessing that Lord Hades has offered us upon our arrival at Gaia, the seed at the root of the universe.” She says it right. The words have been careening around her head for hours. The root of the seed of the seed of the root of the universe entire. Flowers, trees, things which grow, the grave of the Master, the trees of Mynxkiss. But what is this room but a garden? “But I will promise you glory wherever I rule, hospitality wherever I live, and satisfaction with whatever I can provide. And…”

Her cheeks are wet again. The lights blur. But she is still smiling, and there is no murmur of discontent or scandal. It is safe here. She is safe here. Here, out of all the universe she has seen, because of who is here with her. She raises a glass instead, and the reply echoes and multiplies until it is her father’s jovial roar.

“And I know that we are going to succeed,” she says, as if she can carve it into the universe through saying it. As if maybe, this was in and of itself a ritual, like the ones she performs before the altars of her family— no, one of her families. Because this is her family, too.

She holds the glass higher, and with all of her strength, declares: “Damn the Rift! Glory to the Mariners! To Gaia!” And all around her, her family joins in, joyous and defiant.

And then she lowers her eyes, and catches a glimpse of Bella across the room, her own lips half-open, a naked hunger in her eyes, and a giggle bubbles out of her. Come and catch me, she tells Bella with a wink, sipping the bubbling champagne in her glass. Pull me aside with urgent news. Where are we going to hide? How are you going to praise me? And how are you going to stop me from being too noisy and interrupting the party~?

Every moment until she finds Bella at her arm will be all the more electric for it. Come, Assassin. Show her the power of your Hunt.