Tatterdemalion

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Dolly is already leaning into the bow, a smile on her face. Lance out, one hand brought up to her chest, one foot gracefully back. "Ah, the Hidden Bird! But I can clearly see you, how odd!" Jade's voice is a whisper in the temple, but it booms outside. As Dolly lifts back up, Jade's hands supporting her, her eyes are closed out of happiness. The bells hanging on her chime gently, and the padlock on her collar rests against the hollow of her throat.

They'd only barely glanced at the information right before they were to be launched. Instead, they'd gone for that walk, they'd fallen asleep curled up together with Ocean Harmonies IV playing over the speakers (as much as Jade could sleep, that is), and they'd collaborated on Dolly's current piloting getup. The bracelets at her wrists and ankles are thicker today, and ringed with bells, and she wears only a loincloth-- all her suggestion. Clawed hands rub at her cheeks and hold her fast by the chin, and any fear over not having a plan is buried underneath the power of her goddess, the bliss of her position, and the thrill of this hidden exposure.

Today, she is not just silly little Dolly. She is the dancer of the goddess. And victory is found in the fight, not in the victory.

That is what Smokeless Jade Fires whispered in her ear, after all.

"Because you do not know our ways, you do not know my power and my glory," Jade says. Dolly raises a hand in what she hopes is a proper glory pose. Fingers up, shake the wrist, make the bells sing. Jade makes the smallest tilt of the hand, lifts two fingers slightly. Dolly purrs, happy, eyes still closed. "I am Smokeless Jade Fires, Hiding Hen! I pass into the underworld and return with the knowledge of the ancestors! I touch my fangs to the heart! My priestess is Dala Hunters, delight of delights, whose hunt is holy! And in your honor, Vanished Sparrow, let us both be ghosts!"

The cloak of darkness is cool on Dolly's fur where Jade drapes it over her. Her bells still, as silent as Dolly herself. She lifts onto her toes and begins the Dead Bird Strut, which will take them past the open ground and into the factory, where-- oh, yes! Where there will be shadow and movement out of the corner of the eye. Where they can fight a war surrounding the faithless. And even if that just flushes her out, that's still forcing her to cede ground!

As two who are one, they make their approach, cloaked and quick and well-silenced.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Giriel!

“What other way?” She drags the hilt of her sword down her brass arm, scraping, discordant. A hell-sound, slavering and vicious. But underneath…

There’s something there. Something that Kalaya can’t help but reach for. She hasn’t lashed out yet; she hasn’t called for demons contracted to her will, or swung her sword at your head. She’s still making up her mind, even as she paces, gauges your guard, considers you— and what you stand for.

There is always another way, Giriel Bruinstead. The warlock is lost, committed to a path that she’s already spent much pursuing. If she gives up now, she’ll spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder for the debt to come due. But you can help her stop.

This is your magic, Giriel. And of everyone in the Flower Kingdoms, you’re the person that she needs right now. The one who can show her that there is another way.

There’s a shift in the wind. The smell of the rain is cleaner. The seasons are close to changing.

---

Kalaya!

Half-hug nothing. Sagacious Crane pulls you in and clings to you. She’s not a particularly good hugger— all stiff and awkward— but she definitely needs it. Isn’t this what it means to be a knight, after all? This isn’t the usual sort of distress, but you’re still being helpful. Of use. Her hero.

“Yes, yes, that’s— yes, I know just the place where we could beseech the Sapphire Mother for her aid and advice! I’d, I didn’t want to go back to her after the failure of my… well, that’s not important right now. What is is helping you, brave knight!”

With some remaining sniffles, she takes you by the arm and leads you down the river. It’s not the worst walk in the world, despite the rain, the borrowed umbrella from the dumpling stand, and the exhaustion you yourself are facing. And the way that the priestess is clinging to your arm and laughing a little too much at what you say. You might have an admirer, Kayala.

But the sacred place she’s bringing you to? It seems that it’s already occupied— by a great, hulking mud-monster facing down a defenseless woman with an umbrella. One you’ve definitely never met before. Isn’t this the sort of thing a knight’s supposed to get involved in?

---

Fengye!

You have an audience yet again. Coming down a nearby dirt path are a priestess clinging to the arm of a knight, neither of whom look like they’re having a particularly good month.

“Come and claim her,” the Rootwash mumbles, in a pathetic attempt at subtlety. No doubt it hopes you will sink your hands into the mud, looking for the Maid, and then it may force any concession out of you it pleases. But the invocation of rights was correct, and you have this under control— so long as the knight and the priestess don’t interfere.

---

Lotus!

Han is a hero.

That’s why your heart is racing, isn’t it? Feeling her strong, steady fingers remove layer after layer, unwrapping you, freeing your voice, somehow even more enticing than being gagged in the first place? How gentle she’s being with you, even as she winces whenever she raises her arm too high? How she growls, in a way that sends shivers down your spine, that she’s going to protect you? You wanted to be saved by a dashing hero, and that is exactly what you have gotten. It’s difficult to even try and find your voice.

But you have to. Because only a selfish girl would indulge in her own pleasure without caring about the needs of her hero.

“Han,” you say, and your voice is a fluttering bird in the cage of your heart, beating against the bars. “You’re hurt. Please, let me just… may I?” Your fingers brush against her sleeve, slowly rolling it back, even as you look Han in the eyes. She’s tired, and she’s trying so, so hard not to show it. “Please. You got hurt trying to protect me. It’s… it’s the least I can do.” It’s the only thing you can do. You’re not a swordfighter like the two children of dragons who fought over you, like a treasure they both desired. Your tongue touches your dry lips (surely just because of the gag!).

You lower your veil, and scoot down, kneeling beside her— which is a mistake, because now it’s just a little too high up to kiss, and also you’re kneeling next to her like a N’yari slave-girl waiting for permission to serve, but you can’t get back up. Your legs won’t obey you, because you’re staring up at your hero and you can’t decide whether you want her to let you kiss her wounds better and cradle her head in your arms or to pull your face up to hers with those rough, gentle hands and kiss your unveiled mouth, and you shouldn’t be thinking about that, but your lips are parted anyway and you can’t pull your eyes away from her mouth, even as you rub her arm and wait for…

For permission. To be allowed. Even as the daughter of a goddess, you are familiar with this. A good girl asks for permission before she acts. A good girl considers the feelings of others before her own. A good girl respects that Han only sees her as something to be protected, not as… as more.

“I don’t want you hurt,” you say. “I want…”

I want to kiss you. I want you to hold me and make me feel safe. I want you to tie me tighter and toss me over your shoulder in a daring escape as i breathlessly squeal into every one of those gags. I want you to think I’m pretty. Do you think I’m pretty? The way you looked at me…

“I want you…”

And you should say something to finish the thought, but it just hangs in the air, and you are completely at your hero’s mercy as you kneel there, in the most gorgeous dress you’ve ever worn, staring up at her through your golden spectacles, heart in your throat, lips parted, goosebumps under your fingers.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

The tablet on the table chirps with the notification: message received. Information about their next rival, their next battle, their next chance to win. Their next glorious victory, so that all the universe knows of them and sings their praises.

Smokeless Jade Fires ignores it. It doesn’t matter. She just keeps staring at her priestess, laid out beneath her on the couch. Her fingers trace Dolly’s cheeks, play at her lips, brush through her curly hair.

“Mine,” she whispers. “Mine,” she begs. “Mine,” she promises.

It should be crushing. If Jade wanted, it would be. The weight of her attention is incredible. All of that divinity, that magic, that vastness all focused on her body, her face, her self. Overwhelming, crushing, obliterating. But it’s like… like Jade’s being careful. Just like that first night.

“Yours,” she promises. “Yours,” she begs. “Yours,” she whispers.

How can Dolly possibly take her seriously? Didn’t she see her failure at the hands of that dreadful, wonderful minx? But… but everything says otherwise. The joy when she rushed to her goddess’s side. The joy, here and now, just from her presence. The shame mingled with her excitement when she thinks about those mangy, wicked pirates.

Of course they stole her. Look at her. The shape of her eyebrow; the fullness of her lip; the softness of her cheek. To own Dolly is to own the universe. Her fingers brush against the missing fur on her Dolly’s shoulder, and an angry thrill rushes through her. How dare they? To mark her without her…

Oh. That was a familiar expression, Dolly. A squirming, guilty expression. One which makes Jade’s stomach squirm. Were those pirates… better captors? Would Dolly run off and find better…

”I’m sorry,” Dolly blurts out. The guilt has been eating her up on the inside, bit by bit. “I… I tried. I really DID try to seduce her, like you wanted! But she barely let me talk, and, and she had all these plans for trying to make you her goddess, and… I’m sorry, Jade, I’ll…”

“Shhh.” A hand over Dolly’s mouth, just the way she likes it. The heartbeat, the thrill, the happiness in her eyes that doesn’t go away no matter how many times she does it. “I am… happier that you failed.” Confusion. Is she saying that Dolly is a failure? What would Mirror do? Mirror would be all confidence. If Dolly thinks she was doing her goddess’s will, then… then it is right to let her believe that. “They did not deserve you. She does not deserve you. I deserve you.”

(But you weren’t there. You couldn’t stop them from snatching her up. You were helpless. You needed her. You would have done anything Mirror asked just to get her back. What kind of a goddess does that make you, Smokeless Jade Fires? The kind that wants to crush the mech of the insolent cat who dared mark Dolly as their property.)

Once Jade lifts her hand, Dolly says, meekly: “I think we should go for a walk.” Something’s upset Jade, she can’t pinpoint what, but… but all she can do is try to be good. To try and help Jade be as happy as her goddess makes her. “So… everyone can see who I really belong to. Who deserves me.”

Jade’s ears perk up. This. This is something that she can do better than any pirate can. “Yes, I agree,” she purrs, tail drawing slow curls in the air. “My high priestess, wearing her flowers, skyclad, and bound for her failures. Silenced, decorated, and forced to flaunt herself— so that these pirates cannot say they have a special treasure that no one else has seen. Not if I have shown the world, first~”

It is a game. All the pirates could do is undress her, crudely. Jade can give her the experience of showing the entire world without fear of consequences or judgment. Jade can conjure up crowds, make her predicament impossible and perfect, and keep her safe. They can’t do that. They doubtless saw Dolly as a toy, a treasure, a prize— and not as something to be carefully taken care of. Something precious, fragile, and perfect.

It’s almost certainly a game. She’s putting her trust in Jade, every time, that she’s not really, truly naked. It’s just an illusion, for her eyes only. It’s a way of baring her throat, of being vulnerable. The pirates didn’t ask her for trust. That’s something only Jade can give her.

Maybe she wouldn’t mind being kidnapped again. Trying again. But only after she’s talked with Jade about it first. If she’s not comfortable letting Dolly try to succeed at the mission again…

Unbidden, she thinks of Valynia and shivers. There is… there are… it would be nice. To be her captive again. To be teased and groped and put in a dangerous predicament. But not if it hurts Jade. Never if it hurts Jade. She’ll fight like a cornered mother before she lets them hurt Jade.

The tablet sits forgotten on the table as Jade works Dolly out of her clothes, seeing her both clothed and unclothed, and instructs her to cover up the brand with a snugly-tied cloth, and fixes a shining silver collar around her throat. After all, the games are nothing more than another game.

If she had to choose between victory and her Dolly, Jade would never hesitate. Never again.

(She covers each layer of cloth in kisses and digs her phantom claws in Dolly’s fur; she rubs her cheeks on Dolly and wills for her to smell her love as hard as she can. This is how I love you, Dolly. I will give you everything.)

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.