Tatterdemalion

Return to Thellamie

Handmaidens!

[oh heron did that!!]

It works, in a sense. In a larger sense, it does not work: it does not cause this dream to shatter and melt away, to be met again in some other place, at some other time. But the violence with which she snaps back, careening head over tail, swatting at Injimo with that tail as if flailing and falling helplessly, all this stems from the way that the arrow shatters on her head. And she is laughing, convulsions running along her body, as she lands on all fours on the ground- squats- lets her tail finish coming down like coils of rope- and then leaps at Injimo again.

[but you're heron and not!heron, which means heron must have finally, finally, figured it out! i didn't tell her! i would have remembered that! don't tell me, heron, i'll figure it out on my own!]

She wiggles from paw to paw like a cat, snaps her jaws in feints, grins wider and wider, her pearlescent eyes widening without any pupil to give them focus. Her tail wraps around ginger-stalks and brings them toppling down towards both of you; the air is thick and stinging with ginger-spores. She is giddy with motion.

[and you get it don't you? there's no thinking in fighting! in motion! in questing!][ She bounds up and makes of herself a circle, a ring, and then slams her tail down at where Injimo, a moment ago, was. [you've just got to go go go sweep sweep sweep run run run fight fight fight!]

She is full of joy; there is no defeating her by force of arms, save that you tire her out. Show superior stamina in how you move your body. Meet each exhortation towards action with an equal and opposite obedience. This is the way of the warrior-maid; will you prove their equal? (As for the opening, well, it is possible for a friend to slip past her, or to trade places with you- but who could hope to outlast her?)

---

Erika!

"Perhaps I like crassness from time to time," Timtam says, her inflection a perfect imitation of Noon's flirtations. "There's something delectable in seeing an innocent young thing desperately squirm as she tries to catch up with someone older and more experienced." She drags a nail across the table slowly, invitingly...

And then you, little Erika, are interrupted from further solicitations from this wicked cardsharp by the arrival of two more players. One is a big, scruffy Serigalamu huntress, her bandoliers decorated with goblin-fangs, her presence even larger than she is. This is the one who sits right next to you and uses that presence to hem you in, keep you from the door, bring you ever closer to Timtam. Stretches as a pretext to put one arm around your shoulders with the sort of swaggering grin that one expects from high-performing huntresses who wrestle with dreaming dragons.

The other is thin, like a knife for opening envelopes. Her mask glitters with crushed jewels from Aestival's coast, and her coat is swirled in the colors of Crevas. A red cloak, a golden sash, a charm dangling at her wrist: an agonistes, a wicked swashbuckling hired sword. Her makeup is muted, uncharacteristically so, but that is an illusion approached with great care.

If you do not have some sort of plan, this will be a three-against-one sort of game, and those are foregone conclusions. You do have some sort of clever plan to overcome collaboration, don't you, Erika? You're not doomed to spill all of the beans, are you, Erika? Some sort of alternative bet, more creative way of cheating, or a wicked faculty at cards hitherto unseen would all be useful in this moment.

---

Yuki!

Maybe this is one of the reasons that you were so drawn to the Paladins of Kel: they are very, very good at hugs. Or at least Aadya is. She is the rock atop a mountain, after all, and when she holds you, she feels like the entire mountain, with roots that must reach beneath the whole city. But she is not cold. Not even the post-workout cooldown can make her feel cold; if she is a mountain, she is rich with veins of hot, molten ore, the kind that cause mine disasters up in the peaks of Kel.

She doesn't use words to cup your head. She can't make an apology matter using her words, so she envelops you in a body like an avalanche, like being buried in snow, and in the snow there is quiet and peace and room to sniffle without the whole cafe seeing (though the waitress has graciously decided to avoid your table to give you this moment). And she rumbles: a low, comforting, deep rumble. It's common superstition in Kel that this rumble has healing properties, and though it might all just be the placebo effect of it all, that doesn't stop the warm shivers, the tension melting, the sense of one-day-you-will-be-whole.

This is her apology for hurting you, for pushing too hard, for not knowing what to do. Do you accept it? Give her a String, if so.

---

Hazel!

"Oh, but you're about to!" The padlock on the chest jumps and rattles as Juniper weaves eggs and sausage onto a fork. "That's part of your unique social standing here. Now, you're obviously not going to go and earn rank by wrestling with some savage goblin or fighting the mirrorfolk!" It's a blithe assertion, but one that might sting. Obviously not. Just look at you, Hazel. You do not have a wrestling bone in your body. "But if Negodincia had her way, you'd be just another prize, a hot boy to show off and lead around on a leash."

She holds up the fork, offering it as a bite.

"And after all the chores you doubtless were made to do at the Chrysanthemum, without proper compensation," as if being Encouraged was not compensation-- and do you blurt something out about that? "I think Yuki wouldn't want you being made to do all of her chores, the spoiled rotten thing."

"Careful," Olesya rumbles. "...I'm the one who's supposed to say that."

"Oh~ do forgive me~"

"She is, though. Spoiled." A huff, a lowering of the ears, a squaring of the shoulders. Responsibility with that capital R.

"As you say, my lady," Juniper trills, tail flopping about on the floor happily. "We are doing a great big game of pretend, Hazel. And the game involves you being the equal of women who wrestle goblin-elephants to exhaustion, while not having any of the accomplishments that they have. So having your own sluzhankas, infamous women gifted to you by a baygum, shields you with her accomplishment of catching them." Another forkful offered. "As will making your own shield here. It won't hold up well to a heartblade, but what does? But it will turn aside a goblin's horn or tusk, and that's what matters."

She beams. "Okay, your turn. Go ahead and ask. I know you're dying to know more~"

Breathless Dead

As the Alpha of a Ceronian pack, Ember should, by all rights, have an answer to this, all this - to why the Azura think themselves the center of the universe, how their schemes function, on what timeline the sidereal architects work on. As a Princess, Redana should, by all rights, have some political argument against this, some devastating line which punctures their hubris and makes the folly of attempting to immortalize themselves at the cost of an entire universe clear.

But she doesn't. She was never a very good princess, and the Silver Divers are not a politically relevant pack, just another minor scout-pack devoted to Poseidon and his wealth. She doesn't have an answer to Aphrodite's villain speech, and she doesn't have an answer to the constellations. She considered drawing them, just to make sure that they wouldn't be lost if something happened to the Azura and inexplicably didn't happen to her sketchbook, but she gave up when she realized that there's probably artbooks available, each one packed with concept art and contextual articles. That's an art too, after all, and the Azura are all about their art, this art, their use of the entire universe as raw material for their projects. How could they not have artbooks?

So what she does, instead, is the sort of thing that she's been doing since she left Tellus.

She puts her arms around Dyssia's arms and squeezes, and puts her head on the Azura's sholder, and is just there. Good luck trying to pry her off! A lifetime and a galaxy ago, she was practicing on plushies, never realizing that she was preparing for moments just like this. She's steady on her feet, just warm enough to be reassuring, and good at squeezing in a way that reinforces the physicality of the body.

Cry if you like, Dyssia. She will remain steady and present. Take deep breaths and she'll take them with you. Pat her head; it's clinically proven to reduce stress.

You are hurting, and all she can do is this. So it is vital for her to do this.

Return to Thellamie

Yuki!

It feels like it takes entire days for Aadya to answer. She stares down into her teacup, slowly swishing the dregs at the bottom as if trying to divine the future, to see which route the stars have declared for Thellamie. I'm afraid it doesn't work like that, darling, not unless that terrible old bird brings down more dictates from those self-obsessed stick-in-the-muds. And yet she tries anyhow, or at the very least that's the vibe, as you kids say. Some people might say that there's not much going on in her head. (I'm looking at you, Miss Fullbright.) But her thoughts are grinding along like stone on stone, slotting into place.

"I wish they hadn't chosen him," she concludes. "Why couldn't it have been you?" Her hand reaches across the table: a bid for companionship, for solidarity, for acknowledgement. "Why not you? You trapped Azaza, you know our world, you could have chosen someone to be tamed by and we'd be done with the whole thing, and we could worry about the maids making some new bid to impress their sleeping dragons afterwards. And the Khagan! The Queen of Light would..."

Her voice dies. She can't make herself assert that a Queen of Light would see the Khagan as a problem to be solved. Not when there's other things to turn her hypothetical hand to, not when the Paladins might be able to handle things on their own, not when there are problems that Aadya hasn't taken it onto her own shoulders to try and fix.

Her finger brushes against the side of your hand.

---

Handmaidens, Howeverso Many You Be!

It's as you're walking through the humid Castle of Ginger, its psuedo-walls made of towering stalks, its rushes made of leaves, descending deeper into the sweet spice, that Morning makes herself known. One moment she isn't there, and then like an optical illusion it becomes clear that you were looking at her all along: that her scales look like ginger leaves on colorful tiles, that her beard looks like ginger-moss, that her clouded eyes are the color of sunlight filtered through the vine-windows, and that she is the entire world before you, her coils wrapped around stalk-pillars, her leaf-shaped tail closing off the way back.

[fight me] she says, as she demands of all heroes. Nothing more, nothing less. Her head sways, trying to see every part of you all at once. But Tsane would tell you all, she would, that Morning is a terrible foe to meet here in the Outside, because she wants to devour you- not in the way that you would devour a sandwich, but in the way that you (or her, at least) would devour a book.

It would be very, very perilous to remind her that Sayanastia is before her. Then she might remember not knowing anything at all, and she would drown you in the weight of how the nothingness beneath the world would fight the creation that accreted around the Nails.

I do not think Injimo has ever fought her before. Am I correct?

---

Hazel!

"You're here!" Juniper does a little dance-in-place, tail swishing furiously. "Oh, we have so much to show you! Right now we've made our way to the Fragmenthold, and once the storm clears, we'll have some time to show you around this place before the Khagan shows up! This is a place of making things, of piecing them together: the whole castle's broken and ruined but if you spend time gathering fragments and seeing how they fit, you can make all sorts of things, and there are these crabs which steam really well and then you put their shells together and usually they make a shield, wouldn't that be great for you? Because I don't really see you as being an attacker, an aggressive one, maybe if we made a crabshell--"

Olesya snaps her fingers and Juniper stiffens, blushes, glances over to her and then back to you. Pulls the breakfast bowl close to her chest and sways a little in place, fidgeting, happy.

"Make sure he's fed before serving him your sweets," Olesya says. Juniper scoots over to sit next to you, kneels right next to you, smiles with a twitch of her ear.

"Shall I feed you? Or would you prefer your own sluzhankas to do so?" She scoops a bit of egg on her fork (shining, a little chitinous, its handle curved organically). "We are happy to serve, noble guest." And she means it. She's ready to feed you the whole thing if it will make Olesya happy, and it will make her happy to do it. Welcome to the Khaganate.

---

Erika!

The shudder in Timtam is betrayed by her veil of beads, by the slight scrape of her fingernail on the cards, by the light that falls slant through the window, in the slight interruption in her breath. You have won a hit, Miss Fullbright: you have flirted with her when she is not herself, and someone else has done so not as herself, if you understand me. There are things truer to Timtam than this, but she can no more ignore what you have done than you could help yourself from enjoying a lovely gingersnap sheep with tufts of wool-frosting.

"You flatter me," she asserts. "Can you even see these lips to name them soft and precious?" She toys with one of the beaded strings, allows for the briefest glimpse. "Or are you, perhaps, seducing me for information to give your employer, Erika Fullbright? Or is this simply the sort of thing you say when you have nothing else to say? Do you like to say such things in order to make the people around you happier? If it does make someone happy, does it matter?"

The crack, the snap, of cards being sharply shuffled. "Do not answer," she demands, her demeanor changing again. "I have not earned any questions from you yet. It is a game of taking tricks. We play this in Aestival from the time that we are old enough to count. The distinction of this game is that we play our cards face down, Miss Fullbright. We tell each other what we have played. If a player likes, they may challenge the table entire, and anyone who has been caught lying is punished. And if no one was lying at all, well. Well~"

The way she rolls that well around in her mouth (oh, how it would roll around in yours, passed from one mouth to the other) brings to mind trick-taking games as played in the Mansion. Seven Prophecies. Nine Lives. Cravasmaid. Extreme Wizard. Plucky Princess. Bids run high and hot, don't they? And the punishments, well.

Isn't the best part of losing the part where you sit in the winner's lap?

Breathless Dead

"No no no no no, stop that, stop it! Do you all have any idea how far...?!"

The Alpha Princess stomps her foot as if that would make her maid fix everything. But she's distraught, Bella, can't you see that? Because the ship that brought them all the way across the universe, across the Lethe itself, has been undone. Unmade. Disassembled like the logic blocks that Mommy kept giving her as gifts and study aids. And put back together, surely someone would say, calmly chiding her for her panic, for the way she was flitting around the room almost at the point of tears.

This is her ship. Their ship. The Starsong Privateers gave it to her, complete with a brave crew for a desperate mission. It was supposed to make it all the way to Gaia! It was what she could remember when she couldn't remember anything about herself! This gorgeous trash heap, this thick-prowed monster, this disaster howling through the Endless Azure Skies - it was supposed to make it all the way there with her!

It was supposed to!

With her and Bella and Dolce and Vasilly and Iskarot and the Assassins!

And now it's been changed into something completely different. Is there still any capacity for it to remember what it was before, the way that she remembers being both Redana and Ember? Has the unique shipness of the ship been lost underneath the thundering wings and beaks of the Skies? Is there any hope for it, for them, for the quest?

Perhaps it is very silly of her to be sniffling and wiping at her cheeks. The ship is a ship. It will continue to convey them all until they reach their journey's end. It cannot mourn the changes that it has gone through. It cannot feel abandoned or lost or betrayed.

And yet she still rests one palm against a perfect, flawless wall, and she weeps for the Plousios and what it meant to her.

Return to Thellamie

Handmaidens!

This guy is silent a moment. Above him, beams are moved by pulleys and mighty Paladin thews. Civil chants fill the air, extolling the virtues of hard work, cooperation, and taking breaks in order to rehydrate and rest.

Spread the mind’s eye outward. Across the city, nuns and magicians and gardeners are working in concert to shore up towers, to clear debris, to feed and shelter people who have spent the night unable to go home— and most of all, to cut, burn and uproot the growth of the Wildwood into their city. It’s easier than they expected. The roots are withdrawing. The wilting flowers allow themselves to be uprooted.

Further. All around the city, the Wildwood is closer, denser, full of the creaking of branches. They scrape against the walls when the cold wind comes howling out of Kel. The trees are full of an alien will conversing with itself: long, slow, hateful.

And down at the place where all roots begin, beneath the bones of the dead, there is a bier, and on that bier lies a king who is not alive and neither is he dead, and his dreams are dreams of rot, of shattering, of a refusal to end. His thoughts are on Vespergift, and now they are on Hazel Valentine, too.

“Mock me if you like, Heron. It is your perogative. But you should rush the bosses of that frilly rabble before they undermine your helpmeet. Morning, Noon and Evening— chastise them, bind them, wake them. Leave them unable to meddle in our affairs.”

---

Yuki!

The tea is bright, sharp citrus, and it’s got a sparkle to it. Like an actual fantasy sparkle on your lips when you sip it. The teacups are have brightly painted panels on each side.

“…who do you think Hazel is going to pick?” It’s an odd tangential shift in her train of thought. The teacup looks small in her fingers as she looks out the window. Sunlight filters through the now-crooked towers of Vespergift, and the glass of the window almost glows.

With her, it’s not an attempt to sway you one way or another. She’s just admitting that she doesn’t know and that you probably do.

---

Hazelnut!

You’re doing a good job, you know? At least, when you stop talking, that is. Sure, the babbling is cute. But when you let the words die, and you lie there waiting for approval, so nervous but so eager to do the right thing…

She lets the silence stretch out as she finishes cooking. The quiet tap of a silver fork on a gilded bowl. The grind of one more round of spices on the eggs. The crackle of the fire. She glances over to you. Your eyes meet. She smiles, just a little bit.

Then the tent flap swings back; Juniper ties it back as several sluzhankas, in colorful aprons and skirts, bear in a treasure chest. Olesya gestures, and the chest is placed off to one side. The attendants (sneaking the occasional glance at you) set it down and bow on their way out, bells and charms swinging. When Juniper closes the tent flap and lowers her rain-slicked hood, it’s just the three of you.

The chest’s lock rattles.

Just the three of you?

“Welcome to the Khaganate, Hazel,” Juniper says with a warm smile. Olesya pats the floor by the fire and June barely moves through the intervening space, getting her legs under her and her shoulder up against Olesya’s shoulder. “May I take him his food?”

It’s an eager, hopeful question. The kind you ask because you really, really want the answer to be yes. She’s not looking at Olesya, but her tail betrays her excitement. She wants the command. To be of service.

Olesya glances at you and then looks away, definitely not blushing. She answers with a grunt and a nod, and Juniper giddily starts heaping up breakfast into your bowl.

---

Eclair!

Cards flick between her fingers as sharp as shards of glass. Her laugh is a gracious expanse. Naturally she is good at it, very good; this is a clue, too. You’re welcome for it.

“How forward, Miss Fullbright. No, you are not late, you are early. We are waiting for the other players.” Suits flash between her fingers: Knots and Crowns, Stars and Stones. “Liar’s Hand, as played in Pearl. We gamble with questions, Miss Fullbright. Being the private eye, you may have played this before, jah?” She can’t help it. Probably. There’s all the beaches of Aestival in how she says it.

When she brings the two halves of the deck down on the table, they make a noise like cracking stone, but she fans them back together easily. “You may stay. And play. With us. Or you may go find someone to pour tea. As you like.”

She feigns indifference. What do you feign?

Return to Thellamie

Yuki!

Aadya is big. It's hard not to notice that when she's crammed, sweaty and beaming, into a booth at Chatte Souffrance. It doesn't matter to her who won your race through the early streets, leaping over flood-strewn debris and stopping to help lift fallen beams out of the streets: she's just happy that she's got you to challenge her again. She spars with other Paladins constantly, but none of them are a challenge as unique, as delightful, as you are.

"So why be in two places at once?" she asks, demonstrating with the salt and pepper shakers (having well-seasoned her eggs). "What's the point of her declaring her attack on the goddess while also fighting me at the dyemakers' shop? And why did she come here, fight Heron's personal trainer, and then run away? Is she just trying to confuse the issue? What if she is a lying lieface and she's smokescreening us with her alibi? And if not... what's going on?"

She's looking to you not for answers, but for the escalation of theories, of bouncing facts back and forth, of helping her attune her inner compass to what she should do with her quest to apprehend Eclair Espoir. (One may note that she is not working with Heron right now.)

---

Hazel!

Olesya looks at you. Like, really looks at you. Studies you, her head cocked, her shaggy morning hair weighed down with beads and ties. Then she gets up, steps over to you (in barely more than one step), and squats beside you.

And she puts her palm between your shoulderblades and decides that you are no longer pushing yourself up. Not in a cruel way, but in a humiliatingly effortless way. You were up and now you are not. Squirm, little chewtoy, squirm.

"In the Khaganate," she breathes, "a huntress may permit her sluzhanka to cook her kills. It is an honor to them. But we have not decided whether you are or are not mine." Her tail thumps, the once. "You are enough mine that my sister cannot have you and you are enough not mine to not upset your Yuki Edogawa." Her nails are present on your skin.

And she holds you there. And says nothing. Take a glance back over your shoulder at her half-open mouth, her eyes which flick away from yours, the tension in her stance like a deer about to bolt. Then suffer the awkward headpat which smooshes you into the pillow. "No more dancing and strutting for Avel ladies, Fawn," she says, and regrets it immediately, and then flings herself back at the cooking in time to save the eggs from burning.

---

Handmaidens!

"As you once said, in your ineffable wisdom," Brother Mason dryly responds, "bing bong, so simple. You use that thing made entirely out of coats and Aestivali scruples in order to handle rebuilding this ancient shrine to your modesty and good taste, and while she handles that, you go and finally take the fight to the dragons and their fawning maids."

(In case you are confused, dear darling Cair, what he is implying is that Heron is immodest, tasteless and has been ignoring a perfectly good Quest.)

"Though I would understand why you are hesitant to take action at this moment," he continues in all humble piety. "I have studied enough of your mighty deeds to know that the temptation of the role of the interior decorator is strong with you. Especially in this monument to your community outreach. Far be it for me to imply that saving all of Thellamie from perfidious maids is more important than fussing with proper couch placement."

---

Eclair Espoir!

The next step of the invitation was brought to your table with the complementary vanilla wafers: come take tea with me in the Persimmon Room. It is natural that you would follow through, knowing what I know about you. Up the stairs on the east side and out into one of the side-rooms, stepping through a beaded curtain.

Before you is a circular table. A bench extends almost all the way around it, the circle broken at the exact place you stand. A table for friends to sit at, shoulders snug against each other, pushing baskets and plates around so that everyone can get a bite. The light coming through the windows is broken up by the swooping lattices.

And framed against those lattices is Timtam, dressed in Kel finery: a rich silk robe, dipping low at the chest, cinched tight around that devilish waist. Bells dangle from her hairpin, and her entire face is hidden behind more beads. But it's her. You'd know that insouciant crossing of the knees anywhere.

She's alone in here. But the room implies company. A teapot sits in the middle of the table.

"Well. And who do I have the honor of speaking with today, miss?" She gestures with a long pipe, held with seeming casualness. Her smile is a suggestion behind her beaded veil. "Come, sit down, you darling little thing." Her Kel accent is almost flawless, and even the slight Vespergift roll of her rrrs is a deliberate affectation. She presents herself to you as artifice, just as you do in turn.

Breathless Dead

The Princess Redana stands small next to the couch, fretting. Though, it must be admitted, she’s bigger than usual. The ceremonial fur capes of a pack returning to Nemesis are bulky, are anonymizing, for all that the ceremonial armor is designed to maximize exposed skin for the transcendental kiss of the winds of Capitas. (Flowers, silk and bones.) The helmets, too, are bulky and anonymizing; one sits in the crook of her arm. (Flowers, silk and bones.)

The WAX system within will kill all sound. Her companion will be the song of her own blood. There will be no need to speak aloud, because Ceron’s daughters speak through scent, through art, through instinct. No distractions from outsiders’ words; nothing spoken on the surface of Nemesis by pack or captive. This, then, is the challenge all of her training was pointing her towards.

That was the compromise that the first Shoguns made for their pleasure-palaces glutted with trophies and the art that a warrior race must make to feel civilized and distinguished and justified. They would be able to watch the swirling nebulas, the designed sunsets, the rain of jewels. They would be able to feel the kisses of the enslaved Anemoi on their skin, perfectly cool and soft, playing with their earrings and cloaks. They would taste the feasts that Azura wonderchefs prepared, drink variegated wine fresh-squeezed from Iris-grapes, drag their tongues across salt-flecked skin. And, surrounded by the subtle scents of the pack, they would converse in perfect self-control. Only a drunken sot, a hedonistic fool, would lose control of the self; so goes the ethos of Nemesis. Control the self to control the galaxy.

There will be music, Dany knows, and afterwards she will regret that she never got to hear it. There will be songs that are bridges between stars. There will be waterfalls which sing, each stone placed with perfect care. No matter how many times Sagetip has told her about the Ethos of the Shogunate, the thought of losing herself to Capitas keeps coiling around her.

Just a little peril. Just a taste. Tie her to the mast, or better yet, envelop her in Bella’s arms (but she’s still recovering). To be lost in the beauty, to be engrossed completely, to experience the whole of it at once even if it destroys her, to take her helmet off and listen—

She’s going to do it. She tells herself that she is capable of resisting, that she has an important mission to Gaia, that someone needs to look after Mosaic-named-Bella, but the absolute surrender to beauty and desire is something that she will not have the strength to overcome.

Because here, in the center of everything, is an adventure that could take centuries to play out. Here is the fulfillment of her childhood dreams, if only Bella would join her for them. Here is the great big wide world and its charms, contracted to a subjective point. Here is the knife that is made to slip underneath her ribs.

She stands by Bella’s couch, and she holds her helmet firmly against her side, and she frets, and she says nothing, even though soon there will be no need for her to say anything at all, one with the pack as they carry out their plan to infiltrate Nemesis itself.

To infiltrate Nemesis as a pack escorting dignitaries, including one of the Azura ambassadors. The Honored Dyssia, Title To Be Workshopped.

Return to Thellamie

In most of Thellamie, the city is your home. There’s no need to leave the valley of Crevas or to go beyond the walls of Vespergift or to swim out past the shoreline of Emerald, not when there are so many perils of the Outside just waiting to drag you into strange adventure.

Not so out west. Not in the Khaganate. There is no other place in Thellamie like it. The Stones out there are not weaker than the rest, but their effect is diffuse, and there are broad zones where reality and unreality mingle, where mirrorfolk ride goblin-beasts and sing hymns to Sayanastia.

The people here became tough, strong, courageous; they banded together in tribes and competed fiercely for resources, for Outside treasures, for pride and prestige. They learned to secure a prize tightly, lest someone snatch it from their grasp.

And now their most ambitious huntress has her eye on the greatest prize of all.

---

Hazel!

Tea. The bubbling of the hot water, the floral scent richening, and the sizzling of… sausages?

The blanket is heavy. It’s like having an entire dog draped on top of you, pressing you down onto the furs and the feather pillow. Don’t get up, it says. You are warm here, you are comfy here, and all the soreness in your body just needs to be pressed out by this blanket.

But if you take a peek out from it, into the fire and the shadows of the tent, you’ll see Olesya steeping the tea and preparing sausage and eggs over the fire on a two-tier stand. She is wearing a notably snug tank top, one which exposes her broad shoulders completely and hikes up at her stomach.

On the roof of the yurt, the driving rain. On the floor of the yurt, goblin-skin rugs. Inside the yurt: warmth, and tea, and sausages, filling the air even as the smoke swirls up and through the flaps.

She’s very strong, you know.

(Oh, and before I forget: take a String on the Princess Sulochana. Did you dream of her? The starlight in her eyes, the delight and longing on her face, the way her fingers tightened around yours and were reluctant to let go?)

---

Yuki!

Aadya, the Rock on a Mountain, sits on you.

As you were semi-peacefully asleep in a suite at Le Serpentine, a little slice of Crevas in the chill of Vespergift and the de facto HQ of the reconstruction committee, right up until she sat on your stomach, this is likely an unwelcome wakeup call.

“We’re going for a jog,” she says. There are bags under her eyes which suggest she has not slept particularly well over the past several days. “Then a box-breakfast at Chatte Souffrance and I will tell you everything about Eclair Espoir. She’s just the tip of the spear, Yukes. Up and attem!”

“Milady,” Pasenne calls — a little shakily — from outside. “Is everything all right…?”

---

Handmaidens!

“You let her slip through your fingers?”

Brother Mason is bristling. He clutches his tablet tight to his chest as he strides through the Chrysanthemum. If he declares the reconstruction a priority for the Church, then its resources will be brought to bear, focused on this disaster. It should be simplicity itself, but when are things ever as simple as some people would like them to be?

“You had Eclair Espoir here and then you were distracted playing knights with a dead dragon. The agent of three quite living dragons of unknown power and capability, and you let her slip through your fingers?”

Underneath his ceremonial robe, he drums the fingers of his left hand agitatedly. When he looks at the repair work to be done (which really isn’t anywhere as bad as it could be, as long as those stairways get rebuilt and the load-bearing walls get shored up), he’s not looking at Vespergift but at the great cathedrals of Kel.

“Eclair’s compatriots struck at multiple monasteries on the outskirts of Kel last night. We need information on the Order of the Aurora and what their intentions are for Thellamie and her order, her peace.”

And he’s not about to go walking into a maid-mansion full of the presumptive enemies of the Church, now is he?

---

Eclair Espoir!

Welcome to the Interstitial, a cafe full of the presumptive Allie’s of the Church!

It’s a deliberate architectural and stylistic blend of monasteries from all over Thellamie: the angular knot-windows of the west, the stained glass of Kel, the delicate flowering ironwork of Vespergift, the colorful murals of Crevas, and the beaded curtains and incense of Aestival. But don’t get your cute little head confused, it’s just a cafe overlooking a cliff on the southern side of Kel. Far off and away, beyond the swirling winds and the shapeless clouds and the mutable landscapes below, the sapphire-blue bays of Aestival can be glimpsed every now and then.

Both you and Timtam will have to use cunning subterfuge and your wits in order to get into a Civil-oriented cafe in the Civil-friendly heart of Thellamie. She’s certainly stacked the deck in her favor, though, if the uptick in Serigalamu nuns taking a table in the past hour is any indication.

How have you managed to infiltrate this place, Eclair Espoir, this den of danger and delicious pastries? Surely you haven’t just announced yourself and let everyone in the cafe gang up on you at once. After all, some of those Kel nuns have as much muscle as the chariot did.

Breathless Dead

"You are going," Redana sniffles, "to be okay." And the way she says it is like there is no world, no universe, where Bella is not going to be okay. But there will also be no world where she is the way that she was.

This ship's medical chamber is a mish-mash of medicine from the underworld and cures from the land of the living, side by side. Flesh molds and blessed knives, bonesetters and suture wands. In the center is an Asclepian garden, and in the center of the garden is a fountain, and in the center of the fountain is a light shaped like a sun. The sound of running water is impossible to escape in this room. And here is Redana, silhouetted against the sun, interlacing her fingers with the stiff talons of her wife and failing to keep the tears at bay.

She has done her very best. The ship's proper doctors are mysteriously absent. She did not have time to search for a Hermetic, not when her Bella was like this, was like this. She has taken to surgery with a panicked frenzy, and she has done the very, very best that she can, murmuring hymns to Apollo under her breath the whole way. And it must have worked, Apollo must have smiled on her with that beatific smile, because here is her Bella, here is her ray of moonlight, here is her bride, every bit of her that Redana could save.

(She is not completely alone, mind you. Gemini is present here, sitting in a little chair, flipping through a book with an air of aloofness, trying to hide the exertion of telling her sister over and over again that it was still time to live. But the whole host of Tellus could be in the room right now and Redana would only have eyes for her Bella, tears of relief and hope running down her cheeks.)

"We're going to make it," she says, and squeezes. "You and me. All the way to Gaia. I promise." And unspoken is the promise: we will make it even if your legs don't take to the reconstruction. We will make it if I have to carry you in my arms. We will make it if you can never fight again, if you have shattered yourself in order to save your family. We will make it because I promised you that there would be a universe in which we could freely choose to be together.

We will make it because I believe that you will not let yourself die.

But that's the next step. The difficult one. Choosing not to die. Living right now is an effort, is a marathon, is a choice. Just like it was on the Yakanov. Just like it was when Nero made you choose between life and death.

Redana knows her Bella well enough to know that it's no choice at all, though.

All of her sisters are on this side of life. And they need their sister who saved them.

The tools that Redana had to hand were not sufficient for the task of making it as though you never broke, Bella. The materials she could work with were not equal to the body that you were gifted for your holy terror. But there is a rightness in putting something back together so that the scars can be seen, and a beauty in refusing to give up after disaster. You will stand again, Bella; you will walk again; you will hold your princess and be held in turn. And all of you-- all of you-- will see Gaia.

Together.

Return to Thellamie

Hazel!

You shine with the light of civilization, of binding, of laws and strictures, of all the reality that the world can bear. A terrible and wonderful magic flows through you, invests your words with meaning, and makes them truth. It would take terrible magic indeed to break the spell that you weave.

But it just takes a hand reaching over your shoulder and a palm placed on your token to yes, and your spell.

"And while all of that is happening he's going to stay with the last person who won him until the Ball starts," the awful brat adds with a sadistic glee. You are suddenly aware that she's got you. "Because I won." The token thrums with an acknowledgement of this self-evident truth; she's the last Hunter standing, even if she doesn't know what's going on. A boy in the hand is worth... well, you know how that goes.

She twists one hand and a shining leash appears between her fingers, and you get precisely no prizes for guessing where the other end is, Hazel. (Cutie. One more for old times' sake.) She flashes her braces at the assembly and tugs possessively, and both of those actions are largely pointed towards the tall, gangly Serigalamu staggering to her feet.

You know. The one who jumped on a dragon's face to buy you time. That woman. Her cheek's cut, her eyes are tired, and she's lost her jacket which means her shoulders (big, wow) are on full display. And she looks, wow, rather similar to the brat who's claimed you, just older and gothier and big where your captor's a wiry little gremlin.

Then you're all interrupted by a creaking and a cracking, and Walking Elm's limbs bending in odd directions as she lurches to her feet. The way that she snaps them back into an approximation of the proper positions will, I am sure, stay with you forever, especially when you're trying to get to sleep in the dark.

"Oh, a ball," she says, honey dripping from her voice. "Aria, we do love balls, don't we? You had such lovely ones back then, with all your knights and your trophies and your fair damosels!" She claps her hands together, the once, causing another puff of golden spores. Behind her, staggering out from the smashed wall, is the much smaller regular-sized Aria, her eyes still aglow with hate. "Aria, sweet, do go get your builder-knight. She's sure to be useful."

---

Handmaidens!

"After all our long acquaintance, this is how Heron does me? Intolerable," says the Nagi woman curling in a currently-friendly manner around Tsane. Her eyes are wicked, her hair is a mess, and she is still gesturing with a smoking pipe. Her fur-lined blouse is stained with sweat and the strange rain of this night. Did I say that she says that? She declares it. "I do my part in protecting the Golden Fawn from ruffians and ne'er-do-wells, and this is how I am repaid? No, this is not acceptable, not in the least."

She flourishes, from one of her purses, a golden coin. It's rare that these are handed out; that she has one implies that she's done the Civil church some great service, or perhaps that she's done some favor for someone who had and was also drunk, high or very compromised. There, on its face, is the Heronmark, stark in its simplicity. This she hands to Cair.

"I am not entrusting this to anyone but Heron herself, and I am insisting that this be one of her official duties. Repair her holy place, this spring which she gave to Vespergift. Clean up after yourselves, Miss Dragon, and ensure that the Fawn does not spend months being bandied about Khaganate campsites!"

The energy of the argument, I am sure, does not dissipate - but there is a reason for at least some of you to linger and try to fulfill Heron's obligations, or at the very least weasel your way out of having to explain why Heron can't show up and clean all this up with her wonderful toys, most of which are stuck in the Rootwalker-infested Stacks.

Outside, a rushing torrent flecked with suds of soap rushes through the streets.

---

Yuki!

"Oh, we can't let Negodincia, of all people...!"

Juniper does a little foot stomp. It is objectively adorable. The Khanum sticks out her tongue at that, suggesting that she is the Negodincia in question. Khanum Negodincia, one might say, if one was to use her full title; the little princess of the plains.

Olesnya turns and takes one of your hands in her own: broad, warm, firm. She draws it up towards her chest, and she gives you a very intent look. "Miss Edogawa," she says, her voice low and quiet, "put your faith in me. I will not let my sister torment your boyfriend, and I will bring him to the ball."

Juniper's eyes nearly start sparkling. It would mean a lot to her for you to accept this offer, but... well, she didn't really impress you back in Crevas, did she? And she was marked by the crown back in Crevas. That's an awful lot of trusting she's asking from you here, and you're certainly under no obligation to accept it.

Especially right next to Sulochana, who looks indignant and is making a sputtering noise about it.

---

Eclair!

The waterways of Vespergift are a wonder of the world, really. Sure, the Chrysanthemum is squatting on the best hot spring, but here, water moves up and it moves warm, and it cascades down from gargoyles into the sewers, through water purification vats made by skilled artisans, and then back up under the power of the steam of the earth. Now, this system is carefully monitored by the Dame of the Gargoyles, a Civil title with deep integration with the civic infrastructure.

We shall take it as given that, the circumstances being what they are and your single-mindedness being what it is, that you have no compunctions at all about waltzing straight into Vesper Victoria's, which should be bustling with life if the Civils who staff it weren't busy assisting with evacuation (as their oaths demand of them). We shall further take it as given that you know how to open a locked drawer.

The part that I want to know is how you got the soap into the water system in the first place, and how you had so much to hand. That's the part I don't know! Do tell me, Eclair darling, as you remove the safeties and set the gargoyles to running riotous with water all over the city.