It's written that prior to the reign of Her Imperial Majesty Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Tellurian, most servitors had never known the taste of wine. Vast quantities of land were required to grow the grapes and age the juice into something fit for consumption. Wine was the drink of warriors and was reserved as such. In any case the servitor population was far too massive relative to True Humanity to support letting it pass their lips except perhaps by the grace of a particularly kind master or on especially bountiful or backwater planets where resource management was either so trivial or so pointless as to be ignorable. 

But when Nero claimed the throne at the end of her grand adventures and war to end wars, she looked around at her empire and frowned. "I will not suffer my citizens to wither under the labor of those who know neither the pleasures of song or fine drink." Many insisted it was impossible, to say nothing of being pointless. But the Empress is very much not the kind of person who is dissuaded by doubters and lesser men. 

Treasuries were emptied. Trellises were built, winding around all manner of available farmland on Tellus deep within the impossibly vast heating shafts that shot through the planet like arteries. The Empress herself devised a method by which the resulting liquids could be rapidly aged to a point of 'acceptable quality' using large amounts of heat and pressurized casks made from an aluminum alloy to prevent its manufacture from eating up the valuable space on her precious and desperately cramped planet. 

And thereafter the lowest serving girls and even kennel trainees were given wine with their daily meals. Morale is said to have improved by an amount the Empress personally quantified as being 23.87429%. It is written that she smiled before promptly turning her mind to grander matters and never visiting the issue again.

Bella takes a long draft from her cup, letting the thin and oily liquid slide across her tongue and down her throat. The taste is watery and metallic, just barely not bitter or dry by way of how thoroughly boiled out whatever the originally intended flavor had become. And then, just underneath the surface come the comforting notes that truly make the Tellurian vintage so distinct and memorable: a daring slash of chemically extracted orange, a few drops of pure acid like rain, and then bringing up the rear is a scent almost more than a taste that can only be described as a furnace. The taste is heat. Let it linger in your mouth long enough and it will warm you, truly. It cannot be drunk without calling to mind an infinite field of concrete and a maze of glass, steel, and chipping gold filigree. A city so cramped and dominating that even the vast and open halls of the Imperial Palace feel confined by it. Desperate. Comforting. Home. 

Bella snaps her fingers and then snatches the bottle out of the hands of a tiny and particularly frightened servant girl. She ignores the squeaking apology and refills her glass herself before taking a much slower and more deliberate sip. She ignores the tear that comes rolling down her cheek, and watches those violet eyes contemplate the infinite mystery of nothing whatso-fucking-ever. 

She bites her lip in between sips, tilts her head to one side. Her ears twitch, seeking information where there is no more to find. Behind her, her tail curls with pleasure before flicking the feet of her chair. Not those eyes, she decides at last. Not that power. She is not jealous. She is a Praetor. Empress Nero's own praetor. The grandest servant of the absolute ruler who has never made a single mistake. 

"You do not..." she begins, and then trails off. 

Bella swirls the reddish liquid around in her cup, pinching the unsatisfying vessel between her fingers. Like everything else on the [i]Anemoi[/i] it feels purposefully made to attract as little attention as possible. Matte black and slick to the touch, even the sloshing of the wine inside it sounds muted. Impossible not to hate it here. She swirls it again, more forcefully this time, just to the edge of spilling it all over. Her ears perk up as a pair of droplets splash against the table in front of her, just missing her clump of tablets and documents she brought with the intention of taking copious and detailed notes. She has not touched them, except to hold her pen in the exact way a certain princess used to before her tests. The final word of her thought, 'approve', fades into the hum of the dampers.

"I will use her however I see fit. But... I don't have any use for shattered planets. What's the point in smashing those dumps, anyway? You make better use of a weapon when you can act like you don't need it, so that's what we'll do here. Have a report sent to my room before this evening with the details of the place we're supposed to be travelling to. We're going to cut the princess off from all the little voices that keep, hffff, distracting her. Then it won't matter what Zeus does to protect her. No blood this time. Clean and proper, just the way she likes it."

Bella allows herself a smirk before she drains her glass for the second time. Her hand is already moving to fill it up again.

"...Now show me the next one. Don't you dare leave anything out."