The groaning of the [i]Anemoi[/i] is more terrible than usual today. The horrors of space crush the thick hulls with enough force to make the ship's cries of pain audible even through the muting effects of its interior. Bella's ears bend toward the sounds to follow them as they roll over her bedroom. It doesn't help that she can tell by the pitch the size of the object and the angle it struck at, or that neither one would be enough to risk the ship's integrity. She could also hear the vibrations that tell her it would only take very slight adjustments in either to crumple the room she's standing into oblivion. It's by the grace of the gods alone that she makes this journey. The thought of how many of them she might have offended sends chills down her spine.

It's been three days since she last slept.

Her right eye socket throbs and forces her gaze toward the mirror. One golden eye stares blearily back at her. The other, painted in bloody red, crackles with power. Where it splits her vision, she sees three paths toward the door from where she's standing, and glowing highlights flashing up and down her body indicating where she's generating the most strength at any given second. Right now, those patches are dulling, in slower and more infrequent patterns than they'd looked the other day. This lack of rest will kill her soon. The Auspex pulses, and the suggested routes move toward her dresser as easily as bending light. 

Bella's teeth grind in frustration, but her feet are already carrying her in the suggested direction, shuffling with little of her usual grace. She drags them against the ultra-plush carpet so that her bare toes rip through the fibers with a soft whisper that soothes her ears. Her tail flicks irritably behind her, and she pays no mind to the things it knocks around, even as it bumps into her precious camera and sets it slowly winding into action. 

The decanter is in her hands before she knows it. Her fingers tremble as they squeeze the stopper. This is a precious treasure of the Empire. The Princess' perfume is manufactured out of water by the processes of the decanter itself; without it, the peaceful garden with its butterflies and sense of total peace would be lost forever. Bella stares at it with the intensity of a hunting tigress, neither putting it away or lifting her hand to free the scent she knows will give her rest. Her jaw clenches tight enough to break. Her body is almost as rigid as it was when she...

Something hot and wet rolls down her cheeks. They cannot be tears. Something as perfect as the Auspex couldn't possibly be capable of crying. With a tortured animal howl, Bella turns and hurls the decanter at a wall. It shatters into dozens of useless pieces, almost to dust, in an instant. The not-tears turn to awful, choking sobs that wrack her chest with pain. 

Nothing seems to survive the storm that follows. Bella's claws rip through baubles and instruments like paper. She tears her bed nearly in half. She cracks open the crystals lighting the room and covers the room in cracked-web shadows. Every bauble she can get a hand around gets thrown into a wall with a yowl and a crash to rival Poseidon's mysteries. Her claws cut through the rest. Every frilly, silly little outfit in her closet, sliced to ribbons. Every decoration brought to set a princess at ease is crushed. She surges back and forth across the room like the tide, and the debris piles up between her. There's no more room to pretend she isn't crying. 

And then, silence. Bella wipes messily at her face with the back of one hand, sniffling loudly. Spirals of ruined fabrics, mattress stuffing, glass, and shredded metals form delicate rings around the spot where she sits collapsed in a great heap of misery. The [i]Anemoi[/i] groans in pity, and this time her ears don't so much as twitch to meet it. 

Her head lolls back onto what's left of her bed. She squeezes her eyes shut to choke down another sob, and all at once her body unclenches. Her arms drop where they are without caring for comfort or bothering to seem some scrap of a blanket. She's a marionette with her strings all cut. Her neck rolls a little further to the side, and this is where she is when her breathing finally slows and she tumbles from the waking world to the place of rest. It's dark, where she goes. No treasured memories rush up to greet her, nor future hopes come to comfort her. But it's enough at least that she can't see those eyes anymore. It's enough to be free of Redana. The Redana who defied her. The Redana who looked at her so coldly. The true Redana, the one who hates her.