[b]Vasilia![/b]

Bella didn't bother with a blindfold. It only took a second after the ship's door slammed shut behind you to figure out why. 

It's not pitch black in here, but the gloomy lanterns that flicker and flit out of sight the moment you try and look at them make it seem like it would be easier to see if it was. In the darkness of the corridor, the guide lights feel like intruders. Even where they shine brightest, the haze surrounding them creates a fading halo that looks like nothing so much as the shadows devouring the light as you're trying to see by it. And where it fades, the hallways seem that much bleaker for it. 

They curve in on each other endlessly, so that as she carries you you're always moving on a gentle slope, first one way and then twisting round until you're travelling in quite the other way. Bella's footsteps make no sound. Her breathing makes no sound. [i]Your[/i] breathing makes no sound. In this place even scents seem far away, more vague imitations of the idea of a smell than something you can actually guide yourself by unless you already know the way. Circling left, circling right, circling left, and left, and left again. Can you remember where you're headed? Can you remember how you got here? Even the gentle way Bella carries you, placing her feet so carefully to keep her steps from jostling you as if she was somehow convinced you really were sick and fragile, even this is in its own way disorienting. Sight, hearing, smell, and touch have all fled from you here.

Welcome aboard the [i]Anemoi[/i].

Minutes slip by in total silence. She doesn't try to speak with you, doesn't so much as look at you the entire time she's walking. Her fingers clamp tight over your mouth a moment in and stay pressed firmly there, not trusting you to do your part to observe the piety of her ship. Or is she just keeping up appearances? A door slides open in front of her, briefly bathing you both in a soft yellow glow before this new room swallows you and admits entry into paradise. 

She throws you roughly on the bed, which is neatly made and firmer than it has any right to be. She steps to one side toward a small shelf, which gives you a couple of seconds to try and get your bearings back. This is a bedroom. Obviously. Congratulations on figuring that out, kitten! For your next trick, are you gonna guess whose? It's small, like everything else on this ship, but in comparison to the claustrophobic hallways it feels like a palace snuck into the middle of a monster. 

To the right there are shelves filled with books and holotapes that seem completely untouched next to a bunch of glittering knickknacks and treasures that look much fresher. On top of a dresser in the back there's a truly ancient camera that can't possibly still function, and yet there it is in a place of honor. But the far greater impression, if you bother to soak in the atmosphere at all, is that there should be more here. An Imperial Officer, a Praetor no less, should have no end of resources and tools, and yet... everything that's here, but for the closet to the left stuffed with a history lesson of Tellus' most popular fashions, all of it is widely spaced apart and lonely. 

Bella's snarl is the loudest thing you've heard since boarding. She's standing there looming over you like a shadow, both hands occupied by fresh glasses of wine. She doesn't drink from either. She doesn't offer you either. Her expression is unreadable, except for her sharply gleaming eyes. Both the natural and the artificial one seem to be trying to stare straight through your soul, or else kill you without having to dirty her hands on you. Her tail flicks behind her, the motions made larger by the light leaking out of the crystal formations on the ceiling. 

"This can go one of two ways," she growls, leaning so close that the wine threatens to spill onto your clothes, "Either you're a good girl and you start telling me what the fuck you're all about here, or you're a bad girl and I start things off by teaching you how the Kennels break in newbies."

She takes a step away from the back, and finally holds a glass toward you for you to figure out how to take with the shackles binding your arms and legs and making things like sitting up and reaching, if not impossible then at least very awkward.

"Well? Which kind of girl are you gonna be?"