Redana weeps. Redana weeps for cages. Redana weeps for the knife driven into her dreams. She weeps because the prison of humanity is not gravity. She weeps for the golden crown bloody on her brow. She weeps for the glory of Hermes, the messenger, for the injury of the message received. She weeps because the soldier next to her, holding her wrist, making soothing noises with a look of concern and incomprehension, is someone who will never love her again, who never did love her, who she could have lived with in innocence forever. Hermes strips away the lies. Hermes is revelation. Hermes is not the physician, no matter how many use her symbol in confusion.

The Imperial Princess of Tellus, Redana Claudius, born to dominion and power and authority forever and ever, born from a Director and a God, hero by the blood, chosen of her Father, delight of Polychromatikí, breaker of hearts, she who dared climb over the wall of thorns around the garden of paradise to escape into the wasteland of her own heart, reaches up, and up, and up. She seizes the solar crown, the Principality of Tellus, the birthright of command. She twists her fingers around it.

This thing that makes her important. This thing that makes her worth hating. This thing that is the collar on a chain that leads back to the wound in her mother’s heart. This mountain she never surmounted, this expectation she never met. It is hers, and it will not break.

She lowers it down into her lap, and the blood runs freely from her broken hands until the crown is red as copper. It remains inviolate, unbroken, and Redana breaks around it.

Bella takes those hands into hers and rests her forehead against Redana’s own, and their tears steam where they strike the crown, the hiss of evaporation like a depressurized plover. It is so hot. It scalds her. And even if she destroyed herself, throwing herself against it, it would remain inviolate and whole.

“I dreamed you were a shepherdess,” Bella sings softly. “And I a forest nymph. I dreamed myself a jeweler, and you my model dear. I dreamed you were a sailor, and I was all your sea...”

[i]“I dreamed us both anything but what Olympus made us be.”[/i]