[b]Redana![/b]

The Auspex answers. The Hunt - Artemis, the chibi expression of her sitting behind a desk pushing papers that cause starships to fall from the sky. The Harvest - Demeter, as radiant as the highest summer, with a bounty so mighty that simply looking at her glyphs causes alfalfa to sprout from your pancakes. The Heart - Aphrodite, smoking with his feet on the table in the midst of a destroyed home, torn book pages drifting from the sky around him.

Mynx, for her part, gave a tired little smile. Of course she's eaten the pancakes already - you once caught her licking your utensils in case [i]they[/i] had been poisoned. But she takes the offered food anyway because it came from her Princess and she can never refuse you anything, least of all your kindness.

"Princess Redana," said Mynx, "we did not go through all the trouble of putting on a show for you because we hated you. We all did it because... well, an Empress who never learned how to smile would be a terrible thing indeed, wouldn't it?"

[b]Alexa![/b]

One goes low, sliding in for a sweeping kick to your ankles. Another leaps high, pipe swinging in a wide horizontal sweep in the other direction. Pure flash. The Coherent know how to put on a show. 

Their attack is either devotion or hubris, filled with fist-bumps to each other followed by unnecessary flips, lay-ups, flexes and poses. Perhaps their displays of ostentatious skill and co-ordination glorify Athena, perhaps she regards it as tacky or frivolous. Whatever her opinion, hers of you is worth and the blows start coming in. Strike after strike, punch after punch, knocked hither and thither with an intention to hurl you out of the workshop as quickly and fashionably as possible. They intend to have that pride of yours one way or another.

Do they take it?

[b]Vasilia![/b]

"Get some lunch," said Hestia. "You've forgotten, again. It wouldn't kill you to learn how to boil some pasta either. Food is important, drink is important, it's not just something that happens on the way to the next final showdown."

[b]Dolce![/b]

"I once heard a philosopher," Hera's regal nose crinkles a little at the word, although she still speaks it with respect, "say that mortals can never truly know what they feel because feelings aren't real and desires aren't real. Instead they experience the inexpressible and, in anguished inarticulation, invent linguistic narratives to cage those feelings. This pain must be because of love. This joy must be because of revenge. The stories mortals tell themselves give meaning to a meaningless existence, and so all it is simply a case of telling yourself the right story. Aphrodite cursed her by making her an inveterate shipper of romances that would never canonically happen, but I always wondered if she had a point."

She stands up, sweeping her regalia and her court around her as she prepares to leave. "If the philosopher was correct, then the answer would be to experiment with narratives of the self. Invent an achievable desire and tell yourself your impossible desire is the same thing. Adjust as you learn. In time you will build a vocabulary that gestures at your heart, even if it is not its true voice."

[b]Bella![/b]

You have never been in a room so crooked.

To be sure, you have spent your life amongst Imperial politics; poisoners and assassins and dissemblers and professional liars. You have been in rooms designed fundamentally around surveillance or intimidation. You have met some of the most profoundly wicked hearts hidden behind servile smiles. But those deceptions were high class and far ranging, or ruthlessly direct. This is...

That wall is filled with expensive looking heavy bound book covers. You take a breath; not one particulate of paper dust in the air. Not only are those books unread they're quite possibly empty cardboard shells to give the impression of an impressive library. That wall has a bust of Tiaephon, an ancient Azura lawmaker. It has a coffee stain upon its crown where a mug has been periodically set down. An ice pack rests upon your head. It is in actuality a single huge tray of chocolate fudge brownies that, rather than having pieces cut from it like in a civilized way, has simply had bites taken out of it like it was a gigantic cookie. The room has no less than seventeen flags. Big ones, small ones, little ones on the desk, all the blue and violet of the Endless Azure Skies. The walls seem to be held aloft with expensive marble columns and floating Azura grav-rail technology. On closer inspection it's just a thin vinyl sheet textured to look like marble wrapped around a cheap gypsum plaster core.

It's at once the least and most trustworthy room you've ever been in. Least because it [i]overwhelmingly[/i] wants to pick your pocket. Most because that's the extent of its ambitions.

You're resting on a couch, tight red leather that looks amazing and has the comfort of a dilapilated park bench. There's a small tray of food on the coffee table in front of you, not counting your headache brownie - three peanut butter sandwich halves, a whole egg, and a glass of milk mixed with sherry. There is also a styrofoam cup half filled with pills with a scrawled post-it note attached reading DRUGS. And no sooner have you sat up and looked around than Thelis Thist has burst back into the room in an array of silks that even a complete cultural outsider like yourself suspects must be A Bit Much. She's smoking a cigarette and counting a stack of low-denomination banknotes when she sees you, which she hurriedly crams into her bra when she notices you're awake.

"You're up!" said Thelis Thist. "Have some drugs! My shop guy tells me that your deathtrap belonged to the Order of Hermes, which is a hell of a coup. That takes us international! Oh and he reckons he can give you fifteen eighty for the salvage but that's bullshit, don't believe a word of it, I can get you eighteen hundred by week's end, that's a promise."