This would be the part where an objection ought to go. Were it Zeus before her, she might’ve still found one. But it was unfair Hestia, and she put into words aches her heart had never thought to speak of, and Vasilia had no one here to hide behind or lean on. Just her, a lifetime of exhaustion, and a jagged little truth.

“So, what now?” She still didn’t want the cocoa. But the warmth of the mug was...pleasant. And it gave her hands something to do. “I regale anyone who’ll listen to my infinite record of regret until I can say what color I’ll paint the garden fence?”

She winced. Only thing she was good at. “Ugh, no, it’s not like…” Like she planned on not sticking around for the rest of her life. Just. Not something she thought of in much detail. And. Well. The question stood vis a vis painful autobiographies.

*************************************

Forgive the little sheep, if he cannot manage any more divine revelation today. He carefully unpacks every word, arranges them just so, as ordained, they never transform into anything more than words in an odd order. Impossible? Cannot fail? Hadn’t he gotten into this mess by trying to do too many impossible things? But enveloped in the presence of dear Hera, even the lost were acceptable. Especially the lost.

“Who can I even go to with...any of this?” He’s only whispering now, and this too, feels acceptable. “This is, well, it might be, she’s the Captain. My Captain. And, a personal matter, such as this…” He couldn’t. How could he? If word got out-! No no no no no, no, a thousand times no. So who...?

(He did not dare close the last inch between them, to rest his head against hers. Such a thing would be far, far above his station. But. He did close one of the two last half-inches. And if she deigned to close the other, she would not hear any complaint from him.)

Snuck in among the blazing kaleidoscope of colors is a thin ribbon of golden light that threads the galaxy between Alced and a point somewhere still in the middle of the infinite depths of the sea. It is not a powerful light, nor a bright one. Even a talented and invested observer would struggle to look here and see anything other than the galaxy as it should be, as it always was: rippling, powerful, alive, and alone. It is no proof at all of the blazing strength a mortal defying Fate or the gods, though for that matter it barely counts as a manifestation of their will.

It is thin and translucent. Where the solar winds blow by or chunks of rock cross through, it melts away into bits of ragged sparkles. Sometimes the trail is straight and decisive. It cuts through the sea with the confidence of a sword thrust or the stroke of a pen. Other times it is cautious and clever. It winds long and winding loops around obstacles and gracefully serpentines between chunks of asteroid and fragments of old discarded hulls as if it knew they were there all along.

Just now, it is playful and capricious. It zips about in a corkscrew spiral and bends upwards into a series of loops for no other reason than because it can. The golden ribbon is speed. It is control. And more than that, it is Bella. Here and there the sparks break in such a way to prove that the pattern of her thread is not perfect. There are erratic jerks in her movement toward debris, toward stars, toward storms that would crush her to pieces and burn those pieces to ash in an instant. It would be simplicity itself to let those errant moods take her over. She would become the flaw, and be perfect. Her arc would carry her into a lethal obstacle, and she would disappear from the universe without pain. Everything she dreamed of for months on end, granted in a single instant that needed no effort or the slightest bit of will. All she needed to do was fall asleep.

But she corrects each mistake as it comes, as easily as she might swish her tail. She does not consider why she does this. It's simply natural to move. It is natural to swim through the sea and it is natural to move forward and it is natural to to seek a destination even when you do not know the place you are heading toward or what might be waiting for you there. Motion is the gift Apollo has given her. There had been a Bella who thought that being calm was the same as being still. But this Bella understands the serenity of motion. This is the secret that Apollo painted on her before he sent her on his secret paths.

She banks. The void skiff is surprisingly simple to control; all she has to do is make sure she's got the controls gripped tight and from there it's as simple as flexing her wrists. But in the act of flexing her wrists, she remembers that she has them. She remembers the soreness. She remembers the burning of the acid in her muscles built up from weeks of perilous spaceflight where she hasn't been able to move her arms more than to briefly and unsatisfyingly stretch them for fear of becoming the kind of nothing she'd rejected while riding the wave. She remembers how cramped her feet are, and the numbness in her legs that tell her the vibrations of a sighing star have turned her into a useless paralytic lump. She can only tell the muscles in her calves still work because they're desperately squeezing together hard enough to force a grunt from her throat. It's the first sound she's made since she left.

Her spine is crawling with flaming ants, and the small of her back is a block of uncomfortable marble. Her hair and her dress are soaked with sweat, and her ears feel so limp she can't imagine they'll ever regain their proper perk again. Her fingers itch, which piled on top of everything else feels just as bad as dying. Voidskiffs weren't meant for the kind of journey she's putting hers through, and here in the middle of nothing she is proving why.

But the work is not so bad. It's straightforward and surprisingly mindless, for all that it's uncomfortable. Keep her hands on the sticks that bend the sails. Sit up straight. And pray for her next decision to keep her alive, and the next one after that, and the next one after that, and the next one after that. There's no time to second-guess herself at this speed. There's no time to plan a course, and even with her Auspex no chance to see more than one in a dozen problems coming before they happen. It might think at those speeds, but she can't. There's no room to think up here. Her mind does not wander, neither to worry or to reminisce. In its way, void sailing is much the same as sewing a new dress out of ten thousand hand-crafted beads, and she thanked it for that in her heart.

Prayer is easy work. Prayer requires no song and no words from her. Prayer requires no sacrifice except the ones she's making with her body. Prayer is movement, just like freedom. If Apollo put her on this ship and sent her to die in space, he's certainly had his chances to finish her off. So she prays, with every flick of her wrists and every second she holds her arms forward in defiance of her aches. She prays with every twist and turn, and she prays with every action that carries her further from anything she knows. You put her here, Apollo. You shared your wisdom. Now bring her home.

Her landing is not a comfortable one. The voidskiff isn't meant for landing, either. It doesn't seem to be made for much except helping Poseidon kill crazy idiots. When she touches down she immediately bounces off of the landing zone off the back of sheer momentum. Her muscles clench with every impact. Her bones rattle inside her body and send shocks of lightning up into her brain. She smells the acrid tang of something burning, but there's no time to figure out what it is. She wrenches the controls with every ounce of remaining strength in her ragged body. She snarls, because it's better than screaming, as her tiny ship skips across the length of a dock built for landing the kind of behemoth Odoacer would send here before slamming into the railing and tipping over onto its side.

"Ugh... fuck."

It takes her minutes, or maybe hours to pull herself out of the skiff. She's not sure; time's so much harder to count than she remembers it being. Her legs touch solid ground for the first time in centuries, and immediately betray her and turn to jelly before they dump her on the floor. Her blood rushes through her furiously and fills her skin with millions of sharp needles as it brings her back to life.

She smiles, just before a wave of nausea burns her throat. She manages to cough up a bit of spit, but after that she rolls through endless cycles of dry heaves squeezing her lungs, squeezing her stomach, and wrenching her neck. But she smiled. Because she noticed as she looked that her skiff looked better after landing than the last one she'd found so very far from home.

Alexa stares at the dice, before picking one up, noting its face, and contemplatively tossing it down again. The same face stares up at her again, and she turns away from the dice with a small huff of irritation.

"In my own name," she retorts, "and in the name of... Hmm. I do not know your name yet, do I, girl? Spot will not do. Hmm. Rusty?"

Two barks.

"Not Rusty? Okay. We can figure it out later."

She flicks a particle of rust off the wire brush and holds it out to the figure. "Realistically speaking, magus, there are two, three ways this ends. If you do not help, I will stay until you drag in an esoteric to evict me. And if my friend is harmed in that, my wrath will be terrible."

She lets her words hang in the air and adds, deadpan, "This would be detrimental to our team spirit."

Her tongue still chokes on the next words. Don't let them know you care for it. That's a lever they can push, someone they can threaten to get you to be a good soldier. The only way to keep them safe is to keep them away.

"But, if you were to help me fix this dog, you would earn my friendship. That is valuable coin, to be sure. And it would mean I have no reason to dig through your toolbox."

"What do you say, friend?

Eater Of Pancakes!

Swish swish. Bella is sitting down in front of you, but her eyes aren't her own. She's looking at you with an intense, searching expression, staring deep into your eyes that she might imagine the truth below.

"I can't tell if you've changed, Redana," said Bella softly.

She takes your chin in your hand, so lonely, so distant. You see a ripple across her fur and your heavy eyes fall closed again. You feel the prick of antivenom fangs on your mouth and you don't know if she bit your lip as Bella or as Mynx.

She's Mynx when your eyes clear, leaning back on her chair, balanced on two legs and her tail, leather boots up on the table and with an expression like a joke is growing amidst the melancholy.

"Holy shit you're in so much trouble," she said, white teeth grinning with just a flash of your red. "Redana. Did you know? Did you know that you were running towards the Hunt, the Harvest and the Heart? Would it have changed anything if you did?" She's halfway towards falling to easy teasing but the weight on her shoulders and in her heart weigh against the helium of her smile.

Alexa!

"Your wrath is irrelevant," said the Hermetic. "It is as plain as day that Athena has turned her face from you, and I do not require relics to deal with you. Simple Coherent should be enough to eject you and teach you a lesson about respect."

A withered finger raises and points and half a dozen improbably bulky Coherent enforcers approach you, picking up pipes and wrenches, flexing and scowling and striking poses. And, true to the Hermetic's words, Athena is not with you in this. Your mind is filled with fog; you cannot see the angles, you cannot calculate the tactics, you do not know how to smoothly and flawlessly win this battle.

But deep in your secret heart you feel a burning sensation that tells you that an ugly win can still be a win.

Vasilia!

"Oh, you're fucked if you want to keep doing the hero thing," said Hestia brightly. "You've lost the favour of Zeus and she's not the kind of god who takes 'I've thought about what I've done' as an apology. You probably can't even comprehend how much you were coasting on sheer divine favour. Like, that ramming maneuver? Shooting a Hermetic Evoker in the face? That whole thing with Demeter? People way more skilled than you were nothing but blood vapor by this point on your insane journey. Frankly right now you'd be lucky to get steady employment, which I nevertheless suggest attempting because if you pull your husband back into this shit then you will not be able to protect him."

Dolce!

"If she is your Captain then she owes you your wages when you arrive in the next port," said Hera, gently touching her forehead against yours. "If she is your king then she owes you her sword when evil threatens you and yours. But if she is your wife then she owes you everything. And if you do not get your due, the interest in each case will be pain."

Bella!

"Don't you dare move!"

You've had that yelled at you before. But this... isn't being yelled at you. It takes you a moment to orient as the overweight Azura woman jogs up to you, huffing with the exertion and mopping her forehead with her immense cravat. "Oh! You poor dear! You've injured your neck and you might be paralyzed for life!"

She's still not talking to you. She's talking to the crowd - she's making some kind of show out of this, but you can't comprehend what her game is. "You, ser! And you! You saw the whole thing! You saw this poor girl almost killed by this deathtrap, and as Themis is your judge I declare you are all witnesses! I'll have you write your names, and may any woman who does not be held in contempt of the gods and their law!"

And then she's ducked her head into the cockpit to look right at you - and her watery eyes fill with a hard cunning, and she gives a firm wink. "Listen," she hisses. "We play this right and you could be a rich woman. I am Thelis Thist, Path of the Attorney," she tucks a business card into your dress out of sheer habit. "How much can you ham up your injuries? If you're actually injured that's even better."

"What do you think, Bella? Are you any good at pretending to be sick? Do you need me to poison you? Because I could... Bella? Bella! Can you... Bella? Are you listening?"

Despite her very best efforts, she was. Bella stood with prim and proper posture, as rigidly as she could get away with while still being able to reach the next in a seemingly endless pile of freshly washed white sheets. She set herself to the task of smoothing out the next one across her table so she could begin ironing and folding it, a supremely difficult task that took every ounce of a Servitor's concentration to get right. Her golden eyes burned with focus. Her lips stayed set in a very careful, placid smile that betrayed no interest in the conversation, or any emotion other than satisfaction with her lot in life, as was proper for an Imperial Pet. Her arms moved in swift and practiced patterns as she fought the last remaining wrinkles the way a phalanx might fight a band of heroic pirates.

But her damn... AHEM. Her gosh darned ears! They gave the game away! She couldn't keep them from perking up at the sound of Mynx's voice, and even worse, she felt the little traitors wiggle and bend toward her friend, and now no amount of diligent ironing would be enough to pretend she was too involved in her work to hear anything. There was an edge to her voice that caught Bella off guard. Mynx was a creature of total confidence, that tinge of nervousness didn't belong in her scheming. Unless that was part of the trick?

She stepped away from the laundry so she could look up. Mynx's scales rippled across her face as she hid behind her tented hands. Her eyes looked deadly serious, which had to mean she was smiling like an idiot where Bella couldn't see. But the thing that really got her tail all bushed up was the fact that Mynx had her attention and wasn't doing anything with it except... waiting. She sighed and rolled her eyes. Her lips curved into a tiny scowl, which she quickly forced back off her face before anybody could punish her for it. She ran her fingers over the smoothness of the sheet, and made to fold it.

"Hmph. Troublemaker."

"I knew you'd understand! Dany's actually starting to catch on to some of the usual tricks, and I just don't see how I'm going to pull this off by myself this time! Oh thank you Bella, thank you thank you thank you!"

"H-hey I didn't say I'd!" Bella squeaked as she fussed the wrinkles out of her skirt and apron.

"Oh good point, maybe this would work better if we mussed your clothes up a little bit. You're good with a sewing needle, right? So you wouldn't get too mad if we maybe cut that little skirt of yours up? Just a teeny bit?"

Mynxed hopped down from her perch on the shelf. She wasn't bothering to hide her grin anymore. She advanced with bouncy steps while Bella retreated, clutching her apron like a shield. She fought as hard as she could, but she was losing the war. She couldn't keep the smile on her face from melting into a picture of flustered horror. She couldn't keep the rose from creeping onto her cheeks, when everybody knew that roses were only meant for Empresses. She swiped at Mynx, who caught her by the wrist with a soft smile.

"Wh-wh-what does any of this have to do with?? A-and I didn't agree to!"

"Right, so if you can't fake it, I'd better give you a light dose. When Dany hears you, or better yet sees you, she'll find you all faint and weak..."

"M-Mynx, what?"

"...and then right when she's thinking it a trick I'll make sure she sees me..."

"Mynx, please!"

"...So then she'll know it's real, or well, not really real, but for our Princess what's the difference, right? And she'll run up to you and..."

"MYNX! Stop!"

All at once the energy in the room popped. Mynx blinked with obvious confusion, in that slow and incredibly off-putting way of hers, and tilted her head.

"Why Bella, what's the matter?"

"I... I will not," it took all of Bella's willpower not to show her teeth. A Lady was polite. Demure. Unassuming. She took tiny little breaths in and out of her nose, "Be part of such, such... silliness! Leave me out of it! Please!"

"But Bella! Sweetie!" Mynx's face was a mask. An enigma, even. The glitter in her eyes could have been malicious amusement as easily as it might have been determination, "This is for you! I'm just helping you get what you want!"

Bella froze. She swallowed nervously, fumbling for her voice. It was a long and awkward moment full of heat and fidgeting before she found it again.

"What I... want?" she winced at the way her voice cracked.

"Well of course! It's obvious to anybody with eyeballs that you're completely nuts for her, but we'll never get the Princess to figure out how much she likes you back without a little mmmphrble!"

Zeus herself could not have spotted Bella take the pillow up from under the laundry pile even if she'd been watching the conversation with her full interest. But if she had, she'd certainly be proud of how much like a thunderbolt she'd managed to throw it. The second strike was even deadlier, and the third was certainly overkill, but the sound of her flustered squeaking was still being drowned out by merciless giggles, which meant the meteoric rain of sleep aids couldn't stop until the traitor had been well and thoroughly murdered for her crimes.

***

Bella's head is stuck inside a clamp. Every bit of blood that squeezes past her skull crushes her with blinding pain. Light exists only as a sense of nausea, and sound for dizziness. Her lips are dry and cracked when she opens them to yell at... whoever the fuck this is, but the pounding against her brain steals her thoughts from her before she can turn them into venom. She could be birthing a new goddess from her temple right now, and not even notice the difference. Her scowl is filled with teeth.

Every breath she is tainted by the overwhelming smell of mint plastered over faint traces of rot. Onion. Garlic. Vinnegar. All swim in the stinging ocean of sugar-soaked mint. This is the monster come to kill her: a sweaty sack of who crams her face full of candies to hide the fact she couldn't be bothered to pick her lunch out of her teeth or wash herself clean after. Disgusting.

The growl in her throat feels drowned out by the one in her stomach. It makes her skin crawl to think this puffed up suit full of death and bad ideas is sparking her appetite, but she also hadn't eaten once in the entire span of her journey, which for all she knew could have taken years. Even the muscles she's certain still work like they should feel heavy and devoid of power. She moves to lift her arm, and it's like trying to carry the sky on her back. Every inch takes a mile's worth of effort and then some.

That doesn't stop her from grabbing Thellis Thist by the collar. That doesn't stop her from yanking her close so that the Azurite had nothing to look at but the dead, red gleam of her Auspex, or her neat and glistening teeth if she was cowardly enough to try.

"The fuck're you trying to do to... me..."

The weight on her neck is unbearable. It presses down against her spine and pulls what little energy she's got left out of her body. Her face goes slack. Her claws clench blindly. She pulls herself free from the wreck, just to tumble onto the grimy, scuffed up floor with a lazy, exhausted flop. Her ears droop uselessly against her still screaming skull as her tail flops dully alongside her. She is vaguely aware that her eyes are closing.

And she sleeps, for the first time since Apollo woke her. And this time he lets her.

So. It wasn’t a prank of Zeus’. Wonderful.

“I can’t just step down, and, vanish away. No, no, it’s simply out of the question.”

And yet. When she turned her mind to the problem at hand, where was the road that carried her to victory over her foe, when she no longer had divine aid on her side? Hadn’t she said this quest was important? Hadn’t he said so?

“But if it’s for the sake of the voyage, then. Perhaps.” Give her a moment. This was a set of words in a novel order. “Perhaps I can find a way to step. Back. Temporarily.”

It was, all things considered, remarkable progress under dire circumstances, and if she felt a little less like death then she might’ve demanded a medal for her efforts. But step back to what? She couldn’t leave the voyage. The auguries predicted smoother sailing for some time, yes, but not nearly enough to set down anywhere for, what, a vacation?

...when was the last time she’d had a vacation? Question for later.

“Hestia, I wish we could have met earlier, but perhaps I can make up for that some by asking more of your wisdom: What do you suggest I do? Pasts, futures, these are tricky things to take hold of. I may have forgotten how, along the way.”

*****************************

The ship bore him on. Hera held him up, and in her presence no care could intrude. The physical awareness of form, the mental balance of attentions, the emotional weight of anticipation, all that usually composed a Dolce scattered to the void. What was left was free to drift and rest and simply be.

Now, much of him shied away, naturally repelled from the thought of marital debts owed. He much more preferred the reverse, to give, than to risk greed, and overstepping of bounds. But, amidst himself sat a shining core of a thought, a vision of two resting their full weight on the other, and neither falling or slipping. And if that couldn't be marriage, than what could?

And yet...

"I don't know what I ought to say." He heard himself wonder. "I could sit in front of her for hours, and I wouldn't know. I can't, Hera. I'm not ready. I need...I need..." And the strain of searching for the unknown threatened to pull him back together, until a gentle brush of Hera's hand scattered him back into restful quiet, and tipped the words right out of him. "I don't know what I need. And I don't know how to know what I need."

Damn.

Damn him for not backing down. Damn her for escalating to "we can do this the hard way" in the first place. Damn her spear for feeling wrong in her hands, for that little extra knife of betrayal. Damn him for reminding her that--

She's not useless. Yeah, arguably Redana doesn't need protecting, can handle things on her own. Yes, she's earned the ire of the gods. Yes, Athena's turned away from her, so arguably the best thing she can do for Redana is find her own replacement.

She should back down. Should heed her own warning, shouldn't pick fights where she doesn't need to. Has too few friends, divine or otherwise, to go making enemies. What's the next escalation from here, Alexa? What's your plan for when you, chest heaving, stand over your allies? What happens when he says "okay, maybe we do need the relics?" He's got them spare, and you haven't. He's got troops spare, and you haven't. He's not shunned by the war god, hasn't had the strength pulled out of his limbs, doesn't feel like his mind is clouded with--

It's worse for the knowledge that she used to know these things. Remembers what it was like, without the knowledge of how to do it anymore. Could get it back, maybe, if she were willing to get back in Athena's good graces. Could go back to it.

Could go back to what? Go back to being a tool? Go back to being the Pallas?

But what else is there for her? What else can she be? It's all she's ever known!

Not!Rusty tugs at her clothing, whines. It's not worth it, come on, let's go, let's get going, we'll figure out something else. You won't have to fight--nobody's ordering you to fight, here! It's not something you have to disobey! You have options! You can go talk to Vasilia, barter your memories with Iskarot, go whining to Redana!

All it will cost is your pride!

...

Step back, Not!Rusty. She's doing this for your own good. She sways gently, spear dragging and limbs full of unfamiliar reflexes. But what is she, in the end, if she is too weak to protect somebody else?

Redana is still poisoned. She has to be. The tightness in her stomach, the way her throat is closed up, the frantic beating of her heart and sweat dripping off her sides. The poison courses through her veins, and it laps against the locked door in her heart. Behind the door is a world where everything is broken forever because she forced her best friend in the whole world to kiss her. Behind the door is a world where Bella becomes small and quiet and not fun any more, because Redana was a bad girl. Locking the door is don’t be naughty with your servitors and your highness, please accept my suit and the ways that Bella would stiffen and try not to run away when she brought her face close, and Redana might be dumb but she knows, okay? She knows Bella doesn’t want her. Not like— not that way.

And Bella being her best friend is— was. Was the most important thing in the whole world. So that kiss can’t have happened. It’s the forbidden thing, the freedom she doesn’t even dream about because it’s impossible, not in the way that going to space is impossible but in the way that being her father is impossible. And the poison surges through her, an acid sea.

And now she knows, too, that Bella was never her friend. All those flinches were— she must have been disgusted whenever Redana got too close, dared to touch her hand, rested her head on Bella’s shoulder. She was such a good actress. She had Redana fooled the whole time. Hiding all of that contempt and bile and venom behind polite, strained smiles. It wasn’t just that Bella was straight as an arrow, it was that she was roiling with hatred for her charge for, for so long, and Redana really was dumb, wasn’t she? Wasn’t she just.

That. Over and over. The shark beneath the sea of her thoughts. She hated you. She hated you. She hated you.

And still the poison burns.

“Don’t do that,” Dany says, and her voice is small and raw and hurt. “Please.” She doesn’t explain what that is. The words would break her like taking a sledgehammer to stained glass. So instead she changes the subject. When her hand rests on the table, next to the plate of pancakes, it shakes. “And I don’t. Didn’t. Whatever the Hunt and the Harvest and the Heart is. Are. Whatever.”

(And here the Auspex cheerfully shows her— what, exactly? If anything?)

“But I’m still going. I’m not going to stop. I have friends who don’t hate me and—“

She stops. She wouldn’t be Redana if she didn’t. “I’m sorry,” she says, and then coughs out the last of the venom; it shines on her lower lip, where the punctures are already closed. “I didn’t mean— I guess you didn’t hate me. I think. I don’t know. Because all of you were putting on a show for me the whole time. Pretending. And just... I’m not going back with you, Mynx. I’m sorry. I have to see this through.”

But she doesn’t yell for help, or tell her to get out, or anything like that. She sits and looks at Mynx with those sad eyes, and waits for the next part of the performance.

Then: “would you like some of the pancakes? Or some milk?” Because Redana is still Redana, whether or not she’s changed.

Redana!

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 they 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?"

Alexa!

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?

Vasilia!

"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."

Dolce!

"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."

Bella!

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 overwhelmingly 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."

“Aww, you have noticed me.” A memory of good humor sparkled in her eyes, then faded once more. “He. Usually took care of,” Preparing her meals? Fitting time to eat into her days? Keeping her alive? “Such things. I’ve let him do as he pleases now, a sort of, leave of absence.” Of her. From her. “It’s. Been quite some time, since I’ve had to think about...”

And that was quite enough pity for one day. Either she was going to sit here and starve, or do something about it. If only the latter could be as effortless as the former. But when she planted her feet, and dug her claws into the table for leverage, Hestia’s hand was waiting to help her up.

“Have you any pasta-related wisdom to spare too? The kitchens ought to be quiet now, and the Alced won’t be here for days. Even if they hurry it up they can’t take the bridge if there’s nobody there to take it from. It’s just the principle of the thing.”

*******

“So now I just...wait?”

“And stir, occasionally.”

“How occasionally?”

“Every few minutes. Doesn’t need to be precise. Just enough to keep the noodles from clumping together.”

“There’s no spice or, I don’t know, seasoning, I should be adding? Just wait?”

“Ten minutes if you like them firm. Twelve if you like them softer.”

"Usually, there's a sauce of some kind to go with it. Shouldn't we be starting that?"

"Once you've graduated from pasta."

“...this isn’t a test, is it? There’s not some secret step that I ought to deduce from what’s come before?”

“We’re not making a test. We’re making lunch.”

“Ah. Of course.”

“...”

“...”

“...it’s just, boiling pasta. There’s something about it that sounds, I don’t know, complicated? Involved? I always imagined it a bigger fuss than this.”

“Everything sounds bigger than it is, at first. But we all get there in our own time.”

“Like ten to twelve minutes?”

“Ten to twelve minutes, sometimes.”

**************************************************************

Once upon a time, there was a little chef who wasn’t happy just being a chef. So unhappy was he, that one night he broke every rule he’d ever learned, snuck aboard a spaceship, and left his rightful place far behind. This made the little chef happy, for a time. He saw many wonderful things, met many wonderful people, cooked them all sorts of delicious things, and even found a wife he could hold and treasure forever. But this, too, wasn’t enough. His friends could not journey with him. The sights of space revealed themselves to be full of danger and despair. And even his marriage threatened to crumble to dust. So the little chef asked the wise goddess Hera what he should do to fix his cursed heart.

And Hera, in her infinite wisdom, told him he hadn’t broken enough rules the first time.

The little chef held some small concern. He told Hera, “I don’t know, wise Hera. This wisdom may be too high for me to understand.” But could he, a mere chef, so easily discard the words of one so wise? Shouldn’t he ought to, at least, follow after her, and see the results for himself? This was a wisdom more his station. “If you think it wise, then I will try my best.”

And what would his first desire be?

“Mynx ought to eat. And she won’t, unless somebody prepares her food in a way that she will accept. It is not so different a desire than those I’ve had before, but I know I can do this much.”

“So what,” Redana starts to snap, digging alfalfa out of the pancakes with her fork, “Mother decided I needed some clowns?”

Then, again, she stops, and considers what she’s said after she’s said it. She looks at Mynx again, properly, and puts the fork down with a sigh. “No,” she says. “She decided I needed friends. I’m sorry, Mynx. It’s just that... I never would have seen this side of you or Bella if I hadn’t left. You would have fooled me the whole time, and I never would have seen how much Bella really hated me, or the lengths you’d go to just to keep me safe and miserable in my little cage. And I would have thought everything was fine.”

Around them, the ten thousand nameless noises of the ship as it is stressed by the rigors of travel, slingshotted towards their next destination. The sound of pancakes, chewed. The sounds, too quiet to hear, of the body: the beating heart, the rush of blood, the flutter of breath in and out of the lungs.

“I’m surprised Bella hasn’t jumped out yet with a straitjacket and an ELF,” Redana jokes, trying to plaster over that ache. “Is she too busy chasing Alexa around and lecturing her over letting me run off with her?” And she almost hides it. Almost. Almost manages not to glance over at the door, not sure if she is scared Bella will walk in or needs Bella to walk in and be coaxed into trying the pancakes, too.

[Redana Claudius flexes her Wisdom for once and rolls a 12. She would like to ask two questions, to be answered truthfully: what can Mynx tell Redana about Bella’s secret heart; and what does Mynx want now, and how can Redana help her?]

Some cruel god or other must have filled her with mercury while she slept. Her body feels heavy when she stirs though not in the way it had the last time. Her muscles are smooth but sluggish, and the effort that would normally buy her feet only manages to roll her over on the hard and somehow also jabby couch. Where she shifts, she feels her center of gravity move with her, pulling her unsteadily in the direction she tries to move until it flips her over and sends her crashing back down again.

The headache brownie tray drops to the floor with a crash louder than King Jaso's thunderbolts. And, oh! It turns out she can move as quickly as ever with the proper motivation. See how her hands fly to cover her ears with the reckless speed of a void skiff? She moves from lying to sitting straight up to hunched over with her head between her knees and her eyes squeezed shut against the blinding light of the room while seeming to skip the frames of motion in between these poses. She groans, or rather she whimpers, from the pain.

But like everything else in this little room, the danger here is a lie. She holds still, and her breathing steadies. The sounds of the room quiet to obnoxious murmuring and rustling with the occasional 'click' she can for some reason feel in her teeth. The knife-sharp light dims until it's safe to open her eyes again, and even flickers often enough to threaten to plunge her back into the familiar dark. The smell is cardboard, plaster, and cheap scented oils to cover all the dust, which tells her exactly who's office she's in without having to look around.

The muscles in her back come unclenched, bit by torturous bit. Her ears lift on top of her head, tentatively at first, but then to full perk. Bella rises to a proper sitting posture, and her spine keeps curving and loosening until she flops backwards onto the back of the couch with her arms splayed to either side of her. She lifts her head back up to keep an eye on Thelis as she moves about the room. This is a stance of triumph.

Bella scowls. Not ten seconds to rest after the effort of lifting herself and she's already expected to move and respond to something. She'd forgotten how much she hated dealing with other people. Just how stupid and impatient they could be. She leans forward with the grace and control she'd normally associate with the end of a whipping and grabs at the cheap cup full of pills. By the way her new talons tear straight through it, she notices that she is still wearing them and that they have not been plucked off her hands for scrap metal while she slept. She lets out a breath.

"Whatever."

A gaudy blue and yellow pill rolls about the palm of her hand for a moment as she stares at it without comprehension. How was this supposed to help, exactly? There wasn't a single nanite or a whiff of regeneration-inducing pheromones in the whole fucking container. Nothing of food or wine, either. What was it meant for? What did it do? She drops the cup on the table and lets the contents spill across everything while she eyes the 'food' with equal scorn.

She did not consider herself a master of cooking. She was good enough to be Redana's favorite chef, which was good enough to not get punished on a daily basis, but Redana was an idiot who thought that pancakes were the height of civilization so that didn't prove anything. To be a master you had to be dedicated entirely to the craft so you had time to absorb all the subtle nonsense that elevated high cooking from low. Bella had too many jobs to do in her old life to ever develop those skills. But even by her low standards, the offerings in front of her were lazy to the point of insult.

She picks up a sandwich half and sniffs it. Her entire face wrinkles with disgust. Stale, plain bread with such poor texture that it was surely baked by some sort of drone instead of a person, and weeks ago at that. If she was lucky. And what kind of dipshit made sandwiches with only peanut butter in them, anyway? Sticky and disgusting overly sweet garbage... nobody could possibly eat this willingly. Could they? She lifts it with the intention of throwing it atop the pills, but the hollow pit at her center pulls her hand without permission toward her mouth instead. It tastes even worse than it looks: the top of the bread has gone crunchy but somehow underneath that was dense and chewy trash that reminded her of the cup of drugs. It clung to her mouth unpleasantly even without the help of the gloopy filling, which wasn't made from nuts so much as some dumbass' idea of nuts held together with glue and syrup.

She devours all three in a moment, without asking if she can or should. The egg follows, unseasoned and slightly sour in a way that makes her stomach churn the more she thinks about it. She gulps the milk down greedily without bothering to taste it. The film that covers her tongue manages to be tart and unpleasant anyway. She holds her head in her hands and winces, which is how she notices her beret is missing. If she's being charitable, it must have died in the crash. If she's not...

"What the fuck are you trying to do? What the fuck is all this? What the fuck do you think I... what the fuck?"

She'd eaten the food because she was starving. But she'd kept going even though it wasn't helping, because it meant she was doing something with her mouth other than talking about payments. Money... Bella had a dim awareness of what it was, borrowed from Redana's old pulp adventure novels. Azura pirates flitting about the universe burying troves of treasure. On Tellus it was useless. If she needed something for her work it was simply given to her without transaction, and her position didn't come with compensation. On the streets outside the palace they dealt in strange and shoddy coins, but that was the desperation of a bunch of mangy, dying servitors unfit for duty and the boredom of the humans in between bouts of mutilating themselves with ink. None of it made any sense.

But this... Bella feels the vague sense of creeping dread of a person who's about to get ripped off for something she wasn't planning on selling in the first place. Money. She'd never thought about money. As a Praetor she received tribute from every system she visited just to avoid her (Empress') wrath. She was never supposed to wind up here. Never supposed to leave the zone of her Regalia's protection. But here she was, and now she needed money if she was going to get out. Probably?

"Eighten hundred," she repeats unsteadily, "Is that a... trove? Or just a chest?"

At the very least, it's not immediate. It's not as simple as knocking her over and bowling her out the door. She's getting her own hits in. But Alexa doesn't have time for flash, for call-and-response, for choreography. She doesn't remember how to make that happen--how to make the spear dance, how to twirl and pirouette to dance out of the way of the blows, to turn the enemies' energy against each other. She remembers the training! She remembers doing it! She danced through the battlefield, faced entire platoons on her own, was the ultimate in warfare.

And now, she must recognize that it wasn't her. That she has training and strength, yes. This isn't a helpless situation. But so much of what made her, her, was something else. And it's gone, now, and she doesn't know what it'll take to get it back or if she's willing to do that.

And what's worse, she's going to lose. She can see the signs--can't get enough hits in, is driven one step back, and then another.

"There must be some way I can earn your forgiveness!" Is she talking to the Magos, or hoping Athena might show pity? Probably the Magos.

Redana!

If Mynx had a desire in all this it would be to avoid having to talk about this. She squirms and shifts under your gaze in a way that you only have ever seen when questioning her about a mysterious wound she somehow acquired in the line of duty. But her heart weighs the scales and comes to the exhausted conclusion that she, shield and guardian, has to protect you from your own aching heart.

And so she speaks.

"Do you know the meaning of life, Redana?" said Mynx. "I do. It is to die in someone else's place. If I close my eyes and let my mind wander that's what I come back to. When I imagine where I'll be as an old lady it's dying in the place of an old lady. It's, just," she twitches her tail. "I'm not talking about me. Bella's not like that. She was made differently. She was made to be perfect, to be the best. The fastest. The strongest. The smartest. The most beautiful." Again Mynx shifts, hands in her lap in a demure maid's pose. "And you have no idea how scary that makes life for her. Because being the best isn't worth anything, Redana, and doesn't and has never given her control over anything. When she fails it's always for reasons outside of her control but she has to carry the consequences anyway."

She took a breath and, at last, made eye contact. "And she has carried so many consequences. All of palace security's consequences fell on her. All of the household staff's consequences fell on her. All of your failings fell on her. All of my..." she blinks for a moment. "She has all of the responsibility and none of the power, Redana. And she's in so much pain because of it. The only thing she can control is herself and time and again that's not enough."

Her voice, her ears, her head have all dropped. "I can't say she doesn't hate you, Redana. I can't say she doesn't hate me either. And I can't say she doesn't deserve to. Here I am, warm and comfortable here with you, and Bella... I could fail here so easily. I could just... give up and go with you and defend you and fulfill my purpose. It'd be easy and I'd love it. But Bella doesn't have that option. She's trapped between perfection and powerlessness and nobody has ever once supported her when she needed it, the way she needed it. So if I go with you I'm letting her down, just like you did."

Her voice is sore and her eyes are wet and her fists are clenched so tight her knuckles are white.

Alexa!

"Forgiveness?" said someone who was probably the Magos. "Forgiveness is unnecessary. I hold no grudge. You are beneath my notice. You are merely a stranger to me."

And then (s)he gestured coldly and the Coherent cast you down a shaft to land upon a heap of garbage.

Vasilia and Dolce!

You meet in the kitchen. The pasta is boiling. Hestia tastes it and holds up three fingers; not quite yet.

She is there for both of you this time. Salt, too, is there for you. And pepper. It's not a meal that'll change your life, but it's quick, it's warm, and it'll fill you up and give you time to talk.

Bella!

"Oh, you're from the Reaches!" said Thist, smiling brightly and immediately rummaging around in a drawer. "On behalf of Xerxes CVI, The Violet Sunbeam That Kisses The Graves Of Her Foes, Shah of the Endless Azure Skies, welcome to civilization! I've got some pamphlets - ah!"

Thist scatters an array of beautifully illustrated pamphlets across the table in front of you. Stark, simple colours and shapes that captures the imagination with landscapes and laws in a way a lesser bard might need great battles and heroic deeds to achieve. These hold up, even to Imperial eyes, and have titles like SUMPTUARY LAWS, THE PATHS AND THE ARISTEIA, LANDMARKS OF GORGAN.

"Those'll cover the other basics, but here in the Skies we trade in coin," Thist held up a single, round piece of metal, stamped with a sun-and-mask icon. "This is a daric. One of these is worth about a kilogram of flour, ten of these will get a fine meal prepared for you or ingredients for three of your own. Accommodation is... ah, you won't have any trouble finding places to sleep here, put it like that. Eighteen hundred daric is enough for a woman to live in modest means for about two, three months, longer if you're cautious with it. Not that you'll need to be - if we work together, I can develop a legal case before the Senate that'll extract tribute from the Order of Hermes for their negligence towards your safety and the insult they have cast before mighty Xerxes and all that. You'll get a cut, of course!"

"I'm fine, Dany."

Redana's face is ashen.

"No, that wasn't a yawn! I'm fine!"

The Auspex doesn't even need to tell her that Mynx is telling the truth.

"I slept on the wrong side of my bed, your highness!"

Because it's like one of those funny pictures.

"If you don't get it, it's okay. I'm sure your tutors will be happy to explain to you again tomorrow."

Where you spend your whole life thinking it's a monstrous face and then one day you see that it's someone sitting for their portrait at an odd angle, but because it was so small and stuck inside that sprawling gilt frame, you mistook the negative space for a cheek and a screaming mouth, but now you can see it, and you can't see the face again no matter how you tilt your head at it. Because you saw what was really there, even though you'd never been able to see it right in front of your face every time you looked.

"There's nowhere I'd rather be, Princess."

Redana is an Olympian. She has also been training with the Coherents, swinging hammers and forcing panels into place and pulling on cables in sync with a hundred other arms. The table is nothing to her. She lifts and throws it like a monstrous discus at terrible speed, and when it strikes the reinforced wall, it cracks and splinters and skitters, pinwheeling, into Redana's bunk, legs shattered and surface ruined.

The noise that tears its way out of her throat is something that should belong to the Nemean. It is an echo of her great-grandfather's scream when the flint tore its way into his thigh, when from him came whirling galaxies and entropy and time and blood and love, smeared across the dark. For a moment, there are three shadows underneath the flickering lights, and Ares smiles through bloodless lips at Mynx, and the divinity strains to burst its way out of her bones and her flesh and her skin and smear itself across the Plousios.

And then Redana crumples to her knees, just a girl again, making gross heaving sobs, because now she can see the picture.

“We are going to put it back and pretend nothing happened.”

"Bella, this is for you! I’m going to save you and everybody else, whether or not you want to come with me, now stop! squirming!"

"I'm more than that, Redana! I'm so much more!"

"You thought I was useless. You thought I was stupid! I'm so much more than your dumb little pet, Redana! I'm a praetor, you moron! I shot you down, I brought you here! And now I'm going to bring you home because those are my orders, and there is not a fucking thing you can do to stop me!"

Every mistake. Every failure. Everything, on her shoulders, forever, while she tried to pretend she cared for the stupid ditz of a princess who brought consequence upon consequence down on her head.

She must have been so scared. And Dany had just wanted, desperately, for her mother to understand that Bella didn't have anything to do with it, that Bella shouldn't be punished for letting Dany escape, that's why, that's why if Bella wouldn't come with her, that's why she had to leave Bella in that closet, and if that was just the worst in a long line of punishments she'd been given over and over, all Redana's life, bearing everyone's responsibility, and if everyone expected her to be perfect, too, just like Dany, then--

And--

And--

Mynx is at her shoulder now, and Redana grabs at her with sudden violence, in the way that a drowning woman will. She pulls Mynx close, and her eyes are huge and blind with tears.

"Where is she, Mynx?" Her voice is quiet in the sort of way that suggests it will be very loud in a moment. It is the sort of voice that proceeds oaths and terrible dooms and declarations to mothers that can never be taken back. It is the voice of someone who is falling forever.

"Hmph. That's rich, you're gonna lecture me about being from 'the reaches'? You're so far out in the middle of nowhere I had to get lost to find you! Do you have the slightest idea who you're talking to? I'm, hahaha, I'm..."

She wants to throw her head back and laugh until this entire joke of an office cracks in half under the weight of her ego. Her throat itches with want to spill titles, accomplishments, and especially lineage like venom to melt this pathetic, pretentious ass into sludge. Her muscles twitch as though about to lift her off the couch with such grandeur that it'd send mortal creatures sprawling to their knees to worship her like a queen. She'll roll forward and rise to her full height, she'll stretch with such luxury they'll pay her triple just to keep looking at her, please, please, Your Highness, I!

But her neck tips slowly toward the table, instead. She sits forward, but only to lean and hunch forward with her elbows on her thighs. Her eye flicks across the pamphlets, full of words and pictures and ideas she doesn't know. They smile at her. Of course they're smiling at her. She shoots a nervous look behind her, expecting to see Him sitting in the corner in a lotus stance with his horrible and infinite smile. Her only company forever. But there's nothing. This room is just a room. What makes it amazing is that it's someone else's room.

Bella does not laugh. She does not boast or stand or prove the majesty that took dozens of generations of careful breeding to produce. She doesn't turn her claws or her regalia or her Auspex on this stupid, hapless rube. Where did any of that get her, anyway? Here. So deep inside the the backwards half of reality that they stopped measuring themselves by their distance from Tellus... from home. In someone else's trashy, fake, scam of a room.

She sighs, and shakes her head.

"...Trēdecima. That's who I am. My actual name. Never mind the rest. You wouldn't understand it anyway."

Her heart twists itself into knots inside of her chest. She squeezes her claws into her palms and snorts in shock when some instinct that shouldn't be inside of her stops her before she can break the skin. So much pressure. No release. She needs to vent, she needs to get it out, she needs to tear something into little pieces!

"Your coins are stupid," she says haughtily, "They're meant as passage for the Ferryman for a reason. With eighteen hundred of them I'd barely be able to move around. And these are how you get food?! Stupid. Insulting. Stupid. Is it all like the trash you left sitting out? Nobody would pay for that, not even with favors. Your plan is stupid, too. The Order of Hermes will just shrug and say it's a shame it didn't finish me, after everything else. And if Her Imperial Majesty hears that I let--!"

Bella goes silent. Her eye stares with hollow, ravenous emptiness at the pamphlets in front of her. But for the slight flaring of her nostrils, she barely seems to breathe. When she finds her voice again, it's hollow too.

"...If it's supposed to take a week before I can fend for myself, then what the fuck did you expect me to do in the meantime? I just finished flushing the chlorophyll from my system, I am not turning green again just to help your fat ass out."

Well, this is her life now.

She doesn't try getting up. What's the point, really? This is it. Rock bottom. Kinslayer, despised of her mother, and now two posturing muscleheads are enough to defeat her.

Oh, yes! Alexa, the Pallas! Beautiful, strong, graceful! Bow to her! Bow to the queen of garbage!

Why bother trying to move? Let her sit here, be still amongst the garbage heap. Redana can find Gaia without her. She's got an army now, and she never needed her in the first place. The others will manage with her. She'll just rest here with the rest of the garbage and feel quite sorry for herself, thanks much.

Redana would probably even let her go. Drop her off when next they make port, promise never to suck her back in. She'd...

She'd never see them again. But they didn't need her, anyway. Old relic of the past, too blind to see when its usefulness has gone. She'll just hurt them by staying, right? Better this way.

And she'd probably be able to do it, too, if it weren't for the nose digging into her back.

G'wan. Leave her alone, dog. You don't need her. The Alcedi will toss a ball for you, probably.

Nudge nudge. Whine.

Come on. Have you no pity for your elders? She is your elder, right? Maybe?

Bark.

Hrrmmmm. Fine. Fine. She's moving. We'll at least get you fixed up. And then she's coming back to the trash heap, you mark her words.

***

Alright. Fine, Not!Rusty. You were right. Baths were a good idea.

She sits in the steam of bathhouse, water up to her nose, and gently blows bubbles. At least the dirt of the garbage heap is gone. Not!Rusty even seemed to like having the soil of ages gently wiped off its surface. Now, if only the thoughts in her head were as easy to chase away.

A stranger. After dedicating her life to her service, one misdeed turns her to a stranger.

And what is she, if not a scion of Athena? What can she be, when her purpose is gone? No, worse than gone, shunning her? Who else could she turn to? Who else would listen? She can't just... exist, can she?

It'd be one hell of a pivot.

The playwright that brought them together ought to have kept writing. His eyes would widen in surprise. She would glow with pride, and yet, restrain herself. Offering, without demanding. He’d answer with place settings for two. She’d make a quiet joke of serving him, for a change. Old songs, set to older rhythms swell after a long silence. Aphrodite would stand guard at the kitchen door, and he will suffer no one to pass.

But the script ends here. They are alone, together, on the stage, with no one but each other for an audience. He suggests he should leave three times over, and asks her if she’s sure six times more. She can’t focus on him and her lesson at once. She can’t explain he’s not the reason her words come out too curt, too rough. They reach the table, with food enough for them both, and pasta is so much easier to enjoy than words have been, but neither can forget that speaking is as necessary as eating, if this is to survive.

But he waits, out of habit. She waits, out of need.

“Not bad.” Hestia eats, unhurried, and unwilling to encroach on Aphrodite’s domain. “Next time, do one thing a little differently, and see if you like it better.”

A topic. Any topic at all. Safety in a storm. “I didn’t know you were learning to cook.” He didn’t know she wanted to learn, either. Never held much interest in the kitchens, if he wasn’t in them. Had he missed something, all this time?

“‘Cook’ may be a strong word. Let’s start with ‘feeding myself’, and see where it goes.”

He sits for longer than he should, pulled between expectations. Praise her efforts, and risk seeming like empty flattery? Give her company in her amateur state, and risk bruising her pride? “You...have a good teacher,” he hedges.

“Mmm?” She blinks. ”Ah, yes, of course. Indeed, she’s quite good. Would that I had called on her sooner.”

Silence. Forks hunt down noodles too small to matter. Perhaps neither were the right answer. Perhaps he chose wrong when he blundered into the kitchens, and no more answers were right.

“She’s brought to my attention,” she continues. “Other, aspects of my life that I’ve left...deficient. Too deficient. In desperate need of personal attention.”

“Oh?”

She lingers on a meager bite, staring into the empty, oily plate before her. She hears the intent, hiding behind the question. A sneaking thoughtfulness, standing ready to catch any responsibility, and keep it from landing squarely on her shoulders. “Yes, and I suspect it will take a great deal of my attention.” Nothing to clue him in. She knows he will wait up tonight, wondering. She still says nothing. “More than I can usually spare. Between that, and, other, considerations: I have to ask:”

She sets down her fork. Her knife rests against it at the proper angle. She dabs at her mouth with a napkin, before folding it beside her plate, and now she can’t pick up any of them again. Nothing else to delay with. “Dolce, I am stepping down from Captainship for some time. Would you care to take it in my place?”

The news knocks the thoughts clean out of his head. She sees his mouth hang slack, before a mask of duty latches shut over his heart. “Of course, I would gladly take charge for you-”

“No. No, I’m sorry, I’m truly sorry, but that can’t be how it is. I’m not going to be Captain for some time, but that doesn’t mean you have to.” No one had to do anything. No one but her. “If you don’t want it, there are other qualified people on board. Give it a few days, and the Alced will have a Captain from their ranks, favored by the gods.” Unlike her. An Alced Captain on the rise, and she on yet another step down. A long, slow spiral of compromise and tragedy, ever-downwards, from her first breath to an awkward conversation in an empty kitchen on a doomed voyage. But now she could make mediocre pasta, and everything will be different.

She gathers up the dishes - as a proper domestic person should - and one by one sets to washing them in the sink. Needed one more job to hide behind, after all. “You’re my second, Dolce. My second,” she says, filling her vision with chores instead of wool. “It’s your right to take it up or refuse. Whatever seems best to you.”

“And you’re...okay with this?”

“I don’t have much choice in the matter. Not really.” Not anymore. “Zeus has taken issue with me, and if I were to press on like this, it would only end badly for everyone.” She turns, mustering up the remnants of a smile. “But. I think I’ll be alright.”

“Ehhhhh, ‘alright’ may be a strong word for it.” Hestia waves her hand uncertainly. “Let’s start with ‘resigned acceptance’ and see where we go from there.”

As it turns out, being the goddess of hearth and home did not render one exempt from the frustrated pouting of a deeply injured soul. But it did allow Hestia to deflect all consequence via an honest shrug.

He is not so lucky. Finally, questions with words to answer, and nothing less than the fate of the voyage hangs in the balance. The literal fate, of course, but probabilities of dying horribly in a space fire speak quieter than he might’ve feared. He had served under many Captains. Mission mattered, crew mattered, but who decided the tenor of a voyage more than they who stood at the helm? What manner of voyage would Captain Dolce run? What manner of voyage did he want to run? No one had ever asked him before. Least of all himself. “I, hrmm. That is. A lot to consider.” Already, one could hear the considerations tumbling around in his head. “But I will give it some thought.”

“You don’t need to give an answer right away. No one will know, until you’ve made your decision.” The dishes seen to, the meal done, the news given, she makes to leave. And there she pauses at the doorway. This is it. This is the time. The most honesty they’d exchanged since...well, since honesty had demanded they walk this road in the first place. Three little words. Words she’d told him a hundred thousand times over, and the pressure of not saying them threatened to burst out of her chest. Hadn’t she waited long enough? Hadn’t she suffered enough?

He’s still sitting there. Watching her. All the way from the other side of the kitchen.

“Be...” She bites her lip. And waits some more. “Be well, Dolce.”

He watches her go from his seat at the table. A hundred hundred paths trace their way through his heart. None reach an ending in time. “Be well,” his little voice vanishes into the dark after her. “Vasilia.”

He hopes it is not a wrong answer.

Redana!

Mynx is more demure and maidlike than you have ever seen her. Her hands are folded in her lap and her eyes are vague and downcast and she's speaking with the calm of someone terrified beyond comprehension. This is the confession of someone who knows this truth may be their death.

"I last saw her on the Yakanov, after she defeated Demeter's scion and saved you and the station," said Mynx. "She was so overwhelmed with rage and grief she might have killed me there. I ran away. I still don't know what I should have done."

Alexa!

It takes you a minute to recognize Ramses, the Coherent warrior you danced with on the Yakanov, as he comes in. He's changed his gender since the last time you saw him, hair cut short and sharp and swept across his face from right to left. He's crisp, handsome, bright, bare chested and shining with fresh Alcedi tattoos in swirling triangle patterns. He crouches down and puts a heavy tray of Demeter's tubers roasted and mashed along with a selection of defeated battlecrab parts.

"Didn't know if you ate," he said, stepping into the bath, still clothed, and flopping dramatically down on the opposite side of the tub from you. "I figured you didn't, but I also figured the Pallas Rex didn't lose fights to fucking Murvle and Teck-Joe, so what do I know? You made it out in one piece?"

Vasilia!

"Greetings, former Captain."

Of all the houseguests you were expecting, Magos Iskarot was not one of them. Less so that he was carrying a large container of coleslaw in his hands, which he shoves into your arms brusquely.

"I understand you are now irrelevant," said the Magos, pushing past you into your quarters without waiting for an invitation. He looks around, eyes whirring beneath his hood. "I have come to pay my condolences." He opens the door of your fridge and starts digging around. "I am more relevant than ever," he adds. "I am now an Archmagos. Primary Evoker. Very important."

He rips a bunch of cables out of the back of your fridge and tosses them on the ground. "Idiocy. You let this death trap live in your house? What is wrong with you?"

Dolce!

Claiming the Captaincy at this moment a bit like throwing one's hat into the ring.

The Alcedi ritual warfare is reaching it's final stage. There are perhaps twelve champions left of the great contest, each surrounded by a ceremonial band of twenty warriors. They stalk each others through the halls of the Plousios and they will have absolutely no problem about hunting you at this stage of the contest. You're not sure you know enough of the ritual practices of these warbands to engage with them on proper terms either. This is God shit, and high technology God shit too. Just because the Alcedi didn't have functional starships when you met them did not mean they did not have an extremely powerful set of secret rituals that would allow them to draw the attention and blessings of the Gods in times of crisis. These were once the personal guard of Emperor Molech and their secrets are crafted by Imperial hands.

Speaking of, the severed head of the Emperor is still serving as your ship's Navigator. You... probably want to make sure that A) The Alcedi don't discover that, and B) You win this Captaincy contest, because otherwise they will discover that.

It's a hell of a first day challenge. Where do you start?

Bella!

"These coins aren't mere precious metal," said Thist, holding one up to the light. There - right in the centre - a glittering golden dust moving and twisting inside. "See there? That's Sulloi the Marid, greatest of the djinn, bound by the Shah Cyrus XC."

She took out a second coin and tapped the first one firmly against its centre - once, twice, three times. On the third tap the golden dust of the first coin flowed smoothly into the second one. The silver of the coin shrank a little and the golden dust in the centre expanded slightly, and the numbers around the ring rippled and changed from 1's to 2's.

"These coins are actually miniature containment rings," said Thist. "They imprison an immensely powerful spirit, broken into billions of fragmentary pieces. Each coin holds a thousand shards and a fully charged one is the equivalent of having a single hand at your service."

Thist took out another coin. This one glowed with a radiant golden light, shimmering and flowing like the sands of time, bound in a thin ring of silver. "Sulloi, bring me that book," said Thist, and sure enough the golden energy flowed from the coin, picked the book off the shelf, and carried it across to the Azura lawyer. This, it must be said, is a miracle. Nothing in Nero's empire works like this, no Imperial technology has bound a spirit like this, in all your studies of the Azura you read a little about their ambition to bind the Djinn but there was no indication that they'd ever succeed.

Thist smiled, waved the coin, and then another and slid them across the table to you, along with a purse full of empty containment rings.

"All yours," she said, holding her cigar up to her lips and taking a contented puff. "Two thousand daric, I'll round up the cost of your ship's salvage as a personal gift. But don't underestimate the Azura, Reacher." And although she was relaxed and poised, eyes half-lidded in the pleasure of the smoke, her voice was not that of a creature unused to power. It almost seemed like someone else's voice entirely. "The Order of Hermes, as I see it, have violated the Shah's airspace causing the redirection of the Shah's mighty air force, damaged the Shah's pavement requiring the work of the Shah's stonemasons, and have inflicted great personal injury on the Shah's newest servant, requiring the effort the Shah's legal council to identify and remedy. And if the Order of Hermes forgets its place then they will see what happens when the Shah unleashes the Marid upon their fleet."

Thist blinks and shakes away the smoke haze. You're not feeling any effect but your Auspex suggests that whatever she's smoking has some intoxicating interaction with Azura biology. A smile makes its way back to her face, gradual at first but then increasingly genuine.

"Hey, thanks for understanding," said Thist, and the body language seemed to convey embarrassment. "I'm cool, don't worry. But watch the language, yeah? Lot of proud people 'round here and the senth definitely doesn't help. Awful stuff," she taps the stub of the cigar out in her ashtray. "And the Party's even worse. You're a long way from home and there's a lot of stuff here that won't work like you're used to. I'll help you best I can - that's what Zeus and the Path demand - but keep your eyes open and walk softly. The Endless Azure Skies are a lot of things but they're definitely not safe, not these days."

In the desert, Redana walks.

The ship yawns and unfurls. The metal on the walls, well-welded, is gone; there is glass. There is glass and glass and glass. It drifts in dunes up and down the passages, crunching under Redana’s feet. The walls are warped. The labyrinth is here. She walks it, and her clothes are leopardskin and blood, and when she lets her fingers drift against the mirrors she flinches back because they are so cold, they burn.

She is bloody; she leaves smears on the glass, shivering, demarcated. Has she committed another sin? Her body burns where she embraced Mynx, held her so tight, in her throat where she screamed, in her fingers which made fists pressed against her spine. And did she pop? Or... no. That was when the curtain fell. Mynx’s voice follows her, but the words are meaningless: Zenoy, Zanzenoy, Zenangelov. That is what the Coherent say to her when she pushes them aside, into the wastes: Zenoy, Zanzenoy, Zenangelov.

She wanted to become the Nemean and tear Mynx apart for being a coward, but she saw the thought falling like a star, from outside herself, and she was afraid, and Mynx was afraid and knew her death, and there trembling on the edge of calling down that violence she called out, and what she called out was that Mynx was not the one who needed to be punished, Mynx was not the monster, Mynx was not, and she raised one hand to backhand the coward and her fingers interlocked and—

There is a statue that stands alone. The sky above is roiling, a nebula split in half by Nyx’s sword, so violently black that the pink within throbs. The statue is white, glass-scoured, blasted. The back has fallen out, worn away completely, leaving a thin marble facade smiling serenely out. Bees crawl in and out through the parted lips, brilliant black and all-consuming gold, cloyingly sweet to see. It stands in the middle of the road, and Redana cannot go around, cannot go around at all, because distance is boundless and mirrored on either side.

“I hurt you,” Redana says, pressing her forehead to the sandaled foot, the claws and the arch. “Because i am stupid. You were right, you were right, were you always right? By being born I hurt you. Come back. Come back. Please. Let me show you what I wanted. Just let me show you what I meant. Please. Please. Let me unhurt you.”

And she looks up, and Bella looks down, her eyes in the hollow mask painted circles nested forever in a thousand colors, black holes for falling into until the stars fail and the gods begin the game all over again, and her voice is the whisper of the bees passing in and out from her lips. ”Zenoy, Zanzenoy, Zenangelov.” Thus she proclaims, and condemns blood-stained Redana to her punishment, by authority of Redana Nulla, Never-Empress of Tellus.

***

When Mynx catches up to her, Redana’s dug a groove in the shrine door (Dolce has the key) with her nails, which are too strong to break. She lies face-down on the floor, her manic energy all at once expended. Mynx lifts with her knees, asking her ward if she is okay, as if she can do anything about it, as if she did not do this somehow, and all Redana hisses through a clenched jaw is, simply, ridiculously, again: Eloy, Elioyama, Sabakthani.

And together the three of them make their way to the infirmary.