[b]Chen![/b]

+Qiu wants those shards [i]so that[/i] people care about stopping her,+ thought Jessic. +If you didn't care about them she'd steal the moon instead, or make the rivers flow backwards, or just stand outside people's houses yelling HEWWO! until someone came to fight her. I can't get too much into that because it's personal to her, but that's the way she can approach friendship and it took a lot of work to even get her this far.+

Princess Jessic opened her left wing and used it to gently fan the eerie blue fire, causing it to burn brighter and warmer. +Speaking of friends, Chen, do you have any actual friendships amongst the Princesses? Any romances? Any, mmm, strong emotions? I ask because it seems like you don't feel like you've got anyone you can really trust in this game.+

[b]Rose![/b]

Keron's eyes rake across you, Rose, and then switch to looking at Thian. "It seems," she said, "like she [i]still[/i] doesn't understand her place."

[i]Crack![/i] The smack across your behind comes, swift and firm. Immediately following the jolt, Thist takes you by the shoulders and straightens you up, holding your posture in place. "Good girls," she murmured in your ear, "try their best to keep quiet when they're punished. And you're a good girl, aren't you?"

Keron stands smoothly, and oh, when did she get to be taller than you? She looks down on you and her voice is as unyielding as silk rope. "Listen, little Rose. Your mouth is for one thing: pleasing your mistress. You will not use it for anything else unless you wish to be punished. Am I understood?"

[b]Yue![/b]

"That's," said Hyra, lingering on the taste of the words - on the relish of being able to speak them again. "My girl."

*

She's up early. Good nervous system, as the saying goes - the kind of deep, instinctive intelligence and discipline that can pull her out of bed and to full alertness instantly. Although perhaps you might be capable of similar feats, Yue, were you nursing slightly fewer bruises. Turned out that the bruises shapeshifted with you which [i]hardly[/i] seems fair. 

It's after you've woken but before you've summoned the willpower to get out of bed when Hyra walks back into the room, scratching the back of your neck with the pinpoint precision of someone who has spent weeks thinking about all the places she couldn't reach to scratch under her own power. "Hey, beautiful," she said. She's got her phone in her other hand and it buzzes intermittently as messages come in. "You sleep okay?"

She is benevolent enough to not make fun of your response or lack thereof. It doesn't count as quitting if you haven't started yet! "Don't stress too much, cutie, this is actually my kind of curse at this point," she said. "You know, I was trained by Princess Jezara in the Western Plains? She taught me everything - magic, swords, even a little bit about shapeshifting magic. I reckon I might get... maybe not a fix, but a [i]something[/i] with a few days of research. But you know what I got for you right now?"

She takes one of your paws in her hand and a nail-paint brush in the other. She paints one claw a bright red, and then a delicate series of dots all across it. "This isn't much of a spell," she said. "But it [i]will[/i] let you digest things like chocolate and coffee with no problem. This is important because I've cooked breakfast, and it's chocolate chip pancakes, and you look like you could use the coffee."