[i]Harmony creates harmony.[/i]

Rose can’t help but smile when she catches today’s Daily Affirmation on Omets’s phone screen, before he stows the phone back in his robe so that he can accept the plate with biscuits and a strawberry dipping sauce. Everything is coming together. Everything is right, here and now. That’s what it means to live under one lonely sun in the long and beautiful twilight, in the shadows of the elevators.

Below, foxes are exploding out of the ship, which has navigated smoothly next to a little fishing jetty. The ship’s boarding ramp hasn’t been dropped, but they don’t need it: they swing down on ropes, float down on umbrellas, push each other into the shallow water, dash madly onto the grass, roll around shamelessly while scream-laughing, scamper up into trees to yell at their rivals, and scheme about what comes next. There’s rivalries to avenge, cuties to help, mischief to be done.

She sets down another plate next to Chen’s cup and curtsies. “Here you are, my Princess,” she says, almost formally enough to hide the fondness in her eyes, the pride swelling up inside her at how wonderfully her little Chen has done. In the light of the sunshard, her dark skin is vibrant, rich, shining. In the light of the sunshard, you can almost see the string wrapped around her little finger, leading to Chen’s delicate hand. In the light of the sunshard, she is simply Rosepetal, the Princess’s girlfriend, competent in her own way but not the kind of monster that could be used to shake heaven and send the gods rattling from their thrones.

Inside, her whole body is dreaming while awake. She inhabits it, she feels it, she knows it. It’s her finest creation, and her blood sings a song of love, of freedom, of finding a place to rest her head and stay. The world is big and has many problems, but how wonderful that she is allowed to be more than a tool in a toolbox for fixing them. How wonderful that she is allowed to be the love interest in this story, rather than the wandering ronin. How wonderful that she is loved, and wanted, and herself.

There’s a thump from outside the observation cabin, like one fox falling off the shoulders of another onto a third. Rosepetal notices, and she notices that Chen notices, too.

“If that’s everything, your radiance,” she says, eyes hidden under fluttering lashes, “may I return to my quarters to change?”

They’ll let her get that far, now that she’s brought it up, just so they can raid her closet in the process. She knows it, Chen knows it, Omets probably knows it, and only Prim, Quick Ji and Blackleaf think nobody knows. And only Chen knows how Rosepetal’s strong heart is beating hard, carrying her joy out to circulate through her limbs and her face, how she knows that she can walk into an obvious fox trap because someone will always, [i]always[/i] come for her.

She proved it. And now Rosepetal never needs to worry again about being forgotten, about being abandoned, about falling back into the dark. Not with her own little sunshard shining her light through her life, every day, every night, filling her up.

“I’ll be some time,” she adds, demurely. Take your time, Chen. “Unless there is any other need you have of me?”