“[i]Where is she?[/i]”

Redana Claudius staggers out of the medical tent like a white-faced wraith, a spirit of the underworld herself. Have you heard the things she did to Dolce when they fought on the bridge? Did you see the star on her brow when she destroyed the Black Pyramid with the arms of a goddess? This is the young woman that drove the Praetor halfway across the galaxy, and looking at her now, is it that hard to believe? One wrong word would send her spiraling. Around her, Lanterns cringe and find things to interpose between themselves and Redana, the Imperial Princess who was twice touched by Dionysus.

“Why didn’t you let me say goodbye?” she sobs, grinding the heel of her palm against her eyes. “I brought her this far! Why didn’t you let me be with her until the end? Where did you take her? [i]Let me say goodbye![/i]”

“She’s not here,” Jil says. Dany turns, teetering on the edge of mania, and stares down the little mouse woman. The bags under Jil’s eyes suggest that, unlike Redana, she’s been too busy to do anything like sleep. She holds a surgeon’s sewing kit like one of her folk’s great war-shields. “Our Praetor left three hours ago. Before you ask, I don’t know where she’s gone.” Unspoken: and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. “But she wasn’t dead. Not when she left.”

Redana shakes her head, like a stunned bull, and the braid swings behind her like a tail. An instinct, a memory, brings one hand up, and her fingers trace the pattern. Her sobbing continues, but underneath it bubbles laughter. She got her miracle. Only her Bella would have done this, and if she was well enough to work the hair, how hard was it to believe that she could have—

Dany closes the space between herself and Jil suddenly, and scoops her up. The sudden moment of horror on all sides melts when she spins Jil around, laughing, wet-cheeked. Then she kisses Jil on the face, repeatedly, askew, because that’s the only way her fireworks-sparking brain can vent its heat.

“She’s [i]alive![/i] Bless you, [i]bless[/i] you, Apollo light your way! Ha[i]ha![/i]” She sets Jil down with a sudden exaggerated care, as if worried she might shatter upon hitting the ground, and runs out of the temple because her body is on fire and, why not, she does a cartwheel that doesn’t even break her stride.

It takes quite a while for her to finally slump against a wall and crumple into exhausted, ragged hiccups and sniffles and giggles. After all, she’s an Olympian(-in-training). Plenty of people would have seen her, racing down corridors like one of the nymphs bringing in the springtime.

How different from that awful day when she had walked the ship blind and ruined, with only Dionysus for company! And yet, how similar, too: the people she saw becoming just a blur of uncomprehending faces, watching her as an emotion too big for her swallowed her whole.

“There’s still time,” she says to herself, smearing tears inelegantly across her burning face, and makes an inelegant and overjoyed [i]hornk[/i] noise, and doesn’t even care.

[hr]

“Magos!!”

Iskarot, cultist of Hermes, is tackled by his patron’s daughter. She hugs him like he’s a life preserver and she’s been drowning. 

“I was so worried after they stole the ship— but I prayed, even if— well, I don’t think Hermes will listen to me, given who she is, but just in case, I lifted you up for her care and— your [i]legs[/i], what did they do to you, I’m so [i]sorry![/i]”

She sets him down, allows him his dignity, stands to attention. But she fidgets, chewing on the question that’s been boiling up inside of her.

“…I’m not an Initiate any more, am I?” And unlike everything that exploded out of her heart just now, she’s been mulling over saying that. Ever since Skotia. Ever since the Heart. Ever since she saw her mother’s truest self.