"Mmm." says Bella, because that is the noise that she can make without the croak of fear slipping into her voice.

Her body feels slow. Every muscle in her back, shoulder, and arms is clenched tight enough that basic movements seem to cost her twice the time and triple the effort that they should. Even breathing is a conscious decision she has to make, and remember. Her ears bend painfully in search of new sounds in the waves, and her tail crashes against the surface of the pools with a shock that's at once painfully loud and pathetically soft. 

The salt in the air is saturating into her skin. Every little shift of her rigid, overamped body builds fresh waves of itching and discomfort that beg her to leave, or at least scratch until the blood let out and coated her with something like relief. She looks down at her claws and the mutilated stumps where her most useful fingers end for what feels like the millionth time. They ache to be whole again. Even the cool, metallic kiss of a good set of talons would be a blessing. Her neck twitches with all the effort of standing there, and pushes a headache up through the back of her brain.

She sighs.

"No, I suppose you're right. That's no way to live at all."

The riddle unfolds inside her mind with the pressure of a physical thing. It might just be the headache, but it feels more like a parasite. Clever phrases, grand speeches, ideas that point ten thousand toward the designs of a single mind. She saw it on the [i]Yakanov[/i] and in the Armada. It was all over the Endless Azure Skies, even if half of it was reduced to ghosts and phantoms. This was a puzzle for someone like Beautiful. It's too much for Bella. All she'd wanted was to get Redana and go home. She'd never intended to change the [i]Anemoi[/i], she just needed the ship to fucking work in the first place if it was going to keep chasing. Whatever the Lanterns thought of it, that wasn't her fault!

She's not breathing again. She pulls an extra long sniff of briny air through her nose and holds it for another long moment before letting it all back out through her mouth in a fresh sigh. She shrugs, and shakes her head. She watches Eyes of Coral for a long time without saying anything, clever or stupid or otherwise. If this place was Tellus, then these... people felt especially like temple assassins. The thought makes her feel heavy; she sits down.

"Let me show you something. This was a lesson Apollo taught me himself."

Bella sinks into the water. It's warm and feels somehow slimy on her fur, but she ignores the sensation. Every inch of her dress that drinks in the waves clings unpleasantly to her skin and turns from pure white to useless translucence, but she pays it no mind. The brine and silt turn what had been a discomfort on her back to actual agony after only a few moments, but she keeps her posture and pays the feeling no more mind than a single frustrated snort. She straightens out her back as she crosses her legs underneath her and lays her arms palms up on the bed made by her knees. She tilts her head so that her face stays above even the largest surges of the tide pools, and closes her eyes.

"I'm not one of Apollo's chosen, I don't know why this happened. I don't worship Poseidon either, so I don't know why I'm here for that matter. Zeus ignores me, I haven't seen a single sign or token from Hera in the longest time. I was made to be a body for Artemis to inhabit, if she ever needs to crush a planet. But I've never spoken to her. I don't even know how."

She floats there, breathing steadily between her thoughts, letting her body be pushed and pulled gently back and forth along with her hair and clothing by the motion of the water. Her voice is calm and placid, almost bored. In her mind, she traces a pattern of golden light through a belt of rocky asteroids, crossing between two stars. 

"I am alone. Everything I knew, or thought I did is gone now. I had a chance to get it all back, but I lost that too. In fact, I threw it away like a fucking moron, so don't go expecting anything from me. But I have this, and not even the gods can take it away. I can sit here like this, and focus my mind on the sounds I'm hearing in the room, or the feeling of the clothes on my skin, or a smell, or anything I fucking want, and the entire rest of the universe will fall away from me. I can be alone, with nothing at all to hold me down."

She stands up abruptly with a splash and a crack of her neck, and any sense of mystic wisdom or divine insight disappears in a moment. She's nothing but a broken Servitor again, from some nameless race she doesn't even know, and soaked to the bone at that. She shrugs.

"Anyway it helps. Maybe give it a try. Actually, that's an order. Work on this until it means something to you, however the fuck that has to work. When I come back you can tell me how it felt, or what you saw. Whatever. But if none of you can manage this, you're a waste of my time."

Bella flicks her tail across the water as she tosses her hair behind her with a wet slap. The further away she walks, the worse she feels. The water stops reaching her ankles before she notices she can walk normally again. She briefly contemplates the empty, hollow corridor but quickly shakes her head. Not here. The smell will drive her crazy. And if she doesn't find something for her back she'll rip her own spine out soon. No choice, she'll have to risk it. 

So she slinks through the shadows of the [i]Plousios[/i], wishing it were as dark and quiet as she knows a ship can be. Should be. Dripping and cold and with her whole body on display, as if she were taking some ritual test of purity for Artemis. Her teeth flash every time she opens her mouth, as she looks for a new place to hide.