Arousal. Nerves. Embarrassment. Excitement. Passion. Joy. Curiosity. Disdain. She smells them all in the air. Posture. Head position. Arm movement. Leg stiffness. Tail gestures. Eye contact. Finger tension. Touch. She watches everything with eyes that dart so fast they seem like a waterfall. Her whiskers brush Valentina's neck. Her tail curls. 

She is missing the show. Her head turns. The smells pull her attention back around. Her eyes shift. She sees only present company. The chorus of voices that organize her thoughts have splintered into messy spirals. Begin, begin, begin, begin, begin, begin. Cue, cue, cue, cue, cue, cue. Time, time, time. Heart. Heart.

Pain.

The one day defender, they call her. Because of Solarel. She defended her home for an entire day/night cycle before she fell. She defended her home for just one single day, and was removed from the board forever after. She returned, eventually, a prisoner released into the keeping of her mother and the waiting plate of fish. One day. Maybe one day, she'd actually defend something.

...Language is such a complicated thing, after all. Nobody speaks it properly. Nobody says what they mean. Precision, wasted. Nobody listens. Nobody understands. Nobody [i]listens.[/i] Every carefully crafted façade is a pointless and meaningless vanity project doomed to crumble in the face of another perspective, another mind, another unassailable collection of calcified biases. She's spent her entire life trying to have one single conversation. Just one. What can she do? What can she do?

The secret vortex yawns wide. So wide it opens up to the public again. That moan reverberates in her chest until she regurgitates it: half growl and half purr. Her hands make none of their calming, centering gestures. They wander through Valentina's dress, instead. She pulls down and, meeting no resistance, begins to push instead. Face to face. Eye to eye. Mirror does not smile. Smiles are a fabrication. Illegitimate and unnatural gesture; haughty from one angle and judgmental for another. She has other, better uses for her mouth than lying. 

She sweeps her date so low to the ground that both their hair pools and mingles on the the floor. She drinks deep of the air through her nose, sweat and pheromones and perfumes and smoke and even light whisps of nanites. She blows it back in Valentina's face through her mouth. Hot. Wet. Needy. And she punctuates the thought with her tongue. That rough and rasping pink glides across the human's soft skin, wetting her cheek. Tracing the line of her jaw again and again and again, teasing her neck and darting lower, lower, lower.

But never kissing. Not on the lips. Where her own meet the skin she ends each touch with a soft, sharp nip of her teeth. She leaves Valentina's mouth open to speak to her with. No more lies and affectations and layers of ritual exulting in the sacred arts of Polite Indifference. Tell her what you think of her. Tell us all. You will not need your words. Her fingers probe and knead, seeking weaknesses, seeking places to reward, seeking solace, seeking just one fleeting moment of connection that matches the sensation of Nine-Tails' body grinding across the Lonely Star's. 

The rest of her is not idle, either. This is the talent of someone who trains five hours every day controlling tails guided only by free-flowing power in the air and a single iron will. Her long, soft, and fluffy tail snakes out behind her and wraps itself around Crescent's wrist. Stupid girl, you were given instructions. Can't you even follow them? She squeezes. Pulls. Teases. And drags that hand by the wrist until Crescent's fingers are caught clumsily in the crossing frills of Solarel's beautiful dress. 

She pushes that hand down. She pulls it up. She touches without touching, ending where she began with a pirate for a proxy and only the gambits of war to stand in for the words that can't be said. You speak with your hands, as a rule. Then, listen. Listen to the fingers playing at your throat, listen to the bristling fur of a tail that curls and flinches so carefully, not just to guide a Tigress' hand over your jaw, your mouth, your nose, but to pull away at the last possible instant so that no part of her touches any part of you.

The kiss she finally plants on Valentina's lips is... soft. Tiny. Chaste enough to befit the image of a human knight. She lifts her date back into her feet with deliberate slowness that borders on fear. Her breathing is hot. Heavy. Excited. Her suit is perfect. She straightens Valentina's dress until it is, too.

"Eyes. Wait. Soon. Reward. Obey. Misjudge."

It's not the fault of the translators that they can't keep pace with the frantic bursts of chirping pouring from Mirror's mouth. The strangeness of her accent and the sheer speed she's speaking with might leave even Waxing Crescent Moon struggling to follow along. Every thought is a glyph that unfurls like a flower, meaning after deeper meaning trapped inside its petals until the light kisses it open. The density of her vocabulary choices are so impenetrable they might only be appropriate for a priestess' dialog with a High Goddess, or to coax the first trees into growing what would become the homes that kept Hybrasil a paradise even beyond the age of space travel. This is speaking for someone who has given up on being understood. This is someone trying to drink a crystal fire drive through a straw. 

Mirror finally manages to pull her eyes to the stage. She stiffens as her shoulders roll back behind her. Her fingers curl and uncurl stiffly into the palms of her hands.

"Dreams." she says, and walks away from everyone.

Whether it's for a moment or forever is not up to her. It's a question of language, and if she spoke it well enough to open the next door. The hallway is always full of more of them. Endless. 

[Mirror hits her Feelings 4 explosion and lets the mask fall away: she is lonely and desperate. She takes one string on each of Valentina, Crescent, and Solarel, and gives one to each in exchange]