That’s what it feels like— as if the search across the ship, the time spent drinking coffee with Beautiful, the trek through the vaulted halls of the [i]Plousios[/i], the slow accumulation of more knowledge— it all bleeds away, swirls down the drain of thought, is blasted away to nothing in the face of the sun.

Redana stumbles forward. She hits something. A chair, maybe? She walks through it. Doesn’t matter. The world is vast. The world is a face. The world is incomprehensible. Her heart is in her throat. Think of something, she thinks to herself, over and over.

She’s at the head of the table now. Dolce blinks at her. Bella stares at her, red-and-yellow against blue-and-green. She is her body. Her body does not understand what it is doing. She needs to say something. She had so many things she was going to say. They were important. She needs to say them. Bella isn’t saying anything. Olympus.

She opens her mouth, dumbly. She licks her lips. Coughs, the once.

“Hey, Bella,” she manages. The worst thing anyone has ever said. She blew it. Her brain explodes. [i]Hey, Bella.[/i] Like they’re on speaking terms. Like nothing at all happened. Like she’s about to ask Bella what she wants for dinner. Bella is going to run away and hide and everything beautiful will be ruined. She’s sweating. Her hand is warm where she’s leaning against the table. [i]Hey, Bella.[/i] She needs to have something else to say.

“…I didn’t know you knew Dolce?” Perish. Perish. Perish. [i]I didn’t know you knew Dolce![/i] Her mouth is dry. She’s smiling weird. It’s frozen on her face. Beautiful, come back, Dany [i]does[/i] need an assassin, she’s taking out a hit on Princess Redana Claudius For Embarrassing Herself In Front Of A Pretty Girl, And Also For Thinking Of Bella As Just A Pretty Girl, But She Is, So Also Impugning Bella’s Honor Just While We’re At It.

She’s nothing like the Bella that terrorized her on Baradissar, feral, vicious. She’s nothing like the Bella that kissed her on Salib, lush and hungry and explosive. She’s here. She’s almost (almost) the Bella (her [i]eye[/i]) that Redana (her clothes) remembers from Tellus, but… changed. Changing. Different. Can she learn more? Please? She’ll listen this time. Promise.