Every footfall is a symphony. The soft clatter of sandals stamping down onto the ground and the springy crackle of them curling and tensing to spring forward back into the air again. The ecstatic shiver of impact climbing up her legs. The pressure that shakes her knees and rolls her hips. Each motion carries her forward, explosive and liquid smooth at the same time. The harmony of raw power, directed at a purpose. Uninterrupted, perfect rhythm. The feeling of total invincibility that urges her forward faster and faster and faster.

The ship is alive with all manner of scents, but each one falls away in turn as though she'd swatted it into the wall and stepped over its corpse on her way ahead. The Plousios becomes a funnel with a curious void at the bottom of it, faint and astringent chemicals painted overtop delicate alchemy that takes a host of other smells and twists them into a knot where each layer cancels out the next one perfectly. A chameleon odor that could convince any mind that it couldn't smell anything at all, but for that tiny nip of something like floor polish. The signature that the world's greatest forger couldn't help slipping into the masterpiece. She takes great, noisy sniffs and feels as much as smells that painted knot lurching ahead of her, skittering through vents and walls that refuse to hide anything from the great huntress.

Her chest heaves. Her shoulders roll with every clawing stretch in balance with the crushing pistons that are her legs. Her spine compresses and curves, and with every fresh snap back to a full upright posture she is rewarded with the tingling rush of a fresh breath of air laced through with adrenaline. This perfect speed is not effortless. On the contrary, it feels and is the maximum level of exertion her body is capable of. This is ecstasy. All her physicality is bursting through her nerves in every direction, building and building and building in intensity until the heat rolling off her body becomes a tangible thing on its own.

She is blind. Sight is worthless to her, so she discards it. The entire ship and all its many visions and obstacles melt away into less than an indistinct blur. There is nothing to run through except the golden footfalls curving up and over and around and through a pair of sharp spiraling lights. One in soft gold and the other in shining silver. And for the first time, she recognizes this presence for what it is. Who it is. This light has been everywhere with her for her entire life, and only her own tiny mind kept her from recognizing it sooner. Artemis beckons. She follows, faster still. To the crabs and kingfishers, the wagons and the lanterns, she must seem like nothing. A bolt of danger, there and gone before it can register.

Except.

It's an accident of her own running form that she turns her head at all. The slightest shift of her neck to accommodate a flying leap over some part of the gold-and-silver path. That's all. The first is only a flash. She ignores it, to sink back into the raw bliss that is motion. The Hunt.

Except.

Bella sees her clearly. The sharp edges of her joints. Her awkwardly jutting hips and her short but powerful legs, that tiny nose that looks too prim and delicate to belong on the rest of her diminutive yet iron frame. The bouncing of her sweat soaked ponytail trailing behind her. 

There's nothing regal about her, just now. She couldn't seem less like a princess if she tried. She doesn't look kind, either. Not panicked, not stupid, not brave, not clever. Her unsupported breasts jiggle with every lunge of her body, as tiny as they are. The muscles in her stomach roll and stretch into all kinds of exotic patterns as she hurtles down the same path as the one beside her. In this moment, she doesn't even have a name. She's not even the girl who opened the Box. 

She just is. Clear and just as distinctive as The Path. Keeping pace with the same huge and obvious effort that was turning her own body into song. Is she beautiful? Desirable? Distracting? These things all require thought to pick apart and identify.

All Bella knows is that she's there. She's as much there as Mynx and Artemis. Bella breathes a little bit more freely. Her legs feel a little lighter than she remembers, if she could remember anything to begin with. So she runs. Alongside a girl who can keep up.