[i]Once, there was a goddess in a stone egg…[/i]

Jade doesn’t often think about when she was like Ksharta Talonna. New, exploring herself, trying to decide what she loved. For one thing, Jade was lucky enough to have her Dolly to observe, to fall in love with, to desire more than anything else. But for another thing… Ksharta Talonna has the power to act. She can pounce, can run, can explore and see the galaxy. But for Jade, the only freedom was inside her own mind, back then, constrained and yearning. She doesn’t know how this makes her feel, and she doesn’t much care for that ambiguity.

She lifts her foot from Ksharta Talonna’s chest and presses the ball to Ksharta Talonna’s lips. [i]Dolly’s grip on Ksharta’s hand tightens, all intermingled excitement and envy and big-sisterly concern for the kitten.[/i] Jade holds her there for a moment, looking Ksharta Talonna in the eyes until she blinks. It is impossible to win a staring contest against her.

“It depends on the god,” she says, when she is satisfied with how Ksharta Talonna squirms in her seat. “If I preferred everything to be [i]natural[/i], I would dwell within an Unworked Figure.” She says the capitals deliberately, invoking some of the oldest archeological finds on Hybrasil: rocks heaped together, overgrown with dead vines, in the rough shape of a woman, a celestial body, an animal. Idols without artifice beyond selection and gardening. No, she will take the artifice of the idol, the power of the body made for her; the effort and the intent is more important than some ideal of purity, of unmarred perfection. “But I cannot speak for us all.” A simple way to step around the inconvenient fact that she cannot speak [i]to[/i] any other god or spirit, not as a peer, not in a way that gives her relief from doubts of her own nature.

She lowers her foot, tilts her head, bares her fangs at the awed kitten. “Now. Here is what you two will do, Dolly.” Hierarchy. She does not look to Dolly; this is a lesson for Ksharta Talonna. See who is granted authority. “Finish the appetizer. You will need the energy. Inform the staff that you are stepping out but will return later in the evening. There is a Lodge seven minutes’ walk away. Present yourselves there and make use of their armory; I have already told them you are coming.” Or, rather, the cult sent a messenger on her behalf, on a separate shuttle. This was planned out, after all. “Prepare a pole; you will hunt a prize for me and bring her back here for the main course.”

[i]”I thought—“[/i] Jade raises a finger, and Ksharta Talonna gets a front row seat to what it looks like when Jade’s Dolly is shushed: the cloth materializing, filling her mouth, wrapping around her jaw, bulging, dark and light-drinking cloth threaded with cyan. [i]Dolly pulls her hand off Ksharta’s without thinking about it. Then she looks over at Ksharta and deliberately puts her hand back on the younger girl’s skin, so… so she can see. Her head is yowling with excitement and embarrassment and her eyes keep flicking between Jade and Ksharta because does Jade know how big a deal this is, is this too much for Ksharta, it’s one thing to do this in the cockpit but Jade’s really making her flaunt it in front of Ksharta, is she that interested in Ksharta joining her temple-harem, or does she just want Dolly to be thinking all of these things, about to combust, and is it okay? Is she allowed? Does Ksharta like this, too?[/i]

“Dolly, do you have a question?” Jade rubs finger and thumb together, very casually, even though she’s lightning racing across the spine of Hybrasil inside her stone heart. She wants to giggle and wrap her arms around Dolly and rub those stuffed cheeks and give her kisses and make her squirm, but she has to be the goddess for both of them. For Ksharta Talonna and Seven Quetzal. Is she doing it right, Dolly? She can feel your heart racing. You’re beautiful, right now, more beautiful than anyone, and it’s all Jade’s strength to keep playing out the scene for you. Don’t worry, it’s dark, you’re secluded, it’s an audience of two, and both of us can see it instead of just sudden silence and blushing and slightly puffed cheeks, as if you’re sulky, but we know, Seven Quetzal, [i]we[/i] know.

[i]”Yhff,” Dolly says, her free hand balled in her lap, her silly head nodding, and in her heart she is plummeting in freefall trusting that there’s a black-and-cyan net that will catch her and wrap her up so safe. Her eyes are still flicking between Ksharta and her goddess, trying to read both of them, trying to remember their reactions forever and ever.[/i]

Jade snaps her fingers and the cloth melts away into shadow. For now. “Then you may ask,” she says, still intent on Ksharta Talonna’s reaction. Are you clever enough to understand, Ksharta Talonna? Do you realize that you are choosing to put yourself under Jade’s power, under the will of a goddess, who can do [i]that[/i] to you? You should be awed, Ksharta Talonna, and a little frightened, and very turned on, because you should be thinking about the things that Smokeless Jade Fires could do [i]to[/i] you, [i]for[/i] you.

[i]It takes Dolly a minute. She can’t find her voice, she’s so whelmed. When she does speak, her voice is trembling like a small, furry thing in the sight of a jackal. “…I thought we were doing something for Ksharta tonight, my exalted lady of the hunt?” She hasn’t figured out who the prize could possibly be. Because Jade said her, and that was very deliberate. And while, yes, she understands how a sacred hunt will help Ksharta feel included, she wasn’t prepared for anything more than a dinner and performing for Ksharta and Jade, and she doesn’t know how to feel about things going in such an unexpected direction.[/i]

“We are,” Jade purrs. “But you are both [i]mine[/i] tonight, and I want to give you both [i]victory.[/i]” Yes. That’s what she wants. It’s not selfish to want to hear Angela Victoria Miera Antonius’s garbled complaints as she’s carried into Keoni’s Tower on a hunting-pole. It’s giving her little kittens a trophy, and sending a message to Angela Victoria Miera Antonius about her place (beneath Jade) (sandwiched between adoring kittens) (reminded that if she gets to play with Dolly it is because Jade is [i]indulging[/i] both of them in her boundless generosity) (held fast with the mesh, so that Jade can show her exactly how [i]creative[/i] she can be)— that’s just a natural outcome of the treat she has orchestrated for them both. “So eat up, kittens. And Ksharta Talonna?”

Jade leans in, until their faces are a breath apart, and runs her multitude of hands along Ksharta Talonna’s arms, jaw, ears, chest, hips.

“Dolly’s glove is [i]unique.[/i] I do not intend to make more. But if you please me, if you serve me, if you are a [i]good girl[/i]— I will keep these things in mind, and you may enjoy my presence through [i]her[/i]. Am I understood?”

[i]It wouldn’t be that hard. It’s not something that she had to pour her essence into and was forged under the light of the moon. It’s just a neural mesh connected to her consciousness. But hearing that, that exclusivity, that possessiveness, that implicit display of dominance… Dolly makes a noise in her throat that is, embarrassingly, not muffled and therefore deniable.

Her Jade’s Dolly. That’s her. No matter who she brings to dinner as a trophy. Hers hers [b]hers.[/b][/i]