"...Who even told you I didn't like [i]Batrachomyomachia[/i]?"

Bella glances at Mynx, but she's so close to sleep that all she does is smile. Useless. She lets her own eyes drift shut and leans her head back against a pipe and lets the sounds of the ship drown out the rest of the world, if only for a moment.

Water and steam slosh through her hearing with a powerful, thrumming beat. The heartbeat of the ship. It pulses and gurgles; bubbling water that pushes first one way and then pulls back in the other. The ebb and flow... maybe all ships carry the ocean inside of them. Stars and the sea were never very far apart, were they? Maybe that was how the Tides managed to exist in both. Maybe if fate carried her back down there, she could ask them. Maybe...

Her senses pull her away from the larger ship, back into the room. She listens to the venting air pushing a too-even and yet stuttering breeze across the room. The warmth of a light that puts Apollo to her mind splashes across her face. Fluttering leaves cast speckled shadows overtop, and the miracle of this struggle is that is pleasant warmth wrestling with pleasant coolness. No extremes at all: even the act of contrast seems more of a playfight than a true contest. 

Bella relaxes into herself. Her breaths fall not more than once a minute. She feels Mynx shift against her, just to nestle deeper into her arm. Their heartbeats are synched with each other. The soft, slow drumbeat of the tranquilized. No tension, no power, just soft and slow and deeply steady. One sound, the two of them. Each the shadow of the other. On the other side of her, Redana's heart thumps a little bit brighter, perhaps a bit more proudly, but it's no less relaxed. Two pound out and one shrinks in. Two shrink in and one pounds out. This is a different way to be matched with someone, after all. The completion of a melody. Beljani's breathing and pulse both rush against Bella's tired legs, still full of energy and the rush of play even after her body has collapsed from the exertion. Only Beautiful stands apart from the group still, but her rhythms can't escape Bella. Curiosity. Those violet eyes are on her, she can tell without looking.

Curiosity. Maybe she'll even settle in with the rest if the answer is correct. Bella sighs.

"Princess..."

"I liked the first one fine. When I was nine. But even you have to admit they didn't make any sense after..."

She stops. The defensiveness falls out of her voice to be absorbed like rain into the grass beneath her body. Too much effort to finish the argument, so she lets it roll off of her. She shifts, if only slightly, and pulls the Princess in until her head is resting against Bella's stomach. Her eyes flutter open, and find Beautiful's above her. For now. Soon, Bella will be the largest and the strongest of them all again. Soon. She's so sure of it.

"It really never occurred to me to say anything about it. Did you never notice? I never..."

Bella's body flushes with sudden warmth. Her fingers curl carefully against scales and skin and her tail wriggles free enough to flick with erratic, patternless motion that ends with the tip curled up around herself. And even then, the sound that follows comes welling up from the depths of her. It escapes with surprising speed and power that she has neither the ability or the inclination to prevent. 

The deep, healing vibrations that only a cat is capable of.

"All I wanted," she says through her purr and a yawn, "Was to watch you. Would you have cared what movie we picked, if you felt the same way?"

Her eyes fall closed again, and sleep takes her before the reply can come.