Redana Claudius does not know what a carnival, strictly speaking, is.

She’s familiar with parties, mostly somber affairs in her mother’s palace; she knows about gatherings of people, certainly enough. She’s been social on the [i]Plousios[/i] with all sorts. But this is new. Performers, not for the sake of a party but seemingly for the sake of the performance, and games quite actively waiting to be played, and everywhere, an invitation to come and try, or to participate, or to test her mettle, or to sit for a caricature, or to have tasteless white corn-snacks, or to see if she can keep track of where the icon of Hermes is, or to—

“Bella, Bella, look! Oh, let’s!”

—or to heft up a hammer and take turns with Bella seeing who can ring the bell harder, until it is knocked from its high perch completely, tumbling down at their feet as both of them jump back like startled kittens, and, oh, how the tickets are heaped up in her arms then!

The bag is finely-woven, patterned in the manner of a civilization that once burned bright, one that revered Iris as their patron, the messengers who would look upon the entirety of the [i]Plousios[/i]’s voyage as a feat worthy of their epic courier-heroes. Into it is heaped more tickets, and more prizes, and more laughter. The first caricature hugs one side of the bag, Redana’s smile shaped like a striped bean, Bella’s ears a perfection of triangles. The second is slightly crumpled, slipping underneath the towel, bearing a picture of an elegant cat and an exuberant puppy.

Tickets are fed into the latest machine, prizes from the animation dance (the floor flickering between colors and scenes impossibly fast as Dany kept time and managed to score high than the somewhat distracted Bella), as the servitor stares with wide, bright eyes at the plush sharks (some sleek, some hammer-headed, some mammoth, some palm-sized, some blue and grey, some grey and brown, some red and black).

If this was a trap, it could keep Dany here for a long, long time. There is no day and no night here, where the lights hang criss-crossed over the stalls, trapped in lamplight globes, and everywhere she turns there is something new and wonderful and new.

But the other part of the trap is who she is experiencing this with. Because even Dany’s beginning to notice that the bestest part of the whole thing, from start to finish, is who she’s getting to do this with. And as her Bella, her friend, her girlfriend, her [i]girlfriend,[/i] makes an adorable noise under her breath as she tries to choose from the wonders in front of her for the ones that need her the most, palms pressed against the blue-white glass, Dany looks at her with an expression of adoration written plain across her sea-touched face.

This. This is what she’d wanted the whole time. This is what she’d hoped would be her reward after going to the end of the universe and back. This is what she dreamed about when she stared up at that one star, glittering like a solitary diamond, when the clouds broke. This, forever and ever, and every day after that.