[b]Mirror![/b]

“Smaller? [i]Ha![/i]”

The inside of the cockpit is a vast temple. (She is making the mistake of editing as she goes. Shadows shift, warp, dimensions sliding into place. Space is a toy to her, a concept as soon imagined as made real. But she cannot make up her mind. She wants to impress you, needs to impress you, does not know how much of herself to reveal, how much of the face she shows Dolly to show you.) On the far side is the idol within the idol, Smokeless Jade Fires in warrior attire, garlanded and bearing her lance, legs crossed, the back of the fingers of her free hand resting against the cyclopean flagstones. Within the false self is the shape of the true self. Within the shape of the true self is a self that burns.

She limns herself in her namesake, light flickering shallow in her helmet’s eyes.

Before her is a ring, set in the floor. Clearly where Seven Quetzal operates the mecha. The pattern of the ring is fire, coalescing into hands frozen mid-grasp, whorls suggestive of eyes. (She cannot decide how to decorate the walls. Don’t pay attention to the flickering at the peripheral, the twist and shunt of space.)

“Am I small enough now, Whispered Promise?” Shadows drift from the floor, cast by flickering torches, and her eyes flicker in their depths, and then she is here, again, at the edge of the ring, making an inviting gesture with her good arm (as the other remains wrapped in her cloak, refusing to acknowledge her limitation). She thinks she has you. She thinks this is where she is strong and unassailable. She will have her revenge on you for being confusing and proud; she will meet your danger with the thrill of helplessness. Her shadow is the impression of a dozen arms. There are no controls here, no buttons, just her.

Which means that if you are to control her, rather than being a conduit through which she may pilot herself, you will have to convince her otherwise. Through a dance. Through command. Through the subtle shiver of her shadows and the way her fingers flex, compromised. (She is compromised by want. You remain clear. Here. Hit her here. Do not let your chin droop. You have the knowledge she craves, which can only be taught through the secret names of the body.)

[hr]

[b]Dolly![/b]

—is already halfway up out of the chair, banging her shin, being laughed at, squeaking, tail fluffing up, hands on her shoulders sitting her back [i]down[/i] and sure she’s got the cushion for it and doesn’t hit her tail on the way down but she still exhales and that’s when the hand wraps over her mouth, traps the heat against that palm, traps the head tilting back over the back of the seat, tilts the seat back until it’s balanced on two legs and her tail’s wrapping around one in a vain physical reaction to being unbalanced, except she can’t fall, because Valynia is grinning down at her, resting the whole chair and all of Dolly’s weight on one thigh.

Her breath is coming like a scared little hare hopping in and out of its— no, hares don’t live in burrows, they live in grass nests, and if you have a group of them it’s called a husk, and are distinct from rabbits in that a hare is born ready to run while rabbits are born blind, and this all means something in the context of the pattern in her fur, but the facts just fumble through her fingers as she stares up at Valynia, who slowly tuts her tongue, and the breath washes against the side of Valynia’s hand, and Dolly’s free hand is stupidly gripping the seat of the chair instead of doing anything useful.

And all she gets from Jade, so far away, is the sensation of craving… approval? Impress her? Is she doing it wrong, Jade? Of course she’s doing it wrong. You’re not here to show her how to do it. How to be brave enough to use her body. How to be seductive and beautiful and desirable. (Which. Valynia. She definitely doesn’t. Right? She [i]desires[/i] Dolly but as a stepping stone to Jade and also as a trophy and hey remember what she said about hanging you up dangling in the cockpit? Remember that?)

“And here I thought I could [i]trust[/i] you,” Valynia says, her tail slowly swishing behind her, her voice dripping in faux betrayal. “Were you just trying to take advantage of our hospitality?”

“We can be [i]much[/i] less hospitable,” someone says, from the other side of the table.

“Just like with Erys,” one of the Terenians adds. “She doesn’t know how to submit like a good girl yet.”

“Well,” Valynia says, sweetly venomed, drizzling her purr over Dolly, “we can’t have a [i]security risk[/i] running around, can we?” She lifts her palm, only to slip her thumb between Dolly’s lips, pressing down her spice-addled tongue. And Dolly’s mouth is still too numb for her to be able to do anything halfway seductive with that! “No. We. Can’t~”