Bella could not in any way explain how a plover like this had come to be on her ship (her ship? Her ship). It doesn't seem at all like it would have been meant for maintenance work when... whenever it was built. The armor plating seems like it's been layered on long after the frame was originally constructed, and now a lot of the layers have been burned completely black by who-knows-what. And the parts that haven't are painted a striking cobalt blue, which is very pretty but utterly pointless.

There are many other peculiarities to it, hints at some secret history and hidden depths that a person might get lost in if they really wanted to. But Bella has no time for things that are not moving forward. She chose this because the color of it kind of looked like her hair. Isn't that enough? 

The inside of a plover smells like rust and oil with a faint coil of copper around the whole thing. This one in particular also has a note of char sprinkled on top that coats her tongue a little bit with every small breath she takes. It's exhilarating. Her hands grip controls that feel rough and warm and stimulating, her feet press down into paddles that connect the complex system of levers that give these machines all of their power. 

She rockets forward with the pure joy of a creature born to move. She runs on rockets and rips huge chunks out of the dirt with every "step", as if clawing her revenge into the soil for whatever technicolor miracle it visited against her ship (her ship!), as if these long grooves and slashes in the soil would mark her passing and with it her territory for generations to follow her. She digs just to feel the jolt in her legs while raw forward speed crushes against her lungs. 

She pushes the ancient relic harder than it's probably been in a hundred years, or whatever. She pushes it to feel the heat building inside the cockpit, to feel the slick of sweat against her skin and let it drip down into her fur. To let the raw power of her armor rattle her skeleton and set the beating of her heart for her. She breathes, and tastes fire. She smiles. Even laughs. 

There is no path to guide her here. No spirals of silver or of gold, not a single thing to tell her that her choices were somehow wrong, right, or predetermined. There is only the vague impression of a road and the even vaguer sense of curiosity about what she might see around the bend of it. What's past that tree? What's over that hill? What? What? What? 

Even that is immaterial compared with the pure joy of racing a hundred other people to the horizon. She is Bella. She is the one who chases after starships and [i]wins[/i]. The future is infinite, too vast to deserve consideration. The past is behind her and too dull to bother with the effort of turning around to find it. The present is joyful. It is the hiss of steam and the crunch of metal and the roar of thrusters burning hotter than she's ever felt before. It is the rush of wind she can't feel on her face but knows is there beside her just the same. 

There is so much and so many beside her here and now. More than she could possibly need. Bella lifts into the sky until the ground disappears beneath her, just to spite it. With a swoop that twists her insides around in the most pleasant kind of way she crashes back down with a plume of dirt cascading around her like the ripples in a lake when a rock skips across it. Her body aches. Her aches tingle with the pleasant promise of regeneration and content. She tears into the soil with her lance and lunges forward with renewed speed and purpose. 

Maybe this is all there is, forever. But then, what's at the end of forever?