You know, normally Dyssia hates touching the ground.

It's not a sensory issue, you understand? Not a matter of germs, or of the feeling of pebbles grinding to dust beneath her. It's just that touching down binds her, grounds her, feels like swimming through molasses.

And here, she can't help but do it anyway.

It seems appropriate, you know? Like here, in this breathing, pulsating heart of the ship, listening to the flow of ichor and sap, it's only fitting to-- Well, not to become one with the ship, but to let her thoughts slow. To let the moment soak over and through her.

Dyssia sits under a tree.

"The worst thing is, you're not wrong," she admits. "I want the end of the Azure Skies."

And that stings. It feels like--like admitting defeat, almost? Even though it's not her project, even though she's taken step after step away from the Skies?

"I can't stand the way we treat others--abuse them, uplift them, always with that self-assured magnanimity that we have the correct way of doing things.

"But also it's terrifying to think of what that looks like. They'll have figured out new and better ways to become closer to the gods than us--what does that say about our own? What do I do when what is comfortable and safe and known is demonstrably not the best way? There's a part of me that wishes that the new way will be close enough to the old way that I won't have to change who I am to fit into it."

Outside the window, a flash of plasma splashes against the ship, and she watches as a gash opens in the Generous Knight's elbow, watches as it starts to knit together again. 

"It terrifies me," she admits, "that the better way will be so alien to me that I cannot help but fight against it too."