The first taste of water doesn't even make it down her throat. Her mouth is too dry and too cracked to manage the motion. It has no flavor other than cold, the kind of cold that should feel like a relief but the sheer contrast to her suffering turns it into a different kind of suffering. But it wets her tongue and slides to the back of her mouth, and where the burning passes a sense of wet comes back to her.

And with that, flavor. The taste of iron, magnesium, zinc, calcium, bits of complex rock like limestone that filtered it down but left behind its own aftertaste. She revels in the sensation; it's plain and boring but it's the most delicious thing she's ever held into her mouth. Still, it dribbles back out of her mouth and down her chin and neck instead of going where she needs it. Against her skin it doesn't even feel cool.

The second try she swallows, if weakly. By the third she is lost in messy, irresponsible gulping. No thought enters her head if this is something that needs to last or how to ration it if it was. From the inside out she blossoms; a tree of prickling pain. Cold awakens branches of nerves from the core of her body spreading out to her limbs and lastly down her tail. The icy stabs of cold are how she knows she is alive.

Words are spoken. She hears them. Motion is happening. She sees it. Hazy with the oppressive heat as it is, the world is bright and clear again. Bella's proud senses carry every detail of the planet to her in exhaustive detail. She stretches out her hand, but it has no strength to lift her body.

"W-wait!" she croaks, "Wait, please! Don't leave! You... your names. I only... wanted to know. Your names."

It is too late. The sound of buzzing is cut to a barest hum, hardly even audible over the rumbling of warships lifting out and off from the ground. The Uncrowned King's shadow no longer darkens the entrance to her tent, and the glare from the sun above gleams like a hateful dagger beyond the reach of her slight shadows. The tips of her fingers touch the outside air and blister the instant they taste direct light. She moans and pulls it back.

And then, silence. A cruel kind of silence, the whistling of a wind that blows dust into her eyes and the labored sounds of her own breathing that's wracked with something halfway between a sob and a whimper. The glittering edifice of the civilization she had come to still shines all around her like it'd been built just to amplify the spiteful light of the sun, but the parts that had made it seem like a city to her eyes were ships all along. What's left is a skeleton. A nest without its hive. 

And her. Alone.

Bella reaches for the jug of water again. It's smaller than she realized. Nothing more than a swallow left for her to savor. She downs it in a shot and throws the container away from her, as hard and far as she can send it. It lands well within sight of her tent. She sighs. Even that noise is dry to her. Too quickly do the blessings of these small mercies seem to fade to nothing. Her skin peels, her fur sheds, her eye demands constant and annoying blinking but even then it feels desiccated and irritable. She swallows, again and again and again and again, as though afraid to lose the power again. It hurts. But it's something to do.

There is nothing else. No corridors to run down. No hobbies to bury herself inside of. No meals to cook. No mysteries to ponder. She drags herself to the knees so she can watch the shifting of the sunlight through the glass spires that were left behind along with her. They remind her of fish swimming lazily through a pool of water. 

Water. Nothing left to drink. It's all underground. She'll never make it without burning to a crisp. And if she did she'd be beyond its power to revive her anymore. She slumps back and simply watches the facsimile instead. Minutes drift by, and simple watching turns to prediction. Her Auspex helps her calculate the motions of the light against the glass and she amuses herself trying to predict the patterns it creates. How long before it lights this corner? How long until she sees the shape of an animal? She looks for a crab, but nothing comes closer than the vague approximation of half a claw.

Minutes turn to hours. She supposes. Nobody comes. There is nothing to measure the passage against except her own sense of internal timing, and she doesn't trust that anymore. Every eyeblink carries with it the rise and fall of entire civilizations. She falls backwards into the depths of her tent and makes shallow gasps. There, now she has those to count.

She is alone. She is alone. No one is coming for her. She is alone. She has been left behind. Left behind by the companions she tried to make who turned themselves into new, better versions of themselves or who simply died or moved away from her mission so that by the time she discovered herself again there was no one left from among them she could share herself with. Mosaic's friends and loved ones would mourn her name. But not [i]her[/i] name. Bella would pass unmarked from the universe one more time, as worthless and insignificant as the title Praetor she wore atop her head.

There's no strength in her legs to leave the tiny shelter they made for her as a parting gift. All that she can do is sit and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait. With only Him for company. Aha, her old plan. Not a painless way to go, but an easy one. She doesn't even have to choose to die. It doesn't matter if she wants it or not, how many times she changes her mind. All she has to do is sit still, and wait. In the bright and heat of this planet with a name it would not share with her instead of the dark and damp of the Yakanov. 

Last time... last time she'd meant to do it. And Apollo was there to thwart her. But she didn't have the strength to fill herself with chlorophyll again, instinctively or no. And if she did, nothing she took from [i]this[/i] star would make for sustenance anyway so much as a crueler and more creative way to die. She didn't want that. Bella was, at heart, a coward. Something she'd known for as long as she understood where she ended and the world around her began. If it was going to happen, let it happen like this. With no choices for her to make. With no action on her point. Let it happen, please. Just let it happen.

"But I..." why does she bother ruining her beautiful voice speaking to an empty world? "Redana. I miss you. I'm sorry. I was... too much of a fuckup. To carry your torch for you."

That's fine. That's fine. Mynx can carry on for both of them now. She'll do a better job of it, too. The thought brings a bright and painful roll of something on the verge of tears and a hiccup through her system. She can't cry, of course. There's not enough moisture in her system left to allow for that. She couldn't cry back then either, you know. The thoughts keep flitting in and out of her head, all the proof of her sincerity and her incompetence and the fakeness of her own thoughts and emotions. She was wrong about wanting to die, back then. She's wrong about wanting to live now.

Apollo is only here to show her the way. This was the purpose he envisioned for her the entire time.

"Please. Please," she dry sobs, "Please. Please. Please. Please. Please."

Until she runs out of voice to ask. Until she runs out of energy to sit and watch. Bella rolls over onto her side and stares at the tips of her claws in the dim half-shadows of her burial tent. Her final prayer was as empty and useless as she turned out to be. No good. No good to anyone. In the end. And nothing left to do.

The suffering was the point.

So she watches, and she waits, and she counts her own breaths. All alone. All alone and waiting, for the only thing that will come.