[b]Skotia...[/b]

is gone.

[hr]
[b]Redana...[/b]

suffers. Refusing to fight only goes so far, and one woman against a hundred terror-fueled maids?

She will get back up over and over and over. Thank you for leaving her eyes, at least. No matter what else is clawed to shreds, oh-so-briefly. No matter what else is torn out of her and regrown. How else is she to experience an unending battle? To endure torment without end?

[hr]
[b]Ember...[/b]

walks through the darkness with her eyes closed. Ears at attention. Nose sniffing. Barefoot on the tiles.

And there is nothing. Rich, sumptuous nothing. Forever. Silence, except for the echoes. No scent, a complete absence of information. Nothing to report, nothing to scheme, nothing to learn. She walks into no walls. She stubs her toe on no tables. Nothing, nothing, nothing: the darkness of the [i]Anemoi[/i] is total. The bounds of the universe stretch on forever.

[hr]
[b]Dany...[/b]

takes Bella's hand and looks up at this woman so much like her mother. So extravagant, so commanding, willing to change the shape of the world with a command and a wave of her hand. Willing to ignore the fear in Bella's eyes. Willing to shut people away in boxes until they're needed, if they ever are.

"No." Her face scrunches up, and she stands straight and scared. "You're [i]scaring[/i] her." A useless statement of fact. A javelin thrown right at one's own feet. "And, and she's right about the monster, and, and... you're not making [i]either[/i] of us go into the Box. Ever." Her face is a blotchy mess of tears and snot and terror, and her grip on Bella's fingers is the desperate cling of we-go-together.

A woodpecker strikes at a tree in a drumbeat. A butterfly touches the flowers in an erratic waltz. A breeze carries petals across the lawn.

"Put it away. Nobody ever goes back into the Box ever again."