Ember's laughter bursts out of her, despite the careful training of the Silver Divers. Perhaps it makes a sheep shudder a little bit, hearing that wild and delighted bark right behind him. It is a laugh with Ceronian fangs. It is a laugh for skydiving with weapons strapped to every limb. And it is [i]giddy.[/i]

"Under a perfect, starless-- damn! [i]Damn![/i] Sagetip would have me on half rations for not seeing it. For not seeing [i]you.[/i]" She takes a step forward, rests a hand on Dolce. Don't be fooled by the gentleness: there's something of the sheepdog in it. A promise. [i]Approach my charges and I will bite you until one of us is dead.[/i] Her eyes are bright with seeing, with knowing, with the giddiness of not quite enough rehydration. The point where a headache is a whip driving a hound on.

(Dany is clinging to her Bella. Out of everyone in this room, she trusts a Bella who knows how to handle wonderberries and cries over croissants the most. She's trembling, caught in the terror of knowing that no end to this tense conversation will be good for anyone, unable to figure out some diplomatic and politically astute way to get everyone to stop being like this, because she's only got her wishing heart. Nothing more. Nothing less.)

(In the far distance and between things, a roar, muzzled. Even here, at the inflection point, when the maze has reached its end, a possible Redana must not be allowed to rejoin the whole. The Nemean is the only one who could stand up to XIII, and in joining the fight would doom them all.)

"The most basic, rudimentary mistake would be assuming that none of these Bellas are real-- because I'm real. Real enough, right? I was us for a while. But that meant I wasn't watching for the fake when she was right in front of me." She runs a hand through her golden hair. A clever woman would be watching her other hand. "To be fair, one of my wife's faces was convinced to pummel me for a while. Distracting. And the thing about that is--"

And she swings the knife at the throat of Aphrodite's promise in a classic Fisherman's Dance. Taurus would have wept to see the smoothness of the blow.

Of course this won't be enough. But in the fight that's coming, she's got to buy time for everyone else to find the right path. Or for parts of Bella that aren't tainted or devoured by the searing selfishness of True Love to bail her out, as usual. (And if it does nothing at all, she'll still throw a follow-up punch, because all the words coming out of this awful Bella stripped of everything that made her worth loving don't deserve to go unanswered.)

Nevergibsuppy, Mosaic.