Light plays around Dany's fingers. It's soft, the sort of light beloved in watercolors and pastels. Wisps of it play at the edges of her body, trailing belatedly after her movements. It's a new pet from her father, a resignation gift[1]. She cups it close to her chest as she sits squished up right against Dolce[2].

And she tells stories. She's got dozens of them, after all, from one end of the galaxy and back. But someone paying attention might notice that the stories that Redana's choosing to tell are all the stories of how she met other people, and what [i]their[/i] stories were. The Alcedi and the Starsong. The Assassins and the Ceronians. Alexa. Dolce. Vasilia. Dyssia. [i]Bella.[/i]

In Dany's stories, veering here and there, back and forth, as the ute rattles along, she's just the observer. She's just someone who happened to meet them, and her value here is being able to [i]tell you about them[/i]. That once, their paths intersected, and you need to know about that path, and suddenly she'll take you on a tangent right up to what she's heard about Bella being stuck on an orbital kill station with nothing to do but bake and make dresses. And the way she tells it, it's full of admiration for Bella's ability to [i]do[/i] things, to make things with her hands, to motivate herself to escape[3].

And every bubbly laugh, as she goes on and on and on until someone stops her, is punctuated with little flares from the aurora in her hand, all the colors of fresh fruit and bruised sunsets.

[hr]
[1]: Though shouldn't it be the other way around? But nobody told her this was going to happen, so she didn't have nearly enough time to fret about what sort of thing it would be acceptable to get the King of Olympus herself on the day when she walks among mortals and sets down the scepter and the laurel crown, and honestly, she still hasn't come to any sort of conclusion. Unless making it here at all is the gift? But she never would have made it if not for the gods, and for her friends, and for her wife, and for her dream, and... there are all sorts of things that aren't [i]her,[/i] the girl whose identity is as blurred and colorful as the light around her fingers.

[2]: 's butt.

[3]: she does not talk about what was going on upon the [i]Plousios[/i] at the same time. That's not a story particularly worth telling.