Once, long ago, Yumeiko served a Goddess. An actual Goddess, not the facade she maintained for the sake of offering guidance. Ever since that day, she could no longer feel Inari's presence, or that of any other deity. Without any higher power she could trust, she took it upon herself to bear that mantle.

Which is how she found herself in charge of a populace for hundreds of years. Over the course of those centuries, they found the thing the divine had left behind, to guide them on their path into the future.

At least, that's what she told her people. She believed it, or at least she wanted to. It smelled like them. Like Her.

The sky-blue crystal - it responded to life, to strong desires. Clumsily, they could create with it. Yumeiko found that it responded to her, as well. She could commune with it. With time, she learned to draw sacred power from it, to wield it and speak with the gems that grew from trees. She could use it to create prosperity for her people, and so she did.

Her colony of people met with others who had discovered the same novel resource - but their discoveries had been different. They wore the gems from the trees, and some had with them a mote of light or a thing that looked very much like a fairy that accompanied them.

They called it Aevon, their companions Aeva. Together, they learned and grew and became something greater. Scattered settlements became cities with trade to offer each other. That trade created natural prosperity, and as their needs elevated, the Aeva responded. Mere centuries had passed since the Terran Empire had been ground to dust and forgotten, but already were they raising ships worth of the stars above. Great beasts of crystal and living wood. Metal had been molded around them to form armor, but crystal or wood had to be exposed to properly emit energies.

Yumeiko's shrine-ship was constructed like the shrines of old, interlocking wood forming distinct silhouettes and sliding paper partitions. Around the shrine, a ship had been formed. The Aevon already worked into the bones of the shrine melded easily with the new vessel to carry it, and together with the First Fleet of Gaia, they rose to space to face the threat the Aeva felt waiting.

They were greeted in orbit by a mass of Scourge. They fought, and won, though it had not been lossless. Already, Yumeiko could feel the tree at the center of her shrine-ship gathering the souls of the dead.

The battle was over. Their ship had taken hits to the shielding - they held, but the impact had been rough. The blond fox woman felt it her responsibility to check on her... "guest".

Yumeiko's eyes slowly drifted across the quarters aboard her shrine-ship she had dedicated to the woman in question. She was the sort to keep to herself, which was fine. It was not a problem to care for a body or two - their resources were enough to sustain everyone. She had at least learned the woman's name - Miyuki. If the duration of her stay with Yumeiko's people gave any indication, the woman was an entity not unlike herself, so there was plentiful reason to give her space if she wanted it.

Indeed, Yumeiko had come to see if her guest was alright. Yet what was the state of this place? While she could see some things had been jostled, knocked over across the impacts, she found that a difficult explanation to swallow for the level of mess she beheld. Not just a mess - rubbish! Left about in her shrine! It would have been one thing if it were some eccentric collection of pointless statuettes or posable figurines, but these containers were meant to be recycled, not hoarded!

The spirit fox had forgone a retinue, which she counted as a good decision. She wouldn't subject anyone to this. At least there didn't seem to be anything rotten. The blond stepped carefully through the rubbish and other miscellaneous items, following her senses to find the woman she now needed to confront, and not just check on.

Once she stood at the other side of the door, Yumeiko called through the partition into Miyuki's chamber, "Miyuki? Are you alright?"

To many, space is the final frontier. A vast, endless, untapped and limitless expanse of possibilities and potential. Untold amounts of resources and riches, unending real estate and the undeniable opportunity to become the first to discover somehting nobody else has ever seen. It is the Seaof Stars that used to twinkle so high above, beautiful and mysterious, but always out of reach, stirring the imagination and curiosity across untold millions for a span of time that is unfathomable to most living beings. And yet, somehow, at some point, those who lived on the surface of a sole, lonesome planet, eventually manged to reach this place of dreams...

... And what did they have to show for all their hard work and accomplishments? A ruined, scattered and fallen-apart collection of worlds, who had all been decimated by something they didn't understand or even knew was out there, until it was too late. They had started the race, reached the goal, and instead of gettinga gold medal, got punched so hard in the face taht they tumbled all the way back and past the starting line...

... Was it worth it? All of their dreams, their hopes, their ambitions? Had they amounted to anything more than galactic dust, so frail and ephemeral that a single powerful gust had blown it all away into the infinty?

A voice.

A voice amde words that shattered the musings of the one inside. The one who had been so lost in their own thoughts and contemplation, that time had lost all meaning and passed on by without notice. But ntohing ever truly stood still, at least not until entropy secured it's complete dominance over all of existence, and that time was not yet here. Thus, her peace was disturbed and her senses stirred.

The voice belonged to her. The one they called Goddess. The one they rallied and flocked to. For guidance. For protection. For survival. A shining light, a beacon of hope and a pillar of support to all and any. Tiny shoulders, forced to bare the weight of the world, simply because nobody else would. Or becaue nobody else could? The difference was a semantic trifle either way. For to many, she was both sun, moon and stars, to others, she was the guardian and protector, and to others, the guiding force that allowed their pitiful lives to continue.

To Miyuki...

... What was this little creature?

Well, such things could be left to be contemplated and thought about at a later time. For now, there was a call and a question. A silly question, but a question nontheless. During... Whatever it was that had happened earlier... All taht Miyuki had felt was a slight rumble and momentary shaking... Hardly something to be concerned or make a fuss about. Not nearly enough to get the fox-being to leave the comfort of her current state.

... Which was lying curled up on her bed, in a state of most absolute disheveled undress...

Empty bottles of drunk-sauce, boxes stacked atop of boxes of empty, crumb-littered food containers, a veritable little wall or fence of empty mugs and cups stacked atop each other like a barrier... All these things surrounded the bed upon which the black-haired, bodaciously busty being now lay, hal-awake from the external irritant that had come to pester it.

"Mmmnnnnnmnmnh... Fine... 's all fine... Good night..."

A loud, exaggeratedly cute yawn escaped, and then the room fell silent again. Leaving Yumeko at an unanswred, unopened door.

Yumeiko stood at the partition into the bed chamber of the other's quarters, hemming and hawing softly to herself while she considered various possibilities. Furniture might have fallen on her, something sharp could have been thrown by an impact - any number of things. After she stood at the door a while and hadn't received an answer, she decided the only thing to do would be to enter and check on her long-term guest.

No, wait, she heard something. It had been too brief and indistinct for her to identify it - had it been a shout? A call for help? "Miyuki? Are you there? I'm coming in."

The spirit fox turned and looked at the room behind her, the utter chaos of it. Was it worse, within? She braced herself, turned back to the partition, and opened it.

Well, it wasn't much worse, inside. The mess changed - instead of large containers that held servings of food, plates and bottles and cups were scattered everywhere. Booze and- oh, no, there were containers in here, too. Carefully, Yumeiko stepped through the clutter, somehow finding the open spaces between the mess to step as she approached the bed.

Wait, it was still all food waste. This was her bedroom, yes? If this was how she treated her rubbish, she would have expected there to be clothing everywhere, too. Maybe she just did her laundry? Yumeiko still didn't smell anything rotten, so the woman either ate all her food or took care of her waste... eventually. It might have been laundry day.

The blond fox woman came to stand next to the bed, looking with an unsure concern at the woman curled up there. "Miyuki? I don't believe we've met, my name is Yumeiko... no Kami." That still felt strange. "We took hits to the shields, I wanted to be sure you're alright. ... Are you sleeping...?" Had this woman slept through the battle, or had she been injured by something (probably from her rubbish) when they'd taken hits? The way she was curled up, blankets and tails tight around her - it could be how she sleeps, or she might have curled in on herself for comfort after the battle. Hard to say.

The slovenly blackhaired womans leeping on her bed in the curled up position as the Priestess-not-turned-Goddess stood next to her, stirred only slightly.

Her ears twitched a bit, her tails swept lazily to and fro', and her head turned ever so teeny tinily towards Yumeko. An eye opened slowly, like the raising of a medieval castle's port culis, giving the blonde fox a hazy, unfocused, unbothered glance, before falling shut again.

It was at this point that Yumeko, had she been paying attention, would perhaps have noticed that it wasn't that Miyuki's room was void of dirty or unwashed clothes... They were all just stacked aginst the partition wall from which you entered, making them more easily missed right when you entered the room. The problem, however, was that they were stacked into a massive, teetering tower... A teetering towerr that, thanks to the rumbling when the ship had taken damage earlier, was now even more unstabile than before.

this imminent avalanche fo fabric was now on the verge, a mere single shake or sudden jolt, away form coming on down and burying not just the slumbering sloth, but also the Goddess-Priestess...

Meanwhile, back on the bed...

"Mmngh... Tempura shrimp... w... sticky rice... mMnn... breafkast..."

Yup. Not getting up still. And now making demands to be brought food.

What a nostalgic food order.

Miyuki was fine, she'd worried for nothing. The dark-furred fox was hungry, perhaps, but unharmed. Yumeiko sighed softly and rolled her eyes at the demand. Well, perhaps she could make something out of the situation.

As a being apparently not unlike herself, perhaps she could extend the courtesy. "Breakfast? Yes, I suppose I could make breakfast for you. On one condition." Yumeiko shifted, her tails flicking behind her. "You clean." A particularly strong flick of one of her tails punctuated her demand and caught a can, sent it sailing through the air. It tapped the unstable wall of clothing that had been shifted away from the partition by the jostling earlier.

Cloth can be surprisingly dense, when you have enough of it on top of itself.

"Start with your galley, then I'll start co-uhg!" The mountain of her failed perception caught her in the back and pushed her forward, onto the bed, while it buried them both.

"Actually, start with this."

"Mi-kooon~!?"

Suddenly, there was a blonde fox lying over her legs, and the two of them were covered by a massive heap of... Wait... Were those her clothes...!? How'd they end up here on the bed? Miyuki was sure she'd put them all away against that wall so they wouldn't get in the way! ... Hold up. Why was the owenr of this flying island-ship-thingy lying ontop of her? And where was her tempura shrimp with sticky rice?!?

The black-furred, black-haired fox struggled and shifted, eventually managing to pop her head up and through the carpet of clothes that was now burying them both, looking around the.. Slightly disgorganized chamber...

"... It... Was like this when I got here...?" She tried. She really tried.

"No, it was not like this when you got here." Yumeiko took a moment to get the proper leverage with her arms, careful of the soft legs under her. "If you want me to cook for you, I'm going to need you to prepare the space," she found the proper leverage, and let her exertion punctuate her speech, "properly."

The High Priestess pushed her body up from the blanket of unwashed clothing, taking a deep breath of the relatively fresh air as she did.

"I know I granted you this space, but this is still my shrine. Can we pick up, please?" Yumeiko looked out across the wasteland of rubbish and chaos. If it weren't for the partition, you might not be able to tell one space from the next.

Miyuki had been in Yumeiko's care for a long time; long enough that folks, and Yumeiko, had realized her longevity. The blond had expected some amount of decorum from her fellow, and yet here they were; covered in her dirty clothes.

"C'mon, then, up you go." She started to dig the black-furred fox from her fresh, used imprisonment, knowing she absolutely could not introduce anyone to this unkempt mess of a yokai before she was cleaned up.

"... Boo~" Miyuki pouted slightly as her clever attempt at avoiding responsability for her own actions had somehow failed to convince the blonde owner of the Shrine-ship that this wasn't a mess of her own doing... She was sharp, this one! ... or Miyuki was just an idiot...

"Fine~ I'll... Clean up a bit..." Saying those words almost made her skin crawl and she had a distcint, and very noticeable, expression spread across her face that very clearly indicated that the thought of doing actual chores was somehow the self-sacrifice of the century.

She did, of course, wait for the other fox to dig her out of the giant heap of garments that had fallen on them both, not seeming willing to lend a hand in the slightest. Once Yumeko had managed to free the pair though, Miyuki slid off her bed, stretched, yawned and looked around at the undeniable disaster that was her quarters.

Her eyes then returned at Yumeko. The latter actually being a slight bit shorter than Miyuki. Not by much, but still.

"Does the Goddess of the Shrine really have time to cook for a [i]guest[/ though, I wonder~?" Miyuki said, eyes half-closed, a slight smile - or was that a smirk - on her face. "Yumeko no Kami... Yes, I know that name... And know that face..." Of course she did, she'd been mooching off of the other girl's lands for an unspecified amount of time back when they were still terresttrial foxes.

... And now she was here...

... In SPACE...

... Not exactly the future the dark haired, voluptuous fox had envisioned for herself bakc when she was still planet-side.

"Ah, right..." She added, breaking her eye-contact with Yumeko and going back to slowly scanning the mess of a room they were in. "You already know it, but they call me Miyuki. Just Miyuki." Perhaps she had had a title or surname at one point, or a monicre or epithet of some kind. Who knows? If she did, she wasn't sharing, and nobody alive - at least on this vessel - would be very likely to know.

Adjusting her short, short, short sleeping gown - which was lacey and black by the way - Miyuki started to slowly fold the pieces of clothes that had once amde up the leaning tower of garments. This time, seemingly collecting them in smaller, organized piles based on the garment's size and weight, rather than packing everything into a colossal pillar. So, at least she could be somewhat organized... When forced to... She... She didn't look to happy about ti though...

"Yes, somehow or other, the name of my reclusive guest reached me." Yumeiko watched as Miyuki finally pulled herself up, only after being excavated. As the bedding fell away, Yumeiko restrained the sharp breath she took and busied herself with coming down from the bed.

It was short! And lacy! She couldn't let anyone else in here to see Miyuki like this, absolutely not. She had worked hard to maintain an air of dignified grace. That meant a certain sacred professionalism. Modes-

Mm! Modesty!

Her eyes darted away from the woman and out to the mess. "I have the time. The crew will take care of any maintenance or repairs I cannot complete by communing with the ship. I do not have time to do your cleaning. Er..." Yumeiko watched the centuries-old woman fold her dirty clothes as though to put them away. "M.."

No, no, it couldn't be. "Miyuki, that's been worn, right? We have machines for washing, though I think you'll have to do the process more than once to get through all this. You don't have a basket or a hamper or-..."

Yumeiko began to fear what she was realizing about Miyuki. "Miyuki, you wouldn't, perchance, be accustomed to... servants?" Already, she was reaching through the ship to summon servitor drones. The shrine, itself, didn't have any, but there were access corridors to let the roughly spherical, floating utility nodes in from the surrounding vessel. As she summoned them, she held her own hand out with the palm down. A hamper of hardlight would form under her palm, which would present itself to Miyuki for her to deposit her laundry. The drones would come and form containers for the rest of her rubbish, though neither Yumeiko nor her drones would yet move to do the cleaning for her.

"hmmmmmm~" Was all Miyuki replied when the blonde fox stated that she was willing to cook, but not clean, for her guest.

As Miyuki continued to fold and gather the mounds upon mounds of clothes, into smaller, more manageable deposits, the Goddess of the Shrine Ship asked a very peculiar question.

"Of course they've been worn... That's why they're not on me anymore." She tilted her head, as if the question had made her question the other woman's faculties... Regardless of the fract that it was Miyuki's brain that needed questioning. Then came the other inquiry - one that was far mo more easily answered.

"Servants? No. I never had anyhting that fancy." She said, folding up a pile of what looked to be lingerie. "Though I used to have some people who exchanged goods and services with me..." She continued, not stopping her labor. "Things like... Bringing me new,f resh clothes and food, in exchange for not beingannihilated. You know, typical arrangements that benefited everyone."

... That... Might not be a typical arrangement for anyone except Miyuki.

Then she spotted the arrival fo the ... Machines.. Yes... Miyuk knew alla bout machines! They were... Made of metal! ... And... Parts! ... And some of them moved! And could do things! And some had shiny glowy bits, or bits you could press and/or pull to make them sound and move. Of course she knew all about these contraptions!

... She wasn't... Really sure what this new basket was for though... And so, the black-haired fox tilted her head, a quizzical expression on her face. Was... Was it a wastebin? Was she supposed to put all the cartons of devoured pizzas into it? Or the mugs? The bottles? She usually had the 'trade aprtners' take all of that stuff away, so this was... Untrodden territory...

"I... Do I put the bottles into those or... The cups and mugs...?" There was a vvry slight tint of pink on Miyuki's cheeks, as she turned her face to the side and gave the newly formed piece of furniture an uncertain glare.

Oh. Oh no. Oh no!

It was worse than she feared. It wasn't just that Miyuki didn't know how to do any sort of proper living, it was that she had no concept of what the work of proper living even looked like! If she had had servants, previously, she might have understood that those servants did laundry and cleaned dishes, etc. Instead, it sounded like she terrorized people into providing things for her, reducing housework to a false magic.

This was about to be a lot of work.

"Wh- n-no, you, uh," Yumeiko's frustration seemed heavier than the tired sigh she released, "this is for your clothing. Gather your clothing in this basket and I'll have it," her hardlight flickered as she hesitated. She shook her head and it steadied, she continued, "I'll have it washed. We'll get around to you washing it yourself, later. The other containers will be for your rubbish. I can," something in her balked at the idea, "make more baskets, more bins."

She almost missed the soft blush on Miyuki's cheeks. Poor thing, she was trying. The hardlight strengthened.

"Oh... I see."

The slight tinge got worse, and Miyuki turned fully away from her host, focusing entirely on gathering the small stacks of folded laundry and then slowly carrying them over, dumping them into these new-fangled doo-hickies.

However, at the rate she was going, and the fact that aside from the piles of clothes, there was also the empty food containers and wrappers... And she hadn't even begun touching those yet... it would become apparent to Yumeko that, if the Shrrine's Divine Deity decided to stay and watch and observe this guest clean up her entire quarters... Well, she'd be here for a while... A very, very long while... Because Miyuki wasn't exactly sprinting or working herself into a sweat to get this all tidied up.

Speaking of, Miyuki was now - for some reason - half-way under the bed... Standingf on all fours, reaching for - and throwing pieces of more garments - out from under her sleeping furnishing... All with her butt and tails wiggling back and forth as she did so... In that really, really, really short nightie-night... Apparnetly unbothered by the potential of being seen...

"... How did it even get under here, I wonder..." The dark fox muttered - as if she wasn't the cause of this - while continuing to gather the clothes for the hampers.