Balmas

Breathless Dead

"My gosh thethe brownieth are incredible."

Dyssia grins up over crumbs spilled on a diagram of--of probably how this works? Guards and princesses and Princesses who aren't princesses and--

She swallows hard and--oooh, the afterburn of the chili is amazing--

"I'm the Dissident Knight!"

She purses her lips, listening to how the name sounds in the air of the small cottage.

"Which, you know, I've been thinking about calling myself that for a while now? And like, it's a good name, works with my name, and I've been worrying it's a bit pretentious? And it's not like you know what a Knight is, and I'm not sure I'd be able to place it on this diagram, like maybe somewhere between a baroness and a guard? And anyway, you don't actually get to pick your own name, right, because it's what you get famous for and what people call you and you could try to influence what people call you through, you know, introducing yourself like that and hoping it sticks, but I'm betting my political capital is too low right now to try to pull that out in polite society, and--

"Start over. Dyssia! I'm Dyssia, these are my foxgirls, and I'm a busybody! A meddler, a know-it-all, a malcontent, and I'm trying to help as many people as I can to escape from an empire that's bad for them!

"… huh. The pix kidnapped me, way back when. Would that make them my Guards?"

Breathless Dead

Don't look at it. Don't look at it, don't think about it, don't acknowledge it in any way, because if you don't look at it, don't think about it, don't acknowledge it, it doesn't exist. Everything is fine, actually! A golden day on Gaia, with nearly all of her friends, and everything is pretty, everything is golden, and if she doesn't look at the mountain fuck fuck fuck--

It's the galaxy's quietest panic attack as several paradigms shift like a teenager unused to working a clutch.

Think of bananas. Think of flamingoes! Think of literally anything else think it think it think it force it to exist in your head and focus on it and don't think about focus bad think it exist it and force it to not exist in--

"Yes! Teach!"

She's in the kid's face, wildeyed, and the words come strangled, like a cry for help trying to get out between throttling hands.

"You! Brownies, yes! Good thought, good time, yes let's sit down and chat and that was amazing and where did you learn to do that and can you please teach me--!"

Breathless Dead

Dyssia is rapt.

Weird word, that? Normally it conjures images of snakes and swirly eyes and sheer silks and a stark monofocus, but everywhere she turns, she finds more to be fascinated by. She's entranced, as it were, by everything she sees.

Gaia! Cradle, homeplace, birth of species! Admittedly, for another species, so she's probably not getting the full impact, but something that's important!

Not important enough to--

She's glad that some people stayed, anyway. Some people looked at the wreckage of business and industry and space and travel and said "this is home." Anyone can leave if they want!

Anyone. There's a twinge at that, a pang of bittersweet.

The idea of a planet so unloved that nobody would want to live there feels like swallowing a live coal.

She gestures, and a table (blue, crystal) and some chairs (blue, crystal) and some food (clearly out of place but beloved) are brought forward, and she contrives to indicate through facial expression that they're sorry for all the mess, and this is a lovely planet, and would you like some cookies? They go really well dipped in cocoa!

Breathless Dead

Dyssia hauls herself from the surf like a kaiju that's just heard about sushi and is in a hurry to try it.

"Dolce there's so muczhfack!--"

Cursing and laughing and splashing at the waves, she hauls herself just far enough that she won't get slapped with the spray again, and tumbles, giggling like a lunatic, to sprawl on the sand.

"There's so much down there!"

The words burble out like an excited stream--about how the light disappears the further down you go, about how your senses turn to nothing but heat and scent and electricity and actually do you have the electricity sense or not, she's never sure who has the electricity sense, and the pressure! Like being squeezed from all directions by the world's biggest weighted blanket, or the better kind of vacbed, and--And the tubes, at the very bottom! Plumes of smoke! There was this thing that was all eyes and tentacles and it was very handsy, and the reefs! Like a rainbow dancing with a million smaller rainbows! There's a fish like a plate down there that's just the chillest thing ever and--

She stares up at the sky, focusing on nothing at all.

"There's too much, Dolce. I could spend a decade exploring one reef, and till not know a tenth of everything there is to know. About that one area! There's an entire planet!"

Her face is a novel in large print. She's…

She's just one person. Very small in the face of all of this--less than a drop in the ocean.

"Bella's right, I'm realizing. Just one planet--who could use all of one planet? Who needs all of one planet? Who can even understand just the one planet--hold it in their head, understand everything about it, truly claim it as their own to be their homestead? Can hold billions of people and say 'these are mine, now and forever'?"

It's a very large wish for such a small person.

She keeps staring at the sky for a few more seconds, and then rolls onto her tummy to stare up at Dolce. The process is extensive and takes a few long seconds to fully reach the outlying regions of the tail.

"Have you figured out your wish already? We're nearly there, after all."

Breathless Dead

"Is it weird that I don't hate this?"

Dyssia's face doesn't quite know which expression it's trying to make, and the way it's being pressed against the glass isn't helping any.

"Because on the one hand, I've spent my whole life raging against anyone being put into a place, right? Into a slot, into a role, against their will. Being told by someone else, thus far and no further. And this looks like that, but on a massive scale.

"But it doesn't feel like it."

Binoculars. Telescopes. Something better than the ship has. She has to see closer, her mind can't rest until she sees closer.

Almost without thinking, she peels the metal rim off a pot-lid and starts polishing the lid into the shape of a parabola.

"What it feels like is--

"See, this is pre-everything, right? Pre-Atlas, Pre-Knights, Pre-ELF. A nascent culture, reaching for the stars, and thinking, even now, of how to perfect society."

She considers herself in the mirror of the potlid.

"No, no, that's wrong. How to perfect people. How to coax them away from greed and ambition and power, and towards kindness, caring, not because they have a role to fit into to make some magos' project work, but because they're. They are society, and society is worse off for having people who are not kind, are not generous, are evil selfish little shits."

She looks up, seemingly remembering.

"Sorry, we were. We were discussing something else, I think, and I've gone and derailed the conversation. What were you saying?"

Breathless Dead

Brightberry has coached her on this.

It's bad to not listen to your conversation partner--to skim through the sounds, listening for keywords while spending most of your brain cycles on planning a response, or--hold on, hold on, you asked a question, I have an answer, come on, stop talking and let me answer, and--

But on the other hand, it's unsettling to receive her full attention--to suck words and sound and meaning from the air and absorb it like a sponge, all while unblinkingly staring at your conversational partner.
The trick, see, is to find something else to look at while not also getting distracted by the thing you're looking at.

It feels so lonely here. Hopeful, too. This is where the map used to read Here There Be Dragons, and then humanity built, and spread, and stepped out into the skies. She can almost envision the ships, flitting between the fueling pipes, plovers dancing and welding.

She's silent, too, after Bella stops talking. Not thinking about the conversation means absorbing it and trying to understand it and then assemble the flotilla of words.

"I don't want to build an empire."

And that's a true statement, she decides, turning it over from each angle and inspecting the words for faulty rivets.

"I'd be happier with just the one planet, just my planet, just our planet."

She takes a deep breath as if about to jump into a pool of water where, knocking around the edges, she can see the floes of ice.

"And when I first met you, a knight had rocked up to your one planet and was in the process of strip-mining it, just because it was the most convenient source. When first I left my home, it was because the Pix showed up and threatened to glass the planet if they didn't get a sacrificial maiden. When we went to the Portuguese, we were coming to their just our planet, along with two other factions. Thank the gods that Nemesis is gone, because that was an entire megastructure designed entirely to import and fuck up any random someone's just our planet.

"And none of those people were even doing it because they particularly hated us! They barely knew we existed until we ruined their plans, and then we had to hide inside a star to avoid them until the heat died down!"

She stares out at the wreckage of pipes.

"It almost makes me want to change my wish--that, instead of the fall of the empire, instead of disassembling the whole assembly and letting the pieces fall where they may, I should wish for.. You know, a way for people to remain hidden. To have just one planet, outside the reach of anyone else. To remain outside the sight of even the gods. A casque of invisibility the size of a planet, where those tired of their designated places can find the themselves that can look back on the idiots they were without worrying about needing to constantly be on the run."

She pauses, reviews the sentence, and decides, "The wording will need some work, obviously."

Breathless Dead

She wishes she'd made notes.

That was the whole problem, wasn't it, was that the birds had been relentless. Their ideas, their beauty, their standards, fuck you for thinking your pitiful little ship could compare to a perfect shade of blue.

But on the other hand, it'd been--

She couldn't even tell, right? Could be years, could be decades, spent in a frozen instant aboard two ships. She knew its corners with the familiarity of someone who'd slept-walked through it, the ease of someone born and raised in it--how it should purr, where it rumbled, whence its veins and how to take its pulse.

She'd pulled it from her head and doodled it on the cushions of the couch, every line precise and accompanied with the proper measurements. Her couch was gone, you see.

"But who gets to decide what it should look like? And how is that decided?

"This is the ship as it was, yes. It's the ship I remember. But it's your ship too, and Dolce's, and Redana's, and so on and so forth for everyone on board this ship. Different rooms mean different things to different people, and different areas are important for different reasons.

"And if we did decide to restore it to this, then why not make some improvements? And what are the best? And who decides that?

"If we succeed, the Azure Skies will fall. Disintegrate, fall to pieces, find that all the pieces that keep its many plates spinning will be absent. Servitors, everywhere, absent their masters and the threat of species-wide genocide."

She glares at the diagram as if daring it to answer.

"I have a preference, of course. And I could trumpet it to the sky, insist that my version is superior--speak to leaders and cults and priests, exhort the masses that here is a superior vision, abandon the old and in with the new, and anyone who takes up arms against it must therefore need perish.

"… but I don't want to do that."

She sags back, careful not to let her tail disturb the paint.

"I don't want to be the new king. Don't want to wage war, and coerce, and enforce, and politick. I don't want to raise a similar empire with a different flag.

"But at the same time, what else is there? To simply retire, and let whatever I build for my friends be demolished by the next Johnny-come-lately without my morals about death and destruction?"

She buries her face in her coils, and when she emerges she's both staring at the diagram and seeing none of it.

"I just want to build a world where violence not only isn't the default, but isn't even viable. Where 'do what I say or I will employ a man to hit you with a stick' isn't the underlying threat of every civilization. Where people can choose what to do, what to be, without biomancy or the gods or administrator species deciding for them.

"But there has to be a way to achieve that in a way that isn't just accepting its downfall in advance or becoming a bloody warlord myself, right?"

Breathless Dead

For half a second, the image dances in her head so vividly she could bite it.

If it is to happen, it must happen now. Strike! Strike now, strike hard, strike fast, strike for her friends at the glowing core in the center of the smog and--

And then what? And engage with the embodiment of war while she's empowered by the very idea of war?

Her eyes flit to the Plousios, her hand drops to the controls at her belt. Fly, Dyssia! Fly to comparative safety, coordinate the assault, help with the pickup and--

And she hasn't seen her friends since they vanished, and has no idea where they are, and--

And she's the one the Shogun wants. Not exclusively, no, but she's sure as hell the one that's done the most pissing off.

Won't hurt to do a little bit more then, give her a little reminder.

And with a whine of power, she rips a portion of the Corpse Empress' palace from its place, chucks it at the glow, and continues running.

Breathless Dead

Found the thoughts! Found 'em found'emfound'em--

You know, it'd be really damn nice to find a state somewhere between burnt-out husk and last-minute panic.

The sword doesn’t get left behind, barely. She's fleeing, using as many of the tricks she'd used to pursue as her tired frame can muster, but in reverse, and her fingers' claw-like grip on the hilt of the sword simply refuses to be lifted. Normally this would be where she offers a prayer to Hermes to lend her speed in the escape but--

Ah. Erm. Um.

It could have been good! So good! The lights wink out and with them goes the promises of all of, of, of this, but turned to peace! To commerce! To enlightenment and uplift--

No, no, strike the uplifting. She's still learning that, and it's hard.

Still! Imagine this, but turned to-- not to exile, exile is the wrong word, and so's expansion, but! To allowing people to leave! To search out some barren planet that they can make their own! To the free spread of ideas and music and stories and politics, to anything but oh god she's still behind her--

She's alone. She's alone and she's running and she's trying not to think about how she's being chased by someone genetically coded to fuck her up and the idea of standing and fighting is unthinkable and the more she tries not to think about either of those things they more they swell to fill her entire mind. She's being driven by the prey instinct--not to plan, not to fight, to go anywhere so long as it's away, and she knows that that's what the wolves want, and--

Run! Just run, find something better on the way!

Breathless Dead

Dyssia shatters like ceramic dropped from a kiln into a bed of ice.

That's it? Well done, have a cookie?

She should be panicking. She should be scrambling to hold this in, learn about this state, to figure out how it works. There should be a million voices in her head, only most of which were her own, thinking and examining and turning things over and looking for buttons to press.

It's quiet in here. It shouldn't be quiet in here.

She claws herself back up from the dirt, hauling on the crossguard of the sword as if it were a ladder, a piton, a crutch, as if the next step is not going to send her faceplanting back into the field of flowers spreading around her.

Behind her, there's a quiet ploof as part of Kronus's arm, inadequately secured by roots, falls to earth and sends up a plume of dust.

There should be thoughts about that--about whether the Titan is loose now to terrorize the underworld, and whether that was inevitable.

She shakes her head as if to listen for loose change, and finds it eerily empty.

She should be. Should be iron, surely. Dropped glowing from the forge into the oil and finding hardness in it.

But reds were always hard to judge, and temper and tempering were never her strengths, and being hard is. Is not the same as being strong, and.

She can't collapse. There are things to do. There are people to care for.

Propping herself up on her sword, Dyssia goes in search of her errant thoughts.