Balmas

Breathless Dead

Dyssia is grinning like a cat, because it's the only thing keeping her from panicking.

Because on the one hand, happy day! Miracle of miracles! Young love, which is only different from old love in that there are different mistakes left to make! And if she's not mistaken, there are some very interesting uses for various pool and bedroom instruments! And she was here! She did this!

But also oh fuck what does she say? She's had years to think about what to ask Hades for and she's still procrastinating the answer! And Scar is standing there and demanding an answer and--

Do you think Dyssia could manage that expression? She should try to manage that expression, it's a very useful face to have tucked away in your folder of faces to make--

Resist the urge to try it out right now. We have enough issues with echolalia and saying things out loud and--

(What even would you call echolalia of the face? Facielalia? No, no, wait, she knows this one, it's called masking)--

Aaaaaaaa answers, answers, answer that won't take too long or undervalue the relationship because there's that conversational landmine to step on is asking for something that's the right level of not-too-much-not-too-little-goldilocks--

"I want to attend your races," she blurts out. "Maybe not every time, I'm not gonna demand you arrange your schedules around me, but I'd like to see you two keep running forward together and know you'll never stop pushing each other."

Breathless Dead

Silence is tricky. Let it stretch too long and it becomes uncomfortable, but too short a silence before a response can be just as damaging.

Unless, of course, you find one of those friends, you know the kind. The kind of friend where silence isn't demanding or questioning or nervous, but is as natural as breathing because they're the one you're breathing with. Entire afternoons spent with hardly a word--walking, looking at the world, enjoying being alive, coming home to do entirely different things, just so long as you're able to do those things in the same room as them.

… And when they leave, doesn't that silence just feel so much more empty than before?

Her tutors kept acting surprised both that she understood it perfectly, and that she still kept ignoring the things she knew. Because silence is also painful, isn't it, when you have a million whirlwind thoughts that are all waiting for someone else to finish their thought so you can respond to what they said a minute ago like a detective saying "one more thing."

A hundred times, she feels the urge to speak. And a hundred times, she clamps down on it. She's asked a question, she's getting an answer, this is the perfect time to shut the fuck up and let Violet mouth out the words and show that you care for the actual answer by listening for once in your life.

… do you think she could emulate that flip of her hair? She doesn't have bangs to flip, but surely the right series of silver links--possibly embedded with rubies--could mimic that--

The cough makes the hand in hers feel like fire, and she resists the urge to pull back as if burned. Or, now that she thinks of it, to run her other hand through those bangs, and expose those eyes again, just for her own pleasure.

Instead, she makes as if to stand, still holding that hand, still holding her, less a dog on a leash and more pspspsing a kitty that might bolt away if startled. Come, come, there's someone you need to say all this to, you know. And if, say, you might need Dyssia to leave the hot springs for, oh, about an hour to, aha, sort out some feelings and feelings up, that's also an option.

Breathless Dead

Dyssia is cool. So cool. So very cool, she's even totally looking at Violet's eyes when she turns around, and not checking out those legs at all! Despite the way she is so very normal about the way the muscles bunch and extend and send her shooting across the pool!

So normal. So cool. And not slightly panicking at all, either, because oh no oh no she's sad aaaaaaaaa--

"In fairness, being number one has a much simpler benchmark, right?"

She hauls herself partly out of the water, and endeavors to make it clear by her body language that while Violet isn't required to take her hand, the hand is nevertheless there and boy, it sure looks lonely, like it could use a hand, maybe you could take the hand? This hand right here next to yours?

"Ahem. Did you win, yes slash no? If yes, congrats, you did good, let's train more. If no, I'm sorry, let's train more and get 'em next time. But coolness?

"For coolness, we gotta get metaphysical, right? Like goodness, right? Is something cool because it matches some hypothetical proto-ideal of cool, and the cool people are merely revealing it to be so? Or are your actions cool because you do them--that is to say, you are the ultimate arbiter of cool, because something cannot be cool except by your action?"

Wait. No. She's losing her, moping increased! Quick! Change tack!

"I guess what I'm really trying to ask is, why do you want to be cool?"

"Like, for real! I'm not trying to make fun of you or mock you, it's a genuine question! What do you get outta being cool? And I'm also not asking like, why is being cool desirable! What do you, Violet, specifically, hope to gain from being cool?

"Is it the confidence? The ability to declare to the world that actually, you're invincible? You're on top of things, you're coolsville and the world can follow or be left behind?

"Is it about people treating you like you're cool? About the adulation of people around you?

"Like, what is cool is a good question, but I wanna know why is cool!"

Breathless Dead

Dyssia is already half out of the water too, water splashing as she scrambles to take the girl's hand and lead her back into the pool.

But, you know! Gently! As gently as twenty feet of snakegirl surging at you while trying to get every word possible out of her mouth can be because, you see, you're amazing, and she thinks you're amazing, and your problems are important too and you're not butting in at all and how did you do that thing with your hair, she doesn't have hair like that, do you think if she had a wi--no, no, she's babbling and sit your pretty perky rear back in the water, and--

Fistbumb, handshake, high-five, and thumbs up, with a wink thrown on top, because, you see, you're worth it, and Violet is an amazing name, and Dyssia is going to see that smile reach your eyes if it's the last thing she does, and also if Violet's not your real name then what's your real name, because--

"See this hot spring? This is a private hot spring, just for now, just for the next few minutes, because we're friends now, and yeah, I'll take you up on that offer of help and advice, but first, you also sound like you're in the middle of something and, you know, maybe I can help? Or at least be a listening ear, if all you wanna do is talk? And then we can talk about the water being weird after?"

Breathless Dead

Dyssia has had the idea explained to her on the way both on the way here and again in the locker room, but it still boggles the mind. An entire planet! Like, seventy to ninety to some-odd-big-percentage covered in water, and--

And this is the place! This is the place that all the life on Mars came from! With the tentacles and the sharks and the fish and the crabs so tiny you'd barely be able to compare them to a proper battlecrabs--

And it's poisoned! Poisoned to the degree that even a small body of natural water that's safe is… It's the first thing that's made her even slightly uncomfortable here, and she can't let it stay like--

She pauses in the middle of taking off and neatly folding her towel next to the spring's edge to give the question its due consideration. Hold on, Miss--Missus?--Mizz Spikes, she's not ignoring you, you see, but it's very important that this question and--

Oooooooh gosh this water, yes this water, she's gonna melt in this water--

--Get the proper pondering it's due.

She lies back, head on the edge of the pool, arms spread, and considers sinking underneath the water until all the problems go away. But, alas, she has promised an answer. Well, no she hasn't, hasn't said much to this point, but she's been asked one, and being rude in someone else's hot springs is simply unthinkable.

"I've seen things screwed up, uh, worse? If that's any consolation?"

Breathless Dead

Dyssia flies up the tree, chasing the sunset.

It's not that she wants to hold onto it, you understand. It's just that the moment is so beautiful, it seems a shame not to revel in it--to ride it higher, dance in the oranges and pings and the unexpected greens. And dance she does, darting through the lights like her own ribbon of purple blue.

Gaia has fantastic trees, by the by--just the right level of roughness on her scales as she rests afterwards, woven between the branches like a windblown scarf, and surrounded by stars on all sides.

… Is it weird?

I mean… It'd be so easy to… To feel small, like this. Lonely, somehow, amidst a sea of light. To look at the endless skies--they're so dark compared to what she's used to--and feel cut off.

It is weird. But mostly because she remembers being--maybe still is, a little--the girl who wanted to see everything, touch everything, pull every lever, back when she heard stories about the outside. Who looked up at a sky full of far more than here.

And she doesn't feel--

She feels full. At peace. Connected, somehow, with everything--there are stars out there, and a girl down here, and they are the same thing.

…

What was that about a hot springs?

Breathless Dead

Turning into a girl feels like the greatest magic of them all.

You have to understand. You have to understand. She has--

Everything she's ever known since the day of her birth has been… not extravagant, though it was that? Wrong word. Extra… Extraordinary, that's the word. A barrage of perfect beauty to overwhelm the senses, leave you insensate. The strings of satisfaction, satiation, an end to craving, all wrapped in the form of enough beauty to never end.

And yet, here, as the sun sets around them and the world blooms with oranges and yellows, her eyes can only follow the girl into the shadows under the trees. Follow her out of the realm of spirits, and into the mundane.

"You get out what you put in."

The words are quiet, not quite whispered, more to herself than anything else.

"You know, there's a workshop on a planet somewhere--

"Well, there isn't anymore, not after the Pix crated it up and loaded it into a ship, and it's gone twice now thanks to some asshole birds (remind me to tell you about the birds) and also because the ship the workshop was on got cut in half--"

She swallows, bites off the thought, and laughs at herself.

"Sorry, I had a point in that tangent somewhere. I've left behind more hobbies and forgotten more habits than cigarette butts behind a smoker. But this feels like--"

The words fade.

This feels like something different. Something new. Something that's finally more than just… something to fill the days.

"…Thank you," she finishes.

For the opportunity, she doesn't say. For not being Princess Yin.

For showing her that she, too, can be just a girl. Not a knight. Not a legendary hero, the stuff of myths. Not the dissident, not the distracted.

Just Dyssia, which seems like the most magical thing of all.

Breathless Dead

It's madness. And yet, at the same time--

Is it normal to find out, in such quick succession, that everything you've done your whole life is wrong?

She's danced before--felt the pounding of the drums in survival, in the pulse of blood, every muscle singing with the desire to live, to protect, to shield, to see tomorrow, to make sure that those with her do too, in the thrill of get and don't get got.

And she's danced, again, on the strings of the madgod's puppetry, able to do nothing but watch from the inside--

No, no, that's the wrong way to think. To watch from the outside, afterwards, sore and bloodied, and wonder at how everything had made sense before she woke up. To watch someone else pilot her, even while exerting the barest pressure on the threads.

Now she's dancing, and--

It's like waking from a full night's sleep after living purely on caffeine and all-nighters.

So when the music stops, it's all she can do to stop in her movement--every muscle sings that there's more, there has to be more, this is everything, this is all, and--

Not terrible? Not terrible feels like the highest praise, like every part of her is lit with fire, and not a small part of her is wondering how it would feel to get a "good girl" from that voice. It'd have to be orgasmic, right? Worth the--

Wait. Um. Referral?

"I. Um. I got a text on Tianic's phone, and, um--"

She's fighting hard to keep a straight face, but the practiced Not-A-Princess can easily see the panic welling up behind the eyes.

Breathless Dead

Dyssia watches the dancers from beneath her tree--not so close as to intrude or be, gasp, eavesdropping--but close enough to watch the shimmer of rhinestones and the flash of shoes as the dancers--

Normally during a dressing-down like this, she'd use words like cower, or maybe glower, which has a fantastic mouthfeel for such a mean word. But the dancers aren't, right? Aren't even looking at Yin, or stopping in their dance, even as the world sucks in the not-noise vacuum of so many ears listening at once.

Usedtawas, huh? Yin seems… not unbothered, definitely. Nobody waving their arms that emphatically is 'unbothered.' But also not bothered about being a usedtawas captital-P Princess? Dyssia hasn't even given up being a knight yet, and the thought of giving up that part of herself makes her stomach drop.

But Yin has just… moved on. Found a new thing to do? Just like that? Found people who listen to her, not for her position or her species, regardless of what she does or who she does it for?

She watches the ker-lean, and is dizzied by the whirl and jeté and lunge and plunge of dancers breakneckedly never quite colliding.

She's swaying, some internal proprioception informs her--listening to music that does not exist, feeling the pulsing rhythm of step-and-two-and-stepstepstep-twirl--until her entire body is moving in tune, and when a snakegirl sways, she stays swayed.

She's not eavesdropping, honest, but she is hovering--closer and closer, until she's almost swaying against the same tree, feeling the urge to join, not having the words to ask, and looking for all the world like a dog staring at a treat.

"May I… May I learn your dance?"

Breathless Dead

You know, it's strange? Normally, from somewhere high up, you…

Words aren't the right medium, right? She doesn't want to say "feel powerful," because that's not actually the feeling. Awestruck is close, but… Observant, maybe? Observant, asterisk? Like you can see the whole picture, take it in piecemeal. Render the whole of the human experience, of all the intricacies of market and home down to ants on a playing board, that can be followed by an interested observer a thousand feet above.

She dangles off a spar, midway up one of the background orbital elevators, and wonders what she's doing here.

Well, you know, beyond the obvious of indulging a whim felt while touching down of "I wanna climb that?" Feeling a pleasant tightness of muscle in the core and arms? Feeling a bit cold and thin of breath, maybe, up in what is still technically atmosphere?

The borrowed phone chirps in her pocket, and she sighs.

Right.

She pulls it out, and marvels again at it. So small, but holding so much. And so, so fragile--capable of being destroyed if anyone, anywhere decides that it's too much.

And survive it has, here, for two hundred years. Survived, in a world where, according to the residents of the Terraced Lake, the… burrowers? Old people? Had left behind demons, geists, spirits of the old world. Spirits that--

See, it's not that they don't know about ELFs, right? They understand the curse of Zeus, laid against the old kind of computer intelligences, laid against the people until they can become--

She dangles by her tail, arms above her head, contemplating the upside-down world above her.

She could live here, you know. Couldn't she?

Here, alone in the cosmos, are the right kind of people, which as any revolutionary knows are much harder to find than the right kind of government.

… Is she the right kind of people?

Is she the kind of person who could… Who could leave well enough alone? Who could…

The words "tuck her head in the sand" taste like acid in her throat.

Could she just… abandon the crusade, feels like appropriate phrasing? Find a place that makes her happy, and say "this is enough for me?" It's burned inside her for so long--pushing her forward and on and through every obstacle, regardless of who gets hurt as a result, and stopping before the job is done feels--

Well, it feels hollow. Like the fire has burned her empty, and left her alone in the hole of unfulfilled purpose. She's said so long that she's doing this to help others, right? If she stopped, she'd…

What had it all been for, if she stops now?

Her phone--well, not her phone, but the phone she's using--chirps again, and she fumbles to check the text without gravity snatching it up and away from her.

Small meeting of friends, by the lake. Hmm.

She dangles still, for a few moments, considering.

It's not the same purpose. Not really. But it's… It's a warmth, if that makes sense. Something to swim towards and wrap herself around.

She unwraps herself from the spar, and drops towards the lake below.

She won't know until she sits in it for a while, but… It might be enough, after all.