Tatterdemalion

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Fengye!

There are lights on the other side of the river. They are not candles; they are not entirely fireflies. Cinnamon and honey hangs over the omnipresent smell of rain. The House of Lapis Lazuli is close at hand, and the gods are thick and close about, unseen but intent on you as you catch up to the spirit of clinging mud wading through some farmhold’s rice paddies.

Incense rising on the other side of the river. The sound of strings and bells. Blue silks and chains. Zhaojun would either thrive here or be in dreadful peril here. But she is not here; it is you, hemming in this minor spirit, shaking your umbrella at it. It roars and bubbles defiance, and tries to break around you. To the river. To the House. To file a complaint.

If the Maid passes into that House, it is likely that she would never be permitted to escape. She would be sealed away beneath Lake Zenba by the priestesses of the Sapphire Mother, a shard of Hell imprisoned in the world that rejected those ancient titan-powers. Jazumi, conversely, has equal odds of sharing such a fate or being ransomed to the wind-courts. And you? You, Fengye?

Polite, curt dismissal, if you are lucky. Battle with priestesses and gods of river and rain, if you are not.

---

Kalaya!

The kiss on your cheek is sad. But it’s as much as Ven can give you. The brush of her lips against your cheek; the inhalation as if she means to remember your scent. “Then go to her,” she says. Not a command. A prompting. A hope.

And then she follows her witch, and leaves you with the dumplings that taste like nothing. She doesn’t look back.

It is as you sit by the last dumpling, wondering whether you should bother to eat it, that a very disheveled priestess approaches the inn. She looks sleepless, her cloak askew, her hem trailing in the mud, her hair frizzing out from under her hood, and when she looks at you the first time her gaze passes right through and past you. Then she takes several more steps and happens to actually notice you, and a small spark of attention lights in her eyes.

“You! You there,” she says, pointing, a little desperate. “You’re a knight, aren’t you? You do, you do quests, and finding people, and making things right?”

Whatever she wants you to do, you could ask for a meeting with the Sapphire Mother herself as a reward. Or, well, maybe not, if she’s looking for someone’s lost dog or had her wagon stuck in a ditch, but she could point you to someone who could! Clearly, this is a sign!

And she would probably appreciate that dumpling.

---

Giriel!

“Hello, Bruinstead.”

Of all the things to interrupt your valiant efforts to get this half-a-raiding-party pointed in the right direction to do the right thing! It would just have to be Peregrine (again) working with someone shady (again)— in this case, the warlock, the one that Kalaya is besotted with. They’re following a Necessity of Emptiness, one that Peregrine’s called into the world, seeking something or someone out.

“Where is the vessel of the General?” The warlock gets straight to the point, chin lifted proudly high, brass hand on the hilt of her sword. “You had her, didn’t you?”

“It was definitely here,” Peregrine says, drumming tunelessly against her thigh. She looks even worse than usual— something’s really got her by the reins. Is it Uusha, do you think? Or, no, a new project. Something even more interesting to her.

---

Lotus!

You cling to those solid, dirty, warm fingers like they’re your only handholds.

She fought for you. For you! You couldn’t do a thing, and you couldn’t save her when she dunked herself in the river, and you can’t escape being led by the servant of the Dominion towards a promised captivity, but she still fought for you, and whenever you start to pull back, self-conscious of how clingy and needy you’re being with the hands you can’t even see, she tugs you back. So gentle. So insistent.

She wants to hold your hands. That’s what keeps you grounded as your heart keeps racing, as your legs start to complain about the walk, as you feel the heat of your cheeks and the blood thumping through them, caught between a rock and a soft place. You’re unable to talk, to embarrass yourself by trying to thank Han through words, to try to convince Piripiri to let you go, to open yourself up to humiliation when she points out that you’re not even sure that you want to be let go.

You’re not even sure you want her to let Han go.

Which makes you a terrible person.

And yet, whenever you let her go, there her hands are (so strong, so careful, so rough, so good for holding) to tug you back. To rub a thumbpad over your nail in a way that makes fire race up your spine and a pathetic mewl burble through your well-covered lips. To invite you to explore her hands, her sweat-clammy palms, her raised scars, her downy backs. Of her hands. Just her hands. You can’t even reach her back. Because you’re tied up. And because it’s one thing to hold her hands but she probably wouldn’t. Even though. Imagine her wrestling shirtless like one of your mother’s courtiers. The shape of her back, how strong, how firm, how very made to be kissed…

You stumble and are suddenly caught with attention from both sides: your captor catching you by the arm, arresting you, making sure you don’t fall, and your… your… your Han squeezing both of your hands tight and desperate with the need for you not to fall.

You try to hide your face in your shoulder, sure that the entire world can tell how conflicted and full of forbidden desires you are, uniquely terrible and unworthy of all the love— all the affection you are being shown from either side. Affection you are likely making up because it’s a pretty story to tell yourself, because Piripiri sees you as a captive pawn of the Dominion and Han is just the kind of woman who protects travelers, even if they keep being absolutely unworthy of her.

But whenever you pull away, there her fingers are, telling you a different story. Stay, Lotus. If I could, I’d swing you up into my arms and carry you to safety and I’d accept a demure shake of your head when I ask you if you want to be untied…

Breathless Dead

“Do you want a drink?”

The princess pauses, suddenly still. The neck of a bottle rests against the mouth of a glass, in honor of the deeds their own have done. She does not tilt. Not until her love nods, mute, stricken. A small, pained nod. And then the wine sloshes gracelessly into the cup (it’s as if she never learned) and Redana gently but insistently pulls Bella down to sit next to her.

You are included, she does not need to say. I’m here. “I’ll fight them all for you,” she does say, louder than she thinks. Water, then, and stirred. Not straight. Not for Bella, not right now.

“You couldn’t beat us when you were alone,” she adds, feeling out the thought as it leaves her lips. “We were working together. You were angry and scary and all you had at your back were owls and mice. But as soon as you and your sisters stopped pulling each other apart, we brought… her… down. Together.”

A squeeze, and then she lifts the cup to her lady’s lips, in exactly the sort of way that every hero here recognizes. Such is the conduct befitting a knight.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Mirror!

Smokeless Jade Fires keeps her head lifted high, and Smokeless Jade Fires refuses to stop complaining, even though both of these choices work against her and betray her. If she lowered her head, you would less clearly see how her eyes dilate and her ears flick, her body-of-dreams betraying her with every caress, every drag of your claws through her fur, and with every swat on her tight little rump when she, predictably, refuses to cooperate.

It is a simple cycle. You give her an instruction. She refuses, haughty, burbling, tails tugging at their chains, wet chin lifted in the air. You smack a cheek beneath a tail, or reach around and methodically twist, informing her that she is in breach of contract, and she submits with a drooling squeal and a series of furious garbled half-words, feet flexing as she tries vainly to stamp them. By the time she finishes with the console (rebelliously, to her own color scheme, with her own textures) you have discovered that combining the two is the most efficient method; nipping an ear, smacking a thigh, or tugging hard on her base elicits immediate, unconscious obedience, her lower thoughts rushing to please while her higher thoughts are howling in indignity and sensation.

You are reminding her that she is bodied. You are gifting her sensations, and consequences, and allowing her to pretend that she is doing your bidding because she has no other choice, even as she lets her holy spittle drip down her front, puddle at her feet, spray out when she screams something very unbecoming of a good girl mid-instruction, while her hands writhe and clench above her head.

Then you sit down in your seat, and you run your hands over the controls, and she shivers.

You take manual control, easing your speed, sending out a pulse, hands drifting in familiar patterns, and next to you (close enough to touch) her arched feet wobble. You thumb a joystick and her hips begin an unconscious and familiar squirming, trying to find something that isn’t there. You kick-pedal thrusters into life and her haughty, high-pitched, whining complaint drops an octave into a purr that echoes around the cockpit. Smokeless Jade Fires is not her idol, but she inhabits it, and your commands are bypassing her higher thoughts now.

She has piloted many times. She has always been in control, demanding the obedience of the world to bend to her. What you are gifting to her, Whispered Promise, is freedom. Freedom from having to worry about Dolly, freedom from the guilt of not being there for her, freedom from expectations. It is just the two of you, after all, and any future where you tell the world of her shame is too well-hidden in the brush for a silly little brat like her to think about. Every flick of the joystick makes her sweat higher-pitched, tongue-pinned whining, makes her hips buck, makes her fiery eyes dim with, well, smoke.

”Dhhlleeeeeee… Dhllllleeeeeeee…”

She is in love, and love is her weakness. She is in love, and would do anything— anything— to get her Dolly back. She is in love, and she can only express it now, when she cannot mistake control for admission. Raw, messy emotion-sensation thrums through the memory weave: want, hopeless adoration, a petlike need to please, an impossible desire for a real body to share with her, the imagined taste of her body. Overwhelmed with pleasure, she reaches out blindly for the girl she loves, only able to communicate so clearly when she cannot speak.

How good are you at piloting like this, Whispie? Can you fly while dealing with second-hand infatuation, with the bliss of a unsatisfied goddess thrumming through you?

---

Dolly!

The brief flashes of distant connection with Jade are very clear about what she should be doing with Valynia. Not that anything else is clear, but it’s impossible to mistake (not that she would have any vested interest in interpretation, n-no, not at all). Jade might as well be in the room, one hand between her shoulder blades, trying to push her body up against Valynia. Which is. Which is certainly. Jade’s always been so jealous, so “only for me,” so “I want everyone and you want me,” and this is confusing and exciting and her stomach does the occasional flip as Valynia does not let her, in any way, shape or form, fling herself onto Valynia and beg for the holy honor of sleeping with her.

(What’s next? Letting Dolly do that with, to, for, with Angela? After she tries and fails to come save her? Hahahahahahahaha. Haha. Ha. Hahaha. Haaaaa.)

At least she can’t focus on that. She keeps being distracted by the feeling of being small and safe and a good girl who gets touched there and there and right there on the back of the neck, uhhuh, uhhuh, the melty spot. She can’t even hear her own purrs, just feel them, because they’re all soaked up by the fact that she’s gagged. The very tip of her tail uselessly twitches and she couldn’t do a defiant headbutt right now if Jade ordered her to.

When this started, she was scared, angry, embarrassed, ready to fight. And now she’s slumping bonelessly into her bonds, face burning up, wishing Valynia would ravish her senseless, or even let her try her very very best to be slinky and seductive and use her hips and her purrful voice like Heaven’s Touch in Seven Years in Reed Marsh to convert Valynia to a new faith of hunting and star-chasing and subservience, but if you obey the holy goddess you get me as a rewarrrrrdddd~

right there right behind her ear right above her gags yes yes yes uhhuh all she can do is vibrate her skull and even that might be the sway of the ropes but you’ve got to know that’s the right spot, just like running your thumb down each vertebrae, just like pinching the back of her neck, just like licking the back of her ear and getting a little more pirate stink on her, and Jade, please, she is TRYING—

Who allowed you to be soft, Valynia? Who let you be more than just a handsy pirate daring to blaspheme? And why are you very obviously so important to Jade’s plans that she would keep insisting you be seduced by her… her… her temple bride and that is the only title sweet Dolly can use for herself right now, because if she uses one of the names for a promiscuous bride she will implode. Messily.

Breathless Dead

The sound that Redana makes is a breathless gust of wind, the fall of a hungry hawk, the mousegirl that finds the cheese. When she rushes forward into their midst, it is only her color that makes her distinct, the healthy glint of her wheat-gold hair— and the solidity of her build, a weight that seems to draw them all towards her. Half a dozen heroines of similar stature sit together in the shadow of the pavilion, and already a faint silver tea has been poured for the Imperial Princess. Come, Bella, if you dare, and sit surrounded by your girlfriend’s people.

“Of course! We’re the ones that are going to pass through,” Redana says, without a hint of irony; the bones of her mouth are a flash of clean white, solid as ice. “Our captain is the cleverest— no offense, Nobody— our champions the boldest, our cause the most righteous. Even if we break our arms in the process,” she says, nodding to Ortji, “we, we are going to know victory.” She sips, and for a moment she’s actually serene, a warrior-queen surrounded by her peers. But she can’t stop her smile. She is life and death cupped in one hand; she has affirmed desire in the shadow of infinity. Her past lies behind her, notable only in how it allows her to recognize the notables assembled all about her, and the future is one shining ribbon-road that cuts through the awful Aphrodisian gash across the beautiful sky.

When she looks back to Bella, it is with implicit invitation. You deserve to be here, too, among the heroes, she almost says out loud, and the pat on the stone bench is impossible for any of them to miss. Come meet your peers, Bella, even if all of them barely come up to your shoulders. Here are champions that shucked their old selves, their old skins, their old names. Here are those who have gone through transformation and survived. Here are the blessed, and Bella—

You belong here, too, as much as Redana does. She will fight you if you dare to suggest otherwise, this girl who meets the impossible head-on, just like Sir Aeon, just like King Anjia. Bring the sharks, too, so Ikari may marvel at their softness and their innocent smiles.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Euna!

The takeout is greasier and more fried than 3V really should be eating. She will regret it later, she is aware, but food is about how it makes you feel right now— the crunch as you bite down, the warmth that floods your mouth, the sauces you can dunk the food in. She does make sure there’s a good spinach dish, though. She’ll slurp that down buttered fast as you can blink. And because she’s nothing if not annoyingly good at remembering weak points, she’s even got those dumplings you like.

And she’s gone quiet. Dangerously quiet, even. Thinking. Rolling that thought around in her head. Who owns the land?

Who owns the apple tree?

It’s one thing, Locke, to get huffy about men deciding to put fences up around apple trees. There’s basically infinite space for apple trees down there on the blue marble. They grow without being asked, and drop their fruits easy. Up here, there’s nowhere else to run to. Up here, what we’ve got is what we’ve got.

On the one hand: the machine. Vast, undefeated, roaring. The feedback loop of being fed, which allows it to keep swallowing up apples. On the other: a dumb little gym for people who have needs that a chain won’t be able to meet.

Should have figured it out from the beginning.

Part of her agrees with Euna. There’s no way they win. When you see the machine coming, with all those teeth and all those hands and all those apples in its gut, what can you do? The only way to make it stop, to leave your little tree alone, to stop it from stamping down the fence and setting fire to your whole life, is to make it think the whole process will be too painful to bother with. And most of her thoughts about how to do that are “illegal” and “not how we do things” and “there’s no way you’ll make it to his office with the baseball bat 3V and the cops will shoot you even if you try to explain it’s just his kneecaps and you have chosen to let him live.”

She bites into the crisp skin and stares a hole through a wall.

“…who decides the leasing?” It’s not directed at Euna. It’s the only way out of the maze. Because machines are made of people, all linked together in a chain.

---

V3 The 3V: If I remember right, isn’t the story accusing both groups of people? Because the ones who title drop from Omelas still aren’t helping the kid.
V3 The 3V: The real answer is that you’re supposed to scoop the kid up and walk out of Omelas while the entire utopia crumbles around your ears, because walking away to cling to the knowledge that you’re a good person because you’re not benefiting from the suffering of the kid still means that you’re letting the kid keep suffering.
V3 The 3V: This gets trickier when you try to make it applicable in daily life, when there’s not just one kid or—
V3 The 3V: fuck, November (my staggeringly awesome and beautiful and so incredibly gay girlfriend) has a point too
V3 The 3V: what does the kid think about the whole situation?

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Whispered Promise!

Smokeless Jade Fires is a thousand hands, a shadow of fractal tails on the wall, and a volcanic cloud rising to meet this giant of a woman, this inexorable One Day Defender. And then, miraculously, they coalesce and out of them roars Jade, the huntress, with a spear in one hand and the cords in the other. All around you, chains lash and writhe, silver-smoke, living serpents, seeking to coil and lock and constrain. But they do not descend upon you in a pile and bury you under their weight. You still have your eyes (like liquid silver, wet as a kiss) and your feet (shifting, careful, thoughtful) and the goddess has not stolen either. She could. You know that she could. You’ve read the reports of the first pilot she ever overcame.

This is your first victory, as Little Sister Fire fills the room with dizzying light, with mirage-butterflies with thirsty chains behind them, as the thump-a-thud of scampering feet fills the hearts of a pilot and a goddess. She has not overcome you in one shot. She plays the game with you. A battle is a question: who is to rule?

She tells you how she has seen you with the kiss of her spear against your cheek. You feel the skin split, shallow; you feel the sting. Danger, incredible danger, a dance of giants in a beautiful bullet curtain, each movement precise. Chains behind butterflies. Instincts screaming to chase them. The bespoke throb of pain. One of you will be trapped in them; one of you will be the dancer. And you know that it will not be you.

Smokeless Jade Fires cannot give you control. You must take it. But she is letting you reach your hand out. Her pride and her need war. (See how she dares to touch you? How she rubs against you in the pass? How she pins you with her spear and pushes you towards a chain, which wraps about your ankle like a kiss?)

And if you win— no, when you win— you will have won the right to her submission, one which cannot be given freely.

[Jade hits a 7 on an Entice, and Whispered Promise may win as she pleases.]

---

Dolly!

Every breath drags in territory and heat and need and claimed and desired, the feelings drenching the cloth pulled over her nose, the air dragged across the lusty musk of a dozen pirates. Her pores sweat submission. Her mouth is a leaking lake stoppered and dammed, her cheeks packed sore, her cheeks throbbing heat. Her eyes are heavy and her body keeps leaning forward without her permission, putting her weight on the ropes holding her in place, because it knows better than her how badly she needs to be touched, licked, scruff-bitten.

Jade, she’s sorry, she tries to think. It’s just that. It’s just. Ten thousand years of a sensitive little nose, of communication by more than chirps and tail-twitches, is a stone weight in her gut. She leans forward, and the padlock on her collar jingles softly, and Valynia doesn’t even notice.

The courier has, though. The one bringing in manifolds and taking out boxes, slipping easily in and out of the room, who is a witness. Who can’t touch her (wanted desired claimed property) but can see her (straining silent tight drooling) and the mark of Valynia on her arm (sting throb kiss untouched) and it’s more electric than being on display for Jade’s entire temple (she’s sorry she’s sorry she’s sorry she’ll do penance when she’s rescued but you can take your time) and she drags the breath in and there’s no give in the ropes and all her squirming does is give the courier a show, and Valynia won’t even turn around (butterflies— butterflies?) and she huffs a garbled whimper out but it melts uselessly in the air like snow on a finger, if it even escapes the pirate-stinking cloth.

This isn’t the best day she’s had in her life. It can’t compare to the joy of being seen, of being wanted by a goddess, of being promised everything she’d ever wanted, of an endless night of muffled screams and prayers…

but it is definitely up there. Her stupid treacherous heart is a trophy, too, and it must be Jade’s blessing that Valynia is busy, that she’s just a trophy, because the only sort of seduction she could manage right now would be clinging and agreeing and daring, begging Valynia to treat her like a pirate. To kiss the mark she’s left. To bite the back of Dolly’s neck. To rub her paws all over Dolly’s claim-swaddled face. And to make that padlock swing and bounce and jingle.

Or even just to stare at her! To look at her! To think she’s a worthy prize! To pay attention! (Jade pays so much attention.) To value her! Valyyyyy! Please, Valy!

But she has to dangle there, and be quiet, and huff the love of the Red Band (mingling with her own, and isn’t this room warm?), and imagine the air conditioning kissing her right on her mark of Valynia’s claim, and will Jade want it removed? Will she even want it? Will Valynia insist on giving it to her again next time?

(Because even as she knows she will be rescued… she’s already hoping there will be a next time. With these brutish, rude, presumptuous, inappropriate, musky pirates, and Valynia, who, admittedly, did deserve to be hit with a purse… but now she wants to do it again hoping that somehow, some way, Valynia will just smile and make the punishment even worse, and, and, what if Angela tries to save her, and…)

Breathless Dead

“I never imagined this.”

Her jacket is spread out on the black stone. There is a story of a queen who won a kingdom by claiming as much as her shawl could cover, and then unraveling it to threads. Her jacket does not need to cover more than the space around the two of them, but it is the same principle of fashion. Clothing, for the children of Tellus, is a wonder which may do anything.

“Stars. I imagined them.” She gestures at the lantern-lights flickering in the sea of color, each one tinted pink by the gash across the sky. Pink is a nice color in moderation, but here it is oppressive, almost painful. “I didn’t know how many colors there would be, though. I thought it would be like velvet studded with diamonds, and instead the sea is drenched in Uncle’s colors. And I never could have imagined this… this wound. Not healing. Not relenting. Not…”

She nestles into Bella, hugging the pale blue-and-white shark closer to her chest. “I knew there was going to be peril. But I didn’t think the gods could have… would have done anything like this. Would have left it here raw. Would need us to go through. And Hades won’t give us any treasure to protect us, and Poseidon won’t split the rift with a torrent, and once we’re in there… it will just be us. Alone. Hoping we remember what we need to do.”

She does not ask Bella to stay. Not again. Not ever again. And she does not imagine staying here, telling her other uncle that he was right, that some injustices are just too big to make right. Impossible. She cannot back down and remain Redana.

But will Redana come out the other side?

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Fengye!

“Help me,” the Maid mewls. The realization of what she has said, of what she has admitted, of how far her pride has dropped, hits her like a bar of iron a moment later. The blossoming of it over her face is a masterpiece. And you were right! Her pride was indeed about to be broken. But not just by Jazumi.

Take a String on her. You have brought her tumbling, tumbling down to earth, and she will never forget the way she feels right here, right now, hating you and craving you, reduced to this blushing, needy little mess.

And then Jazumi gets her arms in a lock and it’s all over. A third N’yari all decked out in fake-feathers on her leathers grabs you from behind, and brandishes pale rope from the mountains that brush against the spine of the sky.

“What a fight~!” Jazumi is grinning as she puts a knee between the Maid’s shoulders and slips a loop around her wrists, ignoring the frantic kicking and the burbling complaints. “Once we find Machi again, we have to introduce you! You could be a trainer!”

Then the mud explodes underneath her.

---

Giriel!

Something’s wrong. And the worst part is that it might not even be somebody’s fault! You don’t have the information on hand to know whether the N’yari did anything to spiritually defile the region, or whether some foe (like the fairy) has pricked the world until it is irritated like a sore, or whether the drainage of essence through this glade has just been backed up for too long.

But some lesser spirit of this place has taken too much essence and imbued itself into the clinging mud. Jazumi and the Maid vanish inside of it as it half-forms various limbs and a maw to roar with. Twice your height, half-falling with each step, it begins to— lurch away?

No, that’s not right, either. What could it want with either of those two? Why would it manifest and then refuse to engage? Unless it already had what it wanted, but…?

---

Kalaya!

“The Sapphire Mother is a goddess,” the witch says, and there’s no respect to her tone. She says it the same way you might say that someone is a professional courtier. “Too busy with the responsibilities of her station to look beyond them properly. Besides, compromised.” She refuses to elaborate on that. Instead, she proceeds to summon a thing that is like a stretched-out weasel with the nose of a mole.

(Her summoning is… well, a little worrying. Lots of murmured commands you don’t quite understand, said in a tone that makes you itch to do whatever she’s ordering. The little you in the back of your head, the lesser soul. Truly, a witch among witches.)

“All we have to do is follow. Come along, swans.” The weasel is already streaking off towards the woods: deep, dark, dense and dangerous. You just got out, after all. But Ven’s slipped her hand into yours and it’s easy to just follow, isn’t it?

If you do, if you let her lead you into more peril, mark an XP.

---

Piripiri!

Now you have her. You’ve stoked her essence to the boiling point, and now you just need to let her burn herself out. She’s not used to fighting someone who can redirect her blows rather than rushing head-on or trying to dodge, she’s not used to someone who knows how to fight a duel, and most of all?

Only the demigoddess, and only just now, squeaking a breathless warning too late, is aware of how you have brought Han to the very edge of the hungry river, which is a slow, deep well of water essence. Fire burns so, so hot— but water douses it.

(And isn’t that perfect, knowing the demigoddess’s nature? Truly beautiful.)

Extinguish her before she burns herself up. Then maybe she’ll be able to listen.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Mirror!

“Smaller? Ha!”

The inside of the cockpit is a vast temple. (She is making the mistake of editing as she goes. Shadows shift, warp, dimensions sliding into place. Space is a toy to her, a concept as soon imagined as made real. But she cannot make up her mind. She wants to impress you, needs to impress you, does not know how much of herself to reveal, how much of the face she shows Dolly to show you.) On the far side is the idol within the idol, Smokeless Jade Fires in warrior attire, garlanded and bearing her lance, legs crossed, the back of the fingers of her free hand resting against the cyclopean flagstones. Within the false self is the shape of the true self. Within the shape of the true self is a self that burns.

She limns herself in her namesake, light flickering shallow in her helmet’s eyes.

Before her is a ring, set in the floor. Clearly where Seven Quetzal operates the mecha. The pattern of the ring is fire, coalescing into hands frozen mid-grasp, whorls suggestive of eyes. (She cannot decide how to decorate the walls. Don’t pay attention to the flickering at the peripheral, the twist and shunt of space.)

“Am I small enough now, Whispered Promise?” Shadows drift from the floor, cast by flickering torches, and her eyes flicker in their depths, and then she is here, again, at the edge of the ring, making an inviting gesture with her good arm (as the other remains wrapped in her cloak, refusing to acknowledge her limitation). She thinks she has you. She thinks this is where she is strong and unassailable. She will have her revenge on you for being confusing and proud; she will meet your danger with the thrill of helplessness. Her shadow is the impression of a dozen arms. There are no controls here, no buttons, just her.

Which means that if you are to control her, rather than being a conduit through which she may pilot herself, you will have to convince her otherwise. Through a dance. Through command. Through the subtle shiver of her shadows and the way her fingers flex, compromised. (She is compromised by want. You remain clear. Here. Hit her here. Do not let your chin droop. You have the knowledge she craves, which can only be taught through the secret names of the body.)

---

Dolly!

—is already halfway up out of the chair, banging her shin, being laughed at, squeaking, tail fluffing up, hands on her shoulders sitting her back down and sure she’s got the cushion for it and doesn’t hit her tail on the way down but she still exhales and that’s when the hand wraps over her mouth, traps the heat against that palm, traps the head tilting back over the back of the seat, tilts the seat back until it’s balanced on two legs and her tail’s wrapping around one in a vain physical reaction to being unbalanced, except she can’t fall, because Valynia is grinning down at her, resting the whole chair and all of Dolly’s weight on one thigh.

Her breath is coming like a scared little hare hopping in and out of its— no, hares don’t live in burrows, they live in grass nests, and if you have a group of them it’s called a husk, and are distinct from rabbits in that a hare is born ready to run while rabbits are born blind, and this all means something in the context of the pattern in her fur, but the facts just fumble through her fingers as she stares up at Valynia, who slowly tuts her tongue, and the breath washes against the side of Valynia’s hand, and Dolly’s free hand is stupidly gripping the seat of the chair instead of doing anything useful.

And all she gets from Jade, so far away, is the sensation of craving… approval? Impress her? Is she doing it wrong, Jade? Of course she’s doing it wrong. You’re not here to show her how to do it. How to be brave enough to use her body. How to be seductive and beautiful and desirable. (Which. Valynia. She definitely doesn’t. Right? She desires Dolly but as a stepping stone to Jade and also as a trophy and hey remember what she said about hanging you up dangling in the cockpit? Remember that?)

“And here I thought I could trust you,” Valynia says, her tail slowly swishing behind her, her voice dripping in faux betrayal. “Were you just trying to take advantage of our hospitality?”

“We can be much less hospitable,” someone says, from the other side of the table.

“Just like with Erys,” one of the Terenians adds. “She doesn’t know how to submit like a good girl yet.”

“Well,” Valynia says, sweetly venomed, drizzling her purr over Dolly, “we can’t have a security risk running around, can we?” She lifts her palm, only to slip her thumb between Dolly’s lips, pressing down her spice-addled tongue. And Dolly’s mouth is still too numb for her to be able to do anything halfway seductive with that! “No. We. Can’t~”

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

The smile on 3V’s face is almost infectious. Almost. The tablet lies forgotten on her lap. It’s giddy. She’s giddy. This is the side of her that does the research. Because opening with that? That means there is something here. A shadow on the water. Something that demands to be understood, dug into, chewed on. And maybe it’ll hurt her later, sure. But right now? Here and now? She grins, and leans forward, blind to food, blind to November, blind to anything but what’s been dangled in front of her.

“Okay,” she says. “I believe you,” she says, and means it. She really does. Her fingers drum on the side of the tablet, impulse without thought. “But you don’t open with that unless there’s one hell of an explanation following.”