Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

Agony tears itself out of Redana's throat. She grabs her sword arm with her other, digs her claws in until blood trickles down the bones of her wrist, and she

obeys.

Her eyes are wide in her face. Her fangs are bared, the noise of her suffering flowing between them like spittle.

Isn't this the wrong way around? Isn't she the one who should be humiliated for being the princess, the alpha, the daughter of Ceron in the presence of the Shogun herself? Isn't she the one who should throw off her ceremonial coat and yield herself to the fire? Why does Bella have to suffer? Why does Bella have to suffer? Why does Bella always have to be the one who suffers, always and every time, while Redana stands untouched and unpunished and unable to protect her?

This was supposed to be different!

Blood delicately dots her heavy-duty, void-proofed spacer's boots. The laces are thirsty.

The noise is pressed out of her lungs. Dionysus throbs at her temples. She meets the Shogun's eyes, and she

obeys.

No interference.

No drawing of her sword, leveling its tip at the Shogun's breast.

No grab at Bella's arm, pulling her back up off the floor.

She trembles like a tree about to split apart, like a wave about to break, and she

obeys.

But she can't find words.

No more words.

Return to Thellamie

Erika Fullbright!

I'm terribly sorry for what happens, and then what happens, and for what happens after that.

What happens first is that the agonistes flings Timtam over a railing. The mendacious maid grabs onto a chandelier made of Kelish crystal and starts it spinning, which adds to the velocity of the fireworks that are tumbling out of her pockets, already lit. Perhaps a detective such as yourself would realize, immediately, that she must have tried to light one to get out of the situation, all smoke and bang and already heading for a window, but that the fuse caught more, and they're tumbling down amongst a bunch of Paladins.

What happens second is that the cafe fills with smoke in Crevassi colors, impossibly rich and vivid, and loud, sharp cracks and bangs and howls. These are the primo fireworks, as they say, and they are turning this place into the sort of chaos that simply destroys detective work.

What happens third is that Mayzie, instinctively, pulls you towards her, pulls you down the stairs, pulls you away from sensory overload until she hits the banister (yes, I'm afraid we're back to banister-based perils, my dear) and starts to tip over based on momentum alone, and she's too surprised to even let out a squeak as her feet leave the ground.

Can you defy disaster here and save the girl, or will you break once more?

---

Handmaidens!

"Best damn eggs ever," the Knight of the Aurora (one Ruthmoreness O'Tara) reads off the burnished bronze tablet that she has been handed. "Tasted of Determination and also Walnuts." She makes the classic Face of Impressedment, all pursed lips and raised eyebrows.

It's raining. Which is to say, of course it's raining. It's always raining here, on the edge between existence and nothing at all, and the wind is warm and damp, and the light is currently green with a tinge of purple. The light's all around, suffusing the air, and the wind's all around, suffusing the light, and the rain comes down like kisses from a cloud-tossed sky.

You're in the first Courtyard, which is on the other side of the first door, despite the lack of any indication that the room beyond would be a large and well-swept courtyard open to the sky, given how clearly the exterior of the Mansion was just a vast but ordinary and definitely roofed house. There are more maid-knights here, skateboards on their backs, hands on their very ordinary weaponry. Dangerous women. Not to be trifled with.

"Well, I'm convinced!" Ruthmoreness says brightly. The two maid-knights behind her give each other a Look which indicates that they may put it to a vote, and Ruthmoreness would likely not get her way if it comes to a vote. Which is very much not the sort of reception that Morning promised you when you put your entire arm in her mouth in order to Provide Eggs.

---

Yuki!

There it is.

The flash of uncertainty, so small that only someone looking very carefully indeed would ever spot it. A flicker of the eyes, a hesitation of the lips. But then she looks down too far, into the gorget as polished as a mirror, and she smiles in self-satisfaction (such familiar self-satisfaction) and plumps her hair with one hand (and you've seen gestures like that before). The doubt slips back under the smugness like a damsel tossed off a ship with weights around her ankles.

One of her guards gets his halberd over your head and pulls it back, pinning you against him with the bright, sparking light of his heartblade threatening to sink into you. To bludgeon your very dreaming heart into submission. Only a grasp on one of his wrists is keeping you from disaster.

"Give up already, you ridiculous creature! Every moment you waste with futile defiance of me, Purnima Karn-Pasha, is a moment that some Serigalamu hussy gets to rub herself all over my Golden Fawn! I had him first, you know! Before the stars anointed him! And now everyone is trying to steal my dear deer boy!"

---

Hazel!

It is very, very easy for Olesya to hold two squirming, lovely girls in her arms. Barely an inconvenience. (Imagine how difficult it would be to escape her grasp, if she decided to hold you fast.) One might even suspect her of deliberately flexing in front of you as Seli rails at, one must guess, all huntresses and all deerboys who refuse to demand the release of two innocent performers, and while Keli pulls out the frantic, helpless fluttering of the lashes. Goodness, they are really quite muffled, aren't they? And very securely constrained. (Imagine if you gave Olesya a reason to catch you.)

"Now, you could keep their gaudy diaphanous street wear," Juniper says, next to you, and then lets out a giddy little titter that suggests she's another flex of those muscles away from chewing on a handkerchief's corner and wagging her tail so furiously as to achieve liftoff. "Or you can pick out something new for them. We've got some tunics and aprons, like mine, perhaps? Or just the aprons? Oh, but there's also some metal bikinis that would be perfect for a moment like this. You could even... perhaps..." she says, lost in the sauce, "unveil them~"

The twins look at her in horror, then back to you. Seli would like you to know that she will get you and make you regret every single choice you've ever made about sluzhanka fashion, and Keli is clearly, from the way her ears flick, thinking about being undressed in front of you, and worse, unveiled, and I promise you, her revenge will be even worse.

But you have the power. It has been thrust upon you. And Olesya is very big and very strong and watching you to see what you choose.

Breathless Dead

Bella, she taps into her palm in a warcode. Over and over and over again. She owes her loyalty to Bella. To Mosaic of Beri. To her wife. I love Bella. Bella. Bella.

Bend, howl her knees. Around her, the Silver Divers surrender. How can they not? The gravity of the Shogun is everything. There are only two possible responses: to submit or to challenge.

And yet, impossibly, Redana chooses a third. With her helmet in the crook of one arm, the fingers of her other hand tapping as if the mantra is the only thing keeping her alive, she stands in the presence of the Shogun. She is small, true. And she is stiff, aware of every shadow, aware that she is attracting the attention of the superior of all superiors.

Her coat is heavy; she cannot move. Her sword is useless by her side. This is not something as glorious as picking up Beri and flinging it, true. It is much easier to stand still, after all. And yet it is, to her still-determined heart, as if the universe is weighing down on her shoulders. Submit. Yield. Submit. Surrender. Beg for her praise. Beg for her love. Beg for her attention. Submit. Assimilate.

When Bella touches the Shogun, the noise that comes out of her throat is small and pathetic and needy. The noise of a little girl, lost and irrationally betrayed. That her Bella is not standing side by side, is not giving her the strength to do anything beyond standing against the impossible pressure of obeying the Shogun herself, is...

Is human. Not a perfect demigoddess who is going to save the day and show Redana the way forward.

Bella. Bella. I love Bella. Bella. Bella.

Return to Thellamie

Erika Fullbright!

"What under the stars is going on up there?" the waitress complains, halfway up the stairs at the same time that you are halfway down. She is huffy, she is bristly-tailed, she is wearing just the most darling waitress uniform, and she happens to actually properly look at you at the same time that you properly look at her.

Mayzie Sighs, balancing a tray on one hand, can be seen seeing past the disguise in real time (as Yuki would say). She's got a pen tucked behind one ear! She's got a miniskirt and stockings with a darling checkerboard design! And she's about to either blurt out that Eclair Espoir is here to a cafe full of warrior-nuns and paladins, or she'll push past you and end up blundering into the duel that's happening up there, and frankly, both of those Aestivali strike me as the sort who would use her as an Avel shield.

You have to do something to save her! And you! From imminent disaster! And not get distracted by the shade of lipstick she's got on! It's a very fetching violet!!

---

Handmaidens!

Morning rolls over, letting out an agonized hiss as she accidentally drives the cursed blade deeper into herself. But she plops her head right in front of Injimo, and that's more important to her than anything. Her hot breath tastes faintly of cinnamon and honey. [you need to feed me that. or i'm never ever ever going to remember it when this dream ends! please, mighty paladin, not!heron!]

The way she opens her mouth is vulnerability. Her tongue is the pink of peonies. She must devour this, representationally, to make it so much a part of herself that it won't drift away when she fades away completely and returns to being herself, sleeping in the Mansion of the Aurora. Why do you think maids are so good at cooking? (And, yes, she'll remember parts of what happened, but she wants to be sure. She needs to be sure.)

[feed me.]

---

Yuki!

"Ohohohohohohoho!!!"

Purnima Karn-Pana is sunning herself on multiple cafe tables that have been pushed together, drinking a cocktail (at this hour of the morning, even) out of a cup which has a little umbrella in it. Her smile is malevolent and self-assured and punchable. Oh, how punchable it is.

"I'll answer that, boys," she says, flicking her tail as you desperately duck under being slammed in the face with the haft of a heartblade (which would do simply awful things to your ability to think coherently for a while). "They're my retainers, they're attacking me because I told them to, and they don't have mirrors, you silly thing, you credulous outlander, though... perhaps it wouldn't be too bad for me to be able to look at myself more often..."

She slurps through a straw contemplatively, and then pushes her starglasses up. "Now be a good girl and get kidnapped, will you? We've got a lot of interrogating you about the weaknesses and tameability of the Golden Fawn to get through, and the longer you dawdle trying to fight, like you aren't hopelessly outnumbered, the more time those scruffy huntresses will have trying to teach him how to bark and do tricks, and you don't want that, do you?"

So here's a question, Yuki. How could Purnima get you to come along quietly and give her advice? I mean, almost certainly not money, but surely there's some sort of price in your heart that she might be able to make a stab at...

---

Hazel!

Keli shoots up like a jack-in-the-box and wobbles in front of you for a moment, just long enough for you to see the secure knots of the Serigalamu worked tightly all about her, trapping her silks even closer to her generous frame, and then Seli bucks from underneath and Keli comes crashing down right on top of you. (Not because she's top-heavy, mind you. Perish the thought.)

"These two were looking to kidnap you themselves," Juniper says with an air of smug satisfaction (somewhere on the other side of perfume and softness). "If we hadn't stopped them, you'd probably be on auction to the highest bidder somewhere in Emerald right now. Don't you appreciate the irony?"

Do you think that's true, o dearest darlingest Hazel? That these two could possibly mean you any harm at all? Certainly not. If they were nefarious at all, then how come Keli is humming apologies to you and fluttering her eyes while wiggling her way into a more comfortable position, in ways that likely remind you of the first time you met? Checkmate, Juniper.

Breathless Dead

Redana should say that killing never solves the problem. She really should! She might hold the lives of all who live in her hands[1], but all she can see is the Master of Assassins before her. She remembers, and no Lethe protects her from, Bella trapped in that awful armor.

They hadn’t killed her. But could she have? Would she have? If she had the thunderbolt, if she was Mars, if she was the Shogun…

It fills her vision, and she nearly leads the Plousios astray; some part of its perfect exterior will be ground off and, then, immediately replaced by upset birds. The lightning whines under the strain of being held taut, of being restrained for the sake of a moment’s mercy.

“I… I…”

She is a child, forcing herself to read and reread texts of strategy and political theory, paragraph by repeated paragraph, sentence by repeated sentence, phrase by repeated phrase. She is a novice in the pack, forced to perform and punished repeatedly for her failures.

“Not yet,” Ember says, and her fingers shake for a moment. She is not just herself. She is the Silver Divers, too. She is all of them, joined in the love of Gemini. Her voice has the wryness of Taurus, the way she holds her hand is all Bella. “We’re still wrestling with our instructors, and I think some of us still show potential.”

---

[1]: which is a situation that does not come around very often at all, so one so rarely gets the chance to practice what the right answer should be.

Return to Thellamie

Yuki!

It's on your way to go see Sulochana, post-Aadya, that the ambush happens. Aadya's off following up a lead and doing her part with the reconstruction of the Chrysanthemum, and here you are in a part of town that's mostly deserted, off the major arteries of repair for the time being. That's when the Nagi strike.

The first one slithers from the shadows on your left with a long forked spear, and while you're reacting to that, a second is already coming around behind you with a sort of curved halberd for a heartblade. They're wearing armor in the segmented Crevas style, and they are coming at you hard.

The glint of faint northern sun off the decorative gorget of the first one- for a moment, it's like light bouncing off a mirror. You've had this fight before, and you won that time through luck and pluck and friends beside you. Not now. Not here. Now it's just whatever you've managed to hone yourself into back on Yukisearth.

---

Erika Fullbright!

It's the agonistes that flips the table, which means it's towards you, cards tumbling like rain. It's the huntress who reflexively interposes herself and catches the table, arms straining as she stops it from smooshing you into your seat. The telltale sharp ring of heartblade on heartblade, well, rings out on the other side; someone slams into it and makes the huntress strain, too busy with physical exertion to decide whether she should just drop it on your legs.

"Never trust a maid, yah?" This is a cramped space, which means that the sound of the fight on the other side of the table - and I mean quite literally the other side - is as much bodies as heartblades, hammering each other as they lock up for position. "No one plays Osorio Scarlett for the fool!"

"Whatever happened to professional courtesy?" Timtam's snappy when she's angry, no matter her disguise. "At least give me an opportunity to explain--"

The sound of a headbutt going through beads is unmistakable, as is the sound of a knee slamming Osorio Scarlett right in the fork. You're running out of time to figure out what to do in this cramped little space, crammed up against a probable enemy who hasn't figured out what to do yet, and a roiling foxgirl spat is raging on the other side.

Also, this establishment does have cookies. It's important to me that you know that. Rest assured that you might still be able to snag one, depending on how all this shakes out...

---

Hazel!

Juniper giggles and can't help herself. She very much can't. She ruffles your hair without mercy or reprieve. The great rufflening is upon you, boy.

"Oh, you are just precious! No wonder the stars decided to bring you along. Don't you think so, Olesya? So earnest," she says, playfully deepening her voice in a way that suggests she's attempting boyness, "so kind! Maybe we should have tried to just keep you as a sluzhanka and fought off anyone who tried to steal you~!" The effect of the whole is like getting simultaneously talked up and talked down by a big sister.

"Protect them," Olesya interrupts. "Tease them. The old laws." Her tone suggests that this is, in fact, extremely serious. You must protect them. You must tease them. You must, in short, be strong and also confident. These are very definitely two things that you can be, don't you think? Two expectations that will settle on your shoulders with ease and not crush you immediately.

"As for comfort, well, they have pillows," Juniper says in a way that very much suggests which pillows she is talking about, and how they are not providing support for heads. She jingles a ring of keys that was on her belt, swirls them along with a show-offy flourish, and hands one key in particular to you. "Go ahead," she says, with the enthusiasm that is the mark of any good Aestivali and definitely is not, whatever anyone says, 'wicked glee.' "It's a rite of passage every huntress goes through, if she doesn't go to the trouble of hunting down her own..."

---

Handmaidens!

Morning thrashes and collapses like a dying serpent, tail bringing down entire pillars, perfect sword plunged into the soft spot between two scales. The floor cracks. The roof sags. The smell of ginger is overwhelming and everywhere at once. Finally, she comes to a stop, rolled over on her back, sword tilted to one side: the side closer to Injimo.

[that was amazing and i am going to figure out how to counterplay that] Morning says, lifting her head. Her tail is already shivering out of existence, but these dreams of a sleeping dragon go slowly when they go. [so the skating, i get that bit, but the triple jump into a corkscrew thrust?? who taught you that, not!heron??]

Her grin is red and joyous. Her delight is literally infectious here and now, as she unravels, as somewhere Morning twitches in her sleep and lets loose a happy exhale through her nostrils. Joy floods the room, the joy of finding someone who beat you and now you have to figure out how to beat them.

More to the point, a token from her, given freely, would open the doors to the Mansion immediately. Get Injimo an apron and a skateboard straight away. She might have to explain herself, but it's one hell of an opening move, socially.

Breathless Dead

The Princess Redana Claudius of Tellus rides through the void. Ember of the Silver Divers listens to the words of Zeus Progenitrix, the only sound in a silent world. The wind that beats her with exhilarating blows, that threatens to tear her helmet away, is utterly silent. The intoxicating ripple of the forests, as if all were part of some larger organism stirring into life, plays before her without so much as a whisper. Behind her, on a cable not too dissimilar from a Plover's, stretches the storm-tossed Plousios. And beneath her ripples the polychromatic rubbery hide of her horse. Its wings catch the wind and send the two flying, and in her wake she drops beacons, points to tack to, lanterns in offering to Poseidon.

Do not let us be the ones drowned tonight, Uncle, she murmurs. But still her glorious Deus Pater speaks, and it's impossible not to pay attention to what your parent is saying, particularly if they might ask you a pointed question at the end of it, and it will look so bad if you were goofing off and trying to get that old blowhard lightshow to give you treats instead. So as she soars, and as she charts the route that will take the Plousios safely through, she continues to speak words that truly only Zeus can hear.

If one new ending is possible, she mouths into the roiling storm, why not another? Or another? Do we have to be satisfied that there's only two choices, this or that? Do I have to be satisfied?

She grips tight with her thighs, for all that she's buckled down into the saddle. Every bit helps, and the physical sensation grounds her, reminds her that she doesn't have to get lost in the labyrinth of possibilities. If she asks that question and is not careful, then she will forget why she is going to Gaia at all, why she is braving this storm, why she needs to bring her friends to the very end of all ends. She will be dizzy with thoughts of who she was and who she had become; of Bella and the shedding of aprons and lace; of how far she had brought Dolce and Vasilly; and, oh, Alexa.

She hopes that you are happy, Alexa.

She hopes that when she opens up the sky again, you will still be happy.

Maybe only they've got it so far, but what matters is that a difference is possible, and that means... anything can be. That was true back when I was there, back home, and it's true out here, and aren't you giddy with it?

The voidhorse tucks in its wings and dives. Smaller debris, and she doesn't want to think too terribly about the source. Small enough that it will simply yield before the Plousios's transformed might, but big enough to crush her if she were incautious; small debris the size of big debris, then.

I don't know that you have to apologize to me. Dyssia might have words with you, I think. But you know what I want and what it's always been: to not know what the future holds either. Does that make me too much like you?

Perhaps this goes unanswered. Redana's got a lot to concentrate just now, anyway, leaving a trail through peril and into different, new peril. And she wouldn't go back to Tellus for anything.

Return to Thellamie

Handmaidens!

[oh heron did that!!]

It works, in a sense. In a larger sense, it does not work: it does not cause this dream to shatter and melt away, to be met again in some other place, at some other time. But the violence with which she snaps back, careening head over tail, swatting at Injimo with that tail as if flailing and falling helplessly, all this stems from the way that the arrow shatters on her head. And she is laughing, convulsions running along her body, as she lands on all fours on the ground- squats- lets her tail finish coming down like coils of rope- and then leaps at Injimo again.

[but you're heron and not!heron, which means heron must have finally, finally, figured it out! i didn't tell her! i would have remembered that! don't tell me, heron, i'll figure it out on my own!]

She wiggles from paw to paw like a cat, snaps her jaws in feints, grins wider and wider, her pearlescent eyes widening without any pupil to give them focus. Her tail wraps around ginger-stalks and brings them toppling down towards both of you; the air is thick and stinging with ginger-spores. She is giddy with motion.

[and you get it don't you? there's no thinking in fighting! in motion! in questing!][ She bounds up and makes of herself a circle, a ring, and then slams her tail down at where Injimo, a moment ago, was. [you've just got to go go go sweep sweep sweep run run run fight fight fight!]

She is full of joy; there is no defeating her by force of arms, save that you tire her out. Show superior stamina in how you move your body. Meet each exhortation towards action with an equal and opposite obedience. This is the way of the warrior-maid; will you prove their equal? (As for the opening, well, it is possible for a friend to slip past her, or to trade places with you- but who could hope to outlast her?)

---

Erika!

"Perhaps I like crassness from time to time," Timtam says, her inflection a perfect imitation of Noon's flirtations. "There's something delectable in seeing an innocent young thing desperately squirm as she tries to catch up with someone older and more experienced." She drags a nail across the table slowly, invitingly...

And then you, little Erika, are interrupted from further solicitations from this wicked cardsharp by the arrival of two more players. One is a big, scruffy Serigalamu huntress, her bandoliers decorated with goblin-fangs, her presence even larger than she is. This is the one who sits right next to you and uses that presence to hem you in, keep you from the door, bring you ever closer to Timtam. Stretches as a pretext to put one arm around your shoulders with the sort of swaggering grin that one expects from high-performing huntresses who wrestle with dreaming dragons.

The other is thin, like a knife for opening envelopes. Her mask glitters with crushed jewels from Aestival's coast, and her coat is swirled in the colors of Crevas. A red cloak, a golden sash, a charm dangling at her wrist: an agonistes, a wicked swashbuckling hired sword. Her makeup is muted, uncharacteristically so, but that is an illusion approached with great care.

If you do not have some sort of plan, this will be a three-against-one sort of game, and those are foregone conclusions. You do have some sort of clever plan to overcome collaboration, don't you, Erika? You're not doomed to spill all of the beans, are you, Erika? Some sort of alternative bet, more creative way of cheating, or a wicked faculty at cards hitherto unseen would all be useful in this moment.

---

Yuki!

Maybe this is one of the reasons that you were so drawn to the Paladins of Kel: they are very, very good at hugs. Or at least Aadya is. She is the rock atop a mountain, after all, and when she holds you, she feels like the entire mountain, with roots that must reach beneath the whole city. But she is not cold. Not even the post-workout cooldown can make her feel cold; if she is a mountain, she is rich with veins of hot, molten ore, the kind that cause mine disasters up in the peaks of Kel.

She doesn't use words to cup your head. She can't make an apology matter using her words, so she envelops you in a body like an avalanche, like being buried in snow, and in the snow there is quiet and peace and room to sniffle without the whole cafe seeing (though the waitress has graciously decided to avoid your table to give you this moment). And she rumbles: a low, comforting, deep rumble. It's common superstition in Kel that this rumble has healing properties, and though it might all just be the placebo effect of it all, that doesn't stop the warm shivers, the tension melting, the sense of one-day-you-will-be-whole.

This is her apology for hurting you, for pushing too hard, for not knowing what to do. Do you accept it? Give her a String, if so.

---

Hazel!

"Oh, but you're about to!" The padlock on the chest jumps and rattles as Juniper weaves eggs and sausage onto a fork. "That's part of your unique social standing here. Now, you're obviously not going to go and earn rank by wrestling with some savage goblin or fighting the mirrorfolk!" It's a blithe assertion, but one that might sting. Obviously not. Just look at you, Hazel. You do not have a wrestling bone in your body. "But if Negodincia had her way, you'd be just another prize, a hot boy to show off and lead around on a leash."

She holds up the fork, offering it as a bite.

"And after all the chores you doubtless were made to do at the Chrysanthemum, without proper compensation," as if being Encouraged was not compensation-- and do you blurt something out about that? "I think Yuki wouldn't want you being made to do all of her chores, the spoiled rotten thing."

"Careful," Olesya rumbles. "...I'm the one who's supposed to say that."

"Oh~ do forgive me~"

"She is, though. Spoiled." A huff, a lowering of the ears, a squaring of the shoulders. Responsibility with that capital R.

"As you say, my lady," Juniper trills, tail flopping about on the floor happily. "We are doing a great big game of pretend, Hazel. And the game involves you being the equal of women who wrestle goblin-elephants to exhaustion, while not having any of the accomplishments that they have. So having your own sluzhankas, infamous women gifted to you by a baygum, shields you with her accomplishment of catching them." Another forkful offered. "As will making your own shield here. It won't hold up well to a heartblade, but what does? But it will turn aside a goblin's horn or tusk, and that's what matters."

She beams. "Okay, your turn. Go ahead and ask. I know you're dying to know more~"

Breathless Dead

As the Alpha of a Ceronian pack, Ember should, by all rights, have an answer to this, all this - to why the Azura think themselves the center of the universe, how their schemes function, on what timeline the sidereal architects work on. As a Princess, Redana should, by all rights, have some political argument against this, some devastating line which punctures their hubris and makes the folly of attempting to immortalize themselves at the cost of an entire universe clear.

But she doesn't. She was never a very good princess, and the Silver Divers are not a politically relevant pack, just another minor scout-pack devoted to Poseidon and his wealth. She doesn't have an answer to Aphrodite's villain speech, and she doesn't have an answer to the constellations. She considered drawing them, just to make sure that they wouldn't be lost if something happened to the Azura and inexplicably didn't happen to her sketchbook, but she gave up when she realized that there's probably artbooks available, each one packed with concept art and contextual articles. That's an art too, after all, and the Azura are all about their art, this art, their use of the entire universe as raw material for their projects. How could they not have artbooks?

So what she does, instead, is the sort of thing that she's been doing since she left Tellus.

She puts her arms around Dyssia's arms and squeezes, and puts her head on the Azura's sholder, and is just there. Good luck trying to pry her off! A lifetime and a galaxy ago, she was practicing on plushies, never realizing that she was preparing for moments just like this. She's steady on her feet, just warm enough to be reassuring, and good at squeezing in a way that reinforces the physicality of the body.

Cry if you like, Dyssia. She will remain steady and present. Take deep breaths and she'll take them with you. Pat her head; it's clinically proven to reduce stress.

You are hurting, and all she can do is this. So it is vital for her to do this.

Return to Thellamie

Yuki!

It feels like it takes entire days for Aadya to answer. She stares down into her teacup, slowly swishing the dregs at the bottom as if trying to divine the future, to see which route the stars have declared for Thellamie. I'm afraid it doesn't work like that, darling, not unless that terrible old bird brings down more dictates from those self-obsessed stick-in-the-muds. And yet she tries anyhow, or at the very least that's the vibe, as you kids say. Some people might say that there's not much going on in her head. (I'm looking at you, Miss Fullbright.) But her thoughts are grinding along like stone on stone, slotting into place.

"I wish they hadn't chosen him," she concludes. "Why couldn't it have been you?" Her hand reaches across the table: a bid for companionship, for solidarity, for acknowledgement. "Why not you? You trapped Azaza, you know our world, you could have chosen someone to be tamed by and we'd be done with the whole thing, and we could worry about the maids making some new bid to impress their sleeping dragons afterwards. And the Khagan! The Queen of Light would..."

Her voice dies. She can't make herself assert that a Queen of Light would see the Khagan as a problem to be solved. Not when there's other things to turn her hypothetical hand to, not when the Paladins might be able to handle things on their own, not when there are problems that Aadya hasn't taken it onto her own shoulders to try and fix.

Her finger brushes against the side of your hand.

---

Handmaidens, Howeverso Many You Be!

It's as you're walking through the humid Castle of Ginger, its psuedo-walls made of towering stalks, its rushes made of leaves, descending deeper into the sweet spice, that Morning makes herself known. One moment she isn't there, and then like an optical illusion it becomes clear that you were looking at her all along: that her scales look like ginger leaves on colorful tiles, that her beard looks like ginger-moss, that her clouded eyes are the color of sunlight filtered through the vine-windows, and that she is the entire world before you, her coils wrapped around stalk-pillars, her leaf-shaped tail closing off the way back.

[fight me] she says, as she demands of all heroes. Nothing more, nothing less. Her head sways, trying to see every part of you all at once. But Tsane would tell you all, she would, that Morning is a terrible foe to meet here in the Outside, because she wants to devour you- not in the way that you would devour a sandwich, but in the way that you (or her, at least) would devour a book.

It would be very, very perilous to remind her that Sayanastia is before her. Then she might remember not knowing anything at all, and she would drown you in the weight of how the nothingness beneath the world would fight the creation that accreted around the Nails.

I do not think Injimo has ever fought her before. Am I correct?

---

Hazel!

"You're here!" Juniper does a little dance-in-place, tail swishing furiously. "Oh, we have so much to show you! Right now we've made our way to the Fragmenthold, and once the storm clears, we'll have some time to show you around this place before the Khagan shows up! This is a place of making things, of piecing them together: the whole castle's broken and ruined but if you spend time gathering fragments and seeing how they fit, you can make all sorts of things, and there are these crabs which steam really well and then you put their shells together and usually they make a shield, wouldn't that be great for you? Because I don't really see you as being an attacker, an aggressive one, maybe if we made a crabshell--"

Olesya snaps her fingers and Juniper stiffens, blushes, glances over to her and then back to you. Pulls the breakfast bowl close to her chest and sways a little in place, fidgeting, happy.

"Make sure he's fed before serving him your sweets," Olesya says. Juniper scoots over to sit next to you, kneels right next to you, smiles with a twitch of her ear.

"Shall I feed you? Or would you prefer your own sluzhankas to do so?" She scoops a bit of egg on her fork (shining, a little chitinous, its handle curved organically). "We are happy to serve, noble guest." And she means it. She's ready to feed you the whole thing if it will make Olesya happy, and it will make her happy to do it. Welcome to the Khaganate.

---

Erika!

The shudder in Timtam is betrayed by her veil of beads, by the slight scrape of her fingernail on the cards, by the light that falls slant through the window, in the slight interruption in her breath. You have won a hit, Miss Fullbright: you have flirted with her when she is not herself, and someone else has done so not as herself, if you understand me. There are things truer to Timtam than this, but she can no more ignore what you have done than you could help yourself from enjoying a lovely gingersnap sheep with tufts of wool-frosting.

"You flatter me," she asserts. "Can you even see these lips to name them soft and precious?" She toys with one of the beaded strings, allows for the briefest glimpse. "Or are you, perhaps, seducing me for information to give your employer, Erika Fullbright? Or is this simply the sort of thing you say when you have nothing else to say? Do you like to say such things in order to make the people around you happier? If it does make someone happy, does it matter?"

The crack, the snap, of cards being sharply shuffled. "Do not answer," she demands, her demeanor changing again. "I have not earned any questions from you yet. It is a game of taking tricks. We play this in Aestival from the time that we are old enough to count. The distinction of this game is that we play our cards face down, Miss Fullbright. We tell each other what we have played. If a player likes, they may challenge the table entire, and anyone who has been caught lying is punished. And if no one was lying at all, well. Well~"

The way she rolls that well around in her mouth (oh, how it would roll around in yours, passed from one mouth to the other) brings to mind trick-taking games as played in the Mansion. Seven Prophecies. Nine Lives. Cravasmaid. Extreme Wizard. Plucky Princess. Bids run high and hot, don't they? And the punishments, well.

Isn't the best part of losing the part where you sit in the winner's lap?