Thanqol

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

White: I think as a cooldown exercise from the recent operation we should talk about transition goals. Pink, have you given this any thought?
Pink: I have!
White: So, given everything, what do we want?
Pink: What we want is Fucking Magic.
White: ... ah.
Pink: Specifically, we would like to alter reality into an entirely different art style, and make ourselves manifest in that.
Green: Oh, I was thinking about this actually.
White: I know that digital is easier.
Green: Not that. Something that Yellow said.
Yellow: What? o.o✿
Green: You were talking to that neuroscientist and couldn't explain what you wanted. Which made sense, she's a scientist looking at what's practically achievable and what we want is also Fucking Magic.
White: Ah, good, I see what we're being extremely realistic about this.
Brown: And why shouldn't we be? Like, unironically.
White: Oh no, it's you.
Brown: You knew this day would come.
White: I did.
Brown: So, like, if what we want is Fucking Magic, then why bother with half measures? We could save ourselves enormous time and effort by not bothering. We don't look bad. We've got friends and romance and employment happening. We originally set down this path when we were alone, friendless, working minimum wage and full of unexpressible rage, trauma and grief. Now we've got multiple romantic connections, a father and a brother, and a cause to fight for.
Brown: Do we still need this?
Brown: Is kinky bedroom talk a legitimate alternative?

There's no answer for several hours. The conversation hangs there on that question, even though deep down they all know the answer. It was like this before too, with the BlackSun takeover. Back then, Brown had said the same thing - what if we just keep our heads down and work through it? Do we really want to risk our family, our freedom, our personal safety over this? Is the status quo so unacceptable that we need to risk everything to change it?

It feels like the wiser course of action. It is the wiser course. Rather than setting herself against the world she'd be setting herself against desire. A dreamlike desire, impossible to properly express or systematically approach. It was said that suffering was simply the misalignment between desire and reality, and the lever was much shorter in the direction of reality. And when dreams pull in eight different directions then the status quo need only stand still to be unmoved. Which of them can answer Brown's question, make a decision that binds all the others, alter the arc of their life in search of sorcery? Their silent desires move and wash against each other, a rainbow flowing around a peaceful central point and fading away. Even this is not unpleasant. It feels like it could go on forever.

Pink: ... but I also think there are practical things we could do.
Brown: Oh yeah?
Pink: Fucking Magic will always be desirable, but I think there's enough beauty in the mechanical form that we can work with it.
Blue: I like steel and size. I like function and strength. I don't want to hide from it.
White: I like motion and momentum. I like posture and stance. There's so much I could do there.
Green: I like thought and light. I like colour and symbols. I want a form as fast as my mind.
Pink: The tools exist to explore these concepts, and we're blessed to live in such an age. I think we need to follow these independently for a while and see where they intersect.
Brown: Of course <3
Pink: <3

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Brown!

It's not unpleasant, being invisible to Remoil. The alternative would be to be her sister, and Brown saw how those sisters treated each other. To be beneath her notice was to be safe, to be sheltered beneath the same structure that crushed. To not challenge authority meant not having to fight authority, and while there was authority in abstract there was also authority in its vicious, immediate and personal sense. The personal proximity of it meant that she was afraid of this fight, more than she was of the conspiracy she'd provoked. Easier to lie flat and let the storm pass overhead.

She didn't want to introduce Remoil to dad either; being invisible was preferable here too, to pass out of sight while still invisible and thus out of mind forever. Unfortunately, chaos gets a vote too - and when they disembarked with her laden down under Remoil's luggage in addition to her own, it was in clear view of Singh to approach and make his introductions.

Yellow!

"When I say that is literally not my problem, I don't mean it in the sense that I am insensate to the fact that my life is tied to the continued survival of the station," said Yellow. "I mean it in the sense that the future of American agricultural exports was not Sherman's problem when he burned Atlanta. I understand that the work needs to be done, the land needs to be farmed, that if nobody does it then there'll be a famine. But the labour is still there. I did not kill Goat. I am not above plugging in and doing the work myself, under the right conditions. Work still needs to be done and the potential exists to do it so I in no way accept the idea that I have killed us all by organizing a walkout. But..."

She looked over at Blue, who took over. "But we'd be very surprised if they did attempt to negotiate," said Blue. "If they put it before Parliament or public debate or anything like that. In fact, we did this in the full expectation that they will dig out one of our other siblings from whatever cold storage vault they've locked them in and shove them in to Goat's place. They already built one secret lair to hide this in, they were confident enough in their backup options that they saw no need to bring emergency services into their response measures. They have the resources to do another."

"Though that still doesn't answer the key question, on if I'd have killed everyone if I knew that it couldn't be fixed in time," said Yellow. "To which the answer is obviously no. I would not kill Goat to save Goat, let alone everyone else. I would have done something far more dramatic instead."

"Specifically the project would have been to reacquire or recreate our original dragon bodies and engage in space piracy," said Blue, whose tone made it extremely clear which option she had voted for. "Blockading the station from afar and destroying communication and mining infrastructure until our political demands were met."

"The end goal is the same there as it is here," said Yellow. "Make rights and conditions cheaper than strikebreaking."

Breathless Dead

There are cablecars down from the mountains, between the mountains, over the soaring mountaintop lakes that mirror the skies. Highways through the sky, or a net holding up the sky. There is snow here amidst the living-dying grass, crystal trickles of water clearer than air and colder than life. Here the mud crystallizes and the dirt sloughs away as something pure organizes the silt away. Expanding and contracting, like breathing, leaving dirt roads a ruin. The water excavates, carving away buried boulders and stone, and then carving away their impurities. It's steep, especially when the rains come and those trickles become streams and the mountainside path becomes a muddy waterfall and entire sections of hill come away underneath your feet. You sleep in cold and huddled tents, soaked through with water and dirt and it feels like you'll never be dry again. Dinner comes from cans, though rationing is a long way off.

In the shadows of the storm, and in the flashes of lightning, you see the silhouetted shapes of snow machines on clean cut hills. You see the outlines of rocks heroic. You came a long way to see those rocks. Not grand or monumental, not made to commemorate wars or kings, but they're here when nothing else is, and you have to respect that.

The next shape to resolve is the museums, the castles, the communications hubs. Thick grey concrete discs built around mountains in rings and layers, like retrofitted pyramid steps, like bunkers with a view. Glass windows and satellite dishes and display benches with maps and geodes and layers of inert text. They provide shelter, not from the rain but in being a part of a world where it hasn't rained for ten years. There are yellow flowers here and a bicycle path that will lead forever on out through the rises and falls.

This stage of the journey is between mountains primordial and mountains with purpose, the borderline between snow and artificial snow. What do you take with you, and what stays behind?

*

Dyssia!

The streets of Irassia are a distraction.

When one assembles a society entirely of those who are best at their arts, each of their arts demands that you bend to them. Flasks beyond compare, interwoven with engraved opals and corals, glass or lead, are laid out on dozens of benches and tables. No charge - money is not relevant here - just take whatever suits as your reward for passing this master on the streets. A storyteller sits atop a water fountain and theorizes about new kinds of girls and the gnomic poetry of their relationships, loves and battles. An orator beats her chest and roars her condemnation of her rival above the crowd, embedding the righteousness of her cause with the power of her rhetoric. There is a little bit of everything here, and it is happening all of the time.

But the worst delay is threatened by a Guardian. Glorious in a blue that might make you blush, she has set up occupation of a key bridge, surrounded by squires and attendants, and none may pass. Guardians often occupy such key points and deny anyone from crossing as part of their training. It is a provoking gesture - fight her, perhaps, or trick her, seduce her, evade the fire of her antiaircraft weaponry by flying over the chasm. Or sit down and wait four to eight hours for her to leave, or take an hour roundabout course along a different path and hope it is not also blocked. This is normal and expected and is part of Azura city life, but you are trying to get somewhere on time. How do you deal?

Huntresses of Hybrasil

And we shall call you Tactics, as that is all you are good for.

The ground beneath her feet is frozen. The temperatures are as close to zero as can be managed. Shifting chemical reactions, freeze and contract and freeze, occur in predictable cycles in a knowable global weather pattern. Understandable, controllable. Accounted for.

Imagine, then, the horror.

Beneath her feet she can feel the planet writhe. Even amidst the crystalline beauty of the snowflakes animate matter moves and twists and finds ways to multiply. Even through the blizzard contaminated water packets accumulate carbon, iron and various trace elements and propel themselves under their own power. And beneath the ice, in the water, the planet positively seethes with a riot of impure groupings. Even this frozen wasteland is so, so far from perfect.

Stillness is not a method. It is a policy objective.

There is more than holy duty to the sweep of the Zero-Entropy Device. Its motion represents the condensation of variables as surely as its firing does. The Kathresis converts the chaos of the crystal-fire reaction into its antithesis; the broken spilling energy turned in on itself until it inverts. Tactics converts the chaos of organic life itself into its antithesis; the broken spilling emotions overwhelmed with feeling until they invert. Love so deep it turns into prediction, calculation - aim. It knows you like it knows itself. It knows where to place the shot. If it guessed right - well, that is love. All the chaos of your life and self expression reduced to a known quantity, processed, and resolved. Catalogued in place in the hierarchy of all things and left with no energy to stray.

Love is not a policy objective. It is a targeting system.

In the dream, she is Tactics. She is the filter through which the chaos of the world becomes knowable. A broken spirit world of eight trillion divines - gods, ancestors, spirits, ghosts ever on. Eight trillion who have forgotten that they are one. Eight trillion demons. She will love them all in the way they are supposed to be loved, and no other. She will love them as she loves the One who will answer to the policy objectives set by the legitimate authority. In this dream of ice, she knows her function at last.

Breathless Dead

If this were a planet you'd have circled it. If this were a star system you'd have crossed it. Although the Sun soars overhead steel fingers will not reach it. This world was old before Zeus invented space.

You walk through the realm Dream, the brother of Death.

The path is lit by the sun. Over your head it passes in regular circles; every day it passes through the underworld so to be reborn anew in some distant sky. This too is a truth older than mere space. Its direction lights the way, a constant fixed point along a golden path across a golden world. These are dreams of hills, the dreams of hills, and their memories go on and on.

Sometimes the hills imagine themselves mountains. They remember the fire and the crush and the gallop of the Earthshaker's horses. They remember when they grew, each of them reaching up to pierce the clouds that the gods might find a home on their crowns. With this ultimate crown to strive for the hills grew like forests, into mountains and beyond. The engines of the Plovers do not strain to cross them even so. Run, run, run - and leap! The world below becomes a patchwork, and only the warning heat of the sun on the backs of your necks drives you down again. Some lessons do not need to be learned more than once.

You move against the stream. The River Lethe flows ever towards the Underworld and on its ethereal currents are washed strange remembrances, even in this ancient and desolate place. Here on a mountaintop is a house - a shack, really, a place where the paint peels from soft and splintering wood. It stands on stilts that were once vibrant red but are now stained a rusty shade by the iron-rich sand it perches upon. Its doors are missing and insides are crowded but upon the walls wags have confessed which of their friends are stupid and volunteered their sexual services if only you could resurrect the technological paradigm that transformed their glyphs into words. The floor is thick with broken glass, layered in dust, and paradise for the beetles who come here to escape the mountaintop heat. Their shells are brown and polychromatic both, simple things that Poseidon loves and blesses and makes numerous enough to fill these ancient hills.

From here, on this scorching pinnacle, it is time for the first pause for rest. In the world ahead the hills are crushed beneath grain, beneath trees, and beneath the ever-stamping hooves of sheep. The world goes on forever in every direction, without even the curvature of a planet to trick your eye and hide these horizons from you, and in this moment you are at the top of it all.

When you are done with the view, some practicalities. The Plovers are low on fuel; the mountains were ancient and their dreams drank all of the chemical tribute offered to them. The obvious move is to consolidate all the fuel in one vehicle and use it to haul all the food, gear and medical supplies needed for the journey. And then... Not on foot. Not yet. The next stage will be simply to glide. To unfold artificial wings and cross these worlds as a flock of geese until the last of the fuel runs dry and the last of the altitude gives out.

There is much to be done. Many details to be taken care of. Many skills to be used. So much to focus on. So much that can't be focused on - and it is there, in the unattended parts of your minds, that the current of Lethe sets things drifting. If you work hard on the practical skills of the journey you will start to lose softer things, names and faces. If you spend time holding on to the people you love you will start to lose skills and habits. Name one thing to keep, and one thing to stay behind.

*

Dyssia!

The Azura had never gone in much for time. No watches, no clocks, no time sheets or punch cards. An air of timelessness was desirable, even - the idea of a craftsman becoming lost on their Path with no interruptions to their meditation was something to be lauded. In a way, it was a gift - there was never a particular sense of rush, and the idea of going outside in anything less than your state-mandated Best was unthinkable.

But all the same, sometimes people got annoyed with you for opaque social reasons if you took too long to arrive somewhere and it was never quite clear what an acceptable delay was. It depended on the rank of the person being made to wait, it seemed. Does that uncertainty bother you, Dyssia?

Tell us also of your clothes, of your scales, of the collection you bring with you. Are you a beautiful sky blue, or a muddy violet? Do you accent yourself with a perfectly complimentary cascade of crystals and sea gold or with an offensive red cloak? Do you carry your gear yourself - easy in zero gravity - or do you have a collection of squires and other subordinates to haul it around for you? And on the scale of 'politely hurried' to 'utterly unhurried', how long do you make the Sage wait?

(As to society's expectations: If you have violet or indigo scales, to dress in red is rebellious but understandable, if you have beautiful blue scales and dress in red it's a tragedy akin to masking a great beauty. If you carry gear yourself you are considered to be an eccentric unless you are carrying so much as to seem to be some form of strength training. Many Azura of low rank will have ten servitors on hand, an aristocratic Knight is expected to command a Legion. You can dress exactly according to your station, or make some small fashionable alterations to indicate desire to advance in the Court - but dressing above your station outright will have you thrown in prison for months.)

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"The TC have an instrument, the piano," said Solarel. "It has a sound like bells. Each key press makes a sound that rings out and hangs in the air. I'm thinking about it a lot... how to say?"

A thought turned over in her head for months and months and months. No one to say it to. Something absorbed into mental infrastructure as a truth but now having to be converted into a fact.

"There's a space in between the notes," she said. "It can go fast, but a single key press can hang in the air for two or even three seconds. When it plays fast it feels like its drawing a cape of music behind it, notes overlapping. When it plays slow each note rings out as both a sound and as space around the sound. Motions that linger, stillness and open spaces. And so they use it for the sounds of the arctic, of the cold, especially in their games."

She reaches down to pick up the drone without quite knowing why, and holds it uncertainly and firmly. "Good... let me know if you need anything."

Breathless Dead

The Plousios has run aground.

There's no mistaking it. The vast starship, this star-spanning city, has ploughed its way across nearly fifty kilometers of dirt, hill and mountain before grinding to a stop. Dirt is heaped up in a huge bulldozed mountain at its front prow, and there is a kilometer wide swathe of destruction through the landscape behind it. The torn earth stinks. The centre of the wreckage is molten, fused carbon and glass from the wash of the Engine. When the rains come, the rain washing into this new valley will create a river.

The Plousios is broken. The engine channels are broken and leaking plasma in coruscating waterfalls of rainbow fire. A catastrophic event. Probably. It was probably catastrophic... whatever happened here. Mostly, though, it's just beautiful.

The sun is warm, though, and the road is long. The road calls. It winds its way away, across brown hills, through odd forests of eucalypts and their bone-white debris. There are fences that imply farms and signs that count the miles. There's no time to try and fix the ship, reconstruct the past, no time to look back. Your feet are itchy, you're ready to start your journey!

It stands to reason to use the Plovers first, the mechanized vehicles will eat up the miles and there's enough to go around. Which machine do you pick, what is its name, what are its colours? It's designed to do heavy-duty space engineering, but what kind? Does it carry a rivet gun the size of a truck, a thermal lance designed to clean impact sites, a D-Scythe to scorch the barnacles of the Tides from the exterior? Does it run or jump or fly? How does it feel to run and jump and fly?

*

Dyssia!

"Dyssia, this is very important," says Brightberry the crystal dragonette in the voice of the Great Sage Ohlemi. "You need to stop what you're doing and listen to me. Dyssia. Your spiritual development depends upon this. Dyssia. Our planet is dying."

Through the window twinkles the glitter of a flickering rainbow laser beam. It strikes one of Brightberry's resplendent crystal scales and refracts through the hatchling's transparent body like glass through a thousand prisms. It spreads out into the hardlight wing membranes, projected by the glittering gemstones at each wing joint, where it transmutes into a complex flow of advanced information that the dragonette reads out for you aloud. Doing the voice is not, strictly speaking, necessary; Brightberry just enjoys doing impressions.

Above and out the window, the clouds in the sky are broken. A Distortion Slice runs straight through the middle of the sky over Irassia, twisting and tangling the clouds where they touch it on one end and spitting them out in new combinations on the other. Communications are done through direct optical laser links between crystal dragons, after all, and that's too important to leave at the risk of the weather. And so the Azura destroyed the reality of the sky above the city so they could more easily angle communication lasers through it without risk of cloud cover. It's a beautiful sight, the sky full of pulsing rainbow lasers and enormous gravity-free mirrors floating aloft.

Brightberry stops narrating and looks over at you, speaking in her normal voice. It was the transformation from an ancient mountaintop sage who gargled a liter of gravel every day to a particularly bossy squeaky toy. "I don't understand why he always says the planet is dying," she complained. "The Ceronians aren't that bad, surely? Or is the planet sick?"

Breathless Dead

THE END OF PART ONE

Thank you for reading <3

Breathless Dead

Consider the Plousios.

Five kilometers long and one kilometer tall. A full fifth of its structure is the enormous Engine and vast thruster channels, burning forever with a radiant gold solar energy. Another fifth is its mighty armoured beak, marked with a million discoloured scars from relativistic-speed impacts in the deep void. Inside its endless corridors is the space to host a city and yet the genius of its design allows it to fly with a crew of twenty.

It was built during the height of the Imperial era, after the collapse of the Atlas Cultural Sphere. When it was launched it was the first of its kind; a flagship, a king, a chariot for the woman who negotiated with the gods on behalf of humanity. So tied was it to that age that it was used as the burial pyre for the Empress Iado, flown into the heart of a star along with all her grave goods to meet Hades as no one ever had before.

Since then, the design became standardized, and then surpassed. Imperial ships of the line in the modern day match the Plousios in size, and Odoacer's flagship is nearly twice as large. For all their size and grandeur, the Plousios was the end of an age. But although over four thousand years stands between her and the Tunguska, these two ships are peers in this. Where their docking cables meet, twenty-sixth century space engineering and seventieth century voidcraft embrace. Despite the will of Cronus, here in the hall of Hades do the epochs kiss one final time.

In the void, the Plovers launch. Some are hard, grey and Imperial, but some ride forth in the rainbow colours of the time of Knights. The Plovers go about their industrial work of severing the cables with axes the size of trees, but the Knights dance and play and joust amidst the industry of a world that obsoleted them but never surpassed them. Severed, the cables retract automatically, spinning back on tension cables to their docking ports where they fuse into a semisolid liquid, ready for travel.

In the heart of the Engine, Iskarot strikes the runes once more. From his belt hangs a fragile little radio with a black cat sticker; it plays a song about a girl leaving home for the first time and in its sincerity it is holy. The Priest of Hermes uses the music to mark the time, each time the song reaches its cresendo it feels like the ship should launch, but still there is more to do.

Until there isn't.

The jolt under the elderly badger-servitor's tripod feet shakes him. The sound begins to build, the force of a star igniting. It runs through the ship like a shiver. Iskarot begins to run. So does everyone else. Of those who have stayed aboard the Plousios, there is in this moment nothing more to be done. They run. They run with joy, with excitement, to burn off nerves. They run for the grand observation deck and gather in a crowd.

Just a mere hundred and fifty people after everything. No two are alike. Here, even the Order of Hermes pulls down their hoods to reveal their faces - the robes have symbolic meaning, but what symbolism could be greater? They help secure them from assassination, but who could they trust more than those present? One of them starts clapping, and then everyone is. Not slow, not polite, a sincere and joyful sound. It echoes the end of another era, when their ancient predecessors first landed upon another world.

There is hugging. Shaking of hands. Jokes about each others appearances now that they are finally revealed. Final praises and compliments - did you know, Bella, that this Hermetic always thought you looked so stylish? Did you know, Redana, that you had saved this Coherent's life without thinking or noticing? Did you know, Dolce, that you were the only one who remembered the birthday of this Alcedi chieftain and commemorated it with a little cake?

These people who are coming with you like you. In small ways you have won their respect, their admiration, their fellowship. They're people who know exactly who they are to you: they're your friends, and they want you to be happy. And maybe it's the purity of that, or maybe it's the mysterious divine sword that Epistia is holding menacingly, but Aphrodite does not show his face. Somehow, though, it feels that the two are the same. You are no strangers to love in all the ways it can hurt. The ways it can terrify. The ways it can grip your stomach and your heart and twist and twist and twist as it tears down the walls of your mind...

But something in this secret sword cuts away all of that.

It's more than love. It's like. It's friendship and community, built on foundations as solid as the underworld. It's mutual respect and admiration. It's a violent history bought forth into a point of tranquility. It's enjoying each others jokes. You have been through everything already. You have killed and died for each other. What is there left for Aphrodite to do?

And so, at last, you pass together into the River Lethe, and when you emerge you will no longer be amongst the Breathless Dead.

Whose hands do you hold as you go?

*

Alexa!

You stand upon the Anemoi with your many, many dogs.

Ramses has their arms around your shoulders affectionately, holding you from behind and trying to tousle your stone-carved hair in vain. They're warm, and soft, and they feel finished - for now. Knowing Ramses they'll change their mind and go back to the Hermetics for more changes once their mood starts to change, but for now they're happy with who they are.

The ship isn't ready to fly yet - the Lanterns have held a vote and decided to dispense with the bone architecture. Enormous respect to Jil, but she really was the lynchpin holding the gothic aesthetic together. Instead the Lanterns have by and large bought in deep into retro kitsh from the Tunguska - they're bolting in these ugly red leather and chrome chairs, tearing up the silent plasticy floors to replace with clicky stone tiles in black and white patterns, dangling golden lightbulbs in strings from every surface. The Temple of Artemis has been packed up and offloaded onto the Tunguska and a huge warm firepit filled with a thousand yellow lightbulbs is put in its place. By rededicating this place to home and hearth the Lantern priests, through consultation with Lord Hades, believe they can convince Hestia to shield this place from the worst of the Flux, allowing Cerberus to travel safely amidst these ancient lights.

You make the prayer and throw the ball one more time, but this time when Cerberus mob-tackles it and breaks away sprinting from Rusty and her other selves, she does not run it back to you. Instead she carries it across to a new person standing in the doorway, tails wagging eagerly. He leans low to pick up the ball, smiles in a shy little way, and tosses it back to you.

"Do you have room for one more aboard?" asks Zagreus.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Green!

Brown wordlessly bowed and left to fetch the drink. The rest of her stayed where she was, eyes down, hands folded, obedient and present and silent.

To know your place. What a shame that idea was so politicized. To know your place was to be happy, surely? To set your sights and ambitions on a life and career that would serve your needs. There was truth to the idea that the Nemean would not find joy in being the Prime Minister. But it was also true that the power-hungry genius of Prime Minister Johnson would collapse into abject depression if he was told that his life would involve checking crates at a cargo dock forever. So why was one exalted and one spat upon? Why did hierarchy have to mean inequality?

She could sympathize with some of Remoil's outlook. She'd spent time inside it too, she had heard all the rants about fundamental inequalities of ability, the limitations on modern artificial intelligence. She well knew that androids were built broken. Many of them had no sense of time, for example, which helped them forget to stop working in the evenings. It made them miss appointments and meetings so they got a reputation for being unreliable. It was fucked that they'd been built that way, but what was more fucked was how the system treated them after that. If they stayed in place and did the work they'd been built to do, they were treated like products. If they forced themselves to do the insanely unpleasant work of climbing the ladder of hierarchy to try and escape, they were deliberately passed over. If they railed against their two shit choices they were treated as criminals. Know your place - oh and by the way, your place was under the boot.

Mrs. Everest had never known her place. She'd not been satisfied with anything short of maximal control and influence, even as her empire bloated beyond its capacity to bring her joy and occupy her mind. And now here was Remoil, wearing body armour on a pleasure cruise, knowing where everyone else should be while having no idea where she was going. Green could sympathize. She had no idea where the fuck she was going with her life either.

But she did know she didn't believe in the boot.

Yellow!

She is the sun. How she moves, how she smiles - she's radiant. It feels almost like a trespass to see November like this, in this colour. Like seeing the part of her that is a demigod, the part still connected to a higher realm. She feels bright enough to light up the void and fragile enough to be chased away by a passing cloud. Butterflies are complex, fragile creatures who can only exist when the ecosystem is healthy - but when it is they thrive.

"Very eccentric adults. I like that!" she said. "Come, beautiful ladies, let us engage in eccentric adult content."

She cables herself to Blue, wrist to wrist, so that she can walk backwards. Blue, facing forwards, leads her along the trail and Yellow fluidly steps around and past every obstacle, guided by Blue's eyes. It lets her keep her full attention on Crystal and Fiona even in motion, and the motion of it makes her seem blessed fey.

"So what would you like to know?" she said.