Aurora paces down the fallen log while she waits on Arabella. Her new body has more senses than her old one, and while Arabella wastes their time on sky gazing, she takes a moment to experiment with one of the new ones. It manifests as an occasional slippery pressure that flows through her bones whenever she moves.

“It’s like,” Arabella fumbles out her arms, head tilted up towards the sky, “It’s like it’s day and night at the same time. It’s bright out, but I can still see the stars and the rings, and everything’s so clear! You should get some spores in your eyes too before we leave this place for good.”

“No thank you.” Aurora holds one arm in and the other out. Pressure flows into the outstretched arm, getting stronger as she begins to tip over. She stumbles, then repeats the experiment with her other limbs. The pressure seems to act like a second sense of balance, bringing her attention towards the limbs that need adjustment, but why would this body have that? Isn’t one sense of balance enough?

The fae creature zipped around everywhere without so much as a stumble. Maybe it’s a sense of grace?

She notices Arabella zoning out again and interrupts her, “I mean, I’m happy that you're happy succumbing to peasant eye fungus, but I’d really rather not.”

“Peasant eye fungus?” Arabella finally brings her eyes back down, having grown even more red, and scoffs. “That may be the case here, but out there? Nowhere else in the world has these colors! It would be a symbol of status to have such rich, rare, red eye fungus. Don't you want to look like a member of the well-traveled elite?”

“Humans on Earth stained every part of their body except their eyes, and they were the elite of the elite. I think I’ll be fine.”

“When you say stain, are you referring to the skin doodles?”

“Skin doodles!?”

“There’s no way they grew flowers inside of their skin. I bet they painted those on just to mess with us.”

Aurora gasps and puts a scandalized hand to her chest, “Our ancestors would never! And besides, humans were related to all of the other living things on Earth. Is it really so strange to think that they would be compatible with each other in ways that seem fantastical to us?”

“Yes.”

“Ugh, you're hopeless.” Being related to that irreverent is the second hardest thing Aurora’s ever had to do. The first hardest is maintaining her sense of dignity as she’s suddenly snatched up by said irreverent. “Yeep!”

She bangs her fists on the fingers wrapped around her. “Whyyy do you never warn me?”

“If no woman-handle, then why woman-shaped?” Arabella tilts her hand to punctuate her made-up words.

Being grabbed like that bothers Aurora more than she lets on, but talking about her feelings would be stupid and embarrassing. She grabs onto a finger and holds on.

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With Aurora in hand, Arabella approaches the moss trail for round two. “Okay Ari,” she mutters to herself, “you can do this.” She keeps her eyes glued to the ground. “It’s easy. You put one foot in front of the other,” she lowers a foot onto the moss mat, “and ignore the,” she gags, “the warm gas.”

Aurora's stomach growls. “Did you pack any food with you?”

“Seriously?” Arabella’s boot crunches through the empty shell of a long dead xeno as she gets into a walking rhythm. “Can’t this wait until later?”

“Stress makes me hungry. Did you bring anything or not?”

“We'll find something as we go along.” A pocket of spores ruptures, surrounding them in a gritty red cloud. The spores don’t sting Arabella’s eyes this time around, having already colonized them, but it still makes it impossible to see very far. Aurora closes her eyes dutifully to preserve their human purity from the stains of this world.

“So that's a no, then.” Aurora sasses.

Arabella scoffs. “Like you're much better. How much food did you paaa-” her boot comes down next to an armored one. Her eyes slowly trail up the figure in ruby red crystalline armor, the empty sword handle strapped to her waist, and all the way up into glowing red eyes that glare deep into Arabella's own.

There’s a moment of pause, as Arabella and Asmoday process each other’s presence in the middle of the wilderness.

“Evisceration,” Asmoday finally breaks the silence, “is the most common cause of death in a xeno attack.” With a flick of spellcraft, an open leather journal floats above her off-hand, which she glances at. “At least eleven people have died by evisceration today. Can you tell me what the difference between those people and you is?”

Arabella takes a breath to calm herself. While Asmoday ultimately serves the will of their father, she may be able to appeal to her sense of duty to the law. Technically, she’s not doing anything wrong, right?

“This is my kingdom, and I am legally allowed to go wherever I please.”

“Three hours. The only thing separating you from those flesh piles are three short hours.”

Arabella’s stance is firm. “You can't stop me. You’re not allowed to detain me unless I do something wrong.”

“I can and I will. What are you doing out here? Why are you not in the capital? What is that thing you're holding? It practically radiates divine magic.”

Asmoday hunts magical creatures to become more powerful. If she gets her hands on Aurora… Arabella moves the fairy behind her back, and draws herself up with the commanding presence that she’s spent a lifetime acquiring. She looks down on the taller valkyrie, and with all of the authority she’s ever held, she declares, “I'm not answering questions at this time.”

The valkyrie remains unmoved. “This is serious, Ari. The things I’ve heard… I'm getting worried about you.”

“No you’re not,” Arabella says bitterly, “the only thing you're worried about is what Father will say when he finds out I’ve escaped his grasp. Let me pass.”

“Escaped?” Asmoday growls, “You’re going to tell me what’s going on right now, and whatever it is, we’re going to fix it together.”

“Like how you fixed the situation with the necromancer?”

“He was evil!”

“He was going to teach me magic, you murder happy moron! All you do is swoop in, break everything, and then leave the survivors to deal with your aftermath. You don’t fix things; you replace them with new problems.”

“Well sor-ry I can’t stick around for cleanup duty, but I have responsibilities to more than just your kingdom.”

“Then go chase them! Go chase your responsibilities and stay out of my life!”

Asmoday sucks in a breath as if she were dealt a mortal wound. That choice of word, ‘stay’, struck her heart with more precision than any physical blow she’s ever taken. At what point did she become an only child?

Eyes unfocused, all she could get out of her mouth was, “I care about you. I want you to know that I care about you.”

Arabella senses her opportunity. She steps around the defeated Asmoday, shifting Aurora to the front again. With any luck, her older sister will continue her dramatic display long enough to lose track of them.

Aurora taps on Arabella’s hand, and when she lifts her closer to her face, she whispers, “If you tell her who I am, she might be willing to help us. Surely she’d understand that I can’t stay here.”

Arabella whispers back a little more forcefully, “she’d eat you for eleckspi before we finished explaining the situation. Trust me, it’s better if we part ways for good.”

She says the last sentence loud enough for Asmoday to hear. She turns around and scrambles, “I can kill him. It’s because you don’t want to marry him, right? I can drop him in a nest; let the bugs take care of the rest.” She takes a half hearted step. “Stay. Please.”

Arabella wants to ignore her. She wants to keep walking so that Asmoday can know how it feels to be left behind without so much as a goodbye. Maybe it’s the ghost of what they once had, or the way that those last few words sounded so pathetic coming from a woman of her power, but she can’t bring herself to do it. She puts one more foot down and stops. At the very least, even if it changes nothing, this could still be her last chance to get closure with the sister she barely recognizes.

“It’s not just the duke. I don’t want to marry any men. I like women. Father found out, and that’s why he’s pushing this marriage thing through. Even if you kill the groom, he'll just find someone else to ‘put a baby in my belly’.” She tucks a loose hair behind her ear, and gives one last look at her older sister. “So I’m going somewhere that can actually handle me.”