selena.

I can count the bells of the day by the full and untouched cups of tea laid around my resting place like offerings to the dead, five in total thus far. A cloister of three on a serving tray chime delicately and tremble together as the door latch clatters and then opens, releasing the pressure in the room like an exhale. "Mistress, I've brought some tea," the mousey maidservant calls out as though my corpse might sit upright while she's watching and scare her own ghost out of her. I'll give her this: she's announced herself every single time in a new way, and it makes me wonder if she practiced it in the kitchen while the water was boiling. Everyone's an actor.

What have I been doing here, masquerading as my own dead body? It's called meditation, apparently they've been practicing it for thousands of years, and it's a lot easier to do when you have nothing else in your life going on. Which, most presently, I do not. I remember the first time I went to rehab, I was 23 and I knew the minute my agent dropped me off at the resort that it was a dark market for emotional tourists like me, and that's exactly how I treated it. I didn't fix anything, I just studied what it looked like to be in the throes of despair as a very deeply embedded agent and then vowed to get a little farther next time before flaming out. It was nice not to think about press junkets for a week, a complete hall pass to check out of real life, and that's what I did. They let me write letters, so I posted one to my grandparents and said I was feeling homesick on a remote shoot. They sent me a care package and only then did I start feeling like maybe it was time to get it together. I wish they were still here. I've been an unmoored ship resisting anchors for some time.

By the time the capitol fell, I had been in rehab at least a dozen times, but at least toward the end I became masterful at timing them such that the world simply thought I had a real love for private vacations in Radz-at-Han. I can't stand Radz-at-Han. Maybe nobody would believe me, but it's not all my fault things never really got resolved -- rehab never took itself seriously, either. Quite a few of them really were just glorified spa resorts meant to take away the pain of quotidien living with on-demand massage and caviar service so we'd come back again the next time we just couldn't take it anymore. No, not every incident that sent me there was substance-related -- sure, I got a taste for afterparties, but there were times when I was just wax under the heat of the spotlight and there was nowhere else to cool off without being reminded that my product had an expiration date. So goodbye capitol, hello Sunrise Chalet. I guess that's why I liked the women's retreat so much.

In what would be my final New Year's Eve in the sunset of the Empire, I raised a glass to domestic bliss. Film was losing its luster, and I knew it was time to move into my next act as a cosmopolitan mother whose immaculate child's first words would almost certainly surpass a tired 'mama' or 'dada' and skip straight to daguerreotype. I was ready for the safety and rock of a family that I could sculpt, a bastion where I could strip away the stage makeup and safely walk the tightrope of vulnerability. I was ready to be transformed by the act of growing life, to defy this body I've been violently molding and let the stretch marks creep over like choking ivy until all the little vanities died one by one. I had plans, not that there's any force which shapes this world that respects that.

After the personally-humiliating Erasmus interview that made me the punchline of an absolutely overwhelming number of repetitive and uncreative jokes, I oscillated between defeat and consummate rage. There were days when I was ready to pack up my costume bags and find a new career, to perhaps pivot and become a lawyer or maybe a lawyer's disgustingly wealthy wife, but then there were others when the only thing I could focus on was searching for an open opportunity to have my revenge. Allow me to set the scene for you.

The season's films du jour were mostly comprised of musical romantic comedies, particularly after the surprise success of Gavrenti's Good Looking, a quirky script about two spies with ordinary identities who wind up assigned to spy on one another. It was a terrific watch, laced with black humor that buoyed what could have been awfully twee dialogue in other, less deft circumstances, and directors were scrambling to imitate its success. Valerie and I had both landed parts in somewhat uninspired, but well-enough-earning pieces that were particularly heavy on the dance numbers (and critics agreed that my technical prowess and grace in Baby Grand Piano were a marvel to behold, just for your information), and some genius or another had the idea to host a charity auction where we would perform stripped-back versions of our famous dance sequences with the winners. I grumbled about it at first, for who could match the deft partnership of dancing with Sebastian Baris-Bruno, but I gradually became wise to the fact that it could instead be the perfect chance to strike.

I knew Valerie was taking a particular medication for an infection she contracted while shooting on the set of Glimmer (not sexually-transmitted, to my knowledge, but would it surprise anyone?), because my girl saw her girl at the pharmacy covertly filling the prescription and promptly reported back to me. I also knew that she was avoiding alcohol, per what must have been her doctor's instructions, as I heard her use the excuse at a thespian's guild dinner several times throughout the night. But what Valerie didn't know, because I am a genius and the contents of her skull have the approximate texture and content of a baked potato, is that it also doesn't mix well with highly-fermented beverages, and can quickly onset nausea, vomiting, and fainting. What luck, then, that one forged rider sheet later ensured that every single juice, tea, and sparkling beverage offered in her dressing room fit that description exactly.

"I can't do this anymore. I can't. I've reached my end of my capacity to tolerate an environment of ruthless vultures..."

A carefully-arranged bouquet of dried fronds and flowers bursts out of its porcelain vase, stuffed tightly with preserved flora in its desaturated state. Dusty jade eucalyptus frames lilac and pale pink florets of baby's breath yearning away from their stems, quivering lightly with fear.

"After what happened to Antony, it really should have been the end of things. I should have called it quits and left this pit of vipers to collapse in on itself, but I was so afraid that my legacy would..."

There's a childish name for the ivory puffs of lagurus ovatus: bunny tails. They seem larger somehow for their worry as they ramble at me in breathless monologue, bristled up like a malcontented cat. This beautiful spray is having a complete meltdown while I listen with the barest interest in its outsized shadow. After all, this is a breakup; it hasn't been announced yet, but I am being relieved of my duties, and at this point it's just the formality of hoping I can still salvage something out of the wreckage when this humiliating fit has passed that is keeping me adhered to my overstuffed seat.

"...and all along, it's as though they were simply waiting for me to let my guard down again to strike! I will not allow myself to succumb to cynicism. All I ever wanted was a life surrounded by beauty and pleasure..."

According to the Blades report, a single gardenia was left on the headless corpse of my rambling companion's now-deceased lover, the absolute personification of milquetoast by the name of Telur Morgan. It was a bloodbath, they say, an entire family zeroed over plates of cold spaghetti by the time authorities arrived—talk about a sauced pasta. But the gruesome remains don't plague me; rather, it's the pristine white of a freshly-cut bloom and its velvet petals and fragrant perfume. The stem would still be crisp, slightly damp at the angled cut, and the last hand to touch it would arrange it just so. It's as real as if I were standing over it now with the echoes of a gunshot ringing at a screaming pitch in my ears. A message, just for me. A message that says—

"Selena."

The oversized vase is plucked from before me, revealing the tear-streaked face of a panicked Monetarist darling draped in a tropical-patterned silk jumpsuit fit for a permanent cruise through the Cieldalaes. She's a vision, even as her dignity unspools with fear, and still I must answer. I know I've been caught absentee.

"I apologize, Alainne. I'm just as shocked as you are," I lie through my pretty teeth. "I'm still coming to terms with the brutality. My mind has wandered."

Gran,

I apologize for being so late to write you, I’ve been quite busy whilst unpacking and settling in with my new roommates with whom I will be attending class. They’re nice girls, if a bit dull-witted, but you can rest assured I’ve been minding my manners and avoiding provocation. I think you’d approve of the placement, as most come from good, pureblooded families with respectable roots. It seems they haven’t discriminated against my roots like you feared. Our shared flat is not very large, but it is tidy, so I suppose I can’t complain so long as it stays that way. It will feel like home soon enough, just as you said.

I wish I could say I miss Silvestre, but the truth of the matter is that I don’t. I miss you and Grandad and the familiarity of home, but if you both decide to move here with me in a year like we spoke of, then I would hardly shed a tear if I never had to see or smell that horrid industrial yard ever again. The capitol is stimulating by contrast, a feast for the senses. It reminds me so much of the letters you showed me, how your mother described the vivid nightlife during the ceruleum boom and how much she loved the twinkle of lights from her sitting room window. When you visit, there’s an incredible department store just a short walk away from the academy that puts Cassia’s to shame. Their window displays are a production, you’ll see soon enough.

I’ve enclosed a few photos from my arrival. I apologize for their poor quality, the gentleman I asked to take the one of me in front of the Gran Maschera was something of a cad and I wanted it to be over with as soon as possible before he could say something inappropriate. But you should worry not, the city is well-frequented by authorities, and most of the people here that I’ve met (this man notwithstanding) seem to be well-behaved. I still have the whistle you packed for me pinned to my jacket, just in case.

Hugs and kisses to you and Grandad,

For the greater part of my career, casting directors were willing to overlook the mounting tension between Valerie Salacia and I as a petty catfight between two actresses racing for the pinnacle of their careers. And really, were they so wrong to say so? Rearranging seating charts and rumormongering were at the low end of our respective potentials, even I can admit as much, and it kept the Cantilena’s press operators on fire for its weekly publishing, which in turn fueled ticket sales. We were a cultural tour de force, her and I, commanding levels of fascination that hadn’t been seen since Appolinar and Fulgencio’s tit-for-tat, which ended in infidelity, pregnancies, and drug overdoses, doubtlessly a tough act to follow. All in all, a healthy ecosystem for show business, and I think you’d be hard-pressed to find that any of us disagreed. Content with this arrangement, they became as frogs in a heating pot, and the water was boiling before they all discovered they’d let it go too far to turn back.

The night I well and truly unsheathed my claws was to be a run-of-the-mill live interview for my work on Time Unwinding. I knew I was sharing a guest slot with Salacia (doubtless the intent of the cunning host), but resolved to maintain my composure; I’d been overexposed, my publicist cautioned me, and it was time to recede out of the burn of the spotlight for at least a week. I had no reason to doubt her advice, and so I decided to have a drink to soothe my anger before my stage call and steel myself to be the bigger person. Valerie, however, had her own designs on the evening, starting with the bottle of red wine I requested on every set.

“Our next guest needs no introduction. You know her, you love her, you love to hate her. Let’s welcome Marcella Maxime.” 

I put back a good two glasses before I was called to stage and I was feeling good about the odds of making it through the appearance without being intentionally catty or malicious. I strode across the stage draped in a rich emerald green number that made me feel royal and expensive next to the cheap, tawdry glitter and glitz of my rival, waving to the audience with a summoned smile. I never noticed anything amiss in their reaction before placing myself on the couch next to the viper, herself.

“Marcella, it’s good to have you back.”

“Thank you, Erasmus. My aesthetician tells me the same thing every day.”

A wave of polite laughter rises from the audience, but doesn’t quite die down even as the host continues to speak.

“Does she...?” He asks curiously, then pauses before he presses further. “Marcella, did she tell you that this morning, as well?”

I tilt my head slightly, my smile frozen. What a strange question. “Well, I know I’m not renowned for my comedy, Ras, but that’s the implication of the joke. She’s grateful I’m still employed, and in turn employing her.”

I can hear an odd titter break out in the audience as their murmuring grows louder, and Erasmus is studying me intently.

“Are you sure her paychecks are current, Ms. Maxime? Because it seems to me she may be upset with you.”

My blood runs cold, and my heart is pounding my ears. My eyes sweep from the host’s desk to the audience, then reluctantly land at Valerie’s expression. She regards me with her mouth pressed into a thin line, a suppressed grin that’s fit to burst. Do something. But what?

“Well, let me have a look and get to the bottom of this,” I bluff with a humored lilt, and reach into my clutch for my compact. The silver lid lifts and I search the mirror for the source of the interest, feeling the stage lights grow hotter and hotter. My makeup is immaculate, lipstick unbudged by the wine glasses. I open my mouth to protest and find myself face to face with a blue-tinted mouth, my teeth faintly stained with ceruleum blue. My pulse halts, breath held tight, but everyone is waiting to see what happens next. I gather my resolve and snap the case shut again.

“Oh, this little thing?” I hear myself say, but I’ve divorced from my own body by now. The only thing I’d consumed since leaving the makeup chair was that red wine, dark enough to hide the dyes she must have paid a runner to drop in. “I’m preparing for my next role, you see. It’s a thrilling number about a woman who is half-machine. I thought I’d take a little sip of ceruleum and see if I could step into the part...”

What a nightmare, this wretched continent, this Eorzean land. Flush with aether, they boast, and for whom? For unhinged magicians to drink up like it’s last call and continue to run roughshod over every corner of the star under the solemn illusion that they’re the protagonist of this global story. So much freedom, so much potential, all the most optimal environmental determinations on offer for its best and brightest citizens, and yet the basic Mark II Breadmaster, found commonplace even amongst zero-star hotels in the Ilsabard hinterlands, is treated with luxurious reverence by the elite I rub elbows with.

I don’t believe in love at first sight. To tell it true, I don’t believe much about love at all; how can anyone come to call themselves believers in a concept with no concrete waymarks, no agreed-upon perimeter? It’s as arbitrary as announcing you believe in, oh, I don’t know—a nice day? Ten strangers can agree that they indeed enjoy a nice day, but when you try to nail down the exact specifications, there’s a range that varies based on personal conjecture and preference, and yet does not necessitate alignment with others to be called by the same name. A man who enjoys blistering heat can call it by the same name as a woman who wants it to be temperate, or rainy, or frigid. It’s meaningless.

What I felt for Darius was complicated. When I met him, he was a fool. An idealist with poor taste, old money that passed down the wealth but none of the discretion. He was wearing diamond-studded cufflinks that glittered from a malm away, and the aiglets on his laces were plated in gold, the tackiest and most pointless possible expenditure I can personally think of. He found me peculiar and combative, infuriatingly judgmental (especially for my young age), and unflinchingly callous. On our first date, he expected that I might be a more effusive starlet in private, but instead met with an insufferable little cunt that sent her dinner back twice and started an argument about...well, the aforementioned gold aiglets. You had to have been there.

In spite of this rocky start, he persisted. There must’ve been something he saw in me, in our tumultuous get-togethers that ignited his interest and spurred him to keep trying. Maybe he was bored and I was an evening’s entertainment for the moderate price of a few strong vodka tonics and dinner, because he kept inviting me back, and I kept sniping to my friends that he was actually paying me for charm school under the guise of a date. Maybe it was my bitterness that signaled that I was safe, in an odd way. His wealth dwarfed my own, and yet I still made every attempt to buck him out of my life by being unapologetically myself. In retrospect, I was a little harsh, but he confessed once that although he didn’t understand why I kept accepting his invitations because I rarely smiled when we went out, he felt certain I wasn’t just in it to gold dig, and I wasn’t.

To his credit, our petty arguments often gave way to new insights: he was playing it too safe, felt his public persona was milquetoast and didn’t reflect the voice of the man he really wanted to be. He found talking to me invigorating and challenging, a means through which he was trying to change what he didn’t like about himself. I was cornered by fear and disdain of the obstacles that stood in the way of my ambitions, wasting my potential and my time on petty grudges, ruled by my reactions alone. He weathered my temper with a marble statue’s patience, letting me buffet him with sour rants until I ran out of gusto. When the storm blew over, he gave me grounding perspective and coaxed me to let the burdens go. He had an ocean of compassion that I lacked, and reminded me of the humanity of others when I had done everything in my power to strip them of it.

I’m too difficult, my standards too exacting, my expectations utterly impossible to meet. I think I’m better than others and possess an ego that deserves its own named continent to hold it. I go off on tangents, I rant unflatteringly about niche issues, I simply talk about things nobody else cares about at any level. I have an acerbic way of expressing myself that is off-putting to others, and I lack delicacy. Oh yes, I am utterly without tact. 

I know the way I’m perceived, and I’m here to set the record straight: I don’t care. Who could even articulate their own glaring faults with the same laser precision instead of simply looking with self-satisfaction at mine and thinking, See? You’re not that great. I refuse to take criticism from anyone who looks like they chew with their mouth open, and you’d be shocked; shocked, I tell you, by how many in these lands meet that criteria. You can take that back to your mirror and ponder it.

The world stands waiting with a yoke to slam down on my shoulders that demands I be easier to like, that my actions be uncomplex and easy to comprehend. If I cannot (or will not) be liked, then it is equally prepared to saddle me with the weight of a simple villainess that might be scorned and discarded, written off as capital-B Bad. Or worse yet, fashioned into a springboard for mundane heroes to launch careers against, filled with unimpeachable goodness in some kind of rote play for feeble-brained piggies eating from a trough full of simple-to-digest morals. Oh, rot already.

Alright, I’ll admit it: I didn’t think this one through. I’m a calculated woman by many measures, prideful of my capacity to see an outcome and work my way to it in some rational, planned-upon way, and it is a rare day that I find myself completely shooting from the hip, as it were. Improvisation is a tool, not a method, and yet that is exactly what I did (am presently doing) when presented with an opportunity to make off with the lady of the evening’s most prized possession after a rather heated discussion over canapes...and perhaps just a bit more gin than what would otherwise be advisable in a level-headed scenario. So sue me.

If it were it murder that I was guilty of and not simply larceny, I would vehemently insist it was a crime of passion. You know what? Strike that, it was (is) absolutely a crime of passion irrespective of the particulars of said act. I am presently a guest at some-noble-or-other’s dinner party and fundraiser for the arts, and let me tell you that when they wanted to talk about, we shall say, the anthropology of Ilsabard, I did my utmost to remain polite and composed. I redirected the conversation away from imperial affairs to architecture, to culinary arts, to anything but the present subject because I am and have been many things, but a fool is not chief among any of them. And yet, our hostess, the gracious conductor of the evening’s affairs at her indoor menagerie, continued to insist at elevated volumes her crackpot theory that a pureblood’s trademark third eye is—ugh, must I repeat it?—some sort of special gem attuned at such a frequency so as to receive direct instructions from the Emperor in times of need. Surely you could forgive me for losing my shit.

I, mere moments before now, gathered the last of my social graces and excused myself to freshen up in the ladies’ room as a means of preventing myself from starting fires I couldn’t put out (that metaphor is courtesy my late husband, whose turns of phrase were rarely so apt, but he did manage to get it right a few times), and that’s when I stumbled upon the opportunity of a lifetime. Just as I rounded a corner in the courtyard, I nearly trampled the selfsame bird I had just spend an hour prior in the evening listening to Lady Conspiracy drawl on and on about in great detail. This beady-eyed red monstrosity dragging its feathered veil on the ground like a slovenly bride is a rare breed imported from the Far East and is rumored to be worth millions. Why? I couldn’t say. It hasn’t had a thought in its empty little skull worth so much as ten gil, and yet it’s been elevated to the status of some of the most iconic masterpieces. Not that it would know it from the way it stares up at me with its dead, thoughtless stare.

Silvestre. A fine name for a cocksure young man in a cravat; a proud chestnut horse, perhaps; or maybe you’d fancy an ancient term for pasturelands that evokes an idyllic rural scene. It was a terrific place to raise homely and incurious children destined for a clerical bureau in some beige outpost, but an inspiring nest for the brilliant future it was not. Quite the opposite when you know a bit of history, which is this: Silvestre was once hailed in its heyday as a bustling ceruleum town ringed by unusually rich deposits that whispered wicked little promises of a cosmopolitan future into each and every farmer’s ear turned in its direction if only we kept the blue gold flowing. For a people in the throes of Emperor Solus’ technological destiny, who were they to deny this blessing?

When the boom happened, so too did the mundane town’s appeal: it started conservatively with an expanded selection of sundries at the grocer, but then up went a brick department store boasting slender mannequins draped in mink and merino. Dreary facades were demolished and replaced with soaring new architecture that stretched toward the sky in silent mimicry of our own aspirations. The ceruleum fields attracted a renowned military civil engineer who had just the equipment to double the output, and what do you know? We had a radio tower erected within the month, as well, and the elders spent Firesday evenings dancing in their parlors to all their favorites thanks to the land’s bounty. And now that they had secured the notice of the army, Silvestre outdid itself with a crown jewel, a playhouse to rival the Gran Maschera, complete with a new order of middle-class climbers modeling themselves after the excess they had once seen as impossible and out of reach.

What the citizens of Silvestre had not attracted was the care and attention of a geologist who might have warned them when the soil and rock began to erode from the mountains and foothills around them. Green hillsides withered as the nutrients ran downstream, starving ecosystems of needed life. Trees grew gnarled and barren, and in time, they simply rotted and collapsed, the deep neglect driving wildlife to greener pastures in a most literal sense. Bit by bit, decay crept over the horizon, leaving the land around Silvestre to wizen. And when the water began turning a remarkable shade of sapphire, the mayor laughed; “Am I concerned about what outsiders might think if they hear someone complain that Silvestre’s waters are too blue? Well, of course I am; we’re already scrambling to build hotels to house the current wave of visitors!” Clever, I’ll grant, but the weight of his hubris only hastened the speed at which the whole operation collapsed several years later.

It’s the season of fertility and abundance in the temperate valleys of lesser Ilsabard, and the land is heavy with potential, sickly sweet and sticky with excess. Slender boughs sag with fattened fruits whose swollen flesh threatens to rip open and release a flood of syrup bulging within. He knows I hate the unruly properties of uncultivated land, but row after row after row of staked vines forced into orderly lines makes the excursion feel safe enough to be spontaneous, contained enough to come undone. This is a rare treat for a man saddled with the curse of someone like me; that is to say, I would rather immolate than show up to my own surprise party, which makes grand romantic gestures an impossible feat...

And yet, here we are.

It’s unseasonably hot in the vineyard where we crush fallen grapes under our combined weight. Hem held high for the one I adore who even saw fit to lay his jacket down for me before he pried my knees apart and gazed between my legs like he always does, regarding my core like an opulent chest of jewels opened to his hungry sights time and time again. This isn’t like me, this sprawled, swept-up thing with no panties on, but I have ever been racing to remake myself for the sake of my craft; what’s one more facet in a gem that never gets duller? What’s another faucet of pleasure in a shared life that drips with beauty and wants for nothing? We hold our bottomless cups to its gush and then clink them together before we drink our fill. Cheers to us, and to nobody else.

-

Back in our frost-touched Elysium thirty stories higher, at least fifty degrees colder, and over several hundred malms from our rumpled outlines on the flattened grass, I watch his tan grow ashy. We’ve traded birdsong for artifice as machines scream a hellish chorus to accompany a ghastly performance. I witness the pantomime of hope as a nurse gloves her arms up to the elbow in my husband’s blood before the blackened and crumbling walls have even stopped smoking and she reads a steady stream of numbers in statistical trance. Ten, ninety-two, one hundred sixty-seven, one-ten. He’s slipping. He’s slipping. He’s back.

To the stratified deserter, the collapse was not yet real. In fairness, from the frosty windows of flight 8809-C-Epsilon packed with the Empire's most luxurious refugees, all the world is just a little diorama anyway as we break past the clouds and float untouchably into the infinite ceruleum blue. How fortunate were we to take flight as the dregs of the motherland smoldered at our backs, our impeccable skyscrapers twisted and smoking like last night's cigarettes in the ashtray while we sip aged whiskey in earnest belief that a little hair of the dog will take the edge off the horrors we have yet to reckon with seeing. Hingan-expat-turned-Garlean-crooner, the mononymous Tosa, who moved to Garlemald when her music career began to really take off tries to muffle the sound of the pill bottle shaking when she taps out the little helpers that will put her straight to sleep, but half of us in this place could name the prescription by the sound of the rattle alone. Her haunted eyes are naught but two dark holes pointed dimly at the seat behind her until the meds take hold.

I’ve been drenched in misery long before this bitter flight, a widow for six weeks, and I mark the passage of each like my own baby, my grief nurtured quietly from grape-sized to grapefruit in the blink of an eye. Our firstborn was to be named Valentina after a painter we could both agree on (a huge deal, if you know me, not that you do), and our second would be Alexander, for my father-in-law that shaped my husband into the man he is, was. Two children, a boy and a girl; there were ways to guarantee it, Darius told me, and ways to promise their good health; we'd met with no fewer than three specialists to discuss how, and I was struck with awe at their quiet power to shape flesh and destiny. One of the manifold tragedies of the Empire was its capacity to create miracles with one hand while it bloodied the other. I had begun to shift my diet, to meticulously cull the impurities from my presence at every turn in order to prepare for the treatments that would make my body a gilded bassinet for a child that was designed to be loved beyond measure. Now I’m left with an empty cradle, both within and without. I fill the space with another gimlet, the stewardess arriving with impeccable timing the moment I set one glass down to replace it with another. I must say, the service at the end of the world is remarkably sharp.

We're no more than forty-five minutes into the flight and the convivial chatter has quieted into a grave silence. This wasn't some gradual sobering; quite the opposite, in fact, as the sedatives half the flight swallowed at liftoff with a swig of champagne in toast to the ashes of civilization have begun to take hold. I alone remain awake and lucid under the black veil I've been wearing all six weeks, and I have the liberty from under this pall to people-watch with flagrant disregard. Nobody looks at me here, nobody even attempts eye contact or so much as a sideways glance. Before you remind me that we're all carrying a weight under these depressing circumstances, they haven't so much as acknowledged I’m alive since the funeral, a massive affair that drew thousands, and I have always sensed their relief that they no longer have to pretend to love me in order to express their genuine affection for my more-lovable husband. Has it really been so bad sharing vodka tonics at charity galas? Did they really suffer some unrecoverable indignity when they were forced to compliment my gowns and listen to my haughty rambling at the same time I was forced to smile at photos of their horrible, ill-behaved children and pretend not to notice the uneven seams on their low-quality tailoring? What was my most grievous act against these wilted personas except being too interesting, too esoteric, too untouchable?

I am violently jarred from the throes of these self-righteous, self-pitying thoughts by a swift-passing burst of turbulence that forces the massive craft to tremble, and I think it’s the gin coming unmoored in my gut, at first, but the blast of nausea that hits the cabin shortly thereafter is enough to briefly lift a groggy Tosa from her medicated slumber, blinking wide and innocent as she lifts her head from her beautiful companion’s shoulder. Perhaps she, too is thinking that the cocktail pill-chaser wasn’t such a good idea, after all, but before she can get an answer, her head falls back down and her coral mouth hangs ajar. Just like that, she’s out again. I’m tempted to bite down on a little helper of my own, bearing in mind that it’s going to be a long flight if every slight wobble of the airship is going to twist my insides so indelicately, but decide in a stroke of fate that I’ve had one drink too many to be certain I can still safely mix substances without being tomorrow morning’s embarrassing obituary.

Peace overtakes once again, restored as quickly as it’d gone, and I’m just helping myself to the complimentary Hannish Culture Digest not five minutes later when another quake rattles the glasses on the tiny airship tables. This time, very few of us are stirring in response, and I note from behind my dramatic veil that the stewards are exchanging furrowed looks as they watch over their wayward flock of tranquilized sheep when the next invisible wave hits with such ferocity that I double forward and immediately empty my latest gimlet back into the glass in the most dignified way I can muster under the circumstances. I hear the sickly gagging of another who’s also met this unfortunate fate, and low groaning rises up from the far end of the cabin. Nobody rushes to offer me a napkin, a breath mint, or a modicum of dignity; instead, as I’m dabbing at my mouth with the corner of the airline napkin, the staff, still clutching their own bellies, are hustling toward the cockpit, leaving the rest of us to our confusion. I turn my attention to the seats around me, where several have begun writhing in their seats, clutching at their stomachs in agony that seems to exceed my own.

“Oughh...mmnh...”

I search for another conscious face and find my gaze meeting that of a well-heeled pureblood man sporting a fresh cut (and where he found a barber in these times is a mystery unto itself, one for another day). He stares at me strangely, studying me over, and I’m on the verge of making a rude remark when I remember my veil and pull it back over my head. “What’s happening?” he mouths at me once he’s certain I’m awake, and I shake my head swiftly in return. His thick brows sink and he looks away to watch his seatmate, ostensibly his wife, begin to murmur indistinctly with a heavy-lidded gaze. He lowers his head near her to listen and I’m briefly transfixed by the tender scene playing out ahead of me, one where he strokes her strawberry blonde curls and regards her affectionately. He holds her chin with his thumb and curled forefinger and it strikes me just then that it’s exactly the way Darius used to hold mine. Before I know it, I’ve reached up to pull the veil back over my face to collect myself as a great, yawning chasm rips open in my belly. A familiar, old yearning gnaws at me as though it were simply waiting for me to return to it in good time, and I know I always will, I always do. The truth of the matter is, I’d prefer to be subsumed by all the unallocated love left for my husband left orphaned in my breast than to move past it. This miserable, rotting hollow I call home.

The intercom opens, and I barely pay it any mind. But when the dead air drags on for longer than anticipated, spilling out an airy hiss, a dry static with no voice, I’m forced away from this tragic reverie to frown up at the metal box. “Well, don’t just leave us hanging, say something,” I crab up at the device. I’m just on the verge of settling on ignoring it again when the whisper drifts through, tinny and bereft of life.

“It hurts...”

It’s my turn to hang now, speechless. The world narrows in, I’m staring through a tunnel. It happens again.

“Help me...”

A cold nail drives into my heart, all time coming to a halt as I look around and suddenly realize my fellow passengers are all behaving with disturbing irregularity. Tosa has fallen to her hands and knees on the floor, where she’s begun to crawl and wriggle with twitching discoordination, and her companion is groaning with increasing volume; no, it’s not groaning anymore, it’s some garbled, malformed attempt at speech without the coordination of tongue and teeth. It’s alien bleating, joined by a caterwaul that comes from the seat directly behind me. I stand up and turn so fast that my soiled glass smashes to the floor, and what meets me is the glassy stare of a Populares political advisor who makes eye contact with me and begins to chant, sending froth flying from her mouth.

“Glory...glory...”

My head swivels to the left as another voice joins, off-key. The strawberry blonde claws at her husband. “Glory! Glory!”

“...to the Empire!”

“...to the Empire!”

My neighbors, the ones with whom I shared my dwindling stock of sleep aids, fall to the floor with limbs twisted, somnambulating as this frightening fervor grips them, changes them. The choking and gurgling is inhuman, their movements grotesque. An elderly woman’s eyes have rolled back as she stares sightlessly at the ceiling, her sunken mouth trying to join the rising cry.

“Glory to the Empire! Glory to the Empire!”

Life after Anatoli was wrenching for Valerie. Since the night of terror at the awards ceremony, it was like a fat, overripe fruit had fallen from its aching bough and now simply waited in the dirt to split open to the worms. Poor, poor Valerie. By contrast, my star only shone brighter for the occasion. Is it wrong to say I was inspired by the bloodshed? Oh, sure, sure, I contributed to the memorial funds a paltry sum here or there, but I was absolutely taken by the thought that I could be more than a thespian, more than a cultural tastemaker, but a galvanizing figure of real political power. I hadn't before given much thought to my husband Darius' philanthropy work; it was a charming pastime, an endearing hobby that made him happy and earned him praise (goodness, do they love him), but somehow it hadn't occurred to me before that bloody affair that it could also be a means through which I could be more. And thus, my next great shapeshifting act began.

I confided my wishes to my husband in private one night over a glass of claret, and I watched in real time as his face filled with a glow of pure, intoxicating adoration. I was always happy to play the trophy on his arm while he raised money for the poorest, but had I known I'd experience the thrill of seeing him light up in such a way, well, perhaps I might have made this move much sooner, and for much less. My volunteerism was met with the utmost enthusiasm; as a matter of fact, he was thrilled to award me a place as the keynote speaker at his very next event, and insisted I rehearse in front of him over and over and over until he could mouth the words right along with me. And how was it, you might ask? Well, it was an absolute smash success, as though it could be aught else. All the years of scandal and rivalry had built me up to the moment that I flatly defied them all and forced them to love me by being a woman for the people, for peace, for Garlemald's bright and more equitable future.

"Are you new? I would have remembered your face."

"Yes, I am. Iris Senatore, I'm filling in for Junia while she's out on maternity leave."

"Oh, good. They told us we were going to be short-staffed on this leg, so everyone is going to be thrilled to see you..."

-

Practicality was not foremost in my mind when settling on Velox airship lines for a monthlong sabbatical, but I think a girl at university can be forgiven a little whimsy, given the semester I endured. My journey here started when I traded pointe shoes for the black wool and oxfords befitting a law library, and immediately racked up an impressive line of benefactors who were all surprised to see that a spinning waif like me had not yet centrifuged all the blood from her empty little head, and opened their generous purses accordingly. Of course, this lasted four weeks before I began meandering away from class until I found a lecture hall I liked better in the form of bioethics, but the year was paid in full and I'd be a fool not to make the most of my options. This scratched my argumentative itch thanks to a series of rather spirited classroom debates on mid-Allagan replication experiments and the ethics of personhood, autonomy, and individual vs. collective good as a value emphasis, but to my great misfortune, I was quickly rooted out for being too eager a participant in their class discussions. This prompted a check over the roll sheet, and, well—you can imagine the rest. Humiliating.

Where was I? Ah, yes. Velox airship lines. I had recently begun sitting in on aerospace magitek engineering classes when I determined it would be best for my education that I have a more formative experience on an airship before proceeding. Certainly I had been a passive rider before with the dance corps, but being an active and conscious participant with the machine around you as it works is altogether a different thing. I had briefly considered the possibility of donning a pilot's uniform in what I can freely admit was an ill-conceived plan from the onset, and rapidly dialed back my expectations to spare myself disaster and instead take my place as a flight attendant such that I might have unfettered access both to the craft itself and to its knowledgeable caretakers. From there, it was simply a matter of finding an opportunity and slipping sideways through the cracks.

Look, I'm not going to say Velox was a prime choice in a practical sense; for example, Eurus Fuga would have made a more technically sound host, given that they recently overhauled their crafts with models featuring cutting-edge, fuel-efficient engines and an updated fuselage. On the other hand, I chose Velox because their menswear-inspired double-breasted, slim-fit black blazer dresses and accompanying trench-style waist belt were breathtaking and, as I would later realize, the spark that ignited my love of couture. I spent two weeks scouring the flea market for a silk scarf that was a passable knockoff of the real thing at a glance and wrote a fellow student's entire midterm take-home essay so he would have time to sew a uniform lookalike to my measurements. Who says barter is outdated? For me, it was lifeblood.

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