#!prose

---

"Do you suppose it's too late in their development to teach them to call me something more sophisticated than 'Ma'?" Maribelle asks. "You know, tell them it was all a little farce, but that it's time now for them to speak like princes should?" Lissa, jogging Owain's chubby little legs around in circles as he lies on his back, vocalizing pure delight, responds,

"Oh, don't be such a fuddy-dud, Maribelle! They're both babies, 'Ma' is just easier for them to say." Maribelle at her desk heaves a world-weary sigh.

"On the contrary, Brady has firmly established himself in the realm of the 'terrible twos', as I'm told they're called," she insists.

Lissa decides not to point out that Brady, sitting tamely on Maribelle's lap as he tries in vain to undo the absurd miniature cravat he's wearing, isn't so terrible. At least, when he's not crying. Then again, he's so often crying, that maybe the point is moot. If it were up to her, poor little Brady wouldn't be parading around in so much poof that he practically waddles, but then again (somewhat ironically), Maribelle is far better-versed in what a royal upbringing should look like than she is. She play-nibbles at Owain's stubby toes, eliciting another gale of laughter. He thumps his arms up and down enthusiastically, babbling a mile a minute in his own obscure baby language. She wonders if Brady can understand his brother, or if he's forgotten baby-speak in favor of his newfound love of proclaiming, "No!" at everything.

Maribelle looks down from her papers and makes a scandalized noise.

"Lissa! Take his feet out from your mouth--who knows where they've been?"

"He's a baby," Lissa replies with a good-natured roll of her eyes, "He can barely even walk! Where are his feet even supposed to go?"

"No!" Brady chimes in, and Lissa takes that as him siding with her on the matter. Abandoning any pretense of work, Maribelle sets her work aside to dandle Brady on her knee.

"Do you suppose he's simply saying that to be contrary?" she asks. The question is probably meant to be rhetorical, but Lissa can't resist.

"Contrary? Your child? You know, there's a saying about apples and trees..."

"Yes, and our sons shall be good apples," Maribelle proclaims, punctuating her statements with doting kisses on Brady's round, flushed cheek. He bears his mother's outburst of highly ignoble affection with surprising patience, without a single tear. Lissa is beginning to suspect that Brady cries out of happiness just as much as he does out of fear, anger, or most any other emotion he has. Not to be ignored, Owain begins to crescendo his babbling, as if he has a host of opinions on the matter. Lissa tickles his tummy, and he's back to laughter.

"Good, respectable apples, who do not call their mama 'Ma' like hooligans," Maribelle insists.

---

"some men say an army of horse and some men say an army on foot and some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing on the black earth. but i say it is what you love."

Somehow, the task of organizing the group's flying mounts has fallen implicitly to Azura.  The matter had been a nonissue until Cheve added its forces to Hoshido's, bringing with them a small but well-trained flight of wyvern riders.  Most pegasi don't balk at a lone wyvern, but a group of them is enough to set both parties on edge, and the kinshi begin aggressive displays of their feathers the moment they lay eyes on the unfamiliar wyverns.  Thus, the handful of wyverns are relegated to an awkward, ramshackle stable of their own, cheek and jowl with Silas' lone cavalry horse, who regards his new companions with placid disinterest.

Azura doesn't mind spending time with any of the mounts, for all that they belong to other people.  Each animal has its own personality, much the same as any human--the key difference is that none of the animals attempt to solicit her for unwanted conversations.  It's almost enough to make her wish sometimes for such a companion of her own, though she wonders how many secrets she could spill to an animal before even that became too much.

The wyvern whose stable Azura visits now belongs to Scarlet, and the other wyverns regard her with the same deference as the humans do her rider.  She's a beautiful creature, easy to admire in the way the striking white of her scales fades seamlessly into the soft, pearly grey of her underbelly.  Her temperament is a gentle and patient one, though Azura knows from her time in the Nohrian courts that most wyverns are bred to be so fierce that even their masters must struggle to assert their dominance.  Not so with this wyvern, who butts her head gingerly against Azura's hand, signaling that she'd like for her nose to be rubbed.  Azura humors the wyvern--the feeling of scales against her skin is a soothing one.  Had she never seen Scarlet and her mount in combat, she might worry that the wyvern is under the impression that she's a house cat.  

As Scarlet's wyvern leans forward into the petting, her reins dangle down, and Azura notes that they're studded with jewels.  Azura has only spoken to Scarlet one-on-one on a few occasions, yet the bejeweled reins are so quintessentially her that Azura has to smile.  It's one that twitches the corners of her lips upwards, despite her brief effort to contain it.  She takes the reins into her free hand for a closer look, brushing her thumb across the stones, each one evenly spaced from the next and pressed deep into the leather.  Some of them are paste, while others are simple rocks, and there's even what appears to be several kernels of vividly-colored corn, a food Azura has to think about for a moment before she can recall its name.

Someone knocks rhythmically on the wall of the stable.  Both Azura and the wyvern's heads jolt up--Azura's in surprise, the wyvern's in evident delight.  Scarlet leans against the wall like she's been there for a while, half in her armor, half out of it.  Almost immediately, Azura shuts herself down into her default mode for socialization.  Polite, even sweet at rare times, with a manufactured air of mystery that keeps people at arm's length before they can push her away even further.

"I apologize for being in here without your leave," she says, quiet and even.  "I'll be gone in just a moment."  Scarlet waves a hand in easygoing dismissal.

"It's no big deal.  I see you down here every so often, and if Bijou likes you, you're good in my book."  

Bijou can only be the wyvern Azura is still petting, and Azura's incredibly limited knowledge of the language is enough to tell her that the name means "jewel" in Chevois.  At the very least, it's certainly fitting.  As Scarlet strolls over to join her, Azura stays stiffly rooted to the spot, like an amateurish model holding a wooden pose for a painter.  She can see Scarlet sneaking glances at her, trying to figure out a way to drum up a conversation without scaring her off.

"You ever flown before?" is what she decides on.  She doesn't ask in a leering or condescending way.  It's nothing more than an innocent get-to-know-you question, the kind that Azura has conditioned herself to be wariest of.  Earnestness is far more difficult to respond to than passive-aggression, or even outright hatred.  Letting herself be wanted or unwanted as a commodity, and overtures to friendship leave her waiting for the point where she becomes too melancholic, too inaccessible, for the other person to bother any longer.  She feels as though she's missed her cue, and rushes her response like the speed of her words can make up for her silence.

"I've had some elementary training on a pegasus," she admits.  Scarlet simply nods in response, running a cupped hand up and down the stretch of her wyvern's long neck.  Bijou looks for all the world like a cat having her chin scratched, her body language loose and relaxed, her fierce eyes hooded as she leans into Scarlet's touch and emits a little trill of contentment.  

"So, would you maybe wanna try flying with us sometime?  I mean, since you're always down here with the wyverns, looks to me like you're at least a little interested, yeah?"  Thinking that Scarlet is referring to combat, Azura responds in kind.

"High mobility may help me accomplish my tasks faster, but I feel wrong in reducing a flying soldier to little more than my bored escort.  I'll have to decline, for your sake."  For her own sake as well, as she never knows what to say to whichever sky knight hovers back and watches her sing, their wonder always a touch begrudging.

"Nah," Scarlet says, shaking her head, "I meant just for fun.  Y'know, like a joy ride.  You've got some gorgeous skies here in Hoshido that I won't tire of seeing up close anytime soon.  Hell, I even got Ryouma to go on a few with me," and at this, Azura perks up in surprise.  Seeing that she has Azura's attention, Scarlet is enthusiastic to continue.  "Back in Cheve, when we all thought he was just some Hoshidan noble's son with nothing better to do than lend us rebels a hand.  Sure, we had to go at night--less risk of getting shot down--but it's still fun."

Azura tries to picture Ryouma going on a "joy ride", or doing much of anything involving joy.

"He's a good guy, your brother," adds Scarlet.  "I don't feel like some sort of second-rate lackey the way I thought I might, dealing with him, or really with any of you Hoshidan royalty."

"By blood, I am not a member of the Hoshidan royal family," Azura demurs.  She stops herself short of saying that Ryouma is not her brother--he called her his sister when he first introduced Scarlet to her, she remembers suddenly.  

"You're still a sweet girl, though."  Before Azura has a chance to respond to that peculiar remark, Scarlet hurries on from the matter.  "I mean, I didn't come this far just to have Cheve go from being a Nohrian territory to a Hoshidan one, like it's just a hot potato for the big-wigs to throw back and forth."

"Are you admitting to me that your alliance with Hoshido is nothing more than a matter of convenience?" Azura asks, meeting Scarlet's eyes for the first time in their conversation.  Even when her intention is not to be confrontational, she knows this is a gesture that unnerves people.  For her part, Scarlet only laughs.

"You can be a blunt one when you want, huh?  Look, I know Cheve doesn't have a chance in hell at independence on its own, but winding up stuck as a friendly country's vassal still isn't freedom, even if it's cozier."  Azura wonders, then, how much Ryouma has told Scarlet about her, for Scarlet to draw such a hamfisted parallel between Cheve's situation and Azura's own.  Then again, perhaps it only stings her because Scarlet is completely right.  Azura loves Hoshido dearly, but Hoshido loves her only conditionally in return.

She decides it's time to go, her endurance for conversation spent--it's not running away if you go about it right, even if a lonely part of you wouldn't mind staying.

"I hadn't meant to interrogate you.  If you don't mind, I'll leave now, like I said I would," Azura says.  Scarlet looks surprisingly woebegone as Azura begins to withdraw, giving Bijou one last pat on the nose for her quiet, impartial observation of the conversation.

"I didn't mean to scare you off," Scarlet says.  "I'd love it if you came and visited Cheve, once this is all over.  Hell, I'd love it if I could talk to you a little more, period."  When Azura looks back at her, there's a blush covering the freckles on her cheeks, like she'd expected this "chance" meeting to go differently.  Azura scolds herself inwardly for wanting from afar, yet also for the tiring persistence of her own aloofness.  

For the first time, she tries to imagine herself just vanishing into anonymity.  It seems no different from the death she can accept is coming for her, if she thinks of it as something cold and far away.  Instead of dying with a blade through her gut, or singing herself away into a wisp of foam, Azura ventures to picture herself taking a joy ride with Scarlet on her wyvern.  Again, she knows she's been silent for too long, so she indulges Scarlet (and herself) with a smile.

---

Exhaustion creeping in, Lissa moves surreptitiously to pick up her staves.  A few local healers have been in and out of the birthing room, helping her with the aftermath, but she judges that now would be a safe time to leave the baby she's just delivered to his family.

"Will you bless the child, Princess Lissa?" the mother asks from the bed.  Lissa looks up with a start, jostling a loose strand of hair completely free from its pigtail.  It tumbles down gracelessly to cling to her sweaty cheek, though Lissa takes distant comfort in the fact that she's hardly the only one who looks like she's been through the wringer.

"Me?" Lissa echos, voice lilting in surprise.  No, the other Princess Lissa in the room, she retorts to herself, inwardly.  The other Princess Lissa who can be graceful both before and after half a day's work delivering a child.  

"If it wouldn't trouble you too greatly," supplicates the baby's other mother, taking the child from her tired wife's arms.

"No, of course not," Lissa rushes to respond, not wanting either woman to think she's too snooty to put in a few nice words with Naga for their son.  She lays her staves aside to accept the tightly-swaddled baby, wondering briefly how he feels about being passed around from stranger to stranger like a hot potato.  His wrinkled little face peers up at Lissa from amidst his blankets, and she can feel his tiny limbs wriggling in fidgety bewilderment at the newness of his own existence.  

She tries to remember how a blessing for a newborn is even supposed to go--if she ever knew this nicety of a cleric's many duties, she's long since forgotten it in favor of all the harder minutiae of being a battlefield healer.  Emm used to love to bless children, Lissa thinks.  She'd go to them one by one, newborn to awkward teenager, whenever she got the chance.  Lissa can picture Emmeryn's hand on each child's forehead, her benevolent smile (though the details of her face are harder and harder to call up, these days), but she can't for the life of her recall what sacred words her sister would use.  As per usual, when it comes to being a princess, Lissa decides that she's simply going to have to wing it.

"Um."  Off to a fantastic start.  Lissa takes a deep, calming breath, closes her eyes, and tries again.  "May you have a long, happy life, a home to always return to, and people in that home who will always love you."  She lets the words hang there for a moment, hoping that they sounded serene and sincere, rather than childish or holier-than-thou.  Halfway through opening her eyes, Lissa suddenly squeezes them shut again, following up with a hasty, "In Naga's name."

"In Naga's name," both mothers intone, gratitude writ in the tired harmony of their voices.

---

"Are we done here?" Chrom blurts out, nearly the second Lissa rounds the corner into his line of sight.  Lissa snorts with utterly indelicate incredulity, plopping herself down into the chair beside her brother with an equal lack of poise.

"Chrom, really?  That's the first thing you have to say after I've been off delivering a baby all day?  'Well,'" slipping here into an exaggeratedly deep imitation of Chrom's voice, "'We've popped that baby right out, so let's move on, Shepherds!'  Jeez."  Chrom bears her poor (though suitably cavalier) imitation of him with a long-suffering roll of his eyes, likewise devoid of princely patience.

"All right, all right.  At least you were actually doing something, as opposed to sitting around uselessly and making the entire manor's staff uncomfortable just by existing.  I hadn't meant to impose on these people for so long, is all."  

"These people" being a minor noblewoman and her household, situated right along the coast of the small, landlocked sea between Ylisse, Plegia, and Regna Ferox.  Chrom's advisers had described the noblewoman vaguely as "an eccentric mage"--a phrase that Lissa supposes is a politely condescending way of alluding to the fact that the woman has a wife.  She sees nothing "eccentric" about the hospitality the small detachment of Shepherds has been shown, their travel by sea delayed by stormy skies and stormier waters.  Indeed, Lissa is starting to feel proud of herself, for having a hand in delivering the baby and paying their hostess back, in some small way.

"They asked me to bless the baby, you know," Lissa says, half to make it feel a bit more real, half to bask in her own usefulness compared to Chrom.

"They asked you?" Chrom repeats, with a little laugh of disbelief.  Lissa shoots him a glare, and his smile turns softer, more appropriately proud and brotherly.  "What did you say?  Gods know I'm glad they didn't ask me."

"I told him that if he ever has a little sister, he has to take her seriously and never be a jerk to her, or else he'll wake up with frogs in his bed every morning."

"That sounds more like a curse than a blessing!"

"Hey, so I'm a curse?" accuses Lissa.  She's mostly just returning fire at his teasing, now self-assured with the knowledge that Chrom probably couldn't have come up with anything better himself.  Thinking of her sister-in-law, pregnant in Ylisstol, Lissa can only imagine what a dunderhead Chrom will be with his own baby.

"You do have your moments," Chrom admits.  He goes silent, then, as if mulling something over.  "Although," and Lissa is instantly wary, hearing the very timbre of his voice shift from a teasing older brother to a prince about to make a speech, "You did a great thing today, Lissa.  Make no mistake."  Lissa averts her gaze a little.

"I've delivered babies before, Chrom.  I didn't skip out on all my cleric's training, you know."  She makes a show of nonchalance, not entirely sure how to face a rare compliment from her brother head-on, nevermind one delivered with an iota of eloquence.

"I mean it--it's a great gift you have, to be able to save lives while so many of us are preoccupied only with taking them.  Every once in a while, even I wish..." he trails off, contemplating the hilt of Falchion that he seems to have taken ahold of subconsciously.  Emmeryn had refused to touch their father's sword, but Chrom had taken to it so naturally that no one even bothered to test if Lissa could wield the one blade that might prove her of Exalted blood, Brand or no Brand.  Despite that, she can't imagine Chrom as anyone or anything but Falchion's rightful wielder, for all his private agonizing over whether or not he's making his own legacy or merely continuing their father's.  

"You wouldn't last a day as a priest," Lissa reassures him.  "If I had Falchion, you'd just bop people around with staves until they broke."

"And you think you could lift Falchion?" Chrom teases in return.  He keeps his doubts so close, unlike everything else he feels, but Lissa knows when not to push him.  

"Hey, mister, you were actually cool for a moment, there--don't be too quick to totally ruin it."  Chrom reaches over and ruffles Lissa's hair a little too hard, twisting even more of it free from her especially haphazard pigtails.  With an agitated groan, Lissa tugs off both her hair ties, letting the whole tangled mess tumble over her shoulders.  Chrom chuckles with the kind of obnoxious triumph only an older brother could exude.

"I must admit, I took that line from Frederick--he said it about Emm, once.  But I do believe it's true for you, too."

Lissa cuts herself short before she can even speak with a jaw-cracking yawn, the exhaustion she'd temporarily forgotten now settling back in.  About a second before the yawn ends, she remembers to cover her mouth.  Chrom snorts, a shared habit of theirs that he swears up and down he's grown out of.  Lissa flops over to the side, resting her head on Chrom's shoulder--the clothed one, of course.  If he's going to tease her, he can be her pillow for a bit, too.

"Thanks," she mumbles belatedly.  "Wake me up in an hour or so?"

---

"but me you have forgotten"

0Io swears, at the last, dizzy moment, that Miyako is looking up at her.  Too late, she wonders if either of them will remember any of this.

1

"My name is Houtsuin Miyako, acting chief of JP's," she announces.  This time, Io does not immediately wonder where Yamato has gone.

2

"You have promise as a tactician," Miyako remarks.  "You're certain you were really always a civilian?"  She says it in a tone that could almost sound fond, and Io tries not to deny herself the possibility, for once, that someone could ever like her back.

"I think so," is Io's response.  "I'm just doing what I have to do, for all of us."  Miyako nods; her mouth is a sliver of a smile.  

3

"I'm not really that brave," Io insists, hands raised nonconfrontationally, like she doesn't really want Miyako closer.  Miyako's eyes narrow.

"False modesty will get you nowhere, Nitta-san."  She steps forward--not enough that she's in Io's personal space, but almost, almost.  "If you need validation, let me tell you--I like you when you're bold."

4

Io wonders if she's hopelessly fickle, if her romantic instinct is to fall head over heels for the nearest person who helps her stave off the apocalypse (again).  She makes herself look at Hibiki, really look at him, and he's still comforting and secure and warm--but he doesn't make her hot, she realizes, mortified by the thought.  Sleeping under a tarp at a refugee camp, Io pictures herself pulling Miyako down to her, instigating a kiss on the vague memory of Miyako saying that she likes it when Io is bold.  She can't quite recall when Miyako told her that, but the words are so easy to hear in her voice.

5

They all start to remember, by now--at Fumi's behest, Nicaea 2.5 now has a changelog, going back to their original fight with the Triangulum.

"Are you used to remembering?" Io asks Hibiki quietly.  His glance slides to the side, nonchalant, but she can see that his brow is furrowed.

"I wouldn't say I'm used to it, but it happened before.  With the Septentriones, that is."

"Do you think Saiduq and Miyako-san remembered it all from the beginning, then?"  It makes her uneasy, to think of meeting and re-meeting Miyako over and over again, when Miyako has already known her all along.  Hibiki smiles--the one where he looks for all the world like he knows something you don't know yet, something you'll like when you figure it out for yourself.

"Probably."

6

Io takes Miyako's gloved hand in her own, willing the feel of the fabric on her palm, of each individual finger laced between her own, to stay with her.

7

"I will remember," Miyako assures her, perfectly rational.  "Believe me, I remember quite well how long it takes you, each time around, to call me by my name."

8

"Miyako," Io blurts, nearly tripping in her haste over a pipeline exposed by the torn asphalt of the street.

"How forward," is Miyako's remark, punctuated by a smile that could keep Io fighting forever.

9

Intensely aware of Miyako's gaze on her bare thighs, Io wills herself not to bite her lower lip out of sheer embarrassment.

"Why persist in wearing your school uniform?" Miyako asks suddenly.  "Surely by now, you would think to bring a more suitable change of clothing."

"I, um...  It slips my mind, usually, even though I know every time that I won't even finish the school day."  This is an excuse, Io knows.  "My home is always gone, by the time I get a chance to go back for anything."  She does not go back for her parents anymore, not when the thought of seeing them at the start of the next loop is half of what keeps her going through the one she's already in.  Miyako's awkward arm around her shoulder is the other half of her motivation.

"It wouldn't be any trouble for me to procure you something more sensible, provided you don't mind wearing clothes with a JP's logo."  Io looks at Miyako's flashy coat pinned to her shoulders, the svelte dress uniform, and smiles at the notion of Miyako telling her to dress practically.

10

They want her to channel Lugh again, and Io finds herself surprised it's taken this long.  This has nothing to do with the Dragon Stream, though--they need only a medium, to pierce this invader's defenses with something not entirely human, nor entirely divine.

"Logic tells me that you're more suited to act as a medium than I am," Miyako says, just as Io closes her eyes to try and picture the magic circle in her mind.  For this, she no longer needs Yamato's summoning stage.  "Sentiment tells me otherwise."

"It's natural to worry, I think," Io reassures her.  "That's what friends do."  Miyako takes Io's hand in her own and presses a kiss to it.  For once, she does not meet Io's eyes head-on.

"My irrational fretting comes from something more than just a sense of  platonic camaraderie."

11

"Don't," Io gasps, even as her free hand punches the commands into her phone to summon a demon with healing skills, infuriatingly steady.  She feels lightheaded, but far too in command of herself when Miyako is bleeding out in her arms.

"The needs of the many," is Miyako's firm, ragged insistence.  Her voice is waterlogged with blood.  Io does not cry--she only aches.

15

Miyako looks a thousand years younger and a thousand years older all at once, Io thinks.

"You could have died," she says, voice alarmingly tremulous.  "I'm such a hypocrite."  Io isn't the type to throw Miyako's words back in her face, particularly when she can believe, now, that she is worth more alive.  It pains her to know that Miyako still doesn't feel the same way about herself.

"I'll be here for you as long as you need me."  Given their situation, it's one promise Io is certain she can keep.

19

"I, um.  I love you."  Miyako rolls over rather abruptly, eliciting a pained squeak from the metal cot frame.

"What's brought this on?" she asks, sounding less businesslike than perhaps she wants to.

"I don't think I've ever confessed to you properly," Io soldiers on, trying to imagine herself working up from notes in Miyako's shoe locker to a full letter, a date, a relationship that lets them grow older together.  "I keep thinking about what I want to say, only everything ends up sounding so silly."  The generator buzzes ubiquitously behind her every word, rushing in as soon as she's done speaking to chew on Miyako's silence.

"This is perfect," Miyako says at last.  "This is more than enough."

23

These invaders have been here long enough that Io really does feel like they're at war.  A war of attrition, against a veritable fleet of stars that Miyako and Saiduq insinuate are not even a proper asterism, but instead a group of renegades hurtling themselves at Heaven's Throne.

"Maybe this means we're almost done?" Io ventures.  "If there aren't any legitimate successors left, maybe invaders will stop coming for the throne."  Miyako smiles wanly and shakes her head.

"This is nothing more than an invitation for the riffraff of the cosmos to grab at control of the Akashic Record.  Then again, perhaps I'm not one to talk, given my own status."

"You're not like them," insists Io.

"Really?  If I were a proper Triangulum and I could sit Heaven's Throne, would you let me?"  Miyako asks the question, and it hovers somewhere between a challenge and a plea for reassurance.  Io thinks of something Hibiki told her once, who knows how many times ago.  A world that only he remembered, where Saiduq took Heaven's Throne and stayed there, putting everyone else in a surreptitious little pocket dimension where not even Canopus could touch them.  I missed him, Hibiki had told her simply.  She wonders if that world spins on, undisturbed, if she and Miyako ever met there,

"I would miss you a lot," Io admits, "But I think you would make a good, fair Administrator."

??

"It's my birthday," Io says suddenly.  The loops seldom go on this long.  She realizes that she is technically a high school graduate, too.

"Happy birthday," Miyako tells her.  "I'm afraid I've never celebrated such an occasion before--will this do?"  She cups Io's face in her hands and kisses her with a slowness that reminds them both of having all the time in the universe, and yet never enough of it.

???

Io releases her grip, but Miyako twists and catches Io's hand instead.

---

"not one girl i think who looks on the light of the sun will ever have wisdom like this"

She takes Soleil out on a cold winter night, cold enough that her own breath tears through her lungs and makes her teeth ache.  They are stargazing--Soleil's suggestion, though Ophelia knows it's born more from a desire to cater to her interests than any genuine astrological knowledge on Soleil's part.  Ophelia resolves to be her teacher, then.

"If you look...right there, yes," squinting along the line of her own pointing finger, "You'll see the tresses of the queen flowing behind her as she preens and displays her beauty for all the cosmos to see."

"Is it just her hair I'm supposed to be looking for?" Soleil asks.  Ophelia glances up to see her peering, mouth set in a perplexed pout.  "Where's the rest of her?"  Soleil's breath puffs out in a soft cloud through the slightest gap between her lips, one that Ophelia is seized by the desire to kiss.  She buries the thought, but not deeply.  

"You've got to imagine that bit," Ophelia admits.  "Once you've studied the configurations of the stars enough, their faces and stories begin to take shape."  Soleil nods slowly, evidently pretending that she can pick out the right cluster of stars and draw a thread between them.  Ophelia loves her, quietly, for trying.  She indicates another array of constellations, down and to the right from the first pair.  "Here," she says, "This might be more to your tastes.  According to the Hoshidans, this set of stars signifies a tenma-riding princess locked in mortal combat with a leviathan of the deep!  When no prince came to save her from the beast's jaws, she tore herself loose of her bonds, sprung onto her steed, and fought for her own freedom."

Soleil's smile in response is the kind Ophelia can only meet head-on in the dark, where not even a full moon can belie how hard it makes her face flush.  She wonders time and time again why she bothers to hide her affections when Soleil lets hers shine bright and open as the midday sun.  The thought that she's fickle, that she's expecting Soleil to love her (to really love her) just because she's a girl, is what stops Ophelia just short of a sweeping monologue or an overture to a well-timed kiss, every time.  I could save you from that monster, she might say, we could each be one another's princess, we could be each be one another's wings.  It's a shame that her excellent star-themed pickup lines must always go to waste.

She sniffles, and it makes a muffled echo out across the nighttime air.  

"Oh!  Do you need a hanky?  I have, like, six of them, hold on," and Soleil is already snaking a gloved hand into her sleeve, of all places, to produce a handkerchief with what appear to be slightly malformed bunny rabbits prancing all along the edges.  Ophelia accepts it gingerly, picturing Soleil doggedly stitching the design in to make something cute out of a glorified snot rag.

"Confound this leaky faucet of phlegm, broken wide open by the bitter winter's assault," Ophelia complains in a voice made pinched by the handkerchief over her nose.  She tries to blow in the most maidenly way possible, so as to avoid leaving Soleil with the image of her snorting out snot.

"We can go back inside," offers Soleil.  "I can fix you some tea or something, maybe?"

"Tea for true?" teases Ophelia, turning to face Soleil.  "At this hour?"

"It's always time for tea--what else would we be doing?"

Ophelia can think of any number of other things they could be doing, placing a hand lightly on Soleil's forearm.  Light enough that she could brush it off, or bring a hesitant hand of her own to hover just over Ophelia's waist.  It's endearingly awkward, a liminal gesture whose threshold they are both stopping just short of.  They could kiss, like this, under the stars, and no one would ever have to know.  Ophelia's pulse flutters adamantly, leaving her light-headed.  I want to know if you adore me, truly, the way I've come to adore you, she might say.

---

"not tonight," laslow says, like he's been waiting with the words clenched just behind his teeth for the second odin walks through his door. "i love them, truly, even the ones where you're ruler of the universe and i somehow find you incredibly dashing--but not tonight, please." shadows pool into crow's feet under his eyes, and odin wants to burn them away with nothing but his bare fingers. "it's just," laslow swallows though his throat must be so dry, "it's making it harder and harder for me to know what's real and what's fake and what you've been putting in my head."

he doesn't reach out, so odin reaches for him, taking laslow's hand in his own like he can stop it from shaking if he holds it firmly enough. it makes him deliriously ill to see laslow this way, when he is supposed to be the best-adjusted of the three of them.

"i don't have to do it every night," odin offers. his voice comes out low and scratchy against his lips. laslow laughs, and he has such a lexicon of laughter that odin could write a dictionary of it if he could just capture all the sounds right. this laugh is a sad, short little bark, disingenuous and breathless.

"the worst part," leaning in so that his forehead rests against odin's without their eyes meeting, "is that i almost want it, sometimes. for you to keep feeding me false memories."

"they're not false," protests odin, though there is no bite in it. "you and i, we've been together for all these things. it can't be some mass delusion if both our memories overlap--i'm just helping you set the record straight." after a beat, he hastily adds, "but if you don't want the dreams, i won't give them to you." laslow looks up at that, eyes narrowed and bleached of their warmth like something forgotten too long under a desert sun that does not shine in this world.

---

"There we are," Lucina murmurs, hot and throaty as Severa drops to her knees.  Severa almost hates that she thrills with it every time, the way Lucina can make her yield without fail.  Then again, almost (almost) hating it is part of the charm, putting up a fight that is not entirely play to goad Lucina into ruling her with a firmer hand.  Severa drags her gaze up to meet Lucina's, knowing how irascible she must look.

"I'm not a dog," she complains, knowing that her tone borders on outright whining.  Her witticisms sound so much sharper in her mind before they roll off her dull tongue.  "What, do I get a treat for being a good girl?  Or should I just roll over and play dead instead?"

"It depends on if you think this to be rewarding," responds Lucina, her hand drifting over to cradle the back of Severa's head.  This is her velvet glove, when she knows (they both know) Severa wants the iron fist beneath.  "I almost feel as though punishing you is a reward in and of itself, sometimes."  Severa exhales hard, too hard, her petulant poker face crumbling as a low whine of pure want slips from between her parted lips.  Lucina's gentle touch turns sharp all at once, her fingers lacing through Severa's hair at the roots and pulling like hot metal against the skin of her scalp.  "Service me," Lucina orders quietly.

Severa tries not to comply immediately, tries to make it seem like she's considering the ramifications of disobeying rather than already fantasizing about Lucina fucking her face until she can barely breathe.  She tugs at the waistband of Lucina's leggings a bit, mouthing along the line of skin now bared to the too-warm air between their bodies.  Lucina presses her closer, yet she hides her eagerness far better than Severa ever could--the only indicator that perhaps she wants this as badly as Severa does is the dark glassiness of her eyes that makes her Brand burn like a fever pitch in contrast.  Severa is always the first to break, though, perhaps because she wants to be broken, snapped over Lucina's knee like something helpless and wanting.  Fervent in her haste, Severa yanks Lucina's leggings all the way down--

--and feels a tiny piece of her soul die as she comes face to face with the most atrocious smallclothes she's ever seen in her life.

"What," Severa begins, voice trembling with a mix of disbelief and arousal that is now going out the door, unlikely to return, "What in the gods' names is that."  It isn't even a question.

"My new undergarments?"  Lucina's regal air dissipates almost visibly, her expression now open with earnest confusion at Severa's disapproval.  "I'd purchased them just the other day from an Anna, and I'd thought you might like to see them..."

Severa groans in utter dismay--of course, an Anna would enable Lucina's gods-awful fashion sense, so horrendous that it loops back around from comical to just plain bad.  She wants to put an axe through the next gaudy merchant's tent she sees, even if her fashionable vengeance can't be exacted upon the specific Anna who swindled Lucina into paying real money for this abomination.  

The underwear is cut normally enough, and it could actually be flattering, what with the way it hugs Lucina's slender hips and leaves little to the imagination.  Where the problem begins is the material--a faded shade of light blue that looks like it's been washed with too much bleach a few too many times, paired with thick, rough fabric that cannot at all be comfortable when worn right up against particularly sensitive skin.  There's even a little brass button at the top where a ribbon might normally be, winking cheekily in the low light.  Severa wants to scream.

"The only place I'd like to see this hideous affront to good taste is off you and in a garbage fire!  Good gawds, Lucina, I don't even want to know how much money you blew on this thing."

"I bought several pairs, actually," Lucina admits, somewhat abashedly.  "The merchant gave me a bulk discount, and I was told the color flattered my complexion.  Tell me, is this really so much worse than the nightshirt with Exalt Emmeryn's visage stitched into it?  I seem to recall you disapproving of that one as well."

"Um, maybe because that's, like, your aunt?  I don't need Chrom's holy sister watching me have sex with her niece!"  Severa exclaims, unable to believe that Lucina sees no problem in wearing clothing like that to bed--or to anywhere, for that matter.  It probably also counts as some form of sacrilege, both to Naga and to common sense.  "So, yeah, this is at least as awful as the Emmeryn nightie.  Possibly even more awful."

Lucina almost seems a little crestfallen, rather than offended by Severa's scathing criticism of her sorely lacking fashion sense.  Severa, still on her knees, would appreciate it if the ground opened up and swallowed her whole right about now.

"If I were to remove the offending item of clothing, could we perhaps proceed?" asks Lucina tentatively.

"Yeah, maybe if you let me burn it first so that I can get back into the mood.  Gawds, every time I think I've finally stopped you from unleashing the ultimate in bad fashion on me, you pull another turkey out of the hat."

"I don't believe I've ever worn a hat so big as to contain a turkey."  Severa scrutinizes Lucina's face for any sign at all that she's joking, and catches an upwards quirk at the corner of her lips.

"Now you're just messing with me," she accuses, eyes narrowing.

"I'd thought my choice of underwear was quite fetching.  I might even suggest you wear a matching pair next time."  Lucina brushes a curled finger beneath Severa's chin, smiling with a radiance that is patently unfair given the absurd situation.  "I might even make it an order."

"You are absolutely not turning your horrid, ugly underwear into a pickup line," Severa grouses tersely.  Of course, the mere mention of Lucina ordering her to do anything sets a spark of arousal pooling low in her stomach.  Taking another look at Lucina's undergarments douses that spark with the force of a small hurricane.  "Now take that ridiculous thing off so that I can go to bed without getting nightmares."

"Very well," Lucina cedes with a good-natured sigh.  The mood is quite obviously a bust at this point, though Lucina does take the abominable smallclothes off in exchange for some nice, normal ones.  "Would you rather I wear nothing at all down there?" she asks as she slides into bed next to Severa.  The heated tension between them now gone, the room is faintly chilly--that is absolutely the only reason Severa immediately turns to snuggle into Lucina's chest.

"No, but you're on shopping probation for like, at least the next five years, missy.  You buy so much as a sock, you run it by me first, you hear?"

"I am in your care, as always."  How Lucina can humor her so sagely is always somewhat beyond Severa.