“Why are you wasting my tide with this shit, guppy?” His empress asked, her face intent. She radiated confidence, her face almost hawklike in its intent. “Yoar keeping three tyrians trapped here with your shellfish dithering.”

She was right. He was wasting their time. Sweat ran down his face from his hairline, but in her presence he daren’t touch it. Sugary patted his arm, cloying and reassuring and undeniably attractive. 

“Timing is important to clowns~~ take as long as you pike, provided it’s not too much~” Her hair: odd to know that Lurky was housed there, and that his emanations were almost certainly hurting the horrorterror and that he didn’t want that. It was bizarre to him how much both he and Sugary had changed together, how he trusted that she was at least vaguely considerate of his dilemma and wouldn’t punish him somehow if she wasn’t picked. He focussed on that friendship and care for a moment before turning his attention to Clorad, who had only just stopped trying to get off his chair and stab )(er Imperious Self.

Clorad was his mate, one of his best beloved. His appearance troubled him, GHB knew, given how different his body type was to his predecessor, and thus his society’s concept of perfection at the time of his ascension.  GHB knew that and knew too he would be condemned as a liar if he didn’t acknowledge his timeline and how )(IC stood there as the embodiment of beauty. 

The Empress grinned, her teeth sharp and perfectly formed into even fangs. Muralist shuddered. She knew. She was certain she had it in the bag, given that. But then, given that, all three of them were perfect in every way and could not help but be such. Sugary patted his arm again. Maybe Lurky had sensed your distress again. He breathed out the shakey breath he’d been holding rather than let it give voice to hysterical laughter, and )(IC went in for the kill. 

“Give it to me, Guppy. That is an order. You know I am perfect anyway.” She didn’t sound unreasonable, was the thing. She rarely had, such was the intensity of her sureness of her being Right.

“Not fair being,” he mumbled. Nothing in this situation was fair.

Fair.  He grinned, at last sure as to how this could all be over and he could go hive. He could be free to not be sitting in front of three of the people he was most loathe to disappoint. 

“REIGN YOURS UNFAIR WAS,” you say to your empress. The Sky fails to fall down on you, and you’re far enough away that she can’t claw your face off for the insult. He stood up, heading over to Clorad. “YOUR OWN SELF MOST TO REIGN FAIR COMMITTED ARE,” you tell him, placing the crown on his head. 

Nothing happened.

 )(er imperious Condescension laughed, her head and hair tossed back in an alluring fashion and she had to be doing it on purpose, and so did he. Muralist leant forward, his hair falling in a curtain around Clorad as he whispered into his ear in privacy. 

“fairest in looks also are,” he mumbled, words drowned out behind callous laughter, and the scene and table and tyrians live and dead dissolved. Maybe it had all been a dream? The hope stays with him until he looked at Tumblr some three days later. His heart sank when he opened his newest message:

sugaryempress