planar chaos part 1

When she awoke, she was surrounded by soft grass.

Last thing she remembered was a battle against an Eidolon, that had risen from the biggest lake on the Plains of Cetus. She remembered needing to take her fury out on the ghosts of the Old War that inhabited it, as slaking her rage on the Corpus zealots of Orb Vallis no longer calmed her wrath. She remembered the fear, and she remembered screaming in terror. She hadn’t brought any of her shipmates along, and she came to regret it.

She wondered how she was still alive. Did one of her fellows find her and save her? Did her father rush in to save the day? Was she simply lucky, and the Eidolon assumed she was dead?

The sun was too bright for her to open her eyes. She didn’t remember the last time she had needed eyewear – she, like her sister, found some comfort in the fact that her vision problems were eased by Transference. She didn’t emerge on the Plains during the day, or in Orb Vallis at all, there was no need. On her ship, the lights were kept low and the walls painted in just such a way as to be accessible.

She felt around blindly and pulled herself up against the bark of a tree, squinting her eyes open to make sure she was in the shade.

This was not the Plains of Cetus, that was for certain.

She sat atop a large hill, above a broad field. That was all that was the same as the place she had left. The grass here was emerald green and soft, unlike the coarse, brown-ish plains grass from before. Patches of trees dotted the landscape below, green with healthy leaves like the vast forests of Earth as she knew it. Not an Orokin tower in sight on the horizon, but a large structure was visible in the distance that she didn’t recognize.

She also saw another small building below her.

It looked just like the pictures of Ancient Earth houses, but brought to life. A real relic of a time before the Empire, before the Old War, before the Sentients, before she was ever even born. How was it still standing? Why did this place look so green and bright? It was hard to look at through her sensitive eyes. She decided she would have to blindly feel her way there.

It was strange, but she had difficulty using the Void to sense where she was, here. It certainly worked, but her senses were hazed, as if there was some strange interference. A quick test of her Amp seared the side of the building, a blast dented the siding, and she was still able to slip into invisibility. The only thing she couldn’t test was the act of Transference. So what fogged her senses?

Suddenly, she remembered the mountain pass, the icy coldness and the Golden Maws. She remembered the stress of being ejected from her orbiter, and screaming to the sky in hopes that someone, anyone, could help her. Her sister, Beau, anyone she could cry out to. No one came.

She remembered that it was all a hallucination in her stark final moments before the act of Continuity was complete. She remembered breaking free at the very last second, sparing her body of being subsumed by the Elder Queen’s mind. With this memory burned into her head once again, she swiftly checked over herself. She pinched herself, she hit herself, she even turned her own Void blast onto herself. Anything to wake herself up before some malicious entity took her body.

Nothing. It was still just her. Her, a field, and an Ancient Earth house. In front of it was a paved road. Behind it, on the other side of the large hill, was a notably large forest. Even the hallucination had proven to be much more dangerous and painful than this.

She couldn’t even be angry about it, and she knew it had been a very long time since she had harbored no rage in her heart. She had been had-pressed to feel anything but burning furor when left to her own devices lately, since the Lotus left them, since she learned that that horrible man had tried to kill her father and end their bloodline, so the sense of absolute calm was disturbing. She couldn’t bring herself to feel hate toward a place she didn’t recognize.

In the absence of anger, exhaustion filled the hole. She was a little over fourteen. She still looked like a child. But after everything she had seen and done and felt, she had the mind of someone far, far older. She had been robbed of normalcy and she could never have it back. She was now no more than a soldier in a war that was not her own. It was her lot in life to be used and abused, and her anger issues were cultivated very carefully into a heart they were not natural to. She was expected by a man who had given her no reason to trust him to slay her own surrogate mother, after he himself had slain the first.

But here… this was a place untouched by the Old War. The earth was not marred by pollution, ruin, bullet shells or industry. It was not crossed by Sentient bones or scarred by military installments. There was only a house, and the construct in the distance. It was a miracle of a place, to her. That somehow, this piece of Ancient Earth survived all these years, still preserved. It might well be sacred.

But she knew she shouldn’t just sit here and gawk. Not while she was clear-headed for the first time since witnessing the Chimera. She entered the house, its doors happily unlocked. She was thankful for that, because these locks were outright archaic, and she had no means to open them but by brute force.

The door creaked open to a cozy-looking living room littered with similarly archaic technology, at least to her. These devices were the sort of thing she would sometimes dig up when they were sent on excavation missions and try to restore to working order with her modern technology. Many things were different and old, but circuitboards and control modules – called hard drives in the past – were the same as they ever were. It was absolutely dust-free, as if it were recently lived in, and felt warm and comfortable. A few soft blankets were strewn about hanging over the couches and chairs.

She quietly stalked her way, under the cover of her Void cloak, through the room and into a back hallway, past a kitchen full of Ancient Earth cooking tools that still saw use in colonies like Cetus. She was almost afraid that she would be sprung upon by… anything, really. Sentients, Corpus robots, Infestation. An ambush by the Stalker, or angry Syndicates. Such was her life, constantly evading death. It was too quiet here.

But nothing ever came at her.

Instead, she came upon two bedrooms. One, large and plush and covered in the sort of thing that she was never allowed to see but looked for anyway, because she was a teenager with a burgeoning sexuality that she didn’t quite know how to handle. Usually, it just made her angry. Right now, it made her curious. She knew the technicals of these things, but knew nothing of the feeling or the passion, though she knew it existed. She was curious about these phallic objects, but decided to investigate them later in the interest of ensuring the location was secure.

In the second room, she saw two plush beds, and walls covered in posters. A book of anatomy opened on a well-organized desk, written in a language that she had never seen before, except in Ancient Earth artifacts. A second desk, covered in messy notes and strange aluminum canisters painted black with a bright green symbol on the front. More of that script she couldn’t read. When something moved beneath a blanket, she jolted and her Void cloak covered her from sight, but when it uncovered itself it was just a harmless animal.

It looked a lot like a kavat, but instead of the feathery tails and scaly backs, it was covered in pure fur, bright orange with white spots and a straight tail that waved in the air. It was much smaller than the kavats she was used to, and quite a bit fatter. Its legs were shorter, and its eyes didn’t glow, but it still made the same noises, except softer and higher-pitched. When she dropped her Void cloak, it stared her down and meowed.

She cautiously held out her hand toward it, and it sniffed at her a bit, before gently rubbing its head against her hand, just like her kavat did. She decided this must have been what the ancestors of kavats looked like, but how was this animal still alive? It had a collar on it, it belonged to somebody. A second one rustled out of a nearby basket, this one white with orange points, and continued to yell at her even as she began petting it, too.

They followed her through her casing of the rest of the house just like her own kavat did, though they didn’t do much besides whine.

When she reached the bathroom, she finally decided that this must just be an empty house, and slouched up against a sink. Many things here were different and archaic, but bathrooms remained the same. She turned on the lights, and stared at herself in the mirror.

She looked way more tired than she had thought she did. Look at the dark circles under her eyes. She thought these were the eyes adults were supposed to have, but all the ones she had interacted with didn’t look nearly as tired as her. Even the others on her freighter didn’t look this tired. In this quiet calm, she was aware of the toll her problems had taken on her. Everyone on the ship must have been so worried about her. Hell, she knew they were. She knew they cared. But she could never let it sink in, because she needed to direct the fire somewhere.

It had been so long that she started to think that the fire could never burn out. It was what fueled her, but also her curse. It had been carefully stoked by the Orokin who used her as a turnkey soldier, trained to turn on even her fellows in a split second to keep them in line, and only when she came to get a handle on it was she able to direct it at her abusers. But she still suffered under it, and lately only her sweet Jackdaw could keep her stable. She longed for Sakura, the one they assigned to her to keep that talented void witch in line, but who ended up teaching her what happiness was again. But she had only just found the pod containing her frame when she ended up… wherever this was.

Come to think of it, she still didn’t know where she was. No comm messages. Not a peep from Anya or Beau or even Jackdaw or Jason. No Ordis-Impersonating-The-Lotus to infuriate her. No yelling from anyone else. Just her, two not-kavats, and this house. Trying to communicate outward yielded nothing either. No ships in the sky, no attacks, no warframes, no surrogate mothers or impersonators, no other Tenno. Just her, alone, in the silence.

Eventually, she left the bathroom and slumped on one of the couches in that living room. It was plush and comfortable, and a blanket fell on top of her as she fell onto it. Perfect.

She wondered, briefly, if she had died to that Eidolon, and found some Ancient Earth version of the afterlife. Whatever it was, it was exactly as calm and peaceful as she understood that it was supposed to be. She wondered if she would find Rell here and finally know him in death. She wondered if she would find Margulis, or even her original mother. She wondered if she would ever see the other crew of her ship here. She wondered if the souls of all the evils she fought, both before the sleep and after the awakening, were burning in some unknown corner. That was where evil went, right?

She wondered if her sister would be stable without her.

If she had truly died, then she knew Anya would go the way of the Queen of Worms. She would be desperate to revive her, no matter the cost, even knowing full well that’s not what she would have wanted. She realized that her time here might be temporary, and it saddened her. This had been the first time she knew peace in a very long time.

Or, maybe something weird happened and she was about to nap on somebody else’s couch in the far flung past or in some pocket dimension where the Old War never happened. That might be the better alternative.

Sometimes it surprised her that she even still could sleep after so long in stasis. But stasis wasn’t really sleep, she knew, even if she still dreamed. Stasis was unchanging, but sleep was the body and mind’s chance to rest and heal. And here, on this couch, her body called out to the yawning somnolence, and the somnolence answered back with a warm embrace.


When she woke up again, the light behind the curtains had dimmed, and a door opened in the background. Quick to switch gears from sleep to wakefulness, she dashed off the couch and engaged her cloak in an empty corner of the room. Shit.

She listened carefully for the sounds of activity, and only heard the crinkling of paper and rustling of some other thing. The two not-kavats ran into the kitchen and started meowing, incessantly, at whoever had just returned to the house. She heard some familiar laughter from that direction, and squinted.

Was that Anya?

“Morty, Kido, calm down, come on… you both want food, don’t you. Well it just so happens I picked up some just for my two special boys.”

Zora squinted. She bought food? For a kavat? They ate infestation, you can’t buy infestation. The sound of their feeding sounded more like kubrow food hitting a bowl. She loved animals, and wanted to speak out, but knew she shouldn’t. If this was her Anya, she would know better.

The woman who rounded the corner wasn’t the Anya she recognized, at all. A fuller figure, an actual bust, no matter how average. She was actually taller than her, and, most shockingly…

… she had her eyes.

Two of them, dark iris, fully intact. No blindfold needed. Nothing she needed to stick old dusty googly eyes to to make herself feel better. Here she was, whole and pure, at least as far as she knew. It made Zora want to cry, seeing her as she should be. A full-grown adult with her own life and her own eyes. A beautiful woman in her own right. She still couldn’t feel the anger, only the wonderment.

A second figure entered the room, this one as quiet as the shadow of death. She recognized this one too. This woman was Midnight, and not much had changed about her. The scars, the emaciated figure, and the blindfold, all still there. It more looked like you had put her own Midnight through a taffy puller than it did that somebody had grown and filled out. Zora seemed relieved for a moment. They couldn’t see her, her Void cloak would even hide her from others like her.

It only lasted a second before Midnight ‘looked’ right at her. “Hang up, Sugartits.”

“… What?”

“Someone’s there. Aura’s fuzzy, but they’re there.”

Oh, shit. How did she see her? That wasn’t supposed to happen?! No one was supposed to be able to know that she was there!

“Hah. Think I spooked ‘em. C’mon out, show yourself.”

Hesitantly, she dropped the cloak, and watched the shock on Anya’s face.

“Wow sister. You’ve really been working on that costume, haven’t you. Does this go inside the suit, or is it separate… did you actually cut your hair?”

“Wh… what?” Zora could only be confused. “Costume..?”

“Yeah, you have a binder and… everything… that’s not a costume. Where’s your ass. Where’s your muscles.”

“Oh, well I mean I’ve been working on my strength training but-”

“You… you look like a child.”

“You look like an adult. Where’s your blindfold?”

Anya grimaced, and she stepped back a bit. It looked like she had touched on a sore spot.

“S-sorry--”

“Don’t be. You didn’t do it.”

“Where… is this, anyway? It looks just like an Ancient Earth house...”

“… ancient Earth? What?”

“Yeah, you know, how Earth was before the Empire, before they ruined it. Before the Old War, and… everything else.”

“… Oh. I don’t know if you’re just messing with me, with those terms, but... Earth is gone, and good riddance.”

Zora blinked. Earth was just… gone? Was this what Tau was supposed to look like? But she had seen Tau, in the vision where she had been given that horrible sword. She had never been there, and couldn’t go there as she was, but had she somehow ended up there? Were these the Sentient mimics that had supposedly been deployed by the Lotus? Was she being tested?

“Then where are we?”

“Xephixir.” Midnight said, flatly, as if this was an obvious fact or she had done it before.

“Xe...phixir…?”

“More specifically, Librata. These clowns dropped a house on my family’s nature preserve.”

“Nature preserve…?” The concept was absolutely foreign to Zora. Any nature she knew, had been specifically cultivated and genetically modified to be able to clean up and survive extreme pollution. Her Earth wasn’t gone, but it had been ruined, once upon a time.

“Yeah, y’know. Y’can’t build regular buildin’s here, legally.”

“That’s a thing..?”

“Y’know th’more you talk th’more I think you ain’t even another transplant.”

“No,” Anya chimed in, “That is definitely sister. She looked just like this at about fourteen.”

...Looked? Past tense?

Now, she looked toward pictures hanging on the walls, and stared into her own eyes. They were the same eyes, with less scarring. What she saw was an older reflection of herself, one who looked strong and powerful. She had the physique of somebody whose regimens were more intense than hers, someone who didn’t spend half her time in a Transference cradle. She had a fluffy mane trailing down to her rear, a contrast to what she was used to. Like Anya, she looked filled out and stable, an adult in every sense.

Was this what she would have looked like?

Was that an Orokin tattoo on her arm, and the Lotus’ sigil above it?

It looked just like the pattern she had wanted to get, in the same spot, on her upper arm. The only thing that had stopped her was not knowing what to put there. At the size in the portrait, she couldn’t quite read the words of it at all, but the flow and shape was unmistakable.

She turned toward Anya, taking a better look at her. Sure enough, there was a similar tattoo, on the opposite arm to the girl in the photograph.

“… That is not dead, which can eternal lie. And in strange aeons, even death may die.” She translated, aloud. “What does that mean?”

“You can read this tattoo?”

“...Yes?” That felt like an obvious question to her, but she still wasn’t sure how to answer if this was somewhere different than Earth.

“How? If you’re not from here but you talk about Earth as ‘ancient’… old war… empire… oh you’re fucking with me. You cannot tell me seriously that my sister’s Operator just spontaneously manifested in my house. Is this how magic works? Is that what’s going on here? Video game characters just appearing?”

“What? Video game… what??”

“Then again, I lived through a video game that made me a god! And then I got it taken away from me! I was robbed! And it’s your fault I can’t have it back because you can’t stand the thought of immortalit--”

Midnight, without a moment’s hesitation, smacked her. Zora stood there looking aghast at the whole situation. Who the fuck trusted Anya with godhood?

“…. Sorry.” She continued, after a moment to recollect and rub at her face from the fresh new red mark. “It isn’t your fault what happened to me. In fact especially not you.”

“I have absolutely no idea what is going on right now and quite frankly it scares me more than the prospect of having to kill my own surrogate mother but I can tell you I most certainly did not come from a video game.”

“Yes you did. That place you’re from, that Origin System? Not actually real.”

“Nooo, it definitely is and I can tell you that because a video game character probably wouldn’t know every intimate detail of the world she lives in or be able to tell you exactly where she was and who she hid with on the Zariman. She wouldn’t be able to say she lives on a stolen freighter with you, this one in a cat suit and others she managed to dig up and exactly where that freighter was in transit to when she went, by her idiot self, without a frame, to go fuck up the Eidolon that terrorizes the Plains every night because she was angry. Video games don’t work like that. All those intimate details aren’t filled in. I know that because I salvage and repair Ancient Earth arifacts, and that includes video games. In fact, how do I know you’re not the one who’s fake?”

Anya was rendered just about speechless, a miracle for those that knew her.

“I can’t seem to bring myself to feel angry here, even though anger has been my default state of being since the Old War. It’s too calm, too peaceful. I don’t trust anything not to be a Sentient mimic because what is effectively my mother is apparently trying to kill me now and needs to die according to a long-armed fuckboy who’s clearly trying to backpedal. I’m not reasonably convinced I didn’t die to that Eidolon and end up in some kind of afterlife and I’m only seeing you here because that’s what I want to see is a version of you who wouldn’t go absolutely batshit crazy if I died. So if the afterlife is called Xephixir, cool! Great! I’m down for being dead! It’s actually calm here! I’m tired and I don’t want to leave!”

“...”

“… Y’know what? I think maybe we should take this’n an’ go find Ranthael.” Midnight mumbled.

“I… I think that might be for the best what the fuck.”

“Fine, let’s fucking go! I want to see more because it’s beautiful here! It’s beautiful and calm and I’m so tired of the constant fights and the constant anger and everyone I look up to using me or hurting me and I just want to be free of all of it! I want to be done! I want to get older! I want to look like her! I want to be confident and happy and able to destroy anyone who looks at me funny without needing to use the body of somebody who was abused and turned outside their will!”

“… Woah, okay, I’m gonna take her into Bel Air for a walk and try to find a cab to Ville de Briller. I think sister needs to see this. You’d know where the leather jacket guy is better than I would.”

“That’s ‘cause you spent six months throwin’ a temper tantrum.”

“It was not a temper tantrum and I’m justified to be angry.”

“Y’are but y’weren’t justified to blame your sister.”

“… Fine. I guess I can give you that. But she just threw it away-”

“For a good goddamn reason. Now get walkin’. I’ll meet y’at Lumentia Castle when I find ‘im.”

Zora made an uncertain noise in their general direction, before Anya opened the front door and invited this juvenile version of her sister to follow. If she had energy anymore from which to drain, that display would have aged her far past the vision of her in the photographs. Some things really didn’t change, did they?

Nevertheless, she followed, for lack of anywhere else to go. It was a long road, and it was dusk. To either side of it, an animal that she had never seen would dart in and out of the foliage. The spread of stars growing brighter overhead was certainly not her own, and now she knew it for sure. The moon already hung high above the two of them, a pale lavender crescent in the sky. As she walked, she stared long and hard at it. This moon was not broken, not latticed by Orokin towers and architecture. This was a moon who had never seen the Void, never been slept in by the Tenno. This was a pure moon, bright and full of a power she couldn’t place. Chaotic and wild, an affector to the mind. Looking at it made her want to howl.

She shook her head out. No howling, you aren’t an Ancient Earth werewolf.

She could see the lights and outlines of what was unmistakably a city to the west of them, against the setting sun. She remembered cities, before the fall. Before the Old War. They were hives of the worst Orokin opulence, and she hoped that like everything else here, this place would be different.

And different it was. Zora was astounded as the streets began to grow busy with other people. Not just humans, but all manner of other beings that she would have never been able to comprehend before. A pack of anthropomorphic kubrow-like creatures played a game involving getting an orange ball through a hoop and into a net, while some winged being with big ears and eyes watched them upside down from a roof. A man who resembled a walking fish drove a coildrive-like device down the street past them, blaring some music that thumped the ground below them. A pair of kavat-women held an argument in front of a house, and some uniformed individual that had hooves and antlers came to address them.

It felt lively here. Among the noise of population, she felt just as at ease here as she did on Cetus, among the villagers. These people were as clean and fed and well-dressed as the Orokin, but with the same sort of unity she found in that Earth town. Their fashions were strange to her, made up of loose fabrics that she had never seen before, cut into simple shapes that hung off their figures. It looked comfortable compared to her space-ready suit of synthetic material. In fact, she was getting strange looks from some of them for what she was wearing. She was suddenly painfully aware of how much she stuck out in this place.

When she looked at their simple shirts and pants, she wanted a set. She wanted to blend in, to be comfortable. Truth be told, she hated the skintight suit she was in and went without it whenever possible. But it would be uncouth for someone as young-appearing as her to strip down in public. It would be uncouth for anyone to strip down in public.

It felt happy here. It felt healthy here. At least compared to where she came from. She didn’t even know how she had gotten here.

Anya eventually flagged down one of the vehicles passing them by on the road. Zora wasn’t sure what exactly it was supposed to be, but the concept of fast transportation was nothing new, so she climbed aboard anyway once it stopped. The man who drove it was gruff and heavy-set, looking them over before lighting a cigar. She knew those. People still smoked them, of course they did.

The drive took them through a large, bustling city, fraught with activity even through the night. It was unlike anything Zora had seen, even in the Times Before. This was a place of stories and memories, not a hellhole of stolen bodies and crushed dreams. It took them back out into the countryside, and then into an ancient, vast graveyard. It took them through gates that were shaped from uncomfortable gold, and into a land where everything glowed softly in the dark.

It took some time for them to see this new city, but when they did, Zora had to squint to even see it. Anya saw this, and wordlessly handed her a pair of sunglasses. Putting them on her face eased the pain of the city’s light, even at this distance.

“It’s so… bright...”

“I know. I hate coming to Lumentia. It’s too shiny.”

“Why are we coming here?”

“Sister lives here, for… some reason. Why? It hurts her just as much as it does me. I guess it’s that boyfriend of hers, and she’s right to live away from me. I was not in a good way for a while.”

“It’s dangerous to think of yourself as a god. It made the Empire topple.”

“For a little while, I was one. I mean that literally. I felt like I finally had the power to help people, I finally felt right, and it was robbed from me. Not that this world isn’t cool, but...”

“But you got a life you could have had stolen from you. Yeah, I get that. If I hadn’t been on that damn ship maybe I could have been the musician I wanted to be. Instead they decided not to actually kill me and trained anger issues into me instead and used all of us as soldiers to fight off their creations that realized that hey, these clowns are kinda shit. Then I got put in stasis and lost track of nearly everyone I cared about. Then I was woken up and the world went even more to shit. But I guess I have more downtime than I did before. I started my music again with the Lotus gone. It’s been hard to take the time to be a person and not a turnkey soldier, but I’ve done it. I know the system needs me, but I’ve learned to act for myself sometimes. You should too. Find a way to help the world even if you did get robbed. You don’t have to be a god for that.”

“But I wanted to be...”

“Why? If it’s for the power, then you don’t deserve it.”

“No, it’s not for the power! It’s because I didn’t want to die. And I got murdered anyway. And… the powers I got… they felt right. I felt correct as a seer. Even though I was blind, it was comfortable.”

“So it was correctness and immortality.”

“… Yeah.”

“At least you get off better than immortality where I come from. Sure I could have been that musician I wanted to be. I could have also had my body overtaken by a crusty old bourgeoisie because I was ‘young and exotic.’ I’d be dead and they’d keep living. I don’t even know what ‘exotic’ means in that context. It’s because I’m brown, isn’t it.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“It almost happened to me anyway. Anyone who’s that desperate to live doesn’t deserve to.”

“That’s harsh.”

“Consider where I come from, considering you seem to know about it. Harsh is all I’ve ever known until now.”

“I guess that’s fair.”

“What I’m saying is, make it happen anyway. If you want to live forever so bad, find a way to do it that doesn’t involve hurting others. You don’t need to be a god to have the power to make a world better. Sometimes all you have is the Void and your anger. You try anyway. You reach for it.”

“Mmm… anyway… that’s the castle.” Anya indicated out a window in the direction of a brilliantly luminescent building larger even than any of the towers she’d seen and less made of meat to boot. It was white and gold in a way that made her skin crawl, but she knew she had to be brave, because this wasn’t the world she lived in. This was not an Orokin hellhole.

Anya led her inside, presenting an ID to the guards and telling them it was urgent that she see her sister.  They stepped aside and opened the doors, leading to a grandiose hall bathed in a warm golden light. When she saw the inside, Zora was certain that this was not what she had been dreading. Attendants milled about this place, looking healthy, and distinctly not like slaves or clones. It was draped in warm colors and soothing blues as opposed to the harsh whites of the towers. Despite its grandeur, it felt homely, and so did the people within.

She was led up a number of flights of stairs, soon arriving in a long hallway. Anya knocked on the second door to the left, one with a sign in scrawled handwriting and a pair of hot pink underwear hanging on the door. She wondered if she should even be meeting another version of herself. Wouldn’t that break the universe or something? Even the ghost that she saw around the freighter wasn’t actually her so much as some horrible entity of the Void making sure she couldn’t stay sane or rest.

If there was one bright side to that it was that she had learned that bathing in coffee was amazing for the skin and complexion.

Anya received no answer from the door, so she knocked again. When she still got nothing, she growled. “She’s off with that boyfriend of hers at his house that she won’t tell me where it is. Great. I’ll just call them, then...”

“You… mean Jackdaw?”

“Oh, so you have him, too.” Anya sighed. “He’s not a bad guy. I just wish he wouldn’t treat me like I’m abusing her.”

“Well I mean, from the sound of it...”

“I’m not! I told you, I wasn’t in a good place! I said a lot of things I regret...”

“Sometimes that can feel like abuse. Even if you didn’t mean it. If that was his first impression of you, it’s not a good one.”

“I know that! Ugh, I… I’m just… going to make the call, I guess.”

As Anya turned away to activate a communicator… thing, Zora looked around the warm, decorated halls. Gold trim and white marble still raised her hackles terribly, something she would never be able to help as far as she could tell. But it was still true that instead of being cold, and far above everything else, this place, this ‘castle’, felt warm and homey. This place felt lived in, and not a single person here had arms longer than they should be. Not a single human was fucking blue.

Why did that man decide he wanted to be blue? What was the point? She wondered if he was even considered weird to the bourgeoisie, because she didn’t remember Margulis having an arm like that.

She stopped herself from yet another mental tangent.

She sat on a cushioned bench along a wall and watched the humans and creatures mill about. At one point, she noticed something curious about the light fixtures. There was no bulb lighting them, nor apparent source of energy. They were just golden sconces holding spheres of pure light.

Like magic.

She had always wondered about magic as it was portrayed on Ancient Earth. Her Void powers came close, but it wasn’t the same. She hoped this was what it was.

She knew home needed her, but if magic was here, she didn’t want to leave.