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- >”Ooh, look how green everything is!“
- >”Looks just as bad as the palace grounds to me. Can we go back in the ocean?”
- >Be Adagio.
- >You’ve… encountered some obstacles in taking over the human world.
- >Again.
- >You were honestly very close this time, if only they hadn’t abolished the divine right of kings at the last minute.
- >They executed the emperor you were advising just before you could unite them under one flag and overthrow him.
- >But hey, that’s what puppet rulers are for!
- >You’re not bitter or anything.
- >It’s just that everyone needs a break sometimes, especially from politics.
- >So you’ve taken the girls on vacation, starting with a soothing two-month swim.
- >The three of you are finally back at your personal haven.
- >A very long time ago, this is where you were banished.
- >Well, much closer to the western shore, but still here.
- >Everything here was immaculately secret, as far away as possible from the rest of society.
- >There were humans in some of it, though.
- >Sometimes they had darlingly intricate names and deliciously cursed artifacts for you.
- >But you could avoid them if you wanted.
- >In fact, you all thought the world was deserted for the first decade.
- >Ah, youth.
- "You can go swimming again if you like, Aria. Sonata and I are going to go find dinner."
- >She strolls wordlessly back toward the tide.
- >You head for the forest, thick green trees without measure.
- >Sonata’s staring at you, and she’s trying to look cute.
- >”If I catch something, I don’t have to cook it, do I?”
- >You laugh gently and muss her hair.
- "Of course not. We’re here to be ourselves, aren’t we?"
- >Her expression stops being cute.
- >Her grin is toothy and unpracticed, nothing like the polite, wan, elegant thing she would share in banquet halls with your former courts.
- >You can’t help but return it.
- >The things you eat will be remembered someday as hidebehinds, splintercats, teakettlers.
- >Today they don’t have names, and that’s the beauty of them.
- >You’re all sitting on the beach, looking where you came.
- >Aria points straight to the horizon.
- >”Don’t you have a husband back there?”
- >You startle.
- >You hadn’t remembered that, and you’d arranged the marriage yourself.
- >You were getting old.
- "I guess so."
- >You say, reclining on the sand.
- >”What was his name again…?”
- >Sonata cocks her head, trying to think of it.
- >Aria settles in, watching the waves, trying to decide whether or not to go to sleep.
- >She’s calmer out here.
- >For the longest time you thought her hostility was just a defense against a nasty world, but it isn’t.
- >She acts that way because there’s no one here to reason with.
- >For the three of you, not taking control is the same thing as accepting failure.
- >Every time you’ve gotten bored and tried to take over the world fairly, it’s ended horribly.
- >Without someone to argue with and seethe about, she looks more… neutral.
- >Placid, maybe.
- >You know because you feel it too.
- >You want to come at your problems from another angle, so you’re walking across the continent and swimming to the other end of civilization.
- >This is nice, but...
- >Well, you need to pick up your feet sooner or later.
- >You should tell them to head out tomorrow.
- "...Should we head out tomorrow?"
- >It becomes a lazy, floating question.
- >”Not unless you really want to.”
- >Sonata says, forgetting your husband entirely.
- >”Nah.”
- >Aria says, and decides to go back into the ocean for a while.
- >You watch her dive in, then let your eyes close.
- ...
- >In the years to come, you would avoid this place, wondering if you led the humans to it somehow, or if one of the others made one too many hints.
- >You didn’t.
- >No, they found it all on their own, just like the warrior-tribes who picked you up and took you to the rest of civilization centuries ago.
- >There was a war over who got to build their awful infrastructure on it, and you had to stop politicking for a while.
- >Sonata was curious about what was going on there, and sometimes she’d ask to swim over.
- >Aria, on the other hand, was like you.
- >She didn’t want to see what people had done with her beaches.
- >You got over it eventually, and contented yourselves with the islands they still hadn’t discovered.
- >But many years before then, you’re dreaming on a continent that belongs just to you.
- >The ocean air billows over you as the stars of home wheel across the night sky.
- >And, for a little while, that’s adoration enough.
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