The soft murmurs of the couple were a soft rain against the hide of the heartless machine the group inhabited. When the rain hit the ground, it picked up the poisons of the streets of the world and flowed to the lowest place it could find, leaching into Tabai's pawpads as she stood vigilant outside the door... never had such sweet nothings been so bitter, but then again, Pechi was no romantic and Cassie was not in love.

"It'll be over soon," Cassie muttered. "And you promised?"

"Y-yes. Of c-c-course."

Cassie paused before replying. "I want to disappear."

Pechi began to offer her various counterarguments, none of which were going to sway the Fauna as the petrification continued to inch up her body (it was, Tabai decided, better left unseen). Tabai was distracted from the onslaught by the sound of other mutterings, specifically those of Alexa's paws as they meandered, tactfully towards the room. Tabai stiffened, feeling her skin sag the way it always did when Alexa got too close, like the Canii might rip it off her.

"Eavesdropping?" asked Alexa.

"Waiting," Tabai said. It was not a dishonest answer. She had hoped to... well, never mind what she had or hadn't hoped to do, at this junction in her plans. It was an unsteady course of action that brought her here tonight, but to keep it simple, it was nothing that was on Cassie's plans. Ah, Cassie's plans... they would never have those to listen to again, would they?

That was a travesty. Tabai would feel bad about it later.

Alexa raised her pointed snout, which gave her a better vantage point to look down at Cassie from. "Mmmmm."

"Is there a matter that necessitates that you remain standing in this hall?" asked Alexa.

"There happens to be," Tabai said. "Can you vouch for the same?"

"I did want to discuss the mission with someone besides Dusty, as it seems, once again, that the two of us are the only ones who are focused on the mission. You've always been distracting at the best of times, but I suppose it wouldn't be a bad idea to get you back on track."

Tabai narrowed her eyes.

"You'll want to step away from the door," Alexa said. "Although I presume you have some 'business' here. I don't approve of voyeurism, but I have no reason to deny you that pleasure."

"What voyeurism? One leeches off joy, or intimacy, or some other desirable emotion. The two of them are sad as sin," Tabai said.

A silence settled on the room. Tabai imagined a body completely grown over in stone, the fractal formations that had ripped up Cassie's backside and covered her back spots by the time they appeared on the ship now covering eyes, the mouth, and the last tip of the antler going under, submitting to the infinite darkness Tabai had so heard it foretold...

Alexa seemed to have other ideas. "This is why you step away," she warned Tabai. "You're being cruel."

Tabai reluctantly stepped away from the door. Even the most poisonous adversaries occasionally made valid points, and she supposed, on this rare occasion, she could 'give Alexa one'. It would not happen again. She reiterated to herself several defenses, from guarding the duo on the rare instance of seraph intrusion to tracking the temporal aspect of the petrification, beneath her breath, but Alexa did not talk until they had passed even Tabai's room, and were half the way around and coming back to the room again.

"Why, then?"

"I don't like not knowing things," Tabai admitted. The phrasing made her sound like a-- she sounded too young for her age.

"That will get you in trouble," said Alexa. "One of these days. I really wanted to speak with you to discuss an issue we'd had in the past that has since been resolved, namingly the matter of the inhabitants on these planets. I reckon that this mission provides a fairly definitive answer, that is to say, that they can by no means be reasoned with." The Canis finished this with a wide sweep of her tail.

They were around to Cassie's old room, which was fine, because she was in Pechi's, where she would lie, asleep past sleeping, until the end of the mission (whether that heralded her return or not). Tabai snarled in response, "Do I dare remind you who stooped to the unsavory behavior in this situation? Is it so unobvious that we're at fault that I need knock you over the head with it? If so, let me reiterate: Cassie ate someone."

Alexa looked up at the ceiling. One of the lights was making an annoying buzzing noise, flickering in and out like a firefly timelines away from their homes in the woods. "Cassie found the seraph horn. It was inside of one of them. They're just toys for the seraph to play with, to test us with as it likes. If it really cared for them, it would not put them in harm's way for these missions. It would be playing to some kind of strategy to preserve its power, so that it might continue to care for them. There is one good explanation for the behavior we've seen thus far, and that is boredom."

Pechi exited the room, looking more than ever like a stuffed toy that someone had shaken up until it fell into disrepair. Nervously, she shuffled her paws together and told Alexa and Tabai, "I-it's over. I-I-- I d-d-d-didn't w-want to even c-c-come out here, but-- but-- but-- say it. But--"

"I think we can infer something of your motivations from your current emotional state. No need to justify anything to us. You did a good job of consoling her, for whatever you judge to be worth, but you should return to sleep at your earliest possible convenience, for your own sake."

Pechi paused in the hall. Alexa passed her, towards the elevator. "Night shifts. You two, with your auxiliary roles, wouldn't understand them."

The ship swallowed her whole.

Pechi's eyes were hot. Tabai pressed against her side, in the way outer town members might embrace grievers at an inner-town funeral. There was comradery, but there was no mind to it, no personal connection. It was a formal gesture, and Pechi, who was basically trembling with what Tabai could only interpret as need to touch, backed out first. She looked up at Tabai, her eyes still haunted by some evil only she could see, and said, "It wasn't what I was going to say at all."
"Say it," Tabai urged her.

Pechi looked up and her shoulders seemed to fall, close as she was to the ground already. "I w-w-wanted to say we could hear you. Y-y-you could h-have allowed m-me just a little more d-d-dignity."

Tabai's eyes narrowed to slits. "Oh," she said. "I apologize for being honest, then."

"A-Alexa is r-right," Pechi said, adding a quick "as usual," beneath her breath. "We sh-should just sl-sleep, because otherwise, I'll do something r-r-real stupid." Pechi would not get far if she threw herself at Tabai. Pechi had demonstrated no magical talent while on board, which meant she would have to fight Tabai on physical grounds. Pechi had the physique of a nice sausage. It would be over fast, and Tabai would not hesitate for a heartbeat.

"No need for rash action. I'll see you in the morning," Tabai said. "I am sorry for your loss, and all of our loss. We are going to save her. At the end of everything, all will be well. Can you believe that?"

"N-no," Pechi said. "It a-all depends on the e-e-end you're thinking of, a-a-and n-nothing ends w-w-well in Omnia, b-b-because nothing is ever over."

Tabai gave Pechi a resolute nod. "Well, wherever our opinions fall, at least we agree on something."

Pechi returned to her room, and Tabai strode down the hall to hers, past Benn and G'ana's empty rooms. Hers was on the other side of the elevator. The pillows and blankets were larger than those afforded the rest of the crew, but they were starchy to the point that they almost crinkled when she lay down, and she had swapped them out three times already, hating the way they caught the falseness of her scent.

She moved past this to the singular item in her unadorned room, an unassuming mirror. It was an item she had only a few days before the interrogations began that had landed her on this ship, so in a sense, it had outlived her. There were scratches on the edge, where the false gold foil had chipped away or been chipped beneath her claws, but the pane itself was perfect. Tabai would not allow for the reflection to be shattered.

She prepared with a few slow breaths, first, making herself the blank slate to be replicated in the mirror. Her form twitched and flickered, the top horns growing less opaque, but the tassel that held her old scent was back on Omnia. It was a tradition among her kind to keep something with your true scent somewhere you could always find it, so that you would always remember how to turn back, but Tabai had relegated herself to this body, whose truth was a prison.

Never mind that. She stepped out of it.

"What do you hate about me?" asked Tabai.

A ring of white fur flared out around her, so that she became the sun. Green eyes pierced the mirror, foreign to the orange whose fire usually flickered dully in those fragile glass lanterns. "You're disingenuous," Alexa responded. "In any form."

"Is she sorry?" asked Tabai's voice, echoing out from Alexa's mouth and from her thrumming vocal chords.

As Alexa's horns folded back into Cassie's antler, the left antler grasping out for the dark eternity that no shapeshifting could mimic, Tabai found that she was alone in the body, that no double still breathed and spoke for the form that her spirit was dancing through. "I was sorry enough to give up," Cassie said. The Fauna's distress rose as she realized the situation she was in. "Why did I let it take me? I can't-- I can't feel, I can't eat-- I can't hear her, is she there? She has to be there. I can't be here alone." There was a brief pause. Cassie's eyes flowed over with tears, which wet her fur. "I'm so cold." The anguish in her voice was so powerful that Tabai shifted back at once, her legs shaking with the force of the empathy she had forced upon herself.

Some called it a power.

Tabai looked at the stream of water rolling down her Canid face and called it good acting.

The question she had almost dared not ask lingered on her mouth. "Will it take all of us?"

The Lamb's six wings burst from her back, a creature with five remaining horns emerging. Pupils grew slit, paws grew hard again, and the aura of a god was... it was lacking, but the seraph seemed to fancy her facsimile, because he said, "It could or it couldn't. You know it will take you when you consent to be taken. Whenever a judgement has been made, one way or another--"

"So it could be a good judgement, and you'd still take us. That was what happened to G'ana?" asked Tabai.

The seraph's square teeth, loosed from the thin edges of its mouth, became a smile. "You know what happened to G'ana."

The seraph nodded, and beneath his skin, Tabai nodded.

"Know that you'll affect none of their opinions," he warned her.

"Then why tell me anything?" asked Tabai.

"You want to know," the seraph reminded her. "That is the price."

Tabai returned to herself, though she stood waiting in the mirror for far longer than necessary. She felt the want bubble up in her again, and she turned back to Cassie, imagining Pechi there, speaking in her ear. She shifted to Dusty, letting her expertise flow through him, the confident grin pulling up the sides of his mouth. Pechi met her with intense hatred, so she left her for Alexa, who seemed surprised at her fast return. Getting no such warmth from the Canis, whose veins practically flowed with blood, Tabai returned to Benn's fire. The Lapnin-Canis was no happier than Tabai herself was to be amongst this number, and the rage burst through both of them like a flower. It was a reassurance, but Tabai was looking for another meadow. The white flowers in the world Cassie had defiled with her teeth reminded herself of such. Slowly, she melted into a final form, and two earnest blue eyes stared back at her, framed by a smattering of rainbow scales.

Oh, G'ana loved the world so much. Tabai could feel all her sunshine.

"You make it so hard to hate you," Tabai warned the mirror.

"But you want to love us. That's the price," G'ana repeated, the words settling ominous in the air. Tabai did not close her eyes for her, but from the depths of her reflection, G'ana winked.