"Hi Morgan. Mind if I join you?"

He was taking a turn at Ops on the bridge, monitoring the displays while the two pilots got some downtime. They were four days into the journey, things were finally settling into a routine for this group of strangers. To Qamala's mind, none of them were stranger than Morgan Henley (though Teagan definitely gave him a run for his credits sometimes).

There was one sheet of magical paper left and a bit of wax. It was enough for one more letter.

She knew who the recipient had to be. The trouble was, she was having an inordinate amount of difficulty figuring out what to say. There was so much to tell him, yet every time she put quill to paper, the words evaporated from her mind like water on the desert sands.

One page, one letter. No room for mistakes, crossed out words, or poorly phrased sentiments. One page and one page only.

To Her Imperial Majesty, the Matchless and Eternal, the Gift of the Jabal and the Heart of the Desert Sands, Greetings;

And to my eldest sister, whom I love no less than I adore my beloved Sundarya...

With the sense of timing born from years of living in an imperial court, Yasminna waited until a quarter hour after the end of evening prayers before she walked the short distance to his quarters and knocked upon the door. She'd not spent much time with the Gods' clergy until Aislinn and Janus, but she'd noted well how they both seemed to need a bit of time to re-acclimate to the real world after their divine communions and she supposed Atreus was no different.

She realized as she raised her knuckles to rap upon the door that she had been looking forward to this meeting all day, but had no time to dwell upon the possible reasons. His firm baritone voice had already called out "Enter!" and, straightening her spine unconsciously, she did just that.

Eventually, Qamala realized that if she wanted to get to know Jacob, she was going to have to ambush him.

So shy, so insecure about himself and his size, she mused, making her way down to his last known location -- a node where several electronics systems merged, the likeliest place to chase down some answers over that security system. She'd seen the way Willa and Morgan looked at the man and could intuit why he felt so poorly about himself. Humans have such strong emotional reactions to the strangest things sometimes. Leeda says he's healthy enough for his size. He just looks cuddly to me.

September 1930

They were waiting for me when I arrived at the tiny flat I'd taken in Fribourg, two slabs of stupid whose primary attribute was every muscle except the one between their respective ears. I'd never been handled roughly in my life to that point; one of them grabbed me, the other slapped me and my world spun dizzily for several moments. The next thing I remembered was snapping to acute awareness in the cool air outside and seeing a lone man walking across the street.

Part One of Several.

It was late afternoon by the time Tob was ready to see Yahim, or Yasminna again. The previous night's emotional exertions had proved quite taxing for the man, who had worked scrupulously over the course of his life to keep his relationships simple. Yasminna was not simple, ever. Her desire to creep around Freehold was tactically wise enough that he could not discount it, but he could not let her go alone, either, so he had spent some time trying to make his garb fit for the city streets as opposed to the forests that were his home. So here he was, in a borrowed cloak of dark grey broadcloth, with a hood, instead of his usual oiled deerskin cloak and broad brimmed hat. Over his brown leathers it looked bad, but not horribly out of place. The city was not exactly his place.

This was written some time ago and never published -- I think we were waiting on the GM to put it on a child page, but he was probably waiting on one of us to post it as a journal entry. It's a micro-scene, not long ago, and mostly features Honey Rose and Cal, sometime around when they were recruiting Danny Nguyen.

By the time Cal's HMMV arrived in front of Honey's condo, he'd already picked up Mike. She and Price climbed into their seats and they were off toward Texas 1.

She greeted Mike quietly as she settled in beside him, her black leathers dull matte shadow in the darkness. The initial "road trip excitement" settled down to an occasional murmur among them, Honey Rose mostly gazing out at the passing city, trying to find the words to say what needed to be said.

The imperial regalia was still in her wardrobe, Yasminna noted wryly. She'd been tempted to don it before her appointment with the irredeemably beautiful Sanyangia, but had not. Those kinds of displays are for my sister's court, not for here. And not for me.

Yahim had retreated to his room after breakfast, giving Aislinn time to visit with her uncle privately, and time for him to attempt to coax the last, lingering remnants of pain out of his aching head.

First, there's a virtual birthday celebration here tonight. I hope you've all made some plans to drop by at some point, at least for a few minutes. :) We west coasters will probably rock it out 'til fairly late, east coast time...

Now, to the real reason I'm writing this entry.

Recommended soundtrack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdYRzH10L2M

For someone like Serena, a move across country really didn't take all that long.

She'd returned to Austin that afternoon, paid up her rent and given her notice. Packing consisted of putting her pictures, CD's, books, and other personal items into boxes for shipment to New York via DHL. Her two electric guitars and her twelve-string she would take to the city personally -- they'd join her six-string in her new quarters at The Pier.

It was done in ninety minutes; and it wasn't until she was signing the forms with the DHL guy that she realized she wasn't feeling elated, or nervous, or excited. In point of fact, Serena realized what she had was a case of the blues.

They were still on Eden -- and yet they weren't. Her feet could feel the flagstone floor of her childhood home, and she could feel the eyes of both mother and father upon her, watching her; father calm and serene as always, mother wrapped tightly in her dignity to camouflage the fact that she was still opposed to the entire idea.

But another part of her was not on Eden. Her hand in Paulos', the strangest place she had ever seen floated before her. Carved into the side of a mountain was an enormous stone edifice. She recognized it from her studies as the chamber of the Imperial Senate and its accompanying buildings. The Imperial Palace was literally inside the mountain, and so invisible from her vantage point. Trickling down the mountain for almost as far as the eye could see, the city of Patria Regiae seemed to emerge from the very stones.

The crying had turned to terrified shrieking and Qamala turned toward the source, scrambling through fog and brambles to find and comfort that child while demonic laughter peeled like thunder in the heavens....

Qamala stumbled out of her family's teleport station, violet eyes only half-tracking the entry foyer around her. She crashed into a low table, shattering the delicate crystal sculpture of dancing snowflakes into irreparable pieces.

An evil, psychotically leering male face loomed over her, as if she too were a child once more, threatening her in a way she'd never been threatened in her entire life... Qamala cried out in fear, and as she did so she saw the child, kneeling and sobbing in mindless terror...

"But Uncle Paulos, I don't know what it means."

It was the third time Qamala had sent this to the much older Magellen, since their mental conversation had begun. She'd retreated to her favorite hillock above her family's habitation just after dinner, having been seized with yet another of the strange, prophetic visions that stubbornly evaded her ability to control. Uncle Paulos was halfway around Eden, where Qamala knew it was sometime in the middle of the night and yet he'd replied to her right away - the old goat was probably out partying with Paian and some of his other friends from what he called "the old days." Qamala's mother didn't officially approve of "uncle" Paulos -- he wasn't related to the Sotiris clan by blood, but rather by bonds of affection and common history that spanned, so far as Qamala could surmise, many millenia.