Welcome to Gaia! ::

Most people didn't enter Hvergelmir's tent unannouced. Most people, though, weren't small children: Laney heard Antonia's excited voice, and the sound of little fingers fiddling with the zipper on her tent flap, and it was the work of only a moment to pull her kerchief back up over her face before her little visitor tumbled in through the hole she'd made for herself.

She smiled, setting aside the basket of laundry she was folding. Pretty princess! she signed exuberantly, a hand passed over her face, then the letter P crossed over her chest and down one side of her body. This was Antonia's preferred form of address, among the small list of sign words Laney had been teaching her.

Antonia came over to meet her on the air mattress, and she obediently swept the little girl up into a hug, then settled her into her lap. Predictably, Finn followed not long after -- once he'd unzipped the tent flap to admit a person who was larger than toddler-sized. The apples of her cheeks rose in a smile at her friend's greeting, and she'd planted Antonia in her lap just in time to have a book, then a four-pack of sweet, sweet frappuccino drinks extended in her direction. Finn and Antonia made the best visits, obviously.

Thank you, she signed around Antonia, watching the little girl try to copy her movements with tiny brows furrowed in concentration. You're my angel.

She stroked a hand through Antonia's hair, and gestured to the nearby folding chair for Finn to sit.

Mostly the usual. The Bull is tilting at windmills again. Things are tense with the Dark Mirror. One of them was in the Oasis yesterday and a patient who'd lost family to them saw one there and had a panic attack. He tore thirteen stitches and had to be sedated. Most people at the hospital are used to them, but things are mixed around camp.

I know. Chaos is Chaos. It will already have come to them in some form or another, whether or not they realize it. We know what it looks like when it infects the mind. And maybe theirs is something different, a different kind of dangerous. She frowned. But we can't fight every front of the war at once. Otherwise the Dark Kingdom and the Dark Mirror will crush us between them like a hammer and anvil.

Laney ran a hand through her hair. This half alliance isn't benefiting anyone enough. We need to offer them more and we need to get more in return. If they were willing to swear to no more corruptions, and bring us any sailors they find, would you be willing to offer to host them at your Wonder if we ever had to flee to space? Do you think other knights would? It might be a moot point on our end anyway, since we can barely get to our homeworlds on our own as it is. But what do you think?

For the rest, she sighed a little more fondly. Antonia liked the wiggly-fingers-under-chin hand motion Laney had gotten them all in the habit of using for 'youma' -- properly it was the sign for Cthulhu -- and Laney agreed it was admittedly always pretty amusing when applied to the otherwise-terrifying monster menaces of Destiny City.

Is there ever any other windmill, for him? They're a horrible romance. He should be fine if you want to pay him a visit -- he's just cooling his heels until he's healthy again.

It wasn't quite a yes. Yes would've been a lot to ask for, she knew, even from one of her best friends in the world -- but it wasn't quite a no, either. Finn was good enough rarely to ever shoot her down flat.

And Hvergelmir was always asking quite a lot of people, anyway. She always had. She asked for blind faith and high risks in the face of bad odds. 'Take a chance on these Dark Mirror senshi. Let them help us, and bank only on the possibility that we can cure their Chaos corruption before they can turn on us and steal our homeworlds, too.' That was what she was really asking.

Well, she'd asked worse. She'd staked her life behind worse. And there were people fighting on their side today that might not be there if she hadn't -- even if they were only a few. Some of life's differences were made in the hair's-breadth spaces between things.

The offer would only go to the ones who'd uphold their end of the bargain. Chariklo and her group, for a start. It all benefits them anyway -- corruption's a zero sum game for them. They're starting to realize they can't call themselves the saviors of the senshi who'll whisk them safely to space when they're the only ones who can't actually get there. Every senshi they turn is one that can't get them off-planet.

A small treaty, for now. Just you and your Wonder. Just Chariklo and her handful of people. Only Mercury at risk -- and them outnumbered if you were hosting all the Earth knights with you, too. Do you think you'd consider it? If not, I can ask Ida, she's transcendent -- but some people see her as being in Chariklo's pocket. It could look biased.

It's up to you. Please at least give it some thought.

'Would you help broker it?'

That had been what she did once: she brokered things. She talked to people, tried to understand their problems, assess their needs -- then she put them in the right rooms with the right people to see that those needs were met. She hadn't done it for too long. Only a few years; only long enough for people to notice and get pissed off about it. But it was what she'd done, and it was what she'd loved.

Finding the vantage point from which the stars aligned for someone.

She'd missed it.

I'll ask her to meet with me. She knows things have been tense. If she's okay with the idea, the three of us can meet to make sure we agree on the terms.

How do we broach this with the camp? Some of them don't even want to hear about falling back to space, even if we do have tactical nukes on Mercury somewhere.

Laney fiddled with Antonia's little feet when she was finished, retying a shoelace that had come undone.

Consider it done. And thank you. History will remember you brave, Babylon Royal Knight. She grinned warmly, eyes crinkling.

Babylon had supported her, once, a very long time ago, when she'd made what she thought might be a very dumb decision, and had had no one to turn to to help her find her way through a figurative snowstorm. He'd taken her hand, then, and promised he'd be right there with her, to help her get through it.

He had been. He was still doing it. Here was her fine, valiant friend, walking with her into another wall of fog, not knowing what was on the other side. Supporting her in what might be another very dumb decision. Choosing it with her.

It was good not to go alone.

Princess hair! she signed to Antonia, with a silent gasp of amazement, showing her the new word a few times: hair. Hair. Hair. Princess hair.

She made a hair-braiding motion, then pointed Finn out to Antonia. Daddy needed princess hair next, obviously.