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Brielle had picked Friday because there weren't any scheduling projects. There were no dates with her partners, no childcare for the family kids, no theater tutoring sessions for the two clients who she hadn't lost during her most recent mysterious emergency.

She had not thought about how offering to train someone in her own condition might go. She had gotten caught up on the girl being a page of Cybele, and being new, and lost, and feeling alone in a way that she didn't want anyone to feel.

The night before, like most nights recently, she only slept in bits and pieces. Her alarm woke her up from a dream of choking on the blood in her lungs. When she rolled over and looked at her phone, her chest still ached. Her body still ached.

There were reasons that she was only powering up to try to heal up in space.

Still, she saw the message, staring at her from the phone screen. Although in the moment, she sighed, she still tapped back, Let's meet where we did before.

Half an hour later, in jeans and a flannel with an overpriced coffee in one hand, she would be there.

This was a terrible place for training, really. Brielle wasn't a plant expert, but she knew the basics, like the fact that roses had thorns, and it was some kind of climbing rose that was covering the trellis nearby. Getting pushed into that would hurt.

It did, however, make for decent cover, even though they were clearly starting to wilt in the colder temperatures. When she saw Kaðlín making her way over, she gave a quick wave and then grabbed her henshin pen from her pocket, ducked behind the flower arch, and came out on the other side as Cybele.

"Space," she said.

The final frontier, her mind provided. She'd been looking into some popular sci-fi media lately.

She was teaching, though. It wouldn't be helpful to dwell on that.

"Like we were talking about," she said instead. "Take my hand and I'll take you up."

Cybele didn't wait. Her phone was already in her hand, and focusing in on the energies of her asteroid was second nature to her now, with how often she'd been going since becoming a Princess. She gave Kaðlín's hand a comforting squeeze, pressed the button, and then the small garden was empty again.

It was dawn on Cybele. The sky was usually a dusky purple, but now the hints of it that could be seen through the trees was laced with fingers of pinks, and oranges, and even a dusky green. There was a crisp chill to the air, and the branches left long shadows along the ground. A jackalope startled at the sudden presence of the two women, and skittered off into the underbrush, which was looking lush with moss and purple wildflowers.

As they landed, Cybele herself shifted. This was also instinct, not something she thought much of, but the changes were obvious. Her clothes lengthened until her skirts and sleeves touched the ground. Her aura grew, and two real wings unfurled behind them.

She stretched them out behind her, and stretched her back a bit, too, smiling softly into the morning breeze. Being up here, and with the extra strength of her Princess form, helped the residual aches of her injury not seem so restrictive.

At least, she could push past them for a bit of training.

"Welcome," she said. "To, well, our world."

It was the first time she'd introduced it like that, but she liked the sound of it. It got lonely up here sometimes.

"There's a clearing up ahead that should give us room to practice, but you can take it all in first, if you'd like." There was a lot here, she knew.

That kind of discipline was admirable, and Cybele wasn't going to do anything to discourage it. Instead, she stepped around a tree or two to an area where the ground was a bit less rocky, and the trees less densely packed. It wasn't the large clearing where the ancient camp was. They could go there afterwards.

"All right."

She took a deep breath. She was a Princess. She could do this. Her wings would balance her, if nothing else.

"We'll start with the stance. Feet slightly apart, more weight on the front foot than the back foot." She demonstrated, because she was better at doing these things than explaining them. "That way, if something hits you, you have somewhere to go."

She rocked back and forth a few times, and her own balance held. "Not too much weight, though. Float like a butterfly?"

She hadn't actually studied boxing.

"And your fists, you want your thumbs to the side, like this." Some beginners got that wrong, she knew.

"So you don't break your thumbs," Cybele confirmed.

There was something about the way Celadon was looking at her, the way that Celadon was eating up her words, that made her pause for a breath, lips ticking upwards as she thought. Of course she'd stepped into the role of a mentor before. Of course she'd helped teach people to fight, although she was more careful about that one because she knew it had once led to her corruption.

This was different.

The Code had been clear that the knights were allies, hosted on her world. It didn't work in the sense that her title of Princess came with any true authority. Knights weren't meant to be her loyal soldiers.

Yet, Celadon had followed all of her requests and instructions. There was something like trust in her eyes, Cybele thought, something bright. That was what loyalty was, wasn't it?

Cybele took a breath. She'd have to make sure she earned that loyalty, then.

"Traditionally, you hold your fists in front of your face to block attacks," she said, demonstrating once more. "It doesn't always end up working like that when your enemies have different kinds of weapons and magic, but," she shrugged, "Probably a good habit to practice, anyway. There's plenty you can do with hand to hand."

Yes, she was going to teach Celadon about protecting herself first so she didn't fall ingot Cybele's bad habits of forgetting to do all of that, going full offensive, and then ending up dead.

"This is one we can practice. I'll throw some slow punches, you redirect them with your arm." Since Celadon seemed to be following her movements, Cybele showed a wax off with her own hands. "If you do well, I'll go faster, and then after a few minutes, we can switch."

The movement was good for her. Her feet would complain, of course, but that was something she was used to at this point, something she had to push through. Her chest might complain, too, and her arms, and the rest of her, but that was all right. That was the price she would pay for feeling alive. Working through some basic stances in the beautiful scenery of her world, until she could feel her heartbeat against her ribs, she felt more alive than she had since she'd woken up in the hospital.

It was probably best not to overdo it though, and as Celadon motioned for a break, she nodded and dropped to her knees in the moss, wings trailing on the ground behind her.

"You can't ask me questions like that if you want to keep thinking of me as a responsible Princess," she said with a small smile."Training like this, by the book? Not as much as I should. When I'm not dying, though," she said it lightly, even if it stung, "I go hunt youma a few times a week. That keeps you on your toes."

It helped keep the city safe, too, and showed you more of what you were up against than practice punches did.

"Oh, and I brought some oranges," she said, pulling two of the small, sweet kind from her subspace and handing one of them over.

Cybele didn't always bring up food to the asteroid, but when she did, being done with it was usually her signal to go home. There was plenty of water there, and more oranges waiting in a mesh bag on her kitchen counter if they wanted them. Usually, though, she came up here on her own, or otherwise with people who fell strictly into the category of guest. She'd give them a quick tour, and that was all.

Something about being here with a Page of Cybele made things different. Her desires had more weight here. It was her world, too.

It was that, or else it was the fact that she was the first person who had ever asked to stay.

She considered her complaining feet and her throbbing muscles. She thought briefly of home, of her couch, and her sink, and her bed, but it didn't take her long to decide that it sounded a bit boring. She'd been mostly cooped up there for a while now, being good.

Time to drink some river water.

"All right," she said, standing up.