Lucil's tapestry hung skew off the walls, like sagging skin. It was a terrible reminder, and worse, it was ugly, now, Lucil's glorious body ruined by the bloody streak across her mouth. Fitting reminder though it was, for at least Tabai, the daughter of the daughters the Auspicia had damned, Tabai couldn't help but wish they still had some moral guidance, even in the form of the queen of wretches. In sympathy, Tabai set her upright, nudging her this way or that with a sharp pull from her teeth, and eventually the Auspicia sat in all her glory, erect on the wall.

The stain was still there, the mouth open, the teeth sharpened. Lucil's curved horns looked like that of the seraph they had been hunting. Beneath her was the whole world, which her paw had once protected, but now the claws looked like they were raking the surface.

Maybe Tabai was allowing herself certain artistic liberty with this.

"How many days?" asked Tabai.

"You only asked yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that..." asked Dusty, who was, as always, Alexa's faithful lackey. He was working on something that wasn't the plumbing, nor the broken light in the corridor, nor the refrigerator. All three of the former items had been warded off in duct tape. There was hardly anything on the ship you could kick without hitting the disgusting gray reminder of his incompetence.

He knew so much, though. Tabai was certain of it, she had tested every iteration and interpretation of his character she could, and yet there was something behind the eyes she could not capture. Her Dusty's grin was too wide, too smug, and there was a hollowness she lacked in the efforts she'd made to fill him up.

"It's five," Dusty said.

"We'll be into the fields," Alexa said. "Today."

"And then to the outer planets," Tabai said. "If we were concerned about the chill at the third, should we be worried about the coping ability of our suits regarding temperature conditions in the outer planets?"

"Shouldn't be any colder," Alexa promised. "Temperature decline has been inconsistent with atmospheric makeup and solar proximity to the planets. One big game. We could go out there suitless every time, and the seraph would likely nudge the temperature in our favor. Same for gas makeup. Freezing, burning, and asphyxiation may be ways to dispense with fleas, but they aren't quite as appealing to a manipulator such as this seraph as forcing us to confront whatever it believes to be personal weaknesses of ours, and bringing us to our own ends. It wants us to hold the knife to our necks."

"I knew as much," Tabai said. "It's simply a lot of energy to be expending on guests."

Alexa responded, "Nothing to a seraph of this magnitude. We already have enough seraph power on this ship for the Auspicia to keep the barrier up for four reigns, if we had any way to get out of this spacial warp the seraph's set up."

"He won't have the power to make us feel comfortable during our psychological torture sessions once we've retrieved all nine horns," warned Tabai.

"And when that's a problem, we'll be headed offworld," Alexa responded.

"Where are these incredibly dangerous and magical artifacts right now, anyways?" Tabai inquired.

"You know," Alexa said, nonchalantly.

Tabai was about to lose another tirade at Alexa for her continued disrespect, but it dawned on her then that she did, in fact, know. "Pechi's keeping them?"

"In her closet, likely." The Canis could not have sounded less disinterested in the fate of their mission if she tried.

"And you're fine with that?"

"She can't get them off the ship, now can she? Don't mistake my confidence for trust," warned Alexa.

Oh, I wasn't about to, thought Tabai. Out loud, she merely ventured, "You don't trust anyone on this ship."

Alexa looked to Dusty. "Almost no one."

"Lot of faith to put in your right foreleg," Tabai said, her voice coming out far too close to the smug purr she'd spent a lifetime repressing.

"Bad comparison. My right foreleg works," Alexa said, looking down at her paw.

"Well, my right foreleg conforms to the meticulous magical laws established by centuries and centuries of tradition," Dusty said. "Innate metal, from another dimension where there is no magical biosphere to speak of, has no such properties. If my right foreleg was to cease working by these principles, I would amputate it. If you stopped being able to speak telepathically and had to use your regular mouth, Tabai, or if Alexa had to pilot through space deliberately warped to spite her, I feel as if the two of you would be just a hair less smug."

"As a matter of fact, this space so happens to be warped, and I've done an incredible job maneuvering through it."

"I've kept us alive," Dusty retaliated.

"I didn't come here for a lover's quarrel."

"First of all, child of Ace here. No romance, no lovers, no squadron's secrets." Dusty rumbled. An Ace. That would be the most oppressed the poor Canis had ever been in his life. Tabai thought she could use that for sympathy, later, but he said it as if she should have already known, which ticked her off. With a dull glare, she continued, "No one's entirely sure why you're here, Tabai."

Alexa shrugged. "Not much to do if your only job is diplomacy. As long as us, the four remaining members, are holistically in charge of planning the day's schedule, could you be bothered to ensure Pechi's not dead?"

"To disturb her?" Tabai sighed. "Not particularly."

"She probably told Tabai to stop lurking outside her room," Dusty noted. The spherical device in his paw began to beep frantically, like a heartrate monitor on a patient going into a heart attack.

"A little soon to encroach on her romantic affairs," noted Alexa, ignoring the noise.

The noise only grew shriller. Tabai leered at Dusty, who seemed entirely unaware of how irritating his little metal orb was being, and then swiftly turned to the elevators. "I would laugh if either of you were funny, but as your attempts at comedy have thus far fallen short, I'll try to refrain from merriment. You can presuppose whatever incorrect assumptions you may about my relationship with Pechi, but as the only one on here taken to professional and personal dignity, and not one at the expense of the other, I will say that we at least treat each other in a manner befitting either of our positions."

"Almost everyone on Omnia gets under the covers with coworkers," Dusty said. "Now that, that's the kind of thing that even I know you don't need a law for, scientific or otherwise."

"Attraction between objects is one of the fundamental principles of physics," Alexa noted.

"Dusty, you stated only moments ago that you are yourself exempt from such a statement. Please don't make presumptions as to what I am and am not interested in," warned Tabai.

"You're allowed to not be any fun," Dusty said. "It's legal. It will cause you to shed friends like fur, but it is, technically, legal."
Tabai let the elevator doors shut in her face. To be free of the inner ship was its own kind of sweet catharsis, although there was the promise of another point, not far in the future, in which Tabai once again would be called upon to strain her abilities as a soothespeaker for those who were essentially unsoothespeakable. She would claim it was on behalf of their intelligence, if her group was not continuously proving to her that aside from their areas of expertise, they had the general knowledge and wisdom fruitful as the long-evacuated broken refrigerator.

Pechi's door slid open the barest touch, which Tabai was nearly sure it was not supposed to do. Pechi stuck her muzzle through the slit in the door, which was followed by one narrowed purple eye (still massive as it was).

"Where's..." Tabai found herself at a loss for words. Should she immediately state her given purpose? It would appear that Pechi was amongst the living, so that wouldn't exactly provoke conversation. She could ask about the seraph horns, but then it was an interrogation on behalf of Alexa. There was always the more humane angle to consider, and given the inherent upsides of empathy, Tabai found herself considering it. "Where's Cassie?"

"She's in the corner," Pechi said, dully. "What do you w-w-want from me?"

"Just friendly conversation," remarked Tabai, offended. "Have I really come on so strong?"

"I just want to know what you're actually angling for, s-so I can give it to you and you can go away," Pechi said roughly.

"Suppose I have a secondary purpose in meeting with you. This secondary purpose would remain solely an auxiliary function to making some kind of conversation, as I care deeply for your welfare, but if I were to have a secondary function, which would indeed be in service of the first, I might ask you, calmly, that I am allowed to see the seraph horns."

"They're also in the c-c-corner," Pechi mumbled. The door edged open, and Pechi threw her leg up against it and slid it cleanly the rest of the way out. Tabai allowed herself into Pechi's humble abode, which was grimly dark, and found herself stopped in the center of the room. The trees in the corners, multitudinous as they were, made the air more vibrant than anywhere else on the ship. The left and right were balanced, perfectly, with trinkets hanging off the trees in such a way that the asymmetry itself lead to pleasing design. However, on the back wall were three petrified figures, with Benn and G'ana slumped to one side and Cassie in her own, looking just as desolate as she had upon originally being lead into the room. The former two were surrounded by a few idle trinkets, a few sharp pieces of metal for Benn and decorative pearls around G'ana's bloodied neck (the necklace was around her ear, drooped like a string of tears down the side of her blank face). The latter was surrounded by her portraits, most of which were unfinished. Violent sprays of paint battered the canvases, barely visible in the dim murk of Pechi's surroundings.

Tabai surveyed the trees on the left, stealthily creeping her way towards the seated, petrified visage of Cassie, and found the seraph horns curled around several of the tree bases. They were spaced out with various items of Pechi's, in such a way that seraph horns were always given an adequate amount of space... it was hard to fully comprehend Pechi's design logic, as some shelves would have sudden clusterings of small gems, others were spiked with dried plants, and all between were about any small item you could enchant for some purpose, but it seemed like the larger radius an item was given, the more magical effect it had.

Tabai reached out to prod a skew seraph horn back into its pot.

"No, don't--" Pechi smacked her paw away. "S-s-stop that."

"I thought you might've knocked it over."

"It's lined up with one of the energy lines of th-the room," Pechi explained, as if this should have been obvious. "Y-y-you could call it s-s-kew, but entirely pa-parallel design is for novices. I'm n-not a novice. This is the kind of seer b-b-build y-y-ou would kill someone for on-world. No. I would h-have killed someone. You w-w-wouldn't get it."

Tabai inspected the clutter. It must have been truly impossible to do all this, and she might have respected it, if it wasn't crazy. "Well. Have any omens for the day?"

"You don't have to s-s-sound so m-m-mean about it. J-just tell me f-f-forthright that y-y-you think it's stupid, like A-Alexa and D-d-dusty did already."

"I don't! I hold no such opinion. In fact, I was trying to intellectually engage with you by expressing my genuine interest in some of your customs," Tabai said, offended.

Pechi exhaled for a long time. "When w-were you b-born?" Pechi said, in such a way that expressed she had no desire for engagement, intellectual or otherwise.

"I have no idea," Tabai admitted. "That won't be an issue, will it?"

Pechi closed her eyes, pained. "It's l-literally e-e-entirely contingent on y-y-you at least knowing your s-s-season. I c-c-can't even deduce your Harvester, and I h-have the calendar memorized, b-b-but if you don't know the day, I can't do Procyon-Sirius cycles, either."

"Procyon was full," insisted Tabai. "I remember that."

"N-no one remembers being born."

"I do," Tabai said, thinking of entering the castle beneath Procyon's watchful eye. She had turned from the nurturing mother to her colder brother, Sirius, moon of wanderers. It had been a few days prior to the mission, and the first time she had tried on this form. A few cities over, she had buried the tassel with her scent on it. She had looked back on it, feeling her gut turn, and moved on, leaving the last body she'd pretended to own behind.

That had been birth.

"Can you trust me?"

Pechi looked at her. "D-does anyone on this sh-ship really t-t-trust anyone else on this sh-ship? I do-don't think so." She caught Tabai's expression, the pure, gleeful hope that Tabai was trying her very best to administer (along with showing all her teeth, which could have been warmth or aggression). Pechi relented. "Sirius?"

"Apex and falling, traitor's face."

"S-suspiciously auspicious." Pechi cleared her throat. "Slight rustle on the left side, where Sirius is bright, means you should be wary. You'll be offered something, as one of the half moons, and you should take it, because it may be the last time for a while you're offered such an opportunity. This is the time of the year when Icarus, the sun's closest disciple, moves back into retrograde, so prepare for troubles regarding ambition. Finally, we've moved from the harvest season into the starving moons, so it's cold again, back home. You steal away to die, or you huddle in." Pechi spoke the words like prophecy. When she was young and still believed in the Auspicia as anything more than a deluded, outdated symbol, she used to pick up storybooks and repeat the stories within, hoping she could mark herself divine. It didn't work on her, even though she'd seen others execute it and take on the god's countenance. She'd cursed her own inability to believe, but eventually, spitefully, she had resigned herself to it.

Pechi made her want to believe again.

"And u-usually this position of Surria t-this s-s-spells out a soft romantic inclination, but I'm b-beginning to think I should just d-d-disregard anything p-p-positive it says," Pechi said, coming back from her moment of holy rite. "M-maybe your luck is better. N-not that I b-b-believe you, wh-when you say you r-r-remember being born."

Tabai nodded. If any of this was true, it would be an incredible boon to know it, but she had been disappointed by superstition before. "I don't mean to be cruel, but has it ever gotten anything correct that could not otherwise be easily influenced by the circumstances of the day or potentially misassigned as the inevitable consequence of the current state of affairs when it was only shakily retrofitted to the events which occurred, or else, indeed, forced into--"

"Stop." Pechi said. "They g-guessed j-just about the right d-day for everything that has e-e-ever gone wrong in m-my life. The d-d-day we found Cassie on th-the last world, I g-got one for di-discovery, ac-actually. I k-ki-kind of-- I kind of-- f-f-figured, that's the word, yes..."

"You were lucky to have loved her," Tabai said. "You were lucky to have had her."

Pechi looked up dully. "This is usually the p-p-point where someone h-hits you, r-r-right?"

"What?"

The two of them found themselves jolted sideways. Tabai almost slammed into Pechi's still warm sheets, which was an embarrassing occurence if one laughably predictable in hindsight. She hoped for a moment she might prove the Canira a light sleeper, that the pair could perhaps engage in less professional affairs, and Tabai might not have to worry so much about her body. She wished even more firmly that she could give the frozen Cassie all the desires that practically bled from the stone in which she was now contained. Tabai had been so kind to separated lovers in the past. The Omnian underground had use for beings with her talents. This was potentially a little too crude a thought for what she was currently engaged in, but it was...

"I d-don't know what that was, b-but..." Pechi stared down at her. "Y-you should leave."

Tabai found herself staring past her, at what had not been readily apparent before: across the ceiling, like a map of stars, were thousands of little pins. It was unclear how Pechi had gotten them up there, but they were strung together with string, creating a vast labyrinth of connections in all the colors her poor vision could detect, along with strings of gold, silver, and bronze, familiar from mythical connotations: interuniversal connection, interpersonal connection, life strings themselves.

"What are you making?" asked Tabai.

"It d-d-doesn't really ma-matter. I j-just have a lot of th-thoughts, and I'm trying to m-make-- make sure they all line up," Pechi looked to the door. "S-s-supplements the predictions."

"What happens to us next?" Tabai implored, getting hastily to her paws.

Pechi looked up at the ceiling. "If we're c-c-connecting this to mythic archetypes, wh-which the seraph s-seems to e-enjoy, it's g-g-going to get a l-lot hotter, n-not colder. W-we t-t-travel into the w-w-worst of the late growing season, p-post Dog Days. E-expect lava."

"That's... you got that from trees?" asked Tabai. "Have you relayed this information to Alexa and Dusty?"

"N-no one cares, T-Tabai. S-seeing the future and ch-changing it are d-d-different things. I c-c-can tell you h-how you might die, but I c-c-can't stop you from dying," Pechi said.

"I could stop myself, if you told me."

Pechi looked away. "I g-g-guess I'd k-know what to s-s-say if you told us anything about you."

Tabai nodded. "But no one on this ship trusts anyone on this ship."

"Goodbye, Tabai," Pechi said. "P-please check on the turbulence."

Tabai hadn't realized she was in the doorway, but the Canira had been subliminally backing her up the entire time. The door screeched to an unsteady close again, and Tabai found herself thrown against the wall again. The ship began to screech with unholy noise, which was obviously a good sign, and Tabai opened the elevator only for a grinding noise to ensue that went on far too long. Mind racing, she dashed to the second, which appeared to work, and gave herself to the darkness.