"Oh no," Valentina tried to hand the box back, "you do not have to do that."ĭibella didn't take it, "yes. Valentina lifted the small, white box, "what is this?"ĭibella looked at her, a touch of color rising in her cheeks, "with all that happened, I never got a chance to thank you properly. "I thought I might find you up here," Dibella said, pulling herself up onto the equipment box and plopping down next to Valentina in a flurry of snowflakes. It can be fought.īut how? Blood oaths by Münlight were all well and good, but she needed answers, some place to begin. If it has to work by schemes and shadows, if it cannot simply take what it wants, then somehow, it is still weak. Staring at nothing, her eyes widened just slightly, then narrowed. It was scheming, stalking, corrupting to its own pattern, but. It moved, unseen and unnoticed, like subterranean beetles that gnawed on tree roots, and in doing so toppled even the mightiest of them. Valentina gazed out over the perfect, white, unbroken snow. But some part of her wanted to stay up there forever. They would never let her go near a rocket again, she suspected. Of course, it was easy to look back on it now and think that. Up there, despite the gravity of the situation, everything seemed to make sense. She also realized with a wince, that was a horrid way to think about it, yet there it was. She was lucky to have the gained the short time she did. She'd been to space for the last time again, she realized that. Thoughts came random and disjointed, and Valentina let her mind meander through them. well, whatever it was she was sitting on up here. She let out a long breath of cloud, and leaned back against. It had quieted down to nothing in the last few minutes, too. The voice had continued to twitter and hiss in her mind all night long, but distantly, as if afraid to come near. More politics.Īnd, Valentina suspected, the politics of the Ussari Union were the least of her worries. The Empress's decree seemed to have surprised everyone. There had been a thinly veiled tension in the air. Her parents had been pardoned of all wrongdoing, but she still hadn't the slightest idea what they'd actually done, and no one could. It had all seemed distant and dream-like. Then the interviews, the photographs, the hand-shaking. Forms had to be signed, documents initialed, photographs taken, and new docket of paper to be checked, please. After the ceremony, there was, of course, the bureaucracy. Last night's events had yet to fully sink in. It still didn't seem real. Either way, it gave her a welcome moment of peace on this perfect morning to think. She thought everyone on the facility must still be sleeping off the consequences of last night's festivities. Not even footprints broke smooth white sheet below. She knew it wouldn't last, it never did, but it was here, now. Before her, all was pure, flowing white as far as she could see, like creation born anew. It always seemed like the world had been soothed and refreshed: stains covered over, harsh edges softened, all bathed in muted silence. this was her favorite time of all, the morning after the first snowfall. The light morning breeze pulled long clouds of breath from her lips and numbed her face against the loose lock of hair blowing across it, but she didn't mind, the cold never bothered her anyway. Valentina sat watching, perched high on the roof of the VAB. Little more than a dusting, really, and not a flake of it had been plowed yet. Perhaps a shy meter of it had fallen in the night. Slowly, the sun clawed its way into the morning sky, shifting the colors from crimson, to red, to brilliant scarlet, before fading away to unblemished, sparkling white. Dawn broke, casting a deep ruddy glow across the few clouds still lingering about the horizon, and staining the snow-covered landscape the color of blood.
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