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Miorine slept, and as she slept, she dreamed. In her bed, in her wife’s arms, she tossed and turned.
I hope I don’t dream. They always turn sour. Rotten. Unripe.
That’d been her last waking thought, so when it started, she found herself in her garden. Not her garden, but… her garden. In the dream, the strange fuzzy un-logicable dream, she thought of it as hers, but outside she knew it wasn’t. It hadn’t been, not for a long, long time.
The glass-and-metal walls felt tighter than usual, smaller than usual. She wasn’t sure why, but the place felt wrong, but then she saw Suletta turning away from a vine to smile at her, and everything was okay.
The dream shifted. Miorine noticed, if only a small part of her.
They were back in Plant Quetta, drifting in zero gravity together, holding each other. Everything was okay until it wasn’t, until she was back in Plant Quetta, putting herself between the man with the gun and her father, wounded on his gurney.
The sound of the man tapping his finger to the trigger was even louder than that of Aerial crashing through the wall and slamming its hand into him. Then Suletta was standing on it, on Aerial’s hand covered in blood and gore and viscera and what used to be a living person, and Suletta reached out a bloodstained hand to her, and nothing was okay.
Miorine looked away, up to Aerial’s head, and saw its horn blade broken.
No.
No. Not this one again, please. Anything but this one, part of her pleaded to herself, to her subconscious.
Everything got worse.
Miorine strode up to Aerial’s cockpit as it slumped down to the ground, Miorine watched from the air, from somewhere, from an impossible angle that let her see everything. The ground shifted and flickered, Aerial itself shifted and flickered, taking damage and repairing it in what would've been a blink if she had eyes, but the horn stayed broken. It always did. This is a dream. A nightmare. It's not real, not anymore. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.
She couldn’t.
“Because it was me who did it,” she said, as she had. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I thought I had to, I thought it was for the best, she screamed, as she was.
“But… why?” Suletta asked, as she had. There was no other voice along with hers. She was always alone.
“I wanted you to lose.” Away, far away and far too close, Miorine gasped, and Suletta gasped with her.
“That’s a lie…” they said together.
“I told you from the beginning, didn’t I? This was a trade. You made a good shield,” she said, as she had.
Miorine couldn’t listen anymore. She couldn’t watch. She forced herself not to, forced out of her mind the image of her throwing away the symbol of their love but it was still there it was still there she couldn’t stop it from replaying couldn’t stop watching Suletta’s heart shatter with every word she said-
You made a good shield, you still are, so please keep protecting me. Please!
“Goodbye, my Mercurian country bumpkin,” she said, as she had.
NO!!! Don’t leave me I’m sorry I left you I didn’t mean to I thought it- I thought… I thought it was for the best. I was wrong. Please let me come back to you. Please keep protecting me.
Please.
Please.
Please.
She felt unseen arms come around her, holding her close to something she couldn’t see even when she could see everything she didn’t want to see.
Suletta looked up to her, tears flowing from her eyes still, but she was smiling. That wasn’t right.
Miorine realized Suletta was looking at her. Not the old her, the betrayer, but the one she was now, the one who had betrayed and hated herself for it but still couldn’t stop watching.
“I’ll protect you, and I forgive you. I promise.”
She didn’t say that. That’s not how this went. Why is it different?
And then she realized Suletta sounded… older. Her voice a little deeper, a little steadier, a little lovelier.
From inside the cockpit, from so very far away, Suletta raised a hand towards her, and the sky broke open. Through it she saw a second Suletta, not the Suletta that had been, but the Suletta that was. The Suletta that was her wife. Through both selves she reached for Miorine and grabbed her and dragged her up into what had once been Asticassia’s false sky but was now an unremarkable hallway, an unremarkable door she'd opened herself.
But Suletta took her there.
“I’m sorry. I’m so… I’m sorry, Suletta,” she said, as she was. Her wife pulled her close, put her arms around her. Everything was starting to be okay again, if only a little.
“I know, it’s okay. Do you want to take the day off tomorrow and tend the garden with me, Miorine Mercury?”
Miorine Mercury.
That was her name.
She felt a ring on her finger, where she hadn't before. This wasn't as it had been, it just was.
“Yeah,” she said, as she was, trying not to cry so hard she couldn’t speak, “yeah, that sounds nice.”
“Okay. See you in the morning, Mio-mio.” For a while, Suletta’s arms were the only thing she felt, the rustling of their clothes the only thing she heard. Miorine recognized that she was feeling that the wrong way, that Suletta’s arms had hugged her from the front then, but were hugging her from behind now. That was how it felt, but it felt wrong, but it felt right, and everything was right, everything was okay.
“See you in the morning, my Mercurian country bumpkin.”