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[anna shakes her head, and there's the hint of a smile on her face as she does it.]

It's the idea of knowing that someone is still there waiting for you when you get back to whatever you call home. It's a stupid little metaphor, don't get me wrong, but... I don't know. It's what I've got.

[she thinks on the handful of days before apollonia where she had woken up enveloped in venus. she tries not to let it hurt her heart too much.]

Anyway, it probably isn't the same Earth, but maybe it is. I don't know. Alternate universes are a thing here, too, just like they were back home. [for a couple months, at least.] I'm no cosmologist. I just live here.

[ metaphor flies over her, making itself known while illuminating nothing. vesper sighs, only a tiny bit of frustration showing in her inability to understand. ]

That's fine. It's appreciated either way.

[ anna continues to speak, and this time vesper doesn't bother to listen fully. instead, she allows herself to hear the song of the world around her - hundreds of voices singing in unison, and ahead of her an android with two. (two voices? how interesting! is she a kolibri like vesper? some other bioresonant unit?) she listens in closely, and slowly bits and pieces of this gestalt named venus begin to trickle in.

a boyish girl in a dress crying with cracks showing through her arm-
chained to a wall, snow-in-summer-in-kainè struggling forward while a girlish boy struggled to not stare-
a warmth like pure light, wrapped around and holding her close-

staring up at anna, waiting for the tobacco in her mouth to be lit. a cigarette kiss before she knew the name.

vesper pulls away, a great and sad nostalgia she can't quite place unfolding within her. ]

Did she love you?

[now, if the pronouns were switched in that question, she would have an easier time answering it. it would not be an easy time, and she would still not know what answer to give, but it would be slightly less complicated to actually come to a conclusion on whether she loved venus. to be asked if venus loved her is something—]

How the hell am I supposed to know the answer to that? [it's not anger that splits her lips this time, but she's looking away as though she's a caged animal ignoring her keeper. there's pressure in her head that's different from a headache in a way that she doesn't know how to describe. it must be from apollonia. she doesn't know what else to ascribe it to.]

She wanted to be in a triad thing with me and my girlfriend, so I guess maybe, yes? I don't know. I can't ever tell until it hits me in the back of the head like a dodgeball. [joke about it. that's all she can do.] She didn't hate me. She cared about us. We cared about her.

Sorry. I guess it was a stupid question.

[ it's not a stupid question. it's important - it's vital. but vesper can learn almost as much from anna's body language as she can from her song: the way she stirs and looks away, the way she answers honestly-but-not-entirely after a moment, the way it turns to we.

for a moment, vesper wonders what it would feel like to wrap around anna. like a comforting blanket. like a gentle warmth. a reminder that you aren't alone, that someone wanted to stay, someone wanted to wake up next you. gently, she adjusts her own frequencies; she broadcasts out, trying to catch that exact part of anna's song. the gentle echo of being woken up with warmth and light and feathers. the soft smile from a being that has no mouth. something that should terrify you, and yet it only brings joy instead.

behind anna, within her house, the radio slowly activates. ]

...that sounds really lovely. [ gentle. like an admission. ]

[it starts as a tingling that anna can't place, but it feels familiar. it feels warm and comforting and she closes her eye and tilts her head back against the exterior wall of the house that she's leaning against. her expression evens out, and she doesn't look serene, exactly, but she is trying to figure something out with the way it feels. it's hard to come up with the words, so she just agrees.]

It was, yeah. While it lasted. [there is only regret in her words—no bitterness, no anger, and certainly not towards vesper.] Until it changed, and the three of us became different people, and... and now we're here. [she opens her eye and looks up towards the sky, hoping that moon presence can maybe give her an answer this time. there's never a response, not in any way that she can make sense of.]

We all found each other, and then this place tore us apart. ...Maybe that's dramatic. I don't know. I just know that I was getting used to the idea of adding Venus to our relationship, and now... [and now she either has to get by without her or open her heart and mind to someone else.]

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