She looks great in that dress. Is what I find myself thinking as I stare at the expanse of her freckles back in the gown she fashioned from old fabric scraps for the sake of this banquet. She has a goblet of what I know is not wine, and is probably her bootleg Moonshine. “By the grace of the flame…” I whisper under by breath, sipping my own wine. She’s petulant, domineering, ridiculous, and so damn smart.

She’s my compass. She calls me out on my bullshit, bandages my wounds when I’m hurt. She is my direction, my North Star. What would I do without her? If she’s angry at me, but I know she won’t be for long. She’ll get drunk, and cry, and I’ll hold her as we talk it out. Then we’ll fuck and go to bed, and wake up naked. She steadies my arm in training, send her birds to me with suggestions and notes when I’m not wherever she is.

She drifts, like the birds she trains. One day she’s in Polis, the next slipping into Arcadia for the Moonshine she stashed there when it was called Camp Jaha. Sometimes I don’t see her for weeks, only to have her slip into my bed before I wake up. I know I probably should worry, but I don’t. She leaves when it’s too much, and slips back to see me when she pleases.

She slips in and out of the sectors, gets caught for petty thievery I know she could get away with just for the thrill. She’s elusive. Once, because she is as spiteful as she is strong, I pissed her off so she ran away and got herself captured by an Azgeda Bounty Hunter, all so I would pay for her life. She’s… difficult, yes, but worth it in every way.

I gaze at the the tattoo that decorates her spine- a tattoo of the bones in a human spine, and my name hidden at the base of her neck. I like that thought. Her tattoos aren’t traditional Trikru tattoos, at least most of them. But she has a few on her arms that are traditional tattoos, not that it really matters.

A friend of hers, Raven, sidles up to me and nudges my arm playfully. “You two are dating. You know you could talk to her, right?” She asks me, sipping from a flask of what I have learned to be Moonshine. I grab it from her, and take a swig. She turns around when Raven calls her, and I’ve never been more grateful in my entire life that this stupid warpaint hides my flushed cheeks. Goddamn this woman.