Hello Transmitter

It's supposed to be Melia and Nia on the important ends of the lines, greeting each other as figurehead emissaries and natural equivalents (somehow, the hierarchies have been worked out to a mutual satisfaction, by someone's approximate math). It's supposed to be a grand and gated exercise, like war games or a ribbon-cutting, but bigger and better.

Supposed to be, but the connection starts running fuzzy just as they're about to set to it, and then it's taking not just minutes but hours, never mind a few quick seconds, to get the communicators back online, and by this point the queens really do have to retire, but Shulk and Tora still need some kind of relay, up there in the room, or else just bodies on watch, so when the line finally flickers back to life, it's the queens' faithful guards - each of the highest respective rank and degree - that peer blearily through at each other.

"You've got wings on your head," says Mòrag, half asleep.

"And your hair's on fire," replies Tyrea, not sleepy at all but perhaps immediately first-blush bored by the hackneyed comment.

This would be just another step in the round of conversation for Mòrag as well, were Brighid not the type of self-possessed never to stand directly behind her Driver. Calmly, defying her own instinct to stumble out her course of confusion, Mòrag touches fingertips to her temple, just below the line of her cap.

"You'll soon find," she begins crisply, "that there are those in Alrest" - Agnus, she reminds herself - "who look much more fantastical than I."

"But none with wings?"

"But none with wings."

Enough of that - a petty thing called banter, indeed.

"My name is Tyrea. I am the first attendant to the Entian Empress Melia, whom you know as Keves's honored queen."

Mòrag bows a practiced inclination of her head. "I am Mòrag Ladair, Special Inquisitor for the Empire of Mor Ardain."

That's where the routine ends, for now, as both recognize that this first segment of verbal information conveyed across and through the proper definition of a linkring is not one allotted for the mouths and ears of these secondary individuals to exchange.

Tyrea stands tight-lipped, observing Mòrag with no pretense of innocent curiosity. Mòrag levels her gaze right back, hands locked at point of wrists to waist behind her back.

In the interest of efficiency for all prior communications, the only names mentioned had been those of Melia, Nia, Shulk, Tora, and occasionally Poppi. Despite all of Shulk's most fervent entreaties, Pyra and Mythra had elected not to discuss matters of the Aegis in such rudimentary format. There had been no reason, then, to expand to any of the rest of the party, even if they were all dignitaries of a kind, even Rex.

Rather a roundabout way for a bisected oligarchy to come together.

Meanwhile, Mòrag makes her best effort, without moving her body, to count the pixels that run from root to tip of Tyrea's long, willowy wings. If Tyrea can even see Mòrag's eyes under the brim of the cap, she's pointedly not seeking them out. Time stretches along the attenuation of the two-world portal.

"Did we have a timestamp recorded for our first meeting?" Tyrea breaks in, then. Mòrag waves her away: "I'm sure the engineers have it."

Ah.

"Had you alerted the others of our contact?"

"I had not. Had you?"