Butterfly Step(s)
There was so much time, after the end. No quiet moments had to be stolen, they were just ready and available for the taking. One such moment was the one we'll watch today: Melia and Fiora, on an afternoon stroll, trying out new outfits and talking of...oh, nothing, and everything, in particular.
Probably, Fiora was talking about something impressively candid, about how her new sandals fit or how much stronger her calves had gotten as a result of working in that metallic body for so long. Melia was listening, listening, always listening, so intently, as intently as they could. She didn't want to miss a single moment, a single step.
Could she say something similar about how her own new outfit - that of an empress, somewhat, more than of a princess - and the way her boots zipped all the way up to the middle of her thighs, rather than just being held there by tights' friction? How their cape was gone, replaced by pseudo-peplum puffs about her waist, and how it made them ever-so-slightly self-conscious about the way they walked?
Yes, she could, but she didn't want to. Melia was transfixed, enamored, entraced. Fiora was magnetic, brilliant, starry-eyed and lion-voiced and everything, oh, everything.
A little too much, there, Melia? Are you falling in love? Maybe you are. Maybe that's all for the benefit of all of us - they deserve it, don't you think? If the same person is also in love with her.
And, then, there was her hand, small and soft and smooth and pale, held - more clutched - tightly in Fiora's ruddy, callused own. The other was preoccupied behind their back(s) with not-so-secret picnic supplies, but if she hadn't been holding the basket then she certainly would have readily added it to the mix.
Any boys (men? boys) who had ever held her hands had been wanton, careless, sloppy. It was something about...intentionality, wasn't it? But that was what was so beautiful about Fiora. She never stopped to let you know what she was thinking about from her body language alone; she told you what she thought, and let her on with it.
And Melia stood there, and studied her. Let herself be pulled, not dragged, along. This beach was so different to Eryth, so plain and so open. So...so like Fiora. Ah. Well. So Melia would try their best to bring whatever essence of Eryth they could to this new Colony 9.
"Melia?"
Melia blinked. What?
"Come on, Bionis to Melia, earth to empress here!" Fiora sing-songed. "Did you hear me?" Did you? Do you? What's going on?
"I, ah..." She certainly thought she had been listening, and listening was different to hearing, that they knew well, but it was always the latter without the former, rather than the other way around. Curious.
No sound was ever so beautiful as Fiora's laugh just then. That is, this one in particular...oh, it was lovely. "I asked what you thought of my hair!"
The new length? Not so interesting; Melia had never been party to the old one. Before she could comment, Fiora continued, explicated, "Since my hair's short now, I knew I had to figure out another way to put it up, so it's not always getting in my face. Right?"
Melia, privately, thought that having the amount of hair Fiora had now, and surely whatever amount she had had before, was no grounds for worrying about tangles straying into your face; they had due experience and overtime on this matter, of course. But, she didn't say as much. All she said was, "It's quite pretty. It, ah...it suits you."
Fiora turned toward her, grin electric. "You think so? I'm glad. Reyn'd probably say it looks stupid, and Shulk would agree with him but refuse to tell me so."
"Not at all - it lifts up your face, I think." Draws attention to her cheeks, probably, and thus her smile, and whatever else they had learned being done up in paints (not paints, but they felt like the same, to her) for every imperial appearance.
"Lifts up - hey, you're right! Oh, Melia, you're so right!"
"Right about...what?" At the next squeeze of her hand, Melia felt her heart leap (and tumble back down to the ground directly, because her wings were not made for them to fly, but that was alright).
"They look like wings! Right? Wing pigtails - no, wingtails!"
"I--" Curious. Curious!
"Come on, we've gotta write that down. I'll have to go into the history books for that one."
Somehow even prouder, Fiora strutted on, Melia in tow, until at last they reached their destination at the end of the bay: a small inlet, with a shallower pool than most of the rest of the coastline. Plate Snows, lichen-like, coated the rocks and pseudo-reefs also studded with Rainbow Zirconia. It was quite pretty, just as Fiora, and again quite simple, just as Fiora.
Melia watched, again and as ever, mutely observant, as Fiora peered around the area, apparently in search of something (and she had let go of Melia's hand, to boot, so that was...a sad little something).
"Something wrong, Fiora?"
She whipped around much quicker than Melia had been expecting. "No, not at all! We just used to sometimes get the shin creatures - the newts and the geckos, you know - down here by the beach. I wonder if they'll ever come back again."
"And you...want them to?"
Fiora blushed. "Maybe! Is that okay with Mistress Melia?"
Melia smiled, dipped her chin. "Perfectly. Just...just so long as you are happy, Fiora."
"Awww...that's sweet. Thank you, Melia. I'm very happy to be here with you."
So they sat, in relative silence, munching on Amethyst Melon, courtesy of Vanea, and Fiora's own freshly-baked bread. The breeze felt good, as the breeze tends to do, but eventually it got a little gustier, so they packed up and headed back in to Dunban and Fiora's rebuilt house.
To distract herself from how nervous she felt about the idea of sitting on Fiora's bed, Melia proposed a new topic: "I very much admire the color of your hair as well, Fiora. It's very-" healthy? natural? vigorous? "-you." Ah. Of course. Perfect.
True to form, Fiora made a face giving something of an "aw, shucks" (wouldn't she? you know she would) and patted awkwardly at the crown of her head, in between the twintails. "You really do think so? Shulk used to make up the bleach for me. I guess they made sure to take care of my roots and all when they put me into the Machina body too. It is pretty nice, I have to admit."
So a good thing they hadn't said "natural" after all, then. "I never would have guessed that it was dyed."
Fiora bit her lip, took Melia's hand again. "Melia. Do you really think Dunban's sister would have bleach-blond hair, just naturally? No way."
No way. Indeed, no way. Melia laughed too, to dispell the slightly displaced air of the moment. To think of peplum...ah, yes. "I am quite partial to your outfit, as well."
"Oh, this?" Making an appraising face, Fiora picked at the stray stitches on the front of the blouse portion and pulled it forward to get a better look from above. "Yeah. It's a little...girlier than I usually wear. But I still like it."
On this one of the first of many days in their new life post-gods, Melia had seen the old crop-top-and-garter-belt getup just about as much as she'd seen the pink and purple romper, so once again the notion of "usual" or "normal" or, heaven forbid, "natural" was well skewed. They waited, ever-patient, for Fiora to continue.
"It's funny, some girly things I like to do, and others I don't care for at all. When Dunban first told me about how he doesn't really call himself a binary man, even though he uses the usual pronouns, everything became a little bit clearer."
Now it was Melia's turn to squeeze at Fiora's hand, to comfort her. They knew of so many of the same struggles, but they had always striven to be, more or less, crossing directly from one side to the other. This was something new, and yet not, at the same time.
"I think I'm the same way," Fiora said at last. "Aren't we just a matched set, like that? It's...epic. Yes, very epic style."
Something very fond bubbled up into Melia's chest. "Quite," she said, but it was with all mischief. "Indeed, I, Empress Melia of the fallen High Entia nation, under the name of Alcamoth our lost capital, do pronounce you, Knight Fiora, very epic indeed."
"Silly!" warned Fiora, tossing a plush Bunnit she'd pulled, seemingly out of nowhere, into Melia's lap. Ah, a welcome challenge! Melia picked it up with her free hand and regarded it with an excessively composed face.
"This is of the Knuckle variety, is it not?" was their eventual pronouncement.
"Melia! How do you know that - WHY do you know that?"
Melia preened. "I am no stranger to stuffed creatures made in the images of local wildlife. I have - had - a very handsome statuette of a Laia, in my quarters in the imperial villa."
"Not the same," Fiora batted back. "I don't think you can sleep with a porcelain statue, especially not one with wings like that."
"You sleep with yours?" Melia queried. She thought of her beloved plush Nebula, which used to be covered in tulle but had been long converted to a simple blue sphere; they always forgot the crucial change, and were quite indignant as a result, when others regarded it as the same.
"Of course. They help me calm down," Fiora explained, "because...I don't really know how to explain it. The texture fits well under my fingertips. You know?"
Melia had removed the tulle because of its over-scratchiness; of course she knew. "You said 'they' - do you have more?"
"Do I have more, they say," Fiora cackled. "You bet your princess butt I've got more - check out this Arachno!"
Before Melia could stop her, Fiora had dove over the far side of the bed, rummaging underneath the skirt for further plush proof, and before very long after that, they were engaged in quite a silly pillow fight, and wingtails and twincurls alike came undone with abandon.
"It's like Dunban always said to me," Fiora murmured, some fifteen or twenty minutes later when their heads were absolutely covered in Feris and Volff and Ponio rendered harmless and stuffy-warm. "Not baby steps, not adult steps either, with being a woman and all...just butterfly steps. One at a time."
Of all the things Melia had observed about Fiora thus far, this was certainly the most surprising. "And how will I know when I'm there? When we're there?"
"Silly Melia. You know I'll always let you know."