The boat putters along the canal under the warm day-hued light of the sky, the hunched and jutting bone constellation of the soldier-mind seated at the stern, back against the pushpit rail; the bounty hunter, by no means short but only two-thirds her wife's height, sitting between her legs and leaning back into her, radiating contentment.
Poppi lies on her side on the floor of her containment cage, and feels self-indulgently abject, sneaking glimpses of her pursuer's married bliss whenever she's in danger of simply enjoying the weather.
"Didn't I call your idea of flirting pointless?" 79 All Along We Should Have Been says smugly.
Poppi makes a tragic noise and rolls over so that she can't see it, but can still crane her neck to cast pining eyes at their captor.
"You'd be better off considering what they're going to do to you when we get there," All Along says.
"To us," Poppi retorts. "I wasn't alone, and I'm not alone in captivity."
"I plan to decry you as a regrettable influence as soon as anyone will listen," All Along says cheerily, which makes Poppi sit up, scowling at it.
"I'm a bad influence?" she says.
"Deny it," All Along challenges.
"You are the reason you don't have any other friends," Poppi informs it, and lies back down.
They while away the morning, until it's nearly Noon+0:00.
"Do you recognise where we're headed?" All Along says, eventually.
"I am not a frequent river traveller," Poppi says, still somewhat short and cool, and lifts her chin to gaze longingly at 141 Lightly Treads.
"I think," All Along says, "you might find the scenery somewhat familiar."
Poppi ignores it for a while before sitting up, with a great show of indifference, to have a look around. They've passed into one of The City's old tessellations, the canal currently lined on both sides by rice fields; further in, a series of canal locks will lift the boat along a stepped landscape, each rise corresponding to an increase in urban density. Birds flock over a stucco skyline and terracotta tiles; shimmering kites and aerial animatures wink against the sky.
Poppi's eyes sweep for anything distinctive above the rooflines, landmarks to anchor the vista to a particular geography. And shrieks.
At the tiller, Lightly Treads lifts her head from the pillow of her wife, and cocks it. Poppi plasters herself to the bars of her confinement, arms thrust through the bars and waving in pathetic beseechment, like dramatic seaweed, in her direction.
"What now," Lightly Treads says.
"You're taking me to me family," Poppi accuses.
"Who else wants to grab hold of you so much?" the bounty hunter says pleasantly.
"Nooooo." Poppi's hands flap like grasping little paws, and her voice is a whine. "No, what about — what about the inseparable duality of hunter and hunted? The destined, dynamic unity of pursuer and prey? The chase eternal? My yin, your yang, my Valjean, your Javert, my—"
Lightly Treads' soldier-wife lifts and drops the fingers of one hand where it rests on the boat's railing, one at a time, a sequence of pointedly clicking claw-points, and Poppi goes very quiet for a little while; in which All Along's maliciously amused chortling is softly audible.
"You can protect society from me by keeping me," Poppi ventures eventually, in a little pathetic voice. "In this cage," and 141 Lightly Treads assumes a posture of sudden thought, hand pressed to her cheek; which is so obviously, affectedly theatrical that it makes Poppi whine in protest.
"I cannot think of a single good reason to do that," Lightly Treads says benevolently. "...Also, I think that might end with my wife pulling your head off."
