Is this a writing/drawing challenge for Sapphic September 2024, because I didn't see any, and my brain just waterfalled this all over a page?
It can be if you would like it to be.
No pressure, like, at all.
But if you do, maybe tag your works with Sapphtember so people can discover them?
Cohost Sapphic September 2024 writing prompt: 20 — Girls who command
Luciana Caprice stalks the decks of the Most Holy Temple-Flagship, glowering and barking at people.
To the Acolyte-Crew, she is a figure of double terror: still wearing the robes of one of the Spacepriests of Balance, the Temple's ancient opponents, hilt of her shattered sunblade of office strung around her neck on a leather thong. And again, in her new life: robes defaced with a handprint-stain, blood and char, above the heart, from when she boarded as an enemy, was tested, was broken, was salvaged. She is the Most Holy's hand, now, and is as violent and sweeping a terror as ever she was when set against it.
"You!" she shouts, bearing down on a pair of Acolyte-Crewmembers, stacking crates. "You call that tidy? Re-stack them!"
"You!" she shouts, grabbing the arm of one of the worship-artists, painting fleeting mandalas and prayers in chalk along every mile of the Temple-Flagship's corridors, to be brushed away by the touch of hands and robes, a meditation on impermanence. "Sloppy! Sharpen up your lettering!"
"You!" she shouts, wading into a meditation-drill, knocking the sticks from the startled hands of temple-warrior trainees. "Your form is appalling! You call this a devotion? Your footwork spits on the Most Holy!" and demonstrates on them the correct way, leaving them bruised and penitent.
"You—!"
"Lucy," a soft voice says, and a soft hand tugs at her elbow. "Really. It's not your job to ensure perfection."
"Perfection is everyone's job," Luciana growls, unconsciously covering the hand on her arm with her own.
The shorter woman at her side, in robes of her own — both like and unlike those of the Spacepriests, in the colours and designs of the Most Holy — smiles ruefully. "I think your former order colours your thinking still," she says gently. "Not everything need be martial, Lucy. Not everything need be combative. Not everything need be a demand for the ultimate — for purity, for ascetic absolutes, for perfection. Devotion is not measured out in mortification and measurement; only in feeling."
"Effort doesn't hurt," Lucy says grumpily.
"Lucy," the other remonstrates through her own amusement.
"Look, they're doing it wrong—" Luciana starts, trying to tug away to go and seize someone by the arm, or collar, or ear; the other holds fast to her elbow in both hands, not in the hope that her strength will match the warrior-monk's lifetime of trained muscle, but merely to remind her that she's anchored, still.
"You'll wear yourself out, dashing about like this," she scolds lightly. "Won't you?"
"It's no price," Luciana growls, eyes fliting about the imperfections all around. "No price at all, to see people venerate with their whole powers of excellence as they should—"
"You're tired, aren't you?" the other says, an odd ringing note in it, and Lucy sighs and her shoulders slump.
"I'm tired," she says.
"The Most Holy doesn't expect you to mortify yourself to display your devotion," the woman says, and lightly squeezes Luciana's arm. "The Most Holy expects nothing save your humanity. To live the most yourself you can." The faint, weird ring creeps back into her tone. "If you tire, you venerate the Most Holy with your nap."
"I just want everything to be perfect," Luciana says, swaying a little. "Everything should be perfect, for the Most Holy."
"Everything is. Perfectly itself, flaws and all, and the Most Holy celebrates and loves all of it."
Luciana blinks around. Looks at the hands on her arm. Tracks sleepily up to the face above them.
She frowns, then, faintly, as if trying to remember something from long ago.
"Wouldn't you like a nap?" The woman smiles at her. "Look, there's a nest of cushions just there, for wearied supplicants to recline; you can lie there, and I'll lie within the curve of you, and we can rest—"
"I came here," Luciana says, softly as if to herself, in an almost puzzled way. "I came here to stop you, Dvia."
"And yet you're beloved of the Most Holy, Lucy," the woman says, smile turned a little wry. "Not on the condition that you turn to my side, of course; that's a mere practical necessity. You're perfectly you. Isn't that enough, for anything?"
"No," Lucy whispers, hand seeking the burnt-out hilt at her neck; and Dvia sighs.
"I love you, Lucy," she says, and the ringing is strong enough to set Luciana's limbs trembling.
"I love you, Most Holy," she whispers.
"I know," Dvia says, and pats her hand. "Let's nap, shall we?"
