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"You are still hiding!"

It was true! Her pet princess was still hiding in the cargo hold of the ship, which, to be fair, had been adjusted into crew quarters for one: Satarella. Her royal cabin! Featuring the finest scrap blanket the ship could provide serving as a wall between her and the rest of the ship, the colony effort, Sasfsets, and reality.

"There is an assassin here to kill me," Satarella said.

"A very reasonable concern! But I have explained, she is my dear friend, and we have negotiated that you will not, in fact, be assassinated."

"And what is she getting in return?"

"Ah! That I do not kill her."

Satarella did not bother to puppet her corpse's head to even so much as look at Sasfsets at this. Like a doll between street shows, the princess' body was simply at rest along the wall of the ship. Her mouth did not even move as her soul vibrated the words, "I don't understand your life, Nilivir."

"No, I do not either," Sasfsets said, tossing herself onto the floor next to Satarella.

"You have a void monster as a slave," Satarella said, "and another as a friend, despite, yourself, being firmly of the Ocean."

"Liquor likewise is a poison that does its surest best to harm us, and you cannot find a single island in the Ocean that does not have the Bread King's Own for sale in their tall bottles and bright wrappers."

"How do you even become friends with an assassin?"

"Ah, a funny story."

The strings of Satarella's soul tugged lightly, and inclined her head towards Sasfsets. "Is it actually funny?"

"Xixiviv was hired to kill me by a rival executive officer. Do not ask about what, because neither I, nor she, even remember what had spurred such absolute jealousy! Do not ask my rival what pushed him to this either, for you will have quite the adventure searching the Ocean for the record of his soul to satisfy the inquiry."

"How many people have you killed?"

"More than one is supposed to, I'm sure. Anyway, Xixiviv tried to snipe me, as she does, which is usually a one-and-done sort of deal. Pow, bam, that's about it for you. From far up in the Voidsky, wings stretched, rifle Oceanwards, she looks at you for a moment too long, and then you put dirt on. You can imagine my surprise being shot, suddenly, out of the nothing-sky."

"I can't. I can't imagine anything of your life."

"Princess, my life is nothing so exceptional. You yourself were the target of two surprise assassination attempts! You can sympathize with having things interrupted by murder. Not the delight of your soul, perhaps, but that it is what brought us together! So it was with Xixiviv and I. She shot me, but I did not want to die. She's a sniper, and not very accustomed to her prey launching themselves up a tree and then tackling her out of the Void itself."

"I haven't begun to laugh yet."

"Ah, but I was. You have to imagine it. Flying, sheathed in Void, self-assured of her invulnerability, Xixiviv's interaction with death was always a distant selection enacted upon and then moved on from. Was it even death she saw herself as causing? Did she even consider herself a part of the situation? An impartial agent of endings! No longer! Here was Nilivir, throwing herself up a tree with her massive auroral arms, and then weaving them into wings. Here was Xixiviv's target, joining her hundreds of paces above the ground, declining death, and riding her back down to the hard island dirt below!"

"And you... you enjoyed this?"

"I was terrified and acting entirely out of desperate need to not be dead. And so, I granted Xixiviv the first feeling her Void-soaked soul had been given in quite a long time--the same feeling, in fact, the desperate need to not be dead. And so, feet on the ground, we fought, without a trace of elegance or propriety. The Void is very dangerous, you see, because if it so much as clips the wall of your soul, it unravels you miserably! But Xixiviv was not used to fighting face-to-face, while I conduct most of my roughhousing close enough to kiss. The advantage was to no-side, and so, after considerable negotiation about the particulars, no-side won. It was so thrilling we decided we should be friends."

"You understand that that sounds insane?"

"Princess!" Sasfsets stretched out, entirely to prolong the rest of her statement so that she had time enough to create it. "I assume we are friends?"

"I don't know."

"I saved your life, and have let you live on my boat this entire time. We have spoken every cycle of things serious and irrelevant, and I often comfort you in your misery. You have even, in occasion, assisted me in mine. If you have a higher standard of friendship, then I must confess it is I who do not understand the life and standards of the princesses of Alofhom."

Satarella's mannequin corpse did not even affect the effort of breathing, and so it was in silence Sasfsets waited, except for the distant sound of fetradden laborers outside, and the everpresent hum of the Ocean that pressed infinite and all-powerful but fingerwidths away, on the other side of the spongewood.

"It isn't the life you wanted," Sasfsets finally said for the princess' sake. "You do not want to understand my life because you are desperate to not understand your own life. A life where violence can happen with earnest results, without your consent, no matter where the grain sits in the glass. You did not want a life of adventuring executive officers, Void-dappled slaves, skyborne-assassins, political coups and mass-family-murder. If you hold me as your example of an insane life, you can cling to the idea that your life has become insane outside of your agreement, that you are being aggrieved, that this is a mistake that can be fixed. That things can go back to normal. That you can exist in a world where attempted murder does not end in friendship."

The strings of Satarella's soul pulsed, and her body expanded, and then deflated in a heavy sigh. "Another of your famous guesses?"

"This is not so much a guess as an assertion. Even if this is not how you feel, not how you are thinking, I ask that you think it, because I can lead this thought, at least, to a favorable conclusion. It is a harsh one, and it is simply so: this is your life now. Your life is the same sort of nonsense as my life. We are outcast scions followed by violence. Will you reject your new life as not-yours and succumb to its ending, or will you be like me, and, empowered by the desperate need to not be dead, will you say: Yes, this is my life now. I will make of it what I can, because, coward I am, I do not want it to be concluded yet."

Satarella lowered her head--rather, she put even less effort into holding it up, and the fungal thing drooped low to the soft, sweet-smelling spongwood of the cargo hold. "I can't tell if you're manipulating me or being my friend. I can't--I cannot help but find something in your words every time that resonates with my soul. You speak and I--I listen, and believe. Every time."

"That is simply and only because I am right. You have spent some time chewing the nightmare that is your life--are you ready to taste some more favorable dream?"

"You said you had a plan for me. Many plans? So what are they, Princess Nilivir? I'm new to this life of surprise-assassins and battles to postpone death just a little while longer. In your expert opinion, what do you recommend?"

"You are aware of what we are doing on this island?"

Satarella did not answer right away. "Establishing a colony?"

"Nothing very impressive right away, no, but yes. A stopping point for ships to restock. A trading hub. Another knot of life in the great stretch of the Ocean. My kitra insists I remain to make myself useful to the company, and so, moored as I am to this port, I intend to see this colony becomes something more exciting than a buoy-and-breakfast. Yes, of course, that's my kitra's trick, to trick me into responsibility by giving me the choice of 'oversee the establishment of a no-where-nothing' or, in the proper DPREI fashion, turn opportunity to advantage to success? I fall for it, but I fall for it willingly, when the alternative is to suffer it entirely against my want. I will need help."

"And that is me? I'm your help?"

"Princess Satarella, this is a job offer. Do you understand what that means?"

"Do you need a secretary then? Or am I to be the island's official artist? Paint some murals and fancy up the administrative buildings? I do not excel at corporate art."

"I want you to become a legal employee of Flagmark, a DPREI corporation, which is, to our people, little more than a royal bloodline. Cast off your old crown, the one stained with the fungal ichor of your family, and wear our pink little flag crest instead. Do you understand? Your cousin can no longer harm you without it becoming an act of war. And oh, imagine war with DPREI. Where other countries sail to defeat, to humiliate, even to conquer, DPREI sails to profit only. No, when DPREI retaliates, we take your businesses, your money, your freedom, we enslave the strong, cast the weak into the ocean, and sell everything you had to cover the expenses. You will be safe from your cousin."

"And bound to you. You, who have stated your original intention with me was to seduce me. You, who admits she lives a life of surprise-assassins and--and--and all of the rest."

"Yes. Exactly. It is a trick, of course. Will you fall for it, or will you fall for it willingly, and turn opportunity to advantage to success? Will you play the victim princess hiding with the dashing hero, bumbling through happenstance and farce, or will you seize control and say, I am Governor Satarella, fuck you?"

"Governor? You want me to be the island's governor?"

"You were going to be a queen. We can skip a formal interview process, you are more than qualified."

"I need time to think about it."

"Of course, we have--"

"I have thought about it. I will do it, but I will not be a pawn or figurehead for you. If I am to be governor then I will be one in truth. I am Governor Satarella. Fuck you."

"Perhaps later, my dear. But ah! A delight, the trick continues, my own workload has now decreased. Let me catch you up to speed on our work, governor."