Storyline Name: Beyond the Sea of Stars
Creators: Sailor Mercury & Sailor Neptune
Forum: Silver Millennium
Advanced or Relaxed: Advanced

Plot Summary: The pressures of living a life as royalty is simply too much for the newly-crowned Princess Ulysses of Uranus. Chafing under the yoke of etiquette and responsibility, a far cry from her formative life among a rowdy band of interstellar mercenaries, she hijacks a small vessel from the royal fleet and sails off into vast space to escape her life at the palace.

Her boat malfunctions before she can pass the boundaries of the Solar System, and she finds herself marooned on a nearby planet: Neptune. This place, so different from the clouds of her homeworld of Uranus, amazes her with the vast oceans that she has never before seen. While there, she meets an enchanting young woman, not realizing that girl is in fact Princess Calypso of Neptune.

The young Princess Calypso shares a similar longing for adventure and escape. The demands of her parents have weighed her down since early childhood, as they seek to educate and train a "perfect" future queen for their planet. She does not initially reveal to this mysterious stranger that she is Neptunian merfolk, able to live in their vast cities beneath the waves or walk on the small islands that cover her world... or that she was the one to save the blonde from an untimely watery grave after the Uranian's crash landing.

Slowly their friendship blossoms, and perhaps it may become something more...

Details on any necessary information: Takes place during the Silver Millennium, before either Neptune or Uranus have been called to fight as sailor soldiers but after they have been appointed as royalty of their respective planets. They are not sailor soldiers in this storyline. Queen Serenity and anything related to the Moon Kingdom will not be involved in this storyline. Both Princesses have reached the age of majority, at which their titles are recognized, roughly equivalent to 21 Earth years.

Restrictions: Neptune and Uranus are the only playable characters. Other characters will be NPC if necessary.

OOC Thread: None
Storyline Submission Thread: (Approved) [Advanced] Beyond the Sea of Stars

Member to Character List:
Calypso of Neptune - @Sailor Neptune
Ulysses of Uranus - @Sailor Mercury

The seas promised a storm tonight.

Calypso swam in the depths of the waters of Neptune, her cool skin feeling tickled by the electric charge she felt coursing along her slender upper body and her sleek turquoise tail. The water was her home and her kingdom, and yet the surface—and beyond—had always tempted her more.

What worlds were there, out in that vast and seemingly unlimited space? She knew other planets existed, planets where other beings walked upon the ground and even flew in the clear blue sky. They had islands here—a smattering of them—but only a few people lived above ground. Mostly those who had been exiled and were forbidden to return to the water.

Forbidden to swim again and cursed to spend their days on foot.

Calypso couldn’t remember when she last stepped onto the shore. Her kingdom was underwater, and as its princess and future queen, under water was where she was expected to be. The ground is no place for a royal, her father would always say. Walking is for peasants.

But Calypso couldn’t help but wonder… what it would be like to not be constrained by the sea and to, for once, break away from its embrace.

For a moment she held the thing in her hands, too horrified to move. Her eyes, as blue as the turbulent sky of her world, could barely communicate what she was seeing.

She had given them so much of her time, her patience, her surrender, her voice... She let them tell her where to go, how to walk, when to sit, what to eat, how to speak... They policed every moment of her waking hours; she could not even escape them in her sleep, being awoken to learn of new rules or requirements. She let them dress her in these uncomfortable and unfamiliar clothes, trading her casual pants and vests for long hems to trip over and bodices that pulled and restrained in all the wrong places. They painted her face with creams and colours, making it someone she no longer recognized in the mirror. All to create their "Princess".

Could she let them do this as well?

"Here, Your Highness; I'll put the wig on," the stylist insisted, stepping forward with a smile. "That short hair is just soooooo boyish."

She recoiled before she even realized she made the decision to do so, flinging the head of blonde ringlets against the wall. The young woman tripped on one of the agonizing strappy high heels, wrenching her ankle, and kicked the spiteful thing off her feet. She took a deep breath, the narrow chest heaving painfully in her corset, and yanked at the long billowing skirt. The other woman, now the one frozen in shock, gasped aloud as the expensive fabric tore asunder.

"Oh Father Sky!" the woman exhaled. "Princess Ulysses, what are you...?"

Her sentence hung in the air, unfinished. Swift as the wind, the Princess was gone.

---

The castle still entrapped her like a maze, but this was one route she knew well. The leather satchel thumped against her leg as she ran. Her bare feet slid smoothly against the ground, almost noiseless. For once, the screaming confusion in her mind was silenced. This was the only relief she knew. She embraced it again, the only remedy to her internal turmoil. If only it would last.

The tall young woman threw open the hatch and dove into the vessel. These were unlike the ones she knew so well from her childhood, but she could pilot them just the same. She was a vagabond after all...! Or was she? No, that was too confusing now. No time to sort it out—only time to leave. Her expert fingers sought the control panel and gripped the steering column. As the engine rumbled beneath her feet, she shrugged off the remains of the dress and threw it out of the ship and onto the deck. Maybe it would sink into the clouds, lost forever.

She didn't look to see if they had followed her, or if they were trying to stop her from leaving. She kept those blue eyes firmly focused on the distant sea she still could not view—the stars that were her home and comfort. The clouds of this planet could hide them from her, but she knew they were out there. Soon, she would be among them again.

---

The light that flashed on the dashboard almost immediately found friends in a horrifying grating noise and the smell of burning metal. Ulysses leaned hard on the controls, fumbled for the right valves and switches, but there was nothing she could do to stop the fire or its results. The gravity of the Solar System still held her tightly in its grasp; she knew that Uranus did not lay far behind her. Her hand reached out to the distant galaxies that twinkled still beyond her grasp as the ship careened towards the nearest body that could attract it. She never looked down.

Calypso broke the surface as the first echo of a distant thunder filled the sky. The air felt cool and damp on her face, and she swam on her back lazily, looking up at the stars above. There were so many of them up there. Did each of them have a name? Did all of them have kingdoms just like hers, and if so what was it like?

Then she saw a particularly bright speck moving quickly across the sky. At first she thought it was a falling star. She instinctively made a wish; I hope I can get out of here someday and see the world.

But then she realized it was not a falling star at all. It was moving too erratically, its path wobbling and twisting, and that light… it was too bright. It was not the light of a star at all.

It was fire.

She gasped and righted herself as she watched the thing—whatever it was—fell toward the ocean, helpless to stop its descent. Where had it come from, and how did it get here? Why was it burning? Were there people on it?

She watched in disbelief as the shape became clearer as it got closer; a ship. A space traveler? Her heartbeat picked up as she felt torn between what to do. Should she go back and inform her father about this? Surely he would want to know if someone had breached their territory, especially if they were uninvited.

But as the ship continued to plummet like a meteor, Calypso found herself frozen, unable to shift her eyes from the tragedy waiting to happen.

She struggled to maintain consciousness even as her ship descended at an unthinkable speed. The fire spread as the ship cut through the atmosphere of this foreign planet, blazing the entire vessel like a comet. Her hands uselessly pounded against the controls, unable to engage any of the safety mechanisms. She heard only the thudding of her own panicked heartbeat, amplified somehow from within her rib cage.

The ship hit the surface of the water with a force that nearly snapped her neck. Ulysses gasped, thankful for the painful restraint of her seat's harness; she felt bruised but not broken. There was something outside of the windows, but her eyes could not make sense of this kind of liquid. Water on Uranus existed primarily as humidity that had to be condensed. There was so much of the stuff here that her brain could not recognize it as such. She only knew that she was still sinking, and that had to be bad.

Adrenaline coursed through her, the sole element keeping her going. She flipped switches and pulled levers, the ship remaining non-responsive... and then suddenly it did respond, blowing open the cockpit door, but there was no time for relief. The ocean flooded in, embracing the new container it found. Her panic peaked as it soaked her clothes and filled her mouth, blocking out the air she needed to breathe. She struggled to release the buckles that held her in place, choking on the salty brine that sought to fill her lungs.

Ulysses pulled herself free, almost held back by the straps—now loose from where they had held her in her seat—that writhed in the water and snaked around her ankles, and tried to pull herself out of the hole left behind by the vessel's door.

But she had never swam. Her legs kicked ineffectively; her arms pinwheeled. She gasped without realizing she had done so, and her motions slowed. Stopped.

And the body sank.

The ship plunged into the water and immediately sunk. Calypso didn’t waste any more time; she dove back under water towards it. With her tail, it was easy to reach the plummeting object quickly, and she gasped when she saw the door open. At first she halted, waiting for something to emerge; perhaps they didn’t need help. Perhaps they were dangerous… Her father would surely admonish her for being this reckless.

But curiosity won, and when nothing came out, she swam closer. There! A body was struggling to reach the door, but soon seemed to lose consciousness. Calypso had heard stories about how beings in other planets could not breathe underwater, and most ambassadors from outside Neptune did have this problem, which forced the kingdom delegates to always meet them on land, something her father found distasteful. Perhaps that was why they didn’t have a lot of diplomatic missions to the rest of the solar system.

She rushed toward the drowning figure while her eyes searched the entire ship for more, surprised when she confirmed this was the only one. At least that would make the rescue mission easier.

She grabbed hold of the sinking form around the waist and began swimming back up toward the surface, with the space traveler in tow. Please hold on, she prayed in her mind as she whipped her tail faster back toward the open sky.

The two of them broke the water at last, and with some effort Calypso dragged the unconscious body towards the nearest shore. The Island of Triton was large but abandoned, with no one living there, so there was no harm of being discovered by anyone.

She pulled the figure—was it a woman? A man? She couldn’t tell—onto the sand, and laid them on their back. She let her tail shift into legs and then began pumping the stranger’s chest in the way she had once seen someone try to revive a drowned person.

“Please wake up,” she whispered, then, after hesitating, she opened their mouth and blew air into it, before continuing the attempt to resuscitate them.

"Gotcha!" the child called, giggling immediately as her stick found its target.

The dark-haired skinned woman faked surprise, her wavy locks of short burgundy hair tossed as she mimicked the agony of being wounded. Her casual attire was well-worn, but everything about her appearance gave an air of satisfaction—as though she was perfectly at ease with herself. The eyes that fixed on the child looked at the girl with love, although there seemed to be another undercurrent of something conflicted there.

"Oh, young Ulysses has slain me!" she bemoaned, the eyes twinkling. "It all ends for me now!"

The giggling continued as the blonde youth bounded over. The long braid swished as the small form clambered over the fallen body of her vanquished enemy. The child wore faded pants gathered just below the knee and a long sleeveless tunic, perfectly dressed as a son of the fleet. Yet everyone among the group knew that Ulysses was a girl, although sometimes those distinctions blurred and shifted. As the pantomime played out, there was a sparkle of concern in the sensitive blue eyes.

"You're okay, right, Gray?" she asked tentatively, although her hand swiped the wooden sword through the air.

The woman rolled over, propping herself up on her elbows before reaching out and sweeping the girl into her embrace.

"Do you really think you could take down a pirate like me, Uly?" she teased, ruffling the child's bangs. "I'm stronger than that!"

"You're so strong!" the girl beamed. "I want to be like you someday!"

---

The young woman coughed, lungs fighting to expel the salty brine and accept the life-giving air. Her head ached, mind confused, reeling with jumbled memories that seemed so real. When her blue eyes opened, she had no idea what she was seeing. Or where she was.

This jolted her to consciousness, terror taking over to try and keep herself safe. She reached for her knife, only to feel her fingers close around nothing. This wasn't the ship. She wasn't with Gray and the mercenaries. Instead, there was another young woman.

Ulysses stared at the foreign face, unsure of whether the girl should be considered a threat. But... there was something about the woman's expression, eyebrows still bearing the mark of a determined furrow. Then she recalled the crash and the water...

"Did you... save me?" she finally asked, her voice cracked and raw, not yet recovered.

"Who are you? Where is this?"

Finally, the stranger stirred and coughed. Calypso quickly moved away to give them some room to breathe on their own. She saw their eyes for the first time, its deep blue color momentarily stunning her. Calypso moved back further as the space traveler attempted to reach for something, but seemed to have found it misplaced. She stared into those eyes questioningly, curiously. Where had this stranger come from? What things had those mesmerizing eyes seen?

To her first question, Calypso nodded, not quite sure what else to say. “You were… drowning. I’m afraid your ship is lost to the bottom of the ocean.”

They didn’t know where they were? That was concerning. If they didn’t mean to come to Neptune… this could turn into a big trouble.

“My name is Calypso,” she said, neglecting to mention her title, deeming it unimportant for now. And perhaps it was safer if she didn’t divulge her true identity until she knew who this person was. “You are in the kingdom of Neptune. Who are you and where did you come from? I saw you… falling out of the sky. I thought you were a falling star.”

I made a wish upon you, she thought, all of a sudden feeling really foolish.

Drowning?

"Maybe that would have been better," she thought bitterly. What was she going to do now? She hadn't planned any of this, she had just left—ran. But there was nowhere to go. If her ship was gone, that left her with no way to get anywhere else. Soon they would find her. They might be arriving any moment now, ready to reclaim her for a second time.

And then she heard the other response, and her heart sank when she realized how far she had gotten. Neptune? Only one planet over, although the distance itself was not insubstantial. Not only had she failed to leave the Solar System, she had barely made any progress.

It was then that she realized she had been mulling over the responses, failing to answer the young woman's questions.

"I'm Ulysses," she replied, unwilling to speak the dreaded "princess". Even as little as she knew who she was, she was pretty sure that was not part of her identity. "From Uranus."

It hurt to be reminded once more that she had traveled so little distance. She almost winced.

Although the teal-haired beauty's next comment brought a small smile to her lips.

"I wish I was a shooting star, instead," she chuckled. Then she looked up, seeing the stars twinkling in the dark sky far above the endless-seeming water. They even reflected down across the water. It was so different from on Uranus, where the clouds obscured everything beyond. She longed to be up there, among those stars again. That should have been her destination. Those were her home.

"Is there... no one here?" she finally asked. This small island seemed devoid of anything except for herself and Calypso. Ulysses knew so little about this strange place. She had grown up beyond the reach of this Solar System, uneducated on these places. The tutors had tried to cram as much information as they could into the brief time she had been in the palace, but she wasn't really paying attention. She could only think about getting out. In a way, she had. Just not far enough.

She had been listening to the stranger’s voice, trying to decide if they were in fact a man or a woman or something else entirely. Then she heard the name, which sounded masculine more than feminine. A man, then? That was what she was going to guess for now.

“Uranus?” she repeated in surprise, not expecting him to be from one of the neighboring planets. “Where did you mean to go?”

Neptune only had several space ships that they didn’t even use that much, and Calypso couldn’t even begin to guess how to get to one, let alone commandeer it. If Ulysses’ ship was gone for good, did that mean he was stranded here? How would he live here? Would Calypso have to tell her father after all so that he could return Ulysses where he came from?

She smiled as her visitor asked if there was no one else here. For a moment she was tempted to say, yes, it was just the two of them. They could do whatever they wanted because this entire planet was theirs. But she didn’t want Ulysses to despair over his state, even if a part of Calypso strangely wanted to keep him there, to perhaps ask him to build another ship so that they both might escape from here.

“There are some people on the other islands. I’m from… elsewhere too. I just happened to be swimming nearby when you crashed. This island was abandoned several years ago, but there’s an empty house on the edge of the woods there for you to take shelter in. If you want, I can help you with food and other basic needs until you figure out what you want to do next.”

She tilted her head quizzically at him. “You were alone, right? I didn’t see anyone else on the ship, but… Is there any kind of communication device on your person? To call for help?”

She shook her head, tossing the short locks. Calling for help? That was absolutely not something Ulysses planned to do. Who could she reach out to? The parents she didn't know, who clearly weren't interested in getting to know her instead of holding on to the ideal daughter they had wanted all those years? Of course not! The people she had considered her family, only to learn that she was just a bargaining chip to them—a punchline in a bad joke taken too far? No.

For this, she was alone. She had to be.

"I'm alone," she explained, again looking away, towards the stars. "I just wanted to get away. There's no one to call."

The longer they sat here on the beach, talking with this stranger, the more she felt the repercussions of her earlier crash creeping up on her. Her wet clothes felt more and more uncomfortable as the minutes clicked by. Her body ached as well—the impact had not left her unscathed. She knew that she'd see plenty of bruises tomorrow. She wasn't quite feeling up to eating something, probably a side-effect of the adrenaline, but that would change soon.

And then she realized the young woman had offered to help her. Ulysses turned back to face her, perusing the face—so lovely, in this faint glow from the stars... was she actually real?—and wondering why she would make such a generous offer. Wouldn't Calypso have other better things to do with her time?

"Help me? Are you sure? I don't mean to interrupt your swim."

Alone. She didn’t know why, but that word made her heart ache. How sad it must be to feel alone in a strange planet. What had happened to him that had made him so desperate to leave he’d come aboard a space ship on his own and left his home? Were they more alike than she thought after all? She certainly understood the need to ‘get away’—though for her, it was less getting away and more exploring the world, seeing its wonders. Maybe she wanted to get away from her responsibilities and this box her parents were trying to make her fit into as the perfect future queen, but she could never imagine daring to do something so… reckless.

Calypso brushed the sand off of her turquoise dress, the wet material clinging to her skin. She stood up and let out an unexpected laugh when she heard Ulysses’ question. He’d caught her in a rare off-guard moment—she was usually not allowed to laugh so freely like commoners, after all. “Interrupt my swim? You’re an alien that got stranded in another planet with no ship and no way to call home, and I’m meant to worry about you interrupting my swim? My, what heartless people you must know in your life.”

She smiled teasingly and offered her hand. “Come, let’s get you into that house before you catch a cold. Are you hurt from the crash?”

"My, what heartless people you must know in your life."

Somehow the comment, even though she knew the other girl meant it lightly, stung. That wasn't actually something Ulysses had really thought about before. Were they heartless: her parents? Those who raised her? It felt wrong to judge them. She couldn't know their thoughts or intentions, and she had never thought about it from the perspective of an outsider. Yet for as long as she could remember, Ulysses had been the one asked to change, to step aside, to do things differently, to give up her dreams for someone else's goals.

She could only chuckle slightly in return, her cheeks briefly flush with embarrassment, and avoid any comment. There was nothing to gain by saying anything on that subject. She hadn't run away from being Princess of Uranus to unfold her baggage of woes on the first person she had met elsewhere.

That moment of awkward anxiety wasn't enough for her to hesitate in taking the presented hand. No one had been so generous in this kind of way before. She didn't have the heart to turn down the considerate assistance so freely proposed.

The question about injury went unanswered, so she assumed he was fine. The stranger also seemed embarrassed, for some reason, which made Calypso wonder if she had hit a nerve. One thing her education had told her was to read body languages and figure out what other people were thinking without them needing to voice it out loud.

As Ulysses took her hand, Calypso could feel the difference on their skin; his calluses where hers were smooth, the rugged strength of his grip in contrast to her gentle squeeze. He felt sturdy and strong despite having just been in an almost deadly accident, and she felt strangely comforted by that.

She led him toward the empty house that stood about fifty paces from the beach, dilapidated and rusty now that it had been abandoned for a long time. It was made of wood, but thankfully none had broken and the roof was still intact. Calypso opened the front door, letting out the musty air, and stepped inside. She came here, occasionally, when the sea was too much for her, and she wanted to pretend she was someone else. Something else, even. A land-dweller. She kept it clean enough so that she might sit at the table and read something, or paint something, or compose music.

“It’s a little bit dusty, but it should be habitable,” she said apologetically. “There’s a small spring nearby, too, where you can get fresh water. These oil lamps should still work when it gets dark; there’s a box of matches over there,” she pointed at the kitchen drawer. She turned and appraised Ulysses—who was dripping wet—worriedly.

“We should get you out of those clothes. I’ll lend you some.” Maybe she could ‘borrow’ some guard’s suit or something.

“And food. There should be fruits around here, most of them safe to eat. Why don’t you wait here a bit, maybe clean up a little, and I’ll get you those change of clothes, then we can forage?”

This house was not like any that Ulysses had lived in, as she had spent her formative years aboard ships from the fleet, but it was much more welcome to her than the beautiful and expansive palace of Miranda Castle. The wooden structure was old, but had a wonderful feel of home. She felt confused by the sensation of the place being both uninhabited and not abandoned... It didn't seem unsuited for occupation. And Calypso was so familiar with the layout of the place. Is this where she lived? But she had called it "empty"...

"Do you live here?" she asked, hesitant with how to phrase her question. "You seem to know it so well."

Her blue eyes looked around the place, noting that it was in need of repair but overall extremely serviceable. It reminded her of some of the ships most beloved by some of her former... well, not quite family... crew. They may not have always been the newest and greatest, but as long as they were beloved they were some of the best vessels. This had a similar air to it, she thought.

"If so, you've kept it well. It's nice," she commented, smiling, hoping no offense would be taken. It still felt strange to speak to someone who wasn't as rambunctious as her rowdy band of ruffians or as stuffy and awful as everyone on Uranus seemed to Ulysses. Particularly someone her own age. She was too used to being treated like a child—from both parties. This person addressed her with politeness and equality; Ulysses never realized it would feel so nice.

She nodded at the suggestions from the teal-haired beauty. Were all the people here as lovely? She looked so unlike the young women Ulysses had met on her home world. The air of refinement around her was different—more authentic, somehow. She seemed so cool and serene, with every action projecting an intrinsic gracefulness. Ulysses found herself watching every movement, wondering how Calypso could make everything seem so fluid.

There was a canister in the corner that looked like an optimal receptacle for water. The still-damp young woman tossed her limp bangs from her eyes and gestured towards it. She could smell the salt and minerals from the strange water her ship had crashed into. It hung about everything on her, soaked into her clothes and crusting on her skin as it dried. She'd be glad to be free of it.

"Sounds good. I can get some water; maybe rinse off there. Then I'll wait for you here."

A small part of her mind wondered if Calypso would even bother coming back. Still, even if that was the case, she had done a lot to help Ulysses already. That was more than she could have ever expected, and she would be grateful of it regardless.

“Oh, no, I don’t live here,” she answered, realizing that she had sounded as if she did. “I just… use it, sometimes,” she explained vaguely, hoping Ulysses would not ask her to elaborate on that. It would be too complicated to explain her situation, and as much as she wanted to help him, she didn’t know if she could trust him with the information that she was the heir of this kingdom just yet. Or that she didn’t even live above the surface of the sea.

She nodded, acknowledging the compliment, even though she didn’t do much beyond the minimal upkeep. Of course, it was more than a princess should ever do with her own two hands, but Calypso liked having a secret little place and a secret little project that no one knew about. It felt like a tiny piece of freedom somehow.

“Alright, the spring is just south of here, about a hundred paces or so; just follow the sound of water and you can’t miss it. The forest isn’t so dense you don’t have to worry about getting lost. Besides, even if you do, you’ll always end up back on the beach eventually,” she added with a small smile. “I’ll meet you there in a little bit then.”

She gave him one last look before leaving, and checked a couple times as she headed back toward the beach to make sure the stranger wasn’t able to see her anymore before she dove back under water, her legs turning automatically back into tails upon contact. She swam quickly to the palace guards’ quarters, sneaked in, found the place where they stored extra uniforms, picked a couple she judged to fit Ulysses’ size, and grabbed them. Naturally, all clothing material on Neptune were waterproof, so at least Ulysses didn’t have to worry about getting them wet anymore. She did not encounter anyone on her way in and out except a lone guard coming back from his shift that she evaded swiftly, and was glad her secret mission had gone off without a hitch. It would be too difficult to explain why she was stealing these clothes, after all.

She emerged back on the surface with her new cargo, walked back onto the beach, and grabbed a piece of unused cloth from the empty house that could be used as a makeshift towel, and made her way to the spring, wondering if Ulysses had managed to find it just fine or if he’d somehow gotten lost on the way.

The spring was, indeed, easy to find. The sound of rushing water—although not something common on Uranus—was a noise that reminded her of the ships. Her feet led her to it, navigating the forest without trouble. The trees provided cover without making her trek difficult. The soft mosses and grass provided soft and even ground beneath her soaked and squeaking ruined boots.

Ulysses found herself looking into a pool of moderate depth, the bottom lined with smooth stones that seemed as bright as glass. The water was a bright blue—slightly different from the vibrant aqua of the ocean, that colour of Calypso's hair. Trees and bushes provided shelter and privacy, although she had little reason to think that the island was occupied given what she had been told of this place. Of course, she didn't particularly need or require privacy. That was a luxury hard to come by in the manner that she had grown up.

As she peeled off her damp attire, she reflected about how on Uranus the innumerable servants and staff would never allow her a moment of peace even for bathing—they insisted on removing her clothing and scrubbing her as though she was a babe. This opportunity, alone in these woods, was something she could treasure. She left the sea-soaked things in a pile near the bank; they could be disposed of whenever she had redressed in whatever Calypso found for her. Now that her mind was a bit clearer, she recognized the danger that she might be identified by her clothing.

The water felt cool at first, but quickly warmed as she stepped in and sat down. Ulysses took a deep breath and dunked her head, rubbing her fingers through the short blonde locks, hoping to banish that salty residue. When she tossed her head back, flicking the water from her hair and standing up briefly above the surface of the water, she didn't realize that Calypso was just about to emerge upon the scene.

Calypso walked toward the spring, wondering how Ulysses was ever going to get back home. For some reason he seemed unconcerned about his predicament. Whatever he was running from… was it that bad? What could be so horrible that one would not mind being stranded in a strange planet, cut off from everyone and everything they knew?

She wanted to leave here, sometimes, but not permanently, she didn’t think. She still loved her parents, after all. They were not unkind to her, just… they had a lot of expectations. And if she were to leave… who would rule this kingdom? She was their only child.

She arrived at her destination, and did not think about the fact that Ulysses might be undressed, or above the water while being undressed. As it was, she had walked straight into the full view of his—or rather, her—naked upper body without warning. Calypso froze like a deer in the headlights.

She realized two things at once. One, that she had been obviously wrong about Ulysses’ gender, unless people in Uranus somehow had different gender anatomies. Two, that… she was beautiful.

Calypso wanted to paint her.

It was the first time she had felt that way about someone’s body.

And she didn’t realize that she was staring with her mouth slightly open for a full five seconds.

When she finally snapped out of it, she quickly turned around, her face flaming and red. “I-I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to… I’ll… I’ll just give you some privacy,” she said hurriedly as she turned around and headed for the trees, mortified at what had just happened. She didn’t stop until she was safely behind them, where Ulysses could see her no more from her position.

Why was her heart beating so fast in more ways than one?

Ulysses stared blankly at the other woman, unable to fully comprehend Calypso's flustered reaction. She remained in that standing position, still exposed above the water, not sure of exactly what had just happened. Being unclothed around others never particularly bothered her—privacy was not easy to come by among the band she had been raised in, even for bathing. She grew up without too much of a fuss about bodies, even between different sexes. Even on Uranus, locked away in the castle, the other women on the staff were not at all shy about this kind of thing. The sea-haired girl from this planet seemed positively mortified, and it made Ulysses wonder if there was some element of their interaction just now that she had missed—some accidental blunder that was more significant here on Neptune than it ever had been where she was raised.

The blonde hurried to finish scrubbing and rinsing, then pulled herself back out of the spring. She made a halfhearted attempt to dry herself, mostly with her own hands. Her clothes were still sopping wet, and she neither wanted to put them back on nor wanted to wander too far without coverage. For a moment she dallied there, eventually taking a moment to fill the bucket from the spring just to give herself something to do.

Calypso had said she was bringing clothes, wasn't she?

"Um, excuse me!" the still-nude woman called towards the trees where the teal-haired woman had hurried off to. "Did you happen to bring... clothes?"

Everything about this renewed conversation was starting off on a very awkward foot.

Calypso jumped when she heard Ulysses’ voice. Was she done? What did she want now?

Clothes!

With horror, she looked down at the pile of clothes in her arms. The pile of clothes she was supposed to give to Ulysses. So that she wouldn’t be naked.

“Oh gosh! I’m sorry! Of course!” she turned, then almost half-turned again, terrified of getting a repeat performance of what she’d seen earlier. How was she supposed to do this? Walk with her eyes closed? Throw the clothes over? None of the options seemed great. She was too embarrassed to tell Ulysses to go back into the water, either.

Finally she walked back with her eyes glued to the ground until she could see Ulysses’ bare foot. Then she extended the clothes without looking at her. “So… sorry again. I completely forgot…”

The awkwardness was so palpable it nearly killed her.

What in the heart of the Cosmos was going on? Ulysses had to suppress laughter as Calypso emerged again from behind the trees only to approach her with hesitant steps... looking down. Those lovely dark blue-green eyes were glued to the ground, bowing her neck drastically. It didn't feel like something that should be comedic, given the strange tension in the air that she still hadn't figured out, but it definitely looked silly! Why was the other young woman acting so strangely now? Was it something Ulysses had said?

Maybe it was something about her body? Ulysses frowned, staring down critically at her own form. Did she look that bad? Well... she was on the lean side, and the serving women in Miranda Castle criticized her honed muscles as "too masculine". She usually had a few cuts and scrapes, not particularly being someone who exercised too much care regarding her own self. And she had just crashed on this world. There were definitely some bruises to mark that occasion. But surely it wasn't so horrifying to make someone react so severely?

She accepted the clothes and struggled into them. They weren't a perfect fit, but they worked just fine. She found the simple fabrics and masculine cuts much preferable to all of the silly finery they wanted to wrap her in back on Uranus. The fact that these were borrowed clothes only gave her another wave of nostalgia for the life she had left behind. Among those that had raised her, this would have been the rule rather than the exception. Their cares were less focused on appearances and more on the thrill of adventure.

"I didn't mean to startle you," she attempted to apologize, still not exactly sure what she was apologizing for. "Sorry if I look that bad."

Wow, so that was a really terrible and artless try. Well... it was really all that she had. She hoisted the bucket, now full, into the air, resting her wrist over her shoulder.

"Shall we return?"

She averted her gaze as Ulysses dressed, feeling hot all over, uncomfortable in her own skin. Then she spoke, and… bad? Calypso blinked. Why would she assume Calypso wasn’t looking at her because she looked bad?? Was modesty not a thing on Uranus?

“No! I mean… it’s not that… you don’t look bad. You look beautiful,” she blurted out before she realized what she’d said.

She clamped her hands on her mouth with horror. Did she just say that out loud? But a part of her had needed for Ulysses to know that she was wrong. That she was far from ugly.

“I… I mean…” she stammered, freeing her mouth again, looking anywhere but at Ulysses even if she was fully clothed now. “Is… we don’t… normally walk around without clothes here. Also, I was surprised… because I thought you were a man,” she admitted, cheeks flaming.

Calypso was sure that there was never going to be an end to her humiliation.

Noticing how lovely Calypso's cheeks looked when she flushed, Ulysses could not resist the opportunity to tease.

"We don't normally walk around without clothes where I come from, either. But we're usually unclothed when we bathe."

The lilt to her voice was much different than her previous tone, almost like an audio representation of the cheeky smile on the young woman's face. She had always enjoyed a sense of humor, but everything that had happened in her life lately had almost seemed to smother those flames. This interaction blew fresh air over the dying embers, slowly restoring it. It felt so good to smile again, like this. It felt like yet another shackle from her brief return to Uranus had uncoupled and fallen away.

The comment about her "beauty" bounced harmless off her. She knew that simply wasn't true. Ulysses had no vanity to bolster with flattery. Hadn't she heard enough from the servants on Uranus? Her shoulders were too wide. Her hips were too narrow. Her muscles were too defined. Her feet were too large. She was too much of all the things she should have less of and too little of all the things she ought to have more of.

And she certainly wasn't shocked or upset by the other comment. In fact, it elicited more laughter. She tossed her head back with the motion, flicking small droplets of water behind as they flew from her short hair.

"Oh! Sorry about that!" she chuckled. "That's happened before. I apologize if I shocked you."

Calypso blushed even further at the comment. “Well, we do, too, but…” Technically Neptunians didn’t exactly… bathe per se, seeing that they were already submerged in water all the time, so it seemed redundant, “…it’s not considered polite to look at a stranger’s nude body.”

Did they have communal baths in Uranus? She supposed that was possible.

Ulysses’ laughter surprised her. Surprised and awed her. The way she looked so… carefree, with her hair tossed in the wind like that… Calypso had never seen someone laugh like that within the palace walls, not unless they were children. Neptunians in general were pretty reserved people to begin with. They were elegant creatures, surely, but they weren’t known to be very… expressive. It was why she channeled her emotions through art and music, the more acceptable forms.

“It was my mistake for assuming,” she replied, feeling quite foolish. “Anyway, we should head back. I’ll show you which fruits are safe to eat on the way,” she added, wanting to move as far away from this conversation as possible. With any luck, Ulysses would soon forget it.

She wasn't going to prolongue the topic if the other young woman was so eager to move along, but the dark blue eyes that regarded the teal-haired woman maintained their mirthful twinkle. Ulysses felt much better, despite the aching soreness from her crash, now that she was wearing dry clothing and they were discussing food. She wasn't terribly hungry yet, but it would probably do her well to eat something before resting. She'd need energy to heal... and to figure out what she should do next.

After all, she couldn't forget that her forsaken home world loomed somewhere in the skies above. As much as she wished they would just let her go, she knew they would be looking for her. Uranus had lost its princess once. They certainly wouldn't let her leave a second time, not after they had finally gotten her back. She still had to find a way to get farther away, where they couldn't find her. But without her ship... She needed more time to come up with a plan.

Her eyes wandered back to Calypso as she followed the young woman back towards the house, ready to be instructed on nearby safe edibles. Concentrating on the trees and fruit was complicated by her distraction. Refreshed from her bath and the moment of laughter, she found herself unable to take her eyes off of her guide. The Neptunian woman had called her beautiful—such a silly thing to say when it was clearly she who possessed more than enough beauty for the both of them.

When she first saw the ocean-haired lady, she was too overwhelmed from the crash to really look at her. Of course, Ulysses noticed that Calypso was lovely. How could she have overlooked something like that? But she hadn't seen the gleam of the girl's fair skin. The delicate slenderness of her wrists and ankles. She hadn't watched the wind play with the strands of aquamarine hair, dancing it along with the breeze.

Oh, great galaxies, she was exquisite...

Ulysses felt a strange internal turmoil, a surge of conflicting emotions. Calypso wasn't beautiful like the simpering women she had met during her confinement in Miranda Castle. She wasn't coiffed and starched, carefully arranged by others to present a particular look. With a sinking heart, she again thought of her childhood. She thought of the adoration she had for the woman who had raised her, one who always filled her soul with wonder and admiration. Even now, with those once-idyllic memories now tainted, she couldn't deny that Gray was beautiful. Beautiful like a sunrise blooming from behind a distant planet. Beautiful like something wild and free.

This other woman was like that, too. Her thoughts were somewhere else again, far away from the grove they wandered through.

As Calypso walked, she pointed out fruits that were edible and ones that were safe to eat. Some were poisonous, so she made sure that Ulysses really remembered which ones those were so that she wouldn’t accidentally eat them. As they walked and gathered food, she stole glances at her companion; the way the sunlight fell on her hair, the graceful arcs of her lithe body, making her wonder how she’d ever mistaken her as a man to begin with, the way her smile seemed so easy and carefree despite the terrible situation that had befallen her.

Ulysses really was beautiful, and once again Calypso felt an irresistible urge to paint her.

So much so that she decided she needed to ask because she thought if she didn’t, she might explode. She’d never felt so compelled to draw something in her life. It was like looking at art itself, and she wanted to capture it forever. If Ulysses managed to leave here somehow, Calypso wanted to have something to remember her by, something that could remind her what the woman looked like that wouldn’t be eroded by age or time.

As they neared the house once more, she paused, her arms heavy with the fruits they’d gathered. “Ulysses…” Her name felt strange on her tongue, spoken for the first time out loud. For some reason, it sounded like the beginning of a poem.

“This might be an odd request but…” she glanced back at the house, where some of her painting supplies were stored, or rather, hidden away. Her parents appreciated art, but not mindless ones, the ones she did freely, with no regard for perfection or quality. They viewed it as a waste of time. If one wasn’t creating a masterpiece, why start anything at all?

“Do you mind if I paint you?” the question was blurted out, and she held her breath for the answer.

The question dragged her back from the clouds like a stone falling to ground. Although her thoughts were rather sombre, the playful mood from earlier had not yet abandoned her. Nor had some of her earlier convictions. She blinked slowly. Once, then twice.

And then, again, she laughed.

"Wow! I'm that strange, huh?" she chuckled. With every passing minute that the two spent together, Ulysses felt the shellacked veneer of her time on Uranus sloughing off like dead skin. That sense of restoration permeated deeper into her being, freeing up some of the casual mannerisms she had been demanded to cease by her newfound parents and their myriad of advisors. A part of her was returning to the carefree life out among the stars with the crew that had formed her entire world. She hadn't felt comfortable in ages. Something about this change of scenery and change of company was drawing her out again.

"Sure, I don't mind," she continued, before Calypso could have gotten a word in. The grin was back, fingers running through the sandy hair that fell before her striking eyes. If anyone's feelings were hurt, they weren't Ulysses'. This was turning into a pleasant diversion, something she knew she had at least a bit of time to enjoy herself with before she'd have to think on more pressing matters.

Whatever it was that she expected the response to be, laughter was not it. Calypso was confused for a second, wondering what was funny about it. Then Ulysses said that she must’ve looked strange, and Calypso frowned. She was about to correct her, but Ulysses spoke again to say that she didn’t mind, and she nodded. Perhaps she could show, rather than tell, the woman how beautiful she looked through the painting. It seemed she was not aware of this fact. Calypso was more than happy to show her how she looked like through her eyes.

She went into the house, dropped the fruits on the (slightly) dusty table, and walked toward one of the cabinets in the corner and pulled out a drawer, from which she gathered a few pieces of paper and a charcoal. Maybe she’d make a colored version later, but for now, the desire was too urgent, and she wanted to make a sketch to begin with.

“Sit anywhere. You can even eat if you like, I won’t require you to stay still. In fact, it’s probably better if you don’t.”

It was Ulysses’ movements that attracted her; the tilt of her head, the way she’d throw it back to laugh, her expressive arms. Everything about them was so big and emotive and she wanted to capture them the best she could. Preparing herself for the task at hand, Calypso sat on one of the available chairs by the desk and looked up at Ulysses.

“I hope you don’t mind being stared at. I… I’ve never actually drawn a person before. At last, not any real one.”

Ulysses shook her head in answer to the question, striding over to the table. She picked up one of the fruits and decided to show off for a moment, tossing it into the air, bouncing it nimbly against her elbow, and catching it to take a bite. It was sweet and firm, with a bit of a green to the taste, as though it was not fully ripe. She could have compared it with other things she had eaten on other worlds, but she opted instead to just enjoy it as it was. Swallowing the mouthful, she instead followed up on her dismissal of the query.

"Privacy... is not something I've had a lot of," she replied, not willing to reveal too many of her secrets. "I grew up among a lot of people living together in not very much space. You have to make adjustments to keep things peaceful."

Now that she wasn't dripping or freshly-shocked from the impact of the crash, she wanted to explore this cabin a bit. The way Calypso had pulled out her art supplies so quickly was intriguing and almost like magic. It reminded her of the storage on some of the ships in the fleet. They had to make tidy use of all of the space to keep it from feeling too crowded. There was some of that going on in this building, too, even though it was far from the metal structures of her youth.

"Why haven't you drawn people? Or, at least, real people? What kind of not-real people?"

Talking made it a little bit less awkward. Lately the sensation of too many eyes on her evoked a sense of trapped panic. After all, on Uranus they scraped and prodded over every inch of her, always looking for the flaws to criticize and correct. Every time someone stared, she knew they were singling out one more thing to change. It wasn't something she wanted to dwell on here, now that she was finally free of that attention.

Calypso couldn’t suppress the smile when she saw Ulysses expertly bounce the fruit off her limbs. Everything about her movements really captivated her after all.

“Really? That sounds… chaotic,” she commented, surprised to hear about Ulysses’ living conditions. Was it a matter of lack of space on the planet… or lack of wealth for a better accommodation? She was curious but thought it not very polite to ask. She couldn’t imagine living cramped with a lot of people… though maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing if they all didn’t demand her to be perfect all the time. As it were, in the palace, Calypso often felt lonely. Sometimes she could travel many corridors for what felt like days before she saw another person, who would just bow to her and pass by anyway.

She didn’t have any friends.

“I haven’t… found anyone that makes me feel like I want to draw them. You’re the first,” she admitted as she started the first lines, capturing the shape of Ulysses’ face. Her bright, curious eyes and her windswept hair. She paused to pull out some papers from the bottom of the stack, revealing other sketches and drawings she’d done.

“These are the only other ‘people’ I’ve drawn. I don’t really know who they are, but… they seemed to call out to me. I kept thinking about them, dreaming about them sometimes… so I decided to draw them.”

The first depicted a rough sketch of two very vague figures seen from the back who stood facing the sea, their hands clasped together. One had their head on the other’s shoulder, and the two seemed very intimate, though everything about their identity seemed ambiguous. You couldn’t even tell whether they were meant to be man or woman.

The other drawing had some color; it depicted a woman with long hair looking out a window toward the sky above that was filled with stars. It was a portrait that focused on her face, and her eyes seemed wistful, longing for something just out of reach. The dark blue of the sky was vivid and stark against the white sparks of the stars. Those were the only colors on the paper, the rest was in black and white.

She nervously watched Ulysses’ reaction, wondering what she would think about them.