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It's nice that you want to play with this cute princess, but if you're done trying to fuck her, how about you do some work for the family?

Of course, Biviri, yes, Biviri, please tug my chains some, Biviri, would you like me to be your chair, Biviri? I've been such a shame to the family, Biviri, please tie me down and spank me! No, Sasfsets thought, this had gotten too hot. Biviri yanked her around by the purse-strings often enough she might as well graduate from fin-dom and go straight to hard-dom. Aaaand now she was all distracted thinking about that instead of thinking about work, fuck.

Of course, Biviri had work for her. There's always work to be doing. We can't all sail around slutting up the Ocean. You actually want to do something? Out of money-making schemes? No, Biviri, Sasfsets wasn't. She was just between them. She was just. Busy. Too busy to be busy enough to make. Money.

Fuck she was slipping she hadn't even fucked the princess she was keeping on her boat now. Didn't even have a plan on what she was going to do with the actual princess hiding out with her yet. Slipping. Already too old. Her youthful lust of idiot impulsiveness had given way to--what? What was she even doing now?

Land acquisition. That was what Sasfsets was being reduced to. Hey, we want to set up a new stop-port on the 260th line. Help our land surveyor poke around these few islands and find which one is best for us to use. Needed an executive in the field anyway. Might as well be useful. Might. As well. Be. Useful.

Fuck but that was boring. Maybe she should send a heads-up to Satarella's cousin, be all, 'Hey, Princess Satarella's still alive, I solo'd all your assassins. Here's our location. Come get us.' and maybe get some kind of excitement out of that. Was that a bad idea? It was a fun idea at least? Probably be rude for Satarella? She'd been nice so far. A nice guest. A super nice guest. Like. Uncomfortably hot. Oh, the sexual tension was giving Sasfsets LIFE right now. She had to figure out some way to keep her on the boat. Had to. Couldn't lose her own pet princess.

The sand beneath Sasfsets' feet was soft, wet, and fell in clumps behind her back to the shore, into the waiting, churning brilliance of the Ocean. Damanammu island. She'd been here before, once, she was pretty sure, just to restock, once. A nowhere hodgepodge island, settled in the post-colonization era. Whatever country had first set up here, it'd become a mess of strangers and drifters whose blades went dull and never managed to drive off again. Disgusting, imagine that sort of life. This place was depressing.

No matter how they prettied-up their clay-sculpt houses. Depressing. Contractor was supposed to meet her here, though. Not an actual Flagmark employee, just a life-time contractor, the usual tricks. The old joke, what do you call a skilled slave? A contractor. Didn't have to give them any benefits that way. Let Sasfsets boss them around a bit more. At least that.

Contractor was supposed to show up outside the local radio-bar. On her ass it was sad inside, too, though, Ocean's sake, dead drifters long-retired farts just settled in to stink forever. She couldn't even drink like that. She stayed outside. Watched the aurora trace across the void. Waited. Paced. Paced circles in the sand. She could be making progress with her princess. Instead she was doing this.

"Excuse, miz Nilivir? Am survey."

A tiny little voice, way below Sasfsets' line of sight. A long, low little creature, skin dust-red with, what was that even? Was that the natural color or was that something it soaked itself in? What even WAS this? What SPECIES was this!? No, wait--

"Fuck on me, an actual petle. I've never seen one of your kind before."

The petle tilted her long, squeezable snoot. "Axa. You are Nilivir?" She had that perfect look of being out of place, of being lost and helpless. Oh, Biviri, you can't do this. You can't give her more pets to collect.

"... yeah, I'm Nilivir," she said. "Do you uh. Is Escalihaxim all you talk? No offense, you aren't very good at it."

"Practiced first fellam," the little thing said.

Nilivir sighed in relief as she shifted language. "And so my soul sings in joy! The lights on my ship move through Brinnesch alone, which I find ever the most base and artless tongue. Deposited at my shore another golden tongue, delight survives forever in finite moments!"

The petle looked away in what was probably embarrassment, and what was definitely adorable. "Yes. I am--my fellam is also not great. I'm sorry. I probably sound uncultured."

"Profusions of apologies," Nilivir agreed, "my soul incubated only in the heat of the master's forms. I could not compile the straight-lined words if I tried. The weakness of the golden tongue is the strength of its extravagance! Can I have the pleasure of your name?"

"Abatl," she said. "I am the surveyor."

"As I said earlier," Nilivir said, and oh, was fellam so hard to speak in straight, concise statements when half of it was built on literary allusions and phrases that came out of poems written by hands generations dead, how the FUCK did you speak like a normal person in fellam again, fuck it'd been too long since she'd actually spoken this, "I have not had the pleasure of meeting a petle before. I almost thought you were a myth."

A mix of emotions crossed Abatl's snout. "Yes, miss, our race is being quietly erased by your kind. I don't see other petle often anymore either." The words hung between them a long, hard moment, and Abatl scurried to add, "I don't mean that as an accusation against you, I'm sorry. It was--it is simply the facts of form."

"Oh no, my heart," Nilivir said. "You have a bite to you. The one rule I set between us is you never not speak with the rudest forms you can craft. Do so and I will adore you forever."

"... yes miss?" Abatl said, her eyes scrunching. "Uhm, are we going now then?"

Fuck, Sasfsets thought. Fuck she couldn't let this one go. She was going to start hoarding pets, that was it, that was her fate. No way out of it. Look at her adorable little FACE.