Lylis was staring straight ahead, not yet ready to try moving, or looking anywhere else. 

For all she knew, it may have been literal ages since she was in some nightmarish cave, waiting while Aurora spoke for the mothers of Irienne. Then suddenly, overwhelming vertigo. Paralysis, before she had processed what was happening. A mind locked inside a doll, able to feel but unable to scream. Every bone clamped in place, gripped tight by invisible pliers, while she was pulled out of herself. Whatever soul ligaments were supposed to keep her attached had tensed and stretched and strained until finally they snapped and tore.

Six years imagining her chance. Six years lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, stewing in regrets. Blisters. Tendonitis. Pre-dawn runs. Sit-ups, pop-ups, pull-ups, spin-kicks. Hours upon hours maintaining her hair.

Soul ripped from her body. Defeated before she knew the battle started. Useless. Not even against 'Justice.'

So for now, straight ahead. Eventually, she would need to look down, and see what had been done with her. What she'd become. Or been turned into. See if moving caused metal-on-metal screeching. But not yet. Just straight ahead, for now.

The cave was gone. What Lylis could see, staring straight ahead, was a lot of water blanketed in a misty haze, like steam rising from a heated bath. But this was no normal bathwater. It was sparking, constant little flashes visible through the steam, sometimes jagged lines and sometimes more complex spiderwebs running across the surface. They seemed to be the primary or only source of light.

It felt like she was standing in the water. On two legs, thigh deep. It was warm. Body temperature.

Alright. Sparks and lightning and stuff were supposed to be Goddess of Life things. Water and clouds, too. Encouraging, because it was pretty easy to tell that this goddess was the sibling Aurora felt closest to. And being standard, normal, routine Life-and-Death Goddess dead was a lot better than the alternatives. In all likelihood, Lylis was in the same place that her arrows had been sending the bats, the same place Aurora had been trying to sing them to. Couldn't be so bad, then. After all, it hadn't been too long since Lylis' soul was last here, and that had turned out just fine.

Everything was gray or white or clear, except an eerie, soft, steady rainbow glow dancing across the mist nearest Lylis, as if she was the source.

That was most encouraging of all. If having a rainbow glow in a place devoid of color wasn't a sign of Aurora's protection, then this ignorant mortal truly had no clue at all how anything worked.

Nothing about how she was standing felt unusual. Bare feet with toes. Soles pressing against river-smooth stone. Lylis couldn't be certain, but it felt like she had hands, too. And she was breathing, chest rising and falling, moist air passing through what felt an awful lot like a nose. There was no trace of metallic screeching from any of that motion. No vaguely metallic sound at all. 

Alright. 

With a forceful exhale, Lylis ripped off the proverbial bandage, looked down at herself, and nodded. She wasn't in the same body she'd been born in, but all things considered, she'd take it. In place of flesh and bone was watery soul jelly not so different from the bat husks, but also so very, incomparably different. This was not a disgusting puddle of soot and pebbles and bits of corpse that had clumped itself into some counterfeit mockery of the real her. She was pure, as crystal clear as the bats had been utterly foul, and a perfect reproduction: hands, feet, elbows, knees, navel, everything, more of a meticulous water-sculpture of herself than a shambling forgery. In fact, the match was so faithful that being as naked as a newborn, out in the open, triggered embarrassment.

"Idiot," Lylis muttered, in self-annoyance, and the words actually came out, in a familiar, dainty little voice that she would never have chosen for herself and was nonetheless the only one that wouldn't feel wrong. "Pri-or-i-ties! You're about to be a newborn!"

She forced her water-hands onto her water-hips and stood straight, determined to scour the ridiculous impulse to cover herself from every corner of her mind.

While scowling at the steam, it occurred to her to wonder why she didn't feel any hair against her back. She reached behind her head and wobbled from a surge of far more pleasant vertigo--glee, gratitude, relief, pride, purpose--when her hands found a bun of water jelly strands styled in the shape of butterfly wings.

"Thank you," Lylis croaked to the mist. Maybe the wind could pass her words along? "I wish I could have tried it, for real. And...a lot of other stuff, too. But please don't blame yourself. I knew this could happen."

At this point, she wasn't all that surprised when a glittery mist formed in front of her eyes. But there was no time for self-pity.

The story of Lylis Beauty-blessed still had one more chapter, one last mission in this extra time Aurora had bought for her. Everything indicated that this blatantly supernatural lake, or whatever, was home to a goddess who could make a toxic river drinkable with the dip of a finger. And the only hope for punishing 'Justice.'

Find her. Get her to do her job.

Not for the first time, Lylis wished that she hadn't been so stubborn about categorically rejecting her mother's attempts to teach her politics and diplomacy and the First Language, before banishing that useless regret to the same void as self-pity and embarrassment.

Step one was to figure out where to go.

"Orrin?" Lylis called, just in case, while searching for a landmark or any other clues. "Orrin? Are you here?"

There was no answer. Of course, her brother could simply be out of earshot, but why should twins killed in the same place by the same means end up widely separated? Were the souls of men and women sent to different areas? That seemed too absurd, like the Goddess of Rebirth was operating some common bathhouse. Were there separate areas for male and female bats, too?! Regardless, even if Orrin was around somewhere, there was no point searching aimlessly, and if Lylis knew her brother, he'd be doing enough frantic searching for her to cover for the both of them. She punched the air, on pure principle.

Fortunately, there was something to head for. Opposite the direction Lylis had originally been facing, a flat structure broke through the surface of the water, visible as a hazy outline mostly by obscuring flashes behind it. Lylis would call the feature a dock, but the idea of the Water Goddess rowing herself around in a boat, or hoisting sails, was even more absurd than her operating a gender-segregated bathhouse.

A few steps after setting out, the bottom abruptly dropped deeper, forcing Lylis to switch from wading to swimming. That struck her as unusual--shouldn't the bottom rise toward the part that broke the surface? She had a hunch that the explanation must be related to why she had ended up in this particular location: Aurora may have 'sculpted' this area, aeons ago, shifting stone from the bottom to build up walkways--bridges?--and Lylis had appeared on a part that had since submerged, or maybe started that way. An irrelevant puzzle, in any case.

Despite growing up in Irienne, Lylis wasn't much of a swimmer, mostly because making a public appearance in swimwear was on the list of be-more-like-Aurora stuff she'd never get to try. But no cadet could graduate without knowing enough of the basics to keep from drowning, and the water was calm, so she reached the not-really-a-dock soon enough.

Below the water line, it was the same immaculate, river-smooth stone as where she had first appeared. Above, it was carpeted in something that looked like moss, but lacked any trace of green. Gray stone, gray haze, clear water, white sparks, now even charcoal moss? Out of an abundance of caution, Lylis carefully tapped it while treading water, then jerked back in surprise.

In a world completely devoid of color, aside from the faint rainbow aura shining from Lylis, there was now a little splash of vibrant mossy green, right where her water-finger had tapped.

"Dehydrated?" Lylis muttered to herself, but that was implausible. The moss looked and felt in every way like healthy moss, just not green. And, more to the point, it was literally dripping wet from condensation.

"...Super-purified?" Lylis wondered, while confirming that her soul jelly hand was still clear and intact. "Even of color?"

No stories mentioned anything like that, and Lylis was certain she'd seen the Life Goddess painted in colored clothing. Most of all, it was hard to imagine her ever having been on good terms with Aurora if her presence bleached her surroundings.

Briefly, Lylis considered whether it might be better to avoid touching the moss, in case Aurora's blessing was literally rubbing off of her, before quickly deciding otherwise. Swimming or wading would be tedious and possibly exhausting, and besides, just because she could see the effect on the moss didn't mean she wasn't losing anything invisibly to the water or stone.

That said, it would be moot if her water-sculpture body couldn't survive outside the lake in the first place.

"Only one way to find out."

Lylis gripped the top of the mossy stone, which sat about two heads above the water, and pulled herself up until she was seated on the edge, leaving her feet submerged. Like watercolor paint dripped on canvas, the patch of green quickly bled away from her.

Pulling one foot up caused no difficulties at all. A few kicking motions sent the steam swirling about as if it was any normal foot.

"Here goes nothing..."

Lylis leaned forward, on the idea that she would topple back into the water if she went numb or something, and cautiously drew the other foot out.

...And waited a few seconds.

"Finally," she sighed, releasing a breath she hadn't realized she was holding, then springing to her feet. "Why can't things always just work out?"

There was only one way to go. She settled into a jog, leaving a trail of green behind her.