[See you!]

Bella concludes her meeting with the King of Sweden, cures four obscure diseases, reads reports from her ambassadors to Japan and Uruguay, beams into existence and collects a batch of coins from Queenie, catches up with Sarion through Aianon, has dinner, clears out some email, unravels a budding hurricane, does an interview with the Associated Press, takes a thirty-minute break that involves a conjured candy apple and her lovely blue garden on Titan, tells her site administrator to update the FAQ in response to recent emails, makes a routine check-in with the people operating her emergency retrieval team and immigration handlers, checks out a new family of Saturnian animals, has a lunch meeting with her PR person, remembers to tell Slipstick when the concert actually is, accedes to six of twelve requests by the Audobon Society regarding various birds, pentagons a little-used Inuit language and reads a magazine in it, increments her progress in her economics curriculum, bakes muffins with Renée while holding a brainphone conversation with the operator of the imperial bank, drops in on Charlie and sits in companionable silence with cider during a background chat with the person NASA has appointed to deal with her and her abuse of astronomy, reads a series of science fiction novels, participates in composing a press release about her unwillingness to back the United States in achieving miscellaneous objectives by military means, has a recreational twenty-minute nap and a five-minute luxuriating snuggle under the covers, has an e-mail argument with some woman who is inexplicably a celebrity and wants her to eradicate autism like she did measles without consulting any of the people who have it, interviews with another press outlet and regrets it when she finds herself being unfortunately evasive about her beliefs regarding the afterlife, refuses a production company the rights to her likeness for a film about her (and appears to that meeting half-stealthed), looks in on the Ganymede prison colony -

And, when it is time for the concert, she puts on a pretty dress, doffs her floaty crown, picks up Slipstick, and goes to it.

Queenie made her this dress. She likes it, but doesn't wear it much; it's loose and drapes over itself in folds and folds and folds, around the neck and shoulders, but it gets itself under control at the point where it's belted and falls to her ankle in a slimmer sheath. It's green, with one bullseye of cheerful yellow tie-dye at her hip to match the gold belt.

Ripper spoke accurately: there is an aesthetic to this crowd, and she and Slipstick don't fit it, but no one seems to mind.

The venue is small, more like a bar than a concert hall, with scattered seating that at least does all face the stage. There are three people on said stage. Ripper is wearing the same black jeans from when she met him, and no shirt, either because of the temperature or for crowd-pleasing purposes; the crowd is definitely pleased either way. The drummer has her tight-curled brown hair pulled back away from her face with a bandanna; the bass player is bald, probably from aesthetic choice because he's in his mid-twenties. They are all very seriously engaged in their sound check. When Ripper spots Bella and Slipstick, he flashes a grin in their direction and a few heads turn, but there is no lingering interest from the audience.

The sound check concludes. The concert begins.

Wretched is a really good punk band, it turns out. The drummer is a genius, the bassist more than adequate, Ripper plays that guitar like he's making love to it, and his voice can flow like honey and scream like a hurricane in the same ten seconds if he needs it to.

Oooh.

Bella leans her elbows on her knees and listens and smiles.

The concert goes on for a while, and includes a few covers of songs by better-known bands, of which the most memorable is definitely Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now".

At the end, as the band starts packing up, about half the crowd yells for an encore. The bassist grabs Ripper's microphone and yells back, "You know what that means, don't you?", and there is a general shout of agreement, and the bassist hands Ripper back his microphone and brings him a bottle of water and an acoustic guitar.

Ripper sits down. He plays a few idle notes on this new instrument. The audience, which has been varyingly noisy, quiets down with a ripple of shushes.

And then he starts to sing.

The song is about the end of a long and rocky friendship. It's heart-wrenchingly melancholy and wickedly hilarious. The lyrics have a few rough spots, but the tune is beautiful and he plays it perfectly.

To most of the crowd, it won't be obvious that he wrote it this week about Rayne.

It's obvious to Bella. All this and he also writes songs.

She smiles and bites her lip in all the right places, and applauds enthusiastically when it's over.

And now the band really does pack up and leave.

Ripper grins at her again on his way out.