"Sure, all right. Let me see..." and he closes his eyes for a moment, consulting his memory, and then starts reciting. It's a lovely poem. Probably lovelier to people who actually speak Barrayaran Russian, though.

Envee is delighted!

.... Callida is distracted.

No, no, stop that, you're going to figure it out after you contact Occlus. Shuffle towards the door, woman.

"Can I speak with you privately for a moment?" murmurs Cordelia.

"Certainly," replies Callida in the same soft tone.

Did Cordelia do that on purpose? ... It looks like, yeah. Okay. Uh. Let's hope this goes well, whatever this is.

"I apologize if I'm mistaken or overstepping," she says, "but I couldn't help noticing that you seemed to be trying to find out my son's relationship status."

....

Um.

Okay, she's caught off guard, but she's not ashamed or going to deny it or flee, here. She will handle it reasonably.

"I was, yes."

Cordelia smiles.

"Last I heard - and I do hear about these things - he was open to new relationships, although not actively looking."

... Callida likes Cordelia. She has liked her this entire time, it's just more obvious now.

"Thank you. He's -" Why did she ever agree to go without a translator augh, "- being a woman isn't a limit, is it?"

"Not at all. He prefers women, in fact."

"Lucky me," she murmurs in Basic, then -

"Thank you," she repeats.

"You're welcome."

And now they can make their exit. From the dinner party, and then from the planet.

Callida takes care of various administrative necessities, because that is her first priority, as much as she wants to talk to Occlus as soon as possible. These people are her responsibility, and she will take care of them. But she has been taking care of them already, so this is really just maintenance, and therefore won't take very much time at all. She also apologizes to TN-R13 for that whole 'not actually needing the crystals she asked it to grow' thing, and showers it with presents, and gets a grumpy 'Callida =/= need new astromech droid' that means she has been forgiven, but it needs to stew for a little while first.

Then she's free to work on her method of contacting Occlus with minimal interruption. This involves a lot of meditating with the crystals and coaxing amplification out of them. She has a decent picture of what kind of end result she needs, but figuring out how to get there is trickier than she'd expected. Luckily, she has extras, so when she realizes that it would take more time to fix a mistake than start over, she can just start over. Within two weeks, she gets one right, and from there prunes down the system until she can get one every few days.

After six bond connection amplification crystals have been made, she tests them out, and estimates that she needs at least double the number to get anywhere close to where she'd need to be. Even if she knows that this isn't an unimpressive speed for what's essentially artifact creation, albeit artifacts that aren't very powerful and definitely aren't good for anything else, it feels too slow. Then, she has an idea. She needs to amplify herself, right? Well, luckily for her, she has two crystals that are imprinted with essence of Callida from osmosis, it's just that they're in her lightsaber. So she disassembles her lightsaber, critically judges if she can use them for her purposes, and decides that yes, she can. And that she can try it with what she has and see how far that gets her.

She sits in her meditation chamber on her personal ship, clearing her mind and focusing on the eight crystals arrayed around her. She lifts them up with the Force, carefully adjusting to exerting her will through all of them, making sure to let her mind flow through them properly. This is the part she has to be careful with, if she doesn't do this right, the force of her power pressing in ways the crystals weren't meant to go might shatter them. Which would be annoying but acceptable with the amplifying emeralds, and completely unacceptable for her lightsaber crystals. Luckily for her sensibilities and sense of protective ownership, the focusing and color crystals from her lightsaber feel like slipping into comfortable and familiar shoes. If she screws up, they'll be least likely to be harmed of the bunch.

Once she's settled in, she looks over the fruits of her labors, and smiles. This just might work. Time to give it a shot.

A businesslike calm and a clear mind is perfectly fine for adjusting to the crystals, but if she wants this to have the best shot possible she needs to be anything but calm. Strong emotion means power in the Force, and right now, she needs power. Luckily she's been trained for this kind of thing.

She does some mental contortion, drawing upon her frustration at her circumstances, at how unfair life is, how she has never just been left alone to be content and this pisses her off. She wasn't born in this pleasant, downright peaceful galaxy with its reasonable emperor and lovely empire filled with lovely people. She was born in the other one. As a slave. Then she was tossed head first into a hellhole. She's been tortured and mistreated made a pariah and she carved out a life she liked anyway, by being clever and resilient and strong and skilled and extremely lucky. Lucky that Occlus was there, that she had someone who stuck up for her from the very beginning, someone that thought she was worth something just for being who she was. Not because she was related to her or resembled someone or pretty or Force-sensitive, but because she was herself. This isn't new now, she's clawed herself support since then, even though it was hard to make friends as a Sith, but it was then.

The universe does not get to take the first person that liked Callida for herself. It just doesn't. It's not fair, it's not right, so it doesn't get to.

It's not allowed.

Tears are streaming down her cheeks, but she doesn't notice. She pours her rage, her sharp bitterness and cynicism, her self-targeted frustration, her inescapable loneliness, and every other dark and unhealthy emotion she can draw up goes into powering this ritual. If she were another Sith, she might be tempted to wallow, dark emotions are certainly powerful, but she's not. She's herself, and this is a thing that is entirely about her, and she will not let this darkness have her. She channels her determination, her stubborness, her pride through the things that she made. Hers. Her brilliance and her dedication and her loyalty and her love, in physical form. Her rage is not the mindless madness other Sith embrace. Hers is sharp and white hot and directed with pinpoint precision. She is not a hurricane that rips and tears everything in reach, with innocent bystanders fleeing for cover. She is a disintegration beam that will annihilate anything stupid enough to block her path and she will only be hitting the thing that deserved her anger.

The universe, the multiverse, will not stand in her way.

Occlus

Apprentice. A moment-

Of course. I can hold it for now.

A few minutes later, the contact between them is broadened to almost half of what it would have been at home, instead of the bare sliver Callida was able to establish.

You live yet, and apparently have established yourself in circumstances well enough to permit you to reach to me. Well done. What has happened?

Thank you. The entire fleet experienced an unknown phenomenon while in hyperspace, and we were dropped out of it in another galaxy, possibly another dimension. Complicating matters, hyperspace does not seem to exist here. Simplifying matters, there are humans here, and I have made friends with them.

I see. Our bond is weakened in a way not adequately explained by simple spatial distance. It is good you have made friends, because your return will be no simple task.

I don't think it would be, no, but I think I'd like to propose something that will likely be easier. I like it here, a lot. The humans are extremely reasonable, there are no Sith, and there are untrained Force sensitives and interesting technology. Want to pack up the archives and join me?

You make a compelling argument, apprentice. I will need as much of your exact navigational data as you can provide.

Yes, I have it with me, along with the precise time the phenomenon occurred during the trip, and where we were projected to be when it happened. Are you ready to copy it now?

Yes.

She floats over her datapad to read off all of the relevant data on it.

I'll need to talk to the Emperor of the humans I've met so as to prevent diplomatic waves, but I predict he will be cautiously supportive of having a second - er, third, though Nekros is of course dead - trained Force user show up. I made a good impression. ... Khem Val might be more of a problem. Since there isn't very much, er, food over here for him.

And also that is the biggest potential diplomatic shitstorm just waiting to happen that she's ever seen; 'Hi Gregor I decided to bring my teacher and also her pet dashade who eats people.'

I will begin my preparations. Khem Val can stay behind. He will mope and wail as always, but accept his fate. There is, after all, more food here.