“Saela isn’t like the rest of us,” Reina sighed as she clasped her hands in front of herself. “You could say that her upbringing was… a little different.”

Nina waited as Reina searched for the right words, a wry smile creeping onto her lips. While she had been thinking about how Reina had seemed human after all, she had taken control of the situation before Nina even realised. Reina had occupied her bed in the corner of the room like it was natural, and now Nina had no choice but to wait for her to continue.

“The rest of us are from here, higher, or even other plates,” Reina said as motioned with her hands. “Few of us have family, and those who do cut their ties a long time ago.”

Nina decided to sit on the floor, crossing her legs like a school student would do in front of their teacher. The carpet was comfortable on her legs, her mind wandering to how cleaning the thick thread was going to be difficult.

“Saela is from the red floors of this very tower,” Reina continued. “Her parents are still down there, down on 7-12.”

Low, Nina thought. She recalled what it had been like when they had made their way to the station on 7-01, among the filth and the unwelcome atmosphere. From the people that leered at them to the rusted façades, the heaviness in the air had left a lasting impression on her and it was one that she would rather forget.

“I never planned to take anyone in from that far down,” Reina admitted. “They’re… instinctive, wild. The Cloud Orchestra has a reputation to protect and the people I bring on board need to have values that reflect that. Professionalism, dedication, motivation, you name it. But the important thing is that at the same time as all of that, they need to be strong.”

Nina couldn’t see how Saela demonstrated any of those values, but decided not to comment.

“It doesn’t have to be strength like Svanda’s,” Reina continued. “Trim is mentally strong, while Jade and Aline have strong personalities that will show themselves when we travel through the plates. Even Euris has her own strengths, although that is something you can ask her yourself if you ever get the opportunity.”

She probably wouldn’t, and she still couldn’t see how Saela fit into any of this. The more Reina talked, the more Saela seemed to drift away from the ideals that were being described.

“I first met Saela around four and a half years ago,” Reina smiled as though she was thinking back. “She was so small back then, just a fragile child that was wandering around outside the station below us. It was early days at The Cloud Orchestra - Trim, Svanda, and I, and we obviously caught her attention because unlike the others who warily stood their ground, she stuck to us like a magnet.”

Nina didn’t know how old anyone in the team was, now that she thought about it. She had pinned an age of around 15 on Saela, and early twenties on both Trim and Reina. She guessed that Svanda was a little older, but had no idea about Jade and Aline. The youthful way they dressed seemed to conflict with their developed features. Twenty, maybe.

“It was hard to shake her, the grubby little thing,” Reina chuckled. “She kept asking if she could come with us, but we were heading back to the office after a job. We were tired, and her persistence was getting on our nerves. I eventually told her that we could play the next time we passed by, fully knowing that it would be weeks before we returned to the station.”

“So she would give up,” Nina said as she analyzed the sad smile on Reina’s face. She was staring into space as though the memory was playing through her head, a window back in time. Not only would she be picturing a different Saela, Reina herself would have been different. What had she seen, where had she gone, what had she done that had shaped the Reina that sat before her today?

“I forgot about her,” Reina continued. “We were so busy growing The Cloud Orchestra at the time. The amount of networking and reputation building we did during that period ended up being what set the foundations of what we are today. It was only a month or so later when we returned to station that I remembered what had happened, and I only remembered because we found her waiting for us in the very same spot she had been the time before.”

“She couldn’t wait for a month…”

“I don’t know how she did it,” Reina agreed. “People need to sleep, need to eat, and need to get on with their lives. I’ve asked her before, about what she did during those days, but she won’t tell me,” she paused with a soft sigh. “Maybe it was luck, or maybe she truly tried to be there as often as she could. Sometimes I like tell myself that it was fate, but I’ve never believed in destiny.”

“You didn’t shrug her off again?”

Reina smiled as she looked Nina in the eye. “That was the plan, but we didn’t know how to do it without forcing her. We couldn’t just have her hanging around in the shop where the tunnel to the station is.”

Nina could picture it. She had always had problems shrugging off persistent coworkers, and she didn’t know if she could do that to a child. Thankfully, Adults had a tendency to eventually take the hint.

“So what did you do?”

“Blame Trim,” Reina chuckled. “If she had asked me beforehand I would have shut her down without thinking twice, but I didn’t get the chance. Before I knew it, she had squat down in front of Saela and started to describe a place a few floors above us. We were supposed to collect a package from this… rather unsavoury place.”

“Unsavoury?”

“A shady place, gang activity,” Reina sighed. “A vile place that none of us wanted to step foot in, but we didn’t have the luxury to pick and choose jobs back then. Trim described the place and asked her if she wanted to help by picking up a package for us, and that she should bring it back to where we were standing at the same time the next day. Surprisingly, she was off like a rocket.”

Nina frowned as she thought about it. “So you dropped a job on her, sending a child to a place that you didn’t want to visit yourself.” Her voice was deadpan as she searched Reina’s expression for a sign of guilt. “Doesn’t really line up with the values you described earlier, does it?”

“I’m not proud of it,” Reina admitted. “But I’ve worked hard to move past that, to move us all past that. I’m not going to say that we’re saints, but The Cloud Orchestra is moving further away from that past with every job.”

Tell that to the wanted poster, Nina thought.

“She was happy, you know? Saela,” Reina continued with a softer voice than before. “We returned to JE-22 the next day and there she was, package in hand.” She tried to smile, but it seemed to get stuck halfway. Nina watched as she brushed a loose strand of hair over her ear. “It wasn’t until we returned to the office and found the apologetic voicemail that we realised what had happened. They hadn’t given it to her, saying that The Cloud Orchestra wouldn’t be employing a grubby little girl to run errands for them. It struck a nerve with her, because she returned later that night and stole the damn thing.”

“It must have really struck a nerve,” Nina whistled. She wouldn’t steal something from a shady gang den in any circumstance.

“That’s how Saela works,” Reina replied. “It wasn’t that they said she was dirty, or that she couldn’t have it. It was because they told her that we wouldn’t employ her, that she didn’t belong. We were stars to her, people from the mysterious world above and she desperately wanted to be a part of that.”

Nina wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words. She hadn’t been born with a golden spoon in her mouth, but she hadn’t had it badly either.

“You’ve seen the looks we get when we walk in public, the way the crowds part before us,” Reina continued. “Saela wanted in. She wanted it so badly that she declined the money we offered her even after we had sent her on ten, twenty jobs because all she wanted was to walk beside us.”

“She could have taken both.”

“She could have, but she didn’t see it like that,” Reina agreed. “Maybe she felt that she would be more valuable to us that way, or maybe she thought she would be harder to replace. Whichever way it was, it worked. She wormed her way in and before we knew it she was running almost all of our jobs on the red floors in JE-22.”

“So you took her in,” Nina said. “You made it official.”

“I wanted to send her to other towers,” Reina sighed. “I couldn’t do that without bringing her into the fold, sharing information and setting her up with proper equipment. She had worked whenever we asked her to, while rejecting pay, for four years before we finally took her in. The smile on her face the day I gave her an orange armband made me realise just how far that grubby little girl from the bottom of the pile had come. She hasn’t shaken the rough edges off, but I doubt she ever will.”

Reina’s earlier comment about having your own strengths surfaced in Nina’s mind, noting the tinge of admiration in Reina’s voice like a proud parent discussing their child. Maybe Saela had some positive qualities after all.

“And that is the issue that she has with you,” Reina said. “I don’t know how much trouble she went through during those four years. Balancing her work for us without pay and all the other problems that come with day to day life down there, it must have been hell. She worked for her position here, and she probably worked harder than any of us for it.”

Nina was silent as pieces started to fit together, about the swing in attitude after she had walked out on the first night.

“And then in you come, invited through the front door,” Reina smiled. “Everything Saela had ever worked for, everything she had always dreamed of, I offered to you on a plate on the first day we met.”

And I rejected it, Nina sighed. She had even been unceremoniously dumped on the couch before waking up with a massive hangover. She had accepted the offer in the end, but the damage had already been done by the time Saela had responded to the bell that morning to see her in disarray.

“What’s worse for her is that your transition has been pretty seamless, so she still feels like the odd one out,” Reina said as she pushed herself off the bed before stretching. “Just like you’re not going to tell me that Saela has been smoking out the front, you’re not going to tell her that this conversation happened, okay?”

Nina nodded as Reina crossed the floor before opening the door. She wasn’t surprised that Reina knew about Saela’s courtyard habits. She probably would have been more surprised if she didn’t know.

“Enjoy packing,” Reina said with a wink before closing the door behind her, leaving Nina to stew over her new thoughts.