Outside, the storm continued. The rain had only gotten harder since we’d come back to the hotel. I was mad. Thinking of what had happened to Avi, who lay on the bed unconscious. Seeing her face, pale and pained; my chest tightened in a mix of rage and disgust.

Seeing the state the girl was in, and the bloodied corpse of the monster, Scarlett hadn’t asked any questions, simply indicating that we should get Avi to safety.

“She didn’t even need to be there,” I muttered.

“She chose to be,” Scarlett said. “This isn’t your fault.”

“We both know that’s not true. I should have discouraged her from the start. But somehow –”

I liked having her around. I didn’t want to say such a selfish thing. Not after how it had ended. I glanced at the girl; whose faint breathing could barely be heard over the battering water against the glass of the window. For such a reason I hadn’t sent her away when I well should have. I didn’t discourage her accompanying us on what I knew to be a dangerous mission.

The sad thing was she was just as competent in battle as I’d been, if not more so. Why had she been the one to get hurt?

“She’s so young,” I said softly. “I’ve lived already. Made my mistakes. Held my regrets. She hasn’t even had the time to blunder her way through to adulthood.”

“And what kind of life would she have here?” the Lunar Knight asked. “One of poverty. A hopeless existence. Don’t be so inconsiderate as to think the feelings only went one way, Sander. She likes you too.”

My hand was shaky. I looked to Avi once again, and her small form transformed into the sleeping visage of Emilia. I could hear the pounding in my head. Bud-dum. Bud-dum. It grew louder with each passing moment as my teeth ground against each other and the corners of my vision darkened. Bud-dum. Bud-dum. What was this feeling? It wasn’t unfamiliar to me. No. The last time I’d felt it. Bud-dum. Bud-dum. It was that day. When. Emilia.

A sharp pain exploded in my forehead. It felt like something wanted to get out. Needed to get out of my head. Boring through my brain, grinding its way through my skull. A prisoner desperate to escape the confines of my body. I screamed inside. No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no –

I reached for my pipe, but I felt something stop me. Scarlett grabbed my wrist and looked me straight in the eyes. I averted my gaze, looking shakily to the floor as my vision returned to normal.

“You don’t need it. Get a hold of yourself.”

My forehead was covered in sweat, but there were no signs of what I’d felt only moments before.

“I think I need to lie down,” I said.

Scarlett nodded. “You do that. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

I was asleep in minutes.

***

Scarlett watched the rise and fall of the girl’s modest chest. In that moment, she saw herself in Avi. It was during her first month of flight training. Aboard her live mount, a moon falcon, she’d dropped too quickly out of a thermal and had plummeted to the field below. The next thing she’d known she was awake in an infirmary bed, her mentor – Strategos Agis – asleep in the chair beside her.

Apparently, she’d heard later, he hadn’t left his pupil’s side all night. Something had alit in her that day. She’d watched him, starry eyed, not wanting to disturb his rest, as she let the warm feeling in her chest spread throughout her.

Of course, when he’d awoken, he reprimanded her foolhardy behaviour, but Scarlett made sure not to make the same mistake again. Later that day, in the open air of the New Spartan Palace courtyard, she’d stumbled upon him sitting alone, gazing at the halo of light around the dark and distant earth in the blue sky.

Although it was daytime in the new rotational cycle, there was a full lunar eclipse, and so the light of the sun was obscured. Years of harvesting Oort Cloud comets to create the atmosphere of the lunar surface had sped up the celestial body’s rotation to one similar to that of the earth. No longer did the inhabitants of the moon have to suffer the extreme two-week days and nights that the early polar colonists endured.

The young Scarlett looked awestruck at the spectacle in the sky. Though it occurred twice a year, it captivated her imagination each time. When the older man noticed her, he smiled.

“You’ve never been to the earth, have you Scarlett?” he said.

She shook her head.

“These days I suppose it’s not so different to life here. Though I always find New Sparta to be far more tranquil than the chaos of the cities up there.”

“You’ve been then?” she asked, sitting down on the garden bench beside him. Her mentor had such a refined look about him, she always thought; and when he explained things his voice took on such a deep and soothing tone.

“Mhm, yes, a few times. Of course, I was born here, but I’ve had to travel, mostly for diplomatic reasons. But Scarlett don’t be fooled. The earth seems a very fanciful and romantic place, but the sky is clouded with the dark of man’s pollution. The air is not so clean as it is here. You’ll find the people to be less pure too.”

She scratched her head curiously. “Why’s that?”

“People came here for a fresh start. A breakaway from the conflict of the world they left behind. We’ve strived to maintain that, although there may sometimes be tense relations between the Lunar factions, they are overall quite peaceful. On earth there is history of bad blood. Poor relations. There’s no trust left in their hearts.”

“Not like Tachi and I,” the thirteen-year-old girl said with a beaming smile.

“Yes, no like you and that excitable falcon of yours,” Agis replied, patting her on the head.

Scarlett smiled as the memory faded. She put a hand to her chest and blushed at the rapid pace of her heartbeat. He was right about the impurities of the earth, she thought as she looked at Avi.