UNEDITED: Our Forbidden Love

35: Alexander

Starley wasn't officially part of the Government yet but she had been spending quite a lot of time with Binah, Piper and Liliana trying to sort through Coral's old office; putting anything from the records room back into the correct boxes, organising old documents they didn't need anymore and making a list of quests and jobs that Starley would start after her position was made official. I'd found my own way around the city for those few days, but being the humble, apologetic mermaid that she was, Starley constantly kept apologising for abandoning me.
"You didn't abandon me," I would say, "you're doing your job." She would always smile and accept it but a few minutes later, she'd turn around and apologise to me again. I could already see that the job was causing her stress, anxiety and discomfort but she didn't say so and I wasn't going to until she did. I could tell she was very fixated on making both Coral and her mum proud of taking their job; and making the Government right in thinking that she could handle it and that she was the right choice.

Right now, the pair of us are sitting in her new soon-to-be office in Government house. She is sitting at the desk and I'm in a chair towards the side of the room. The desk is covered in a few boxes from the records room, files and manila folders and random writing implements are strewn across the desk. She is reading one of the files that seems  to be very long and confusing. She throws it down on the desk and pushes her chair backwards.
"I give up!" she screams, frustrated. Get up and swim over to her, opening my arms for her. She swims into them and I take advantage of my long arms to make her feel secure. She takes a deep breath and then breaks away from me.
"I can't make any sense of some of these, Alex," she says, gesturing to the files lying all over the desk. "Some of them are easy but the others are so difficult and I don't know how I'm going to solve them."
"You haven't gone through the initiation yet, baby. You're not supposed to be able to solve them yet."
"That's true," she says, smiling at me, then moving to pack up the desk. She puts pieces of paper inside different folders and then sorts them into the boxes. The sorting of files seems to calm her slightly. Then she picks up the three boxes.
"You okay with all that?" I ask, offering my hand to hold one. She nods in response.
"I'll be back," she says. The door opens for her without her having to touch it and then it swings shut behind her. I take a look around the room. Starley's desk is at one end of the room, made of coral and wood that somehow hasn't rotted from being underwater for years; next to the door is two chairs for visitors, I assume; at the opposite end of the room is a collection of drawers and a shelf on the wall. Starley hasn't completely 'moved in' here yet and so they still stand empty. A board is on the wall behind the desk, meant to be used for different cases and the connections between different people and events. Luckily a window is on the side of the room opposite the chairs. I think Starley might've died if she had gotten one of the rooms in the centre of Government house where there were no windows and no connection to the city outside the building.

Then Starley returns, but this time Binah is with her. Binah's face is serious and contradicting her usual self and Starley looks serious too.
"What is it?" I ask, immediately expecting the worst.
"Just kidding," Starley says, breaking her serious expression and turning it into a playful smile, "I just convinced Binah to do something that I think will help the both of us. You'll find out at my initiation." I look at her pleadingly. Please tell me, I think, but I know that she can't hear me. She smiles cheekily knowing perfectly well that I have absolutely no idea what she convinced Binah to do.