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NOVA AWAKES ONCE AGAIN TO THE CARRIAGE rocking side to side, her senses began to become alive again as she could feel something heavy yet warm around her. Everything seemed to have been silent, she groans as her limbs felt heavy and her muscles were tight, but she sat up anyways.
"Nova!" Alina breaks the silence and looks at her, she looks up with a dopey smile. "Are you okay?"
"M' good." She sighs, "just a little sore." She said turning around so she was sitting like everyone else. She glances up to see the two heartrenders who were with her at the start.
"Hello." She mutters awkwardly.
"Hi, I'm Fedyor and this is Ivan," the smiling man said, "that was a great show you both put on back there."
Nova smiles again, meeting eyes with the brooding one who's eyes softens at the sight of her, but turns back to the window again ignoring the three of them.
The blonde stairs out of the curtained window to see that they were in a woodland area far away from the camp. She glances at Alina who was fumbling with her sleeve, that was when she realised she was also wearing a kefta.
"They call this a kefta, it's bulletproof. The uniform of the Second Army." Fedyor explains. Nova smiles feeling all the embroidered swirls around it, while Alina was touching her scar.
"What about the First Army? Back in Kribirsk," both men turn to her, "a thousand soldiers marching with us. Isn't that safer?"
"Slower, not safer. Not really." The brooding man said, causing Nova to look at him in shock.
"You talked!" She blurts out. They eye her, Fedyor chuckles while Ivan stares her down. She gave him a cheeky smile.
"If you left us with the cartography unit, no one would look twice at us." Alina answers Ivan back taking hold on Nova's hand, both crescent scars touching each other.
The brooding one ignores her staring out of the window again with a frown, while the smiling one stares at him before looking back towards the girls. "Why is that? You summon pure sunlight and she moonlight. Your kind of Etherealki has just been a theory, a picture in a storybook. Until now. You're both very special girls."
Alina shakes her head while Nova stares blankly. "So, how has no one looked twice at you before?"
"Are you joking?" The half-Shu girl asks, "maybe it's nicer inside the Little Palace, but out here, when you're different, when you look different, everything's at risk of becoming a fight." Nova looks sadly towards her best friend and gives her hand a squeeze.
