The Hunters of Artemis: The Return of the Hunters

Chapter 22: The Welcome Dance

I've never really liked dances. You could say that I'm more introverted than extroverted. It's not that I don't like dances, it's just that I don't really think they have a point. I mean, people think that if you have music, strobe lights, and people, that counts as a dance. But if no one's dancing, then I don't really think that it's a real dance.

And no one was dancing at The Welcome Dance. 

Clumps of students stood around the gym, whispering, giggling, and chatting. Every once in a while, a group would start to sway, which apparently counts as dancing here, but when they saw that no one else was dancing, they went back to whispering, giggling, and chatting.

Just get the note, I heard Lyra saying in the back of my mind. That's all you need to do. Get the note and come back to the hotel.

I stood off to the side, a glittering blue mask with blue feather plumes on top to my face, wearing a gorgeous, shimmery blue dress. It was all different shades of blue, the colours flowing down from the one shoulder to my hip. Below that, the dress was layers of fabric, all covered on top by a thin layer of lace. It hung down to about mid-calf and was surprisingly light weight.

I touched the lacy skirt and thought about Robyn, and how she had given me the dress before the dance.

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I heard a knock on my door as I was finishing up my homework. I got up and answered the door. "Hello?"

"Hi." It was Robyn. She had her hair in a French braid, and she looked really, really, really nervous. "Can... Can I come in?"

I noticed she had a box in her hands. "Yeah, sure. What's up?"

Robyn closed the door behind her as she entered the room. "Um... It's just..." She sighed and ran a hand lightly over her braid. "Sorry. I'm just a little bit..."

"Tense? Nervous?"

She gave me a thankful smile. "Yeah. Both."

"You don't have to be nervous around me," I said, smiling. I understood why Robyn was so... twitchy around me. I guess if I had a sister who died, and then one of my best friends, who abandoned me, had a child that looked exactly like my sister, and my former-best-friend named her child after my sister, I would be a bit twitchy too. "It's just me."

She looked like she didn't know how to respond to that, so she looked away. "Um, thanks. Sorry. This is a bit awkward. The whole... you-look-like-my-dead-sister thing..."

I smirked playfully, trying to ease her mind. "Yeah. I thought as much." 

She held the box up and smiled faintly. "I, uh, brought something for you."

"You did?"

Robyn nodded and set the box down on the bed. "All of those years ago, the original ten came on a quest, and we ended up coming here too." She chuckled lightly. "In fact, we stayed in this hotel, maybe even in these same rooms."

Captivated by the story, I sat down on Anna's bed and crossed my legs on it. 

"We also had to go to a dance," Robyn continued, "but it was for a very different quest. When we came, we had nothing to go to the formal in, so we had to go shopping." She shuddered. "It was terrible. We hunters don't often dress up, so it was a bit weird. Anyway, when we went shopping, all of the hunters got dresses from a store here. This..." She opened the box. "This was Rhea's. The original Rhea's."

She lifted up the blue dress, which sparkled as it moved. 

I gaped at it. "You... You kept it all this time?"