Moonrise ✔ [Complete]

09 Smile

Their items had been delivered from Lady Luciana's manor that morning. Aegis Team was horrified to discover that they were sharing a small room with five beds together. Though, when the director had given them the alternative option to join two dozen other celestials in a single space, they reluctantly accepted the former offer.

Maeyune, although given her own private room, found it was much smaller than her room back at the temple. It had to be at least a good four-steps wide.

The bed, she was not surprised to find, was a narrow cot with one side attached to the wall. A shelf protruded a few feet above it. For her clothing and other small items, she assumed. Aside from those necessities, there were only two other features of the bland, stone-walled room: the narrow slit in the wall made for a window and a small, square mirror hanging next to the door.

She had not expected much. Granted, she had not given her room much thought. The vision from before still haunted her.

The director had said that it had been an accident. What had happened five years ago? What had caused that disastrous fire? Those screams, that overwhelming anger that she had felt. To whom did that rage belong?

She remembered Reo and the way he had looked at her in the hall: quiet, as if he had known what she had seen. His eyes had been steady to capture her reaction.

That fury in the vision and the dark figure inside the blaze...it had to have been him. Had he lost something in that fire?

Gerothen had mentioned casualties. Had the fire taken someone Reo knew?

A knock on her door brought her back to the present. She only needed to take a step to wave a hand across the door's panel that allowed the door to slide open. The five rather dissatisfied members of her team waited on the other side - well, four, considering Benny's gaiety for sharing a room together with everyone.

Trix and Meera took turns leaning into her room before facing each other, shrugging, and simultaneously muttering, "Meh." They appeared apathetic to see that Maeyune's situation was not quite as superior as they had imagined.

In the hour that Gerothen had given them before dinner, they had all changed out of their formal wear and into their usual Suolani training fatigues, which were essentially a pair of flexible, black pants and a dark gray, sleeveless shirt with a standing collar. On the left chest was an embroidered crescent moon - Suolan's symbol.

Maeyune had carefully removed her headdress and her prodigious alliance treaty ensemble. And as she observed herself momentarily in the tiny mirror, she could not help but think that she was back to her original self.

Black hair framed an oval face, her high cheekbones and dark eyes almost uncanny under the room's lights. It was the same face she had observed her entire life, a face and its body that belonged to the Moon God.

Relinquishing the thought, she tied her long hair up before leaving her closet of a room.

Together, she and her team started for the facility cafeteria. Gerothen had given them directions through the maze of halls. Luckily, they only needed Aerylis to follow the sounds of ravenous soldiers to lead them there.