Evanesterrin

Chapter Seven

It was nearly midday by the time everyone had awoken. Everyone, that is, except for Virion. She had fallen asleep shortly after her conversation with Naeren, curled cat-like on a chair. A thin blanket covered her. Naeren had remained awake, and one by one the others had returned from sleep.

Alden was the last to wake, standing and stretching with a loud yawn, before casting a glance at Virion's sleeping form and trudging over to the table to join the others, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

"Virion is awfully tired, isn't she?" he asked conversationally.

"Well, she was up all night, according to Naeren," Lumina said, pushing a plate of toast toward Alden.

"I've been thinking..." Naeren started, tearing her gaze away from the window where she had been staring fixedly at the forest for a long while, "The other people here don't know about the risk of going into the forest after dark. We should gather everyone together and tell them what happened."

"Yeah, but would they believe us?" Alden said through a mouthful of toast. "I mean, if I were them, I don't think I would..."

"Well, we should try either way. That way, they'll either believe us, or they won't. If they don't believe us, at least if something happens to them we will have warned them. That's all we really can do," Lumina said, running her fingers absently through her long blonde hair, scattering several twigs and other forest debris onto the floor.

"Yeah, but I don't want them to think we're crazy," spoke up one of Alden's two friends and the other nodded in agreement.

"So you'd prefer they die to protect your pride?! At least if we tell them they won't be going into it blind, then if they want to make a stupid decision they can, but their deaths won't be on us!" Lumina shouted, and everyone looked slightly surprised by this outburst. Lumina was normally the quiet observer, but at this moment she was glaring at Alden and his friends as though wishing she could shoot one of Virion's arrows at them with her eyes.

"They won't necessarily die," Alden said, though he did not look at them when he said it.

"Boys!" Lumina muttered and snatched up her empty plate, taking it into the kitchen.

"Did you know," Naeren said softly, but in a voice that was so deadly serious that the room seemed to drop a few degrees in temperature, "that last night it wasn't just that one at the window? All of them stayed. Hiding on the roof. Waiting for one of us to open the door. We escaped from them by pure luck, and I don't know that it would happen again. The only reason they left was because it got light outside."

A deafening silence fell. Everyone stared at her. This was news to them.

"That is why we need to tell everyone," Naeren said after several long moments. "It could happen to anyone. I know we don't know everyone here, I don't even know your names," she gestured to Alden's two friends, "but I didn't care about that last night when we were all fleeing for our lives. Just because we don't know the people out there very well doesn't mean we shouldn't help them."

More silence followed this statement. Alden and his friends looked to each other awkwardly shifting in their seats.

"I didn't mean we should let them die..." Alden said quietly, "I just meant... you're right, we don't know a lot of these people. If we have to live with them, I'd rather they not think we're insane."

"What is wrong with this..." Lumina said weakly, sinking into a chair and burying her face in her arms, "this is supposed to be a perfect world. The paradise world... So why...?" She left the rest of that sentence unsaid. She didn't need to finish it. Everyone knew what she meant.