“You’re writing?” Svanda asked a couple of hours later as she sat down at the small dining room table. “To who?”

Reina pushed the piece of paper across the table instead of replying, using the break to flex her fingers a couple of times with a clawing motion. The house didn’t have a computer, and as a result she had ended up resorting to a pen and paper. She didn’t write by hand much these days, nobody did, but a short letter was easily manageable.

Getting the letter to its intended recipient would be the hard part.

“He’s here?” Svanda asked as she quickly ran an eye over what Reina had written before sliding it back to her. “I thought he’d be on Terminus.”

“Not yet. He’ll wait until the last minute” Reina replied as she picked up the page before looking over her own writing for what felt like the millionth time. “The view’s a bit nicer here, don’t you think?”

Svanda smiled but didn’t respond. She could see where Reina was coming from, but part of her also didn’t necessarily agree. Terminus certainly didn’t have a reputation for being a scenic place, but that didn’t mean that it was lacking its own sense of charm. Many people said that they couldn’t see it, but in her opinion it was their own loss.

“You can take the woman out of Terminus, but you can’t take the Terminus out of the woman, huh?” Reina smiled after examining Svanda’s expression, seemingly clued in on what she was thinking. “It’s an interesting place.”

The fact that the word ‘interesting’ could mean just about anything wasn’t lost on Svanda, but she couldn’t think of a decent response. Instead, she changed the topic back to the letter. “How are you going to get it to him?”

“I was thinking of giving it to one of the doctors actually,” Reina replied as she folded the piece of paper in half before rummaging around in a small box beside her. Pulling out an envelope, she placed the letter inside before tearing off the thin film that protected the glue and then neatly sealing it up. “I’m sure that they can pass it onto someone who will deliver it if I throw enough money at them, discreetly too.”

“This would be a lot easier if he didn’t change his phone every second week. You’re not even sure if he’s here.”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” she smiled as she scribbled some details on the envelope before leaving it in the centre of the table. “He’ll come to us if he’s here.”

“You mean he’ll come to you,” Svanda replied with a smirk as she leaned back in her chair.

Reina didn’t think that what Svanda had said was true, but it would be difficult to argue against it. She was, after all, the spearhead of The Cloud Orchestra, but her role as the lead negotiator couldn’t attribute for everything. The man that she was contacting usually wouldn’t bother with people at their level, so it would have been common sense that Reina herself would have to go to him. In what Julia had once described as ‘truly privileged treatment’, however, The Cloud Orchestra had quickly developed a relationship where they were the ones who ended up playing the role of the host. Svanda thought it was because Reina was both attractive and unmarried, and while she may have been partly right, Reina thought that it was more about the fact that everyone at The Cloud Orchestra was attractive in their own ways.

“Hopefully we won’t still be here,” she finally said as she tapped the tabletop with a fingernail. “The sooner we’re off the mountain, the better.”

“Agreed,” Svanda sighed. “Sitting around without being able to go outside is boring.”

“Maybe you could trade places with Nina,” Saela suddenly said from the couch. “That wouldn’t be so boring, would it?”

Her comment caused an awkward silence to descend upon them where even Reina was momentarily lost for words. They hadn’t even thought that Saela was listening, but it seemed that she wasn’t as absorbed in whatever was on TV as they had believed. Regardless, it still seemed out of place for her to assert herself on the conversation as she usually tried to avoid them, so Reina was wondering if the comment had struck a nerve.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Svanda replied as she held up her hands in a casual gesture of surrender. “Not at all.”

A cold snort escaped from somewhere under Saela’s hood as she stood up. Reaching for the remote so that she could turn off the TV, she then dropped it on the sofa before heading for the stairs without bothering to look either of them in the eye. “If you saw what she was really like that night, you’d be giving her as much time as she needs instead of trying to get us out of here as soon as possible,” she said as she stopped on the top step. “You’re lucky that the fall into the moat knocked her senseless, because before that it was horrible. She was conscious, you know?”

Reina and Svanda watched in silence as Saela disappeared down the stairs.

“Kind of, at least… if you could call it that,” she added from somewhere below. After another moment her footsteps were no longer audible, and finally Reina and Svanda looked over the table to one another in the silence.

Svanda frowned while Reina wore a complicated expression. As Jade, Saela, and Trim had said nothing about it, they truly hadn’t known the finer details on what had happened. Trim wouldn’t have known either judging by Saela’s comment, which would match up as Trim had already talked the two of them through what had happened from her perspective. Aline may have also known, but she was also the kind of person who would have reported it to Reina if she thought that the information was critical. That was especially true where Nina was concerned, and now Reina was frustrated but wary at how Jade and Saela hadn’t passed this information over to the doctors.

She was frustrated because the doctors needed all the information they could get, and if they had described what state she had been in before, it could have shed additional light on her condition. Jade, however, was busy being treated and let Aline do the talking for her while Saela had disappeared to sleep. Reina, like everyone else, had simply assumed that she had been in the same state when they found her and was only finding out now that they had been wrong.

On top of being frustrated, however, she was wary because if Jade hadn’t mentioned it, it must have been bad. Not just a little bad either, but bad enough that she probably wanted to ask Nina before she said anything to the group as a whole. She didn’t even want to begin to think that she had been violated, but Jade’s reluctance to speak up combined with Saela’s uncharacteristic hard-headedness about the issue were leading her into thinking that it was plausible.

“I don’t know what to think anymore,” Svanda sighed as she put her forehead on the table. “Should we go and check on her?”

“Not now,” Reina replied as she stood up. “It will just look like a sympathy visit after what Saela said.”

“Isn’t that exactly what it would be?”

“Just give it some time, it’s going to be your shift to watch her soon anyway,” Reina reminded her as she crossed the living room before pushing her way out onto the balcony. While the breeze drifted around inside through both the fans hanging from the ceiling and the large open windows, it was stronger on the balcony. The scent of salt was also more noticeable, but despite the pristine view and the sunny weather that bathed the plate in light, Reina was brooding.

“You’re going to ask me if she said anything, aren’t you?” Aline asked with a yawn as she tilted her head to look into Reina’s eyes. Obviously she had also heard what Saela had said, and as a result she was in an awkward position. Aline was expressionless, but Reina didn’t know if that was just a reflection of the fact that she was drowsy after sleeping away the morning in the hammock or not. It was true that she wanted to ask, but being second-guessed had caused her to change her mind so instead she stepped up to the railing.

“No,” she finally replied after pausing for a moment as she looked out across the ocean. “I trust that everyone will tell me the things that I need to hear.”

Aline’s expression turned into one of amusement after she heard the reply before she leaned back into the hammock once more, staring at the thatched roof above them. “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t know anything either. Does that help?”

“Maybe a little.”

“A little is better than nothing.”

“Mmm.”

The two sat in silence for a while as time passed, each occupied by their own thoughts. That’s what Reina thought at least, although she didn’t know if Aline had fallen asleep again or not. She didn’t have anything to discuss anyway, so instead she examined the islands in the distance one by one to the best of her ability. Unfortunately, she didn’t have any binoculars and as a result she couldn’t see further than the closest few islands, and as interesting as they were to look at, they weren’t where she wanted to go. When the time came, she wanted to move far away from the hustle and bustle of the mountain and set up on a small island in the distance. Ormain hopefully wouldn’t be able to find them once they had disappeared into the island maze, and they could also be a little more comfortable while Nina recovered at the same time.

Her ears pricked up when she heard a clattering downstairs. She didn’t know what it was, but she hoped that nobody was causing a racket that would disturb Nina. Saela, Jade, and Trim were all downstairs right now, and while she thought that Trim was asleep, anything could happen right now considering how tense everybody was.

The clattering, however, seemed to move instead of stop. Up the hall it went before it hit the stairs, and soon it had already made its way up as a rather stressed-looking Jade appeared in the kitchen. It only took her a moment to see that Reina was outside, so while ignoring Svanda who had a confused expression on her face, Jade dashed across the living area at a pace which certainly wouldn’t be doing her wound any good before she threw the door open.

“Reina,” she said between pants as she clung to the door handle. “She’s awake.”