Lunabelle had been taken to her room on Selene, and stayed there for 3 days without contact from anyone. Not only that, but she was now feeling a strange feeling that she later found out was a little something called fear.

‘Why does it feel this way…’

‘I just wanted to laugh and play with all my friends and hug mommy Asta, Mora, and Selene and be happy…’

‘But this feeling...Why! Where is mommy? Why isn’t she here?’’

Selene had not been very good at explaining what had happened or reacting well. All she told her was that everything was going to be fine, and everything was OK before leaving for somewhere, leaving her with Zora. But no matter what Zora did, an animal could not explain things Lunabelle nor tell her that her parents were in trouble.

Selene had freaked out after the brief run in with Mora and Astenna and had left. Sure they desperately needed to raise their follower unit, and sure the best chance would be sending someone close to them as some sort of divine oracle, but why did it have to be her little girl! In her planning to keep Lunabelle with her, she had forgotten Lunabelle herself and left her alone in the dark about everything.

‘I Just wanted to smile forever...Just for mommy to laugh and play with me. To swim and make pretty flower hats for everyone forever…I just wanted to smile and make everyone else happy because I was born too...’

‘But now...Now no one is glad and everyone is gone. Why was mommy Selene sad? Did I do something bad?...why are they not happy...’

She fell into a deep sleep afterward.

_____________

That night, the only one who slept soundly was the dead drunk dwarf. All of them remembered his words and could not help but think there was a chance he was right. More than a chance actually, it was definitely going to happen like that. The goddesses had even said so. None of them wanted to be the one to take care of the child though because of the threat it would present to their entire species, AKA almost certain annihilation.

‘Only an idiot would endanger their people for such a foolhardy job.’ every one of them thought.

Even if they took the job, they would be outcasts from society. People would say they should have died on the moon instead of bringing a calamity unto them. They would be killed or taken into captivity, and the little girl locked in a high-security vault somewhere. Only a cruel fate awaited all those involved.

The sleeping compartments in the shuttle were reminiscent of a school locker. It was a padded space located inside the wall wide enough to accommodate a grown adult, but small enough to fit several units along a wall.

“Puh…”

From one of the unit burst out a sweating and shaking elf. Lia had been trying to get some sleep, but each time she closed her eyes she dreamt of the destruction of her homeland. The beautiful forest ablaze with silver flames and her hometown in ruins, pained screams of friends and co-workers played on a constant loop. In the background, the murderous aura of all three goddesses stalked her.

Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore and decided to go and research some of the terrain samples she had taken earlier today.

*CRASH*

She had been too distracted looking into the microscope, that when she went to switch slides she knocked over a rack of test tubes containing the blood she had taken from the girl. Good thing she made sure to separate what she had collected into several different tubes. Only 2 of the 4 she had were broken.

She bent over to pick up the pieces, but unknown to Lia, the wheel on the microscope that adjusted the slide height ended up being caught on her sleeve, pulling the microscope down on top of her hand when she bent down.

“AHHH!” she screamed.

The microscope mashed her hand on top of the shards of glass and stabbed many into her wrist. The green blood of the forest dwellers spilled out of her punctured arm and mixed with the red on the floor, making a huge mess. She clutched her wrist as her eyes watered.

Lia had had it. She was exhausted, stressed, and in pain. She had engaged with an unknown deity and practically made a deal with a devil that could kill her entire race. The captain was likely going to call a vote for who would be chosen, and everyone was definitely going to vote for her up.

She was a long way from home, taken prisoner and threatened with extinction. She was just a normal girl who dreamt of being a famous alchemist someday, settling down, and raising a few children with a loving husband. But now...

She sank to her knees and broke down crying for her bleak future. The pain in her wrist tiny in comparison to the one in her heart.

To be lynched by your friends. Her sister might even vote on Lia herself, and why not, she had brought this calamity on them. And worst of all what would her professor back home think?

Another one of the compartments opened and out came her twin sister, rushing over once she saw how badly her sister's wrist was cut.

“Hey hey, shhh shhh”

She pulled her little sister into her lap and grabbed the trauma kit from nearby, unfortunately, Ariel had been hoping not to need it again during the mission. She held her sister's arm tight as she sprayed a hemostasis spray over the wound. While the blood clotted, she went to work using tweezers to pull glass fragments out of the flesh and deposit them in a petri dish she took from the workstation.

Lia wasn’t even conscious of someone trying to help her. Blood loss had taken a toll due to no effort being made to fix it between the time she cut herself and now, leaving her pale and light-headed, or she just didn’t care. If Ariel hadn’t woken up and helped her, within a few minutes she would have bled out.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Come on. You have to take care of yourself. You're not allowed to commit suicide on a mission you know!”

After several minutes and many tears, Ariel had retrieved 13 tiny glass fragments from the bloody green mess

Ariel knew Lia wasn’t the suicide type, and even under the circumstances, it wasn’t an option she would normally consider. But regardless if it was intentional or just carelessness, they were on the job right now and were expected to perform at 100%.

“Now I think I got all the fragments, but just don’t scratch at it OK? I can get you stitched up in the morning so don’t worry about it, and just get some sleep.”

“*Sniff Sniff* B-but the vote, and *Sniff* the captain *Sniff Sniff* he’s going to *Sniff* and your-”

“Call for a vote? Of course, he will, I talked it over with him. But I hope you didn’t expect me to vote for you. I’m an elf too you know. It would be bad if I voted for you to save my own skin then doomed myself later on for it.”

She turned off the lights and carried Lia to her sleeping pod, she could sweep up the glass later. She buckled Lia into her bed and closed the door after saying a few words of encouragement.

Unknown to either of them, the little amount of blood mixing with certain properties of that of the elves, unleashed an odd, psychoactive effect similar to dream potions or soul mate marks, allow both the users to walk into eachother dreams.

_________________

Nightmares did not come for Lia again. Instead, she was transported to a grassy field. A bright green blanket covered in splotches of yellow flowers of some sort covered everything the eyes could see. The tunes of unfamiliar birds filled the air and small animals reminiscent rabbits ran around. It was a literal paradise, but it was wrong, in patches around the clearing, the grass had turned a sickly yellow and withered. The sky was bright blue, but a large crack ran down the middle of it, splitting the beautiful blue, a dull gray fog leaking from it.

In the center, of it all, an oak tree with an old rope swing fluttered in the breeze. Glowing white balls of light flittered around under its branches and in the grass. As Lia got closer, she heard the sound of crying.

“It’s her again?”

Lying curled up in the roots of the large tree, the little girl with silver hair was weeping. All around her, little animals nudged her and tried to comfort her and get her to stop crying, but to no avail.

This time, Lia didn’t approach any closer. Here was the cause of all her problems and she could do nothing. If she harmed her, the goddesses would no doubt bring hell down on all of them, so Lia decided to be on her best behavior around her. But why was she crying? She could possibly be still upset about earlier right.

She settled on sitting down near her and staying silent. But as soon as she set foot in the ring of roots around the tree, the little girl sat up straight and looked at her.

She sniffed and before Lia could sit down or open her mouth, the little girl jumped right into her embrace and buried her head in Lias bosom.

Now Lia really didn’t know what to do. Her mood in the last 24 hours had gone from curious, to fearful, to elation, then back down to depressed, to fearful. And the root cause of it all was burying her head in her chest.

“What's wrong little girl?” she said stiffly.

It was an odd sensation, inside the dream realm, one could not talk, but what they wanted to say was communicated.

She stopped her crying for a moment and looked into the eyes of the elf. Like a massive hurricane, painful memories of the last few days hit Lia like an arrow to the heart.

She was scared, and lonely, and wanted to see her mommy. But for the past 3 days, none of them had come to see her. Images of her huddled under the covers waiting with a look of agitation on her face, or waiting patiently at the door to her room for her mommy to come in and collect her for breakfast on Mora came across through the connection to the elf's memories.

But the door remained shut. No one had come for her. Without her mother's words to comfort or explain things to her, she thought back through everything that had happened recently. Children are more capable and sensitive to changes than some adults after all. Through her strange connection to the essence of the moon and beyond, she was able to look through the eyes of her mothers and view their recollection of events from the past few days. However, she wasn’t able to understand it, such as what a follower unit was or why it was bad if it went down, but the dark undertones they. Little by little, Lunabelle had begun to fear she had been abandoned.

“Shared memories!”

For years, there had been theories of certain species of monsters being able to share memories. The memories that flooded her head were ones taken from the goddesses standpoint. Although Lunabelle was too immature to know what they meant, Lia was able to infer what had happened and what the goddesses situation was.

“So that’s why…”

Lia didn't know why Selene hadn’t come to see her as the memories cut off abruptly after the confrontation in the conference room, but it couldn’t be good. During the connection, Lunabelles own feelings came across as a tidal wave of fear and anxiety. And Lia, she could feel in her heart that it wasn’t a trick or trap.

She pitied the girl. All her life she had been treated as the center of her mother's constant attention. But in a single moment, they had forgotten about her and left her out, Lunebelle was afraid she had done something wrong to deserve to be pushed aside. And by experience, Lia knew the cold shoulder of someone so influential in your life, like a mother or father, was a horrible thing to experience, and at such a young age too.

Her own mother had been the one in charge of her training as an acolyte when she was young, and being her daughter of the clan matriarch had done the exact opposite of winning her any special treatment. Similar to her sister, she was pushed to be the best at everything and forced to endure hours of her mother's constant lecturing and forced practice at home, except she hadn’t taken to it so naturally as Ariel had.

That time period in Lia’s life had been one of her least favorites, with only a few friends actually knowing what was happening to her at home. All the other young acolytes in her class thought she didn’t care enough to join them going swimming or climbing trees, and had gradually stopped inviting her. In the end, Lia was left friendless and spent more time in the classroom and attended more lectures than most adults would in their entire lives, most of them not being of choice. She was also pushed to graduated the academy alongside her sister. After she graduated, she moved as far away from her mother as she could and got a teaching position at a university on the other side of the country from her home.

Her mother had turned her into an impeccable young lady and priestess, but she had missed all those opportunities for friendship with children her age. No matter how many successful theories, rituals, or ceremonies Lia achieved thanks to her mother’s influence, the woman still had taken from her her childhood life.

Lia held the girl close to her chest as tightly as she could, reminiscing of all those long days and nights she sat in front of her mother being told how to act in an official court or the pre-preparation rites for a ritual.

She pondered for a while, loosing track of time. It wasn't fair the situation her and the crew were in, Lunabelles moms were in, or Lunabelle herself. Everyone was suffering.

Suddenly, like lighting, an idea struck Lia's brain, and a plan began forming. 

"It could work? But we would have to deal with her first..."

It was simple, yet difficult. If any part of it failed, they were all going to be off in a bad way later, the goddesses included. But she was willing to risk it.

Once Lia had calmed the crying girl down enough, she then began to explain everything that was happening, why her mommies hadn’t come to see her, as well as telling her what Mora and Astenna had planned as revealed by the shared memories.

“Your mommies are just having a misunderstanding. You see, they want to send you to that big planet in the sky to do stuff.”

She explained what Lunabelle needed to do in order to help her mommies and what she should say and do. 

Lunabelle pouted and Lia laughed. It was just too cute. She could see why the goddesses loved her so.

A clock bell in the distance chimed and the dream world around them began to fade. Before going, though, Lunabelle communicated one last thing to Lia.

“I like you! You make people happy!”

And with that, the world around them turned to white smoke and evaporated.