The apartment is a piece of crap with poor insulation and horrible plastic furniture, but it’s clean, cheap and the paths are clear. The broker’s eyes widen in slight surprise when she tells him it will do but he doesn’t comment. It takes less than ten minutes to empty the rental car of her meager belongings, then the door slams closed.

Home, such as it is.

Seren suspects that she stayed in Ithaca for purely sentimental reasons. Deep inside, she has not lost hope of one day returning to Cornell. Maybe after Chauham finally gets off her case. There is also the fact that there is nowhere else she can go this side of the Pacific. Ah who is she kidding, the truth is that this place has become her home. This is where she met Milo. This is where she met and keeps meeting Yuki. She has her favorite coffee place as well as her favorite waterfall. Now that her future is uncertain, she clings to her usual haunts with that much more intensity.

Seren sits heavily on her bed and winces when her sore arm hits the mattress. The bed’s covers look inviting but what she feels under her hand is coarse and damp. There is no small amount of hypocrisy clinging to the remnants of the past and clamoring for freedom when truly she is taking this risk because she knows that, worst come to worst, Chauham will offer her a job, and if not him, her dad. For a brief instant she considers giving up this joke of a dream, and then her personality reasserts itself. She is trying her best to be free. She sacrificed a lot for this and even though the world has come crashing down around her she will only let go when she has no choice.

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Just a quick nap first, just to test the bed.

No. It’s too early and she’s been sleeping too much recently anyway. It’s time to make some long term plans.

She needs money, and that means getting a job.

She needs to plan for a new career path.

Her eyes roam to the foot of her bed. Ah, to hell with this, there are more pressing things.

Seren opens the sport bag and takes out the sword. She runs her hand on the black scabbard and her fingers brush the handle. It is made of metal circled with some sort of twine and feels good in her hand, almost… Calming.

She draws the blade and immediately everything feels different. The house is still here but the paths jump to the front of her perception, still mercifully clear. The blade is the color of steel with a strange bluish tint.

Why worry about career when the world is inhabited by man eating monsters?

Can she really want to hide from it and work in an office?

Can she really afford to?

More importantly, does she want to?

Seren takes out a cotton cloth and start cleaning the blade mechanically, and she remembers. The fight. The pain. The victory.

The victory.

Nothing has ever come close to this, the feeling of triumph when she had impaled the alpha and known he would die from it. It was not bloodlust, she had not been after pain. Nor had it been revenge. It had been about winning by a breath against such a dominating opponent. For a few seconds Seren had felt a clarity of purpose like nothing she had experienced before. For the first time since Milo’s death she had felt truly alive. It had been liberating, and even now the memory of this moment makes her feel lighter.

The truesteel blade is sheather back with regret. She may have lost a lot but she also gained something precious: allies.

Time to make a phone call.