Sitting at the Knight's feet was the album poster that'd been leaning by the electrical pole earlier. She even looked back for a second to make sure, and it was gone, now stuck in the blades of grass.

"...how's this supposed to get us home?" Hotaru asked quietly.

"It wouldn't be here if it wasn't gonna help us out." Tsuki replied. "That's how this works sometimes."

The phrase "turn around" was written across the poster's plastic protector in a waxy, almost greasy, red lipstick.

Tsuki looked back and saw a black luxury car creeping across the thin strip of asphalt, before stopping in front of the vending machines. It was unlike anything Tsukiko'd ever seen before: long, built of gentle curving lines and painted a deep, piano black. It hovered only a few centimeters over the ground with large alloy wheels.

"Hey!" Hotaru shouted, waving her hands.

Without a word, Tsuki began her march back to the road, feeling a bit stupid that she'd even made the trek in the first place.

"Think they'll give us a lift to town?" Hotaru asked.

"Why else would they stop?" Tsuki replied, hoping she was right.

They reached the car's passenger side window, Tsuki leaning forward a bit to try to get a look through the tinted windows. Only a silhouette was visible until the window lowered.

Aurelia was on the driver's side. "I apologize for the wait. I hope I did not inconvenience you two."

Lily was sitting in the passenger's seat, looking up at Tsuki with a smile.

"Aurelia?" Hotaru spoke before Tsuki could. "What're you doing here?"

"I came to drive you back to Tokyo." Aurelia answered bluntly. "Please, allow me."

Just as she finished talking, the rear passenger side door opened, swinging out backwards toward the rear of the car. Tsuki carried Hotaru a few steps more and placed her in the rear seat.

"Sorry about all this." Hotaru sighed. "Didn't mean to make you carry me around all day."

"I still owe you lunch, don't worry about it." Tsuki reassured, feeling good about herself.

The Knight walked around the car and sat down behind Aurelia and next to Hotaru. Shortly after the door closed, the car started gliding over the road almost silently, save for a quiet rumble.

The interior of the car was as dark as the exterior, with long flowing lines and golden accents. The headliner was a deep black, with pinholes that let in a twinkling, flickering candle light that mimicked a starry sky.

"...jeez, how do you afford a car like this, Aurelia?" Hotaru admired the interior.

"An automobile can be another home away from home. I thought it necessary to have one that was as comforting to my guests as my shop is." Aurelia sounded a little proud of herself.

"...I guess that makes sense." Hotaru scratched her head. "Doesn't really answer my question, though."

Aurelia chuckled.

"You hangin' out with Aurelia, Lily?" Tsuki looked over at Lily.

Lily struggled in her seat to look back at Tsukiko. "Yeah!"

Hotaru craned her head to get a better look. "Lily? Like, Lilith Guillemot?"

"You know her too?" Tsuki asked.

"Doesn't everybody?" Hotaru muttered a quick answer before introducing herself. "Hi, I'm Mori Hotaru."

"Hotaru." Lily repeated. "You can call me Lily!"

"...why does everyone say that?" Tsuki asked.

"It's Lily Guillemot." Hotaru repeated. "She's like... an urban legend. You spend enough time walkin' around town and you'll run into her eventually."

"...right." Tsukiko didn't really get it.

"Lily, uhh... Sorry for makin' you two drive all the way out here." Hotaru bowed her head a little. "Must've driven for hours..."

"It's fine. It didn't take that long anyway." Lily said nonchalantly.

"Oh, right." Hotaru nodded. "Hey, wait a minute. How'd you two know we'd ended up out here, anyway? How long have we been gone?"

"Probably a few minutes, now that I think about it." Tsukiko realized. "...half an hour at most."

"Seriously?" Hotaru checked her watch. "It feels like I've been out here for hours..."

"You have not adjusted to it yet." Aurelia said.

"Yet?" Hotaru countered.

"You are an esteemed guest in my shop. It would be my honor to have you visit once again and in doing so, I think you may come to understand these things the way Tsukiko does." Aurelia's voice was softer than usual.

"'These things?' I know you're a fortune teller and all, but you don't have to talk in riddles all the time." Hotaru looked across the car to Aurelia. "So you're the one behind us ending up all the way out here?"

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"...I suppose that is something else that Tsukiko understands." Aurelia kept her answer vague. "Lily too."

"If you say so." Hotaru left it at that, taking Tsuki's advice to heart.

For a moment, Tsukiko looked out the window, gazing through the deep tinted windows and out at the field. She could see the town at the field's edge, it looked like nothing more than a few scattered homes and buildings. There were other people too, driving cars and riding bicycles, but they were all too far away to see clearly, only appearing as hazy, colorful silhouettes. As Aurelia crossed a central road, she saw further into the town in the distance, the edge of a small city appearing to her like a mirage.

"Sorry, we haven't had much chance to talk lately." Tsukiko could only stare at the back of Aurelia's seat. "I've been so wrapped up in this Themis thing, I--"

Aurelia stopped her. "I did not make you that jacket so you would come to my shop more often, I made it so that you could do what you must do. No matter what happens, I will wait for you, for as long as it takes."

"...it's not like that." Tsukiko shook her head.

Lily tried to cheer her up the best way she knew how. "It'll be okay! We'll hang out later when you're not as busy."

"Yeah, we will." Tsuki forced away her own cynical thoughts.

Hotaru tried to change the subject. "Hey, uhh... do you make all the Knights' jackets?"

"I do." Aurelia spoke bluntly.

"Figures. Still, how'd you end up doing that?" Hotaru asked. "That's... kind of a weird gig, not something that just falls into your lap."

"I met Tsukiko's aunt... almost twenty years ago now. She came to me with a damaged jacket of her own, and I made her a suitable replacement." Aurelia gave her usual sort of answer. "And then Tsukiko's sister came and then Tsukiko herself."

Hotaru's interest was piqued. "Twenty years. You must be one hell of a seamstress, bein' able to make something that fancy and make it tough enough to last all that time."

Aurelia seemed to enjoy the praise. "Twenty years is nothing when you do something you love."

"Y'know, I'm surprised I've never actually run into you before." Hotaru remarked. "I've lived in this town my whole life. Part of my job's knowing almost every corner of it, so a fortune shop in Ikebukuro's kind of a weird thing to miss."

"I would not expect you to remember every single shop in the city." Aurelia replied. "My shop is one in a city of a million shops."

"...oh yeah." Tsukiko remembered. "We saw Claudia earlier, carrying a big roll of fabric. Where'd she end up?"

"She's next to you." Aurelia said.

Hotaru and Tsukiko nearly jumped out of their seats when they finally noticed the little redhead squeezed between them. She was small enough to fit between them quite comfortably, so they somehow must've missed her. Claudia looked at Tsukiko with a slight annoyance on her face.

"Sorry for not helping you." Tsuki looked away. "We were tryin' to get home."

Claudia had her arms crossed, a pouting face and a red ink note between her fingers that Tsuki grabbed and read. "It's not your fault anyway, I blame the wind."

"So this is who you were following back in the field?" Hotaru looked at Claudia. "I'm Mori Hotaru. You must be--"

Claudia looked back at her, then paused. She wrote something onto a note, then handed it over to Hotaru silently.

"Claudia. Right." Hotaru read. "...can't talk? Shy?"

"She doesn't talk much." Tsuki spoke for her. "...not really sure why. I always assumed it was painful for her."

"Literally painful? Is she hurt?"

Tsuki shrugged. "I dunno, I've never asked."

Claudia handed Tsukiko a note. "Don't talk about me like I'm not here!"

"It's your own fault for sneaking up on people." Tsuki scolded her.

"Maybe she has an accent or something... She does look foreign, after all..." Hotaru muttered to herself.

Claudia shook her head.

"Do I have an accent?" Lily turned around to ask. "I've never really thought about it."

"...not really." Hotaru paused. "You just sound a little weird cuz you're... well, you're speaking perfect Japanese, but you don't sound like a Japanese person. Must be cuz you're built differently from us."

"That, and Aurelia doesn't have much of an accent, does she?" Tsuki added.

"Hmm..." Lily went quiet in thought. "Maybe she isn't confident in her voice? I swear I've heard her talk before, though!"

"It's nothing like that." Tsuki sighed. "She'd just rather write her thoughts down on notes and signs. It was weird at first, but I've gotten used to it."

Hotaru looked Claudia up and down."Where'd she hide a pen and notes in that dress? Did you make this too, Aurelia?"

Claudia reached behind her back and produced a pen with a red tip and notepad and wrote something before handing it to Hotaru.

Hotaru read it with great interest. "Oh, so that's what you mean... Doesn't that make holding a conversation super inconvenient, though?"

Before she'd finished talking, Claudia'd already handed her another note.

"Oh, so you have a phone too?" Hotaru asked. "Wait, how does that help?"

Claudia produced a phone just like Tsukiko's with a golden exterior. She opened a translation app and started typing at what felt like lightning speed, before a sound escaped the speaker.

"If I ever need to, I can just use this." A text to speech program spoke on Claudia's behalf. "It helps me talk to people who can't read my notes or if I ever have to explain something to someone more clearly."

Tsukiko watched with a raised eyebrow. "So you've moved on from the old pen and paper finally?"

Claudia simply shook her head.

Tsuki laughed a little. "Old habits?"

Claudia wrote her a note instead of using her phone. "Pen and paper has its benefits. Sound doesn't really go through glass that easily. Besides, what's wrong with the way I do things?"

"Nothing at all." Tsuki said.

"There is a flaw." Hotaru admitted. "I have no idea what she's saying to you, poor Lily's straining her neck trying to get a better look, and Tsukiko's only giving us her half of the conversation."

Claudia mulled it over, turning her head side to side as she thought, as if she was rolling around some marbles in her brain. In the end, an unsatisfied look fell upon her face as she found herself in a conundrum with no real answer.

"I guess the phone thing helps, but that's not really got that Claudia touch, huh?" Tsukiko pitied her a bit. "I'd say you could use one of your signs, but there isn't enough space in here for all of us to see it."

Claudia shook her head.

Tsukiko glanced out the window again, expecting to see the fields in the distance or the greenery on the side of the highway, but the concrete siding of an office building and an apartment complex took up her view. As the buildings passed, and she was able to see further out, she instantly recognized Tokyo's jagged skyline and the distant glass skyscrapers in the distance.

"...Aurelia?" Tsukiko spoke up.

"Yes?" Aurelia answered.

Tsukiko paused. "Where were we, right now?"

"In a small town one hundred kilometers north of Tokyo." Aurelia gave her an oddly mechanical answer. "Why do you ask?"

"A hundred kilometers..." Hotaru remarked. "Sheesh, going that far in less than a second would give anybody whiplash. You do that regularly?"

"Not really." Tsukiko denied. "I haven't done anything like that in ages."

Somehow, after what felt like only a few minutes driving, she'd made it back to the city. A slight melancholy filled Tsukiko's heart, but she didn't really know why. The skies didn't feel as blue and the gray walls seemed so dull compared to the green of the field. Still, knowing she was close to home made her feel safe.