I'm awakened to Kael shaking me in a frenzy. It startles me, and I fly up in the bed and start looking around the room, panicked.
"Sigmund, it's four-thirty in the morning!" Kael explains. "It was your bright idea to have us all meet downstairs at five, and you're not even awake yet!"
I wipe the sleep out of my eyes. "Cause I knew you'd wake me," I allege. Kael rolls his eyes and shoos me out of bed.
"Come on, get ready," Kael pushes me right up out of bed and leaves to go take a shower. I showered last night, after all that craziness, so I don't feel particularly disgusting. Oh well. I'll just get ready real quick and head downstairs. I notice Cabel isn't around. His stuff is gone, too. He must already be waiting.
By the time I get my stuff ready, packed, and head downstairs, I find that Kael is the only one who has not yet arrived. When he comes in right behind me, though, I see the whole group is gathered together. I expect Kael to look a little wet, since he just came out of the shower, but he looks perfectly clean and dry. His hair is so short that it dries almost instantly. It's not like mine. My perfectly windswept hair takes forever to dry.
"Aw, you look so cute and clean!" Natalia laughs as she scoops Kael into a big hug. She starts to dote on Kael as I look around to the rest of my group.
Portia looks extremely tired and weary, but she's okay. At least I think she's okay. I figure she's just resting her eyes. There's no way she fell asleep standing up…
Natalia is as lively and vivacious as ever. I can tell that from the way she is crushing Kael. Cabel is standing nearby. He is silent and strong, like always. When I make eye contact with him, he gives me a firm, resolute nod. I don't know what that's supposed to mean, but I'm guessing it's some kind of macho-respect nod. Should I do it too? I give him a solemn head shake, and he looks like he's about to start laughing. Okay, now I'm embarrassed.
I look away from Cabel and over to Kavella. We make eye contact as I glance over to her, but she quickly tilts her head away. Kavella looks a bit exhausted, but I'm not sure if it's from a lack of sleep or something else. She looks visibly bothered, though. We still have a few minutes before five officially hits, so I decide I should talk to her for a moment. Kavella and I haven't been talking much lately, so…
"Hey, there," I put on my most friendly face and work my way over to Kavella. "How are you?"
"I'm just thinking," Kavella mumbles. "There's a lot on my mind."
"Do you want to…?"
"I don't want to talk about it," she affirms. She shakes her head, letting her hair whip around. Kavella's hair is a little bit wet, so I'm guessing she took a shower this morning as well. Kavella leans close to me and whispers something quickly. I don't hear what it is she tried to say, though.
"What?" I ask, wanting her to repeat it. She looks into my eyes, a little hurt, and shakes her head.
"Forget it, it's not important." I can tell Kavella has shut down on me, but I have no idea why. Did I do something wrong? If she wants me to act a certain way, she should say something. If she's always so quiet, I'll never have any idea what she's trying to say or get across to me.
A tiny bit before five, we all start heading out. It looks like we're a little bit ahead of the sun, right now. It hasn't yet come up.
Cabel takes care of the proper arrangements to get a carriage. He knows where the Alchemist lives, and he's talking to one of the drivers about the destination. As he settles on a price, he pays the man in the booth and walks up to the rest of us.
"We can take this carriage here, it'll bring us straight to my friend's house. He knows just where it is," Cabel notes. Well, that's entirely convenient.
We all board the carriage and take off. I'm not sure how long the trip will take, and I forgot to ask. I'm about to interrogate Cabel and get the information out of him, but I notice his huge form is slumped over and his eyes are closed. Poor guy must be tired; I shouldn't bother him. As I look around, I see that everyone is getting cozy and closing their eyes. Maybe I asked the group to meet too early.
Nobody said anything against it, though. They trust me as a leader, it seems…The only other person in the carriage who isn't already falling asleep is Kavella. I consider lying down and getting some rest too, but my eyes catch Kavella's and I can see she has something she wants to say.
She either doesn't want to disturb anyone, or has something to say that she doesn't want overheard. She dips into her bag and pulls out a piece of paper and a pen. She starts to scribble something on it, using one of her hands to provide a soft light via an Animus technique. After she writes, she hands the pen and paper to me.
I look down at the paper. It's impossible to read in this lighting, so I have to use an Animus technique to provide some light. I try to use the same technique Kavella used, but when I do it, the entire carriage lights up with the force of a thousand suns.
Everyone's eyes shoot open as they look at me dementedly. I turn off the light and apologize, then look down at the paper.
I don't have the same level of control over Animus techniques that Kavella has. In fact…I don't have ANY level of control over Animus techniques. It's a wonder I can even do them. My light has one setting, and that setting is 'BRIGHT'. Kavella shakes her head and slides a little closer to me. She holds out her hand so that I can have the light to read, and I look down at the paper, reading what is written.
I get a bad feeling from Portia. What do you really think of her? Do you like her?
I write a lengthy reply.
I haven't had the chance to tell you the whole story, because she's been around me the whole day. I went to the Vitarine building to try and get information from their receptionist, and Portia overheard me. She held a gun to me and told me to tell her what I knew, and then told me she'd give me the key if I let her hang out with me. She also said she'd go report us to the people at Vitarine if I didn't bring her, so I didn't have a chance. I'm sorry if she's bothering you, but the fates weren't looking down on me too favorably yesterday.
I'm surprised at how much of the paper I take up with my response. Kavella reads through it quickly, like she's searching for something hidden on the paper. It doesn't seem like she's acknowledging my actual words very much.
She writes something back as a reply and hands the paper back to me.
But do you like her?
Is that jealousy I'm detecting, Kavella? I look over at her but she's staring at the paper. She wants to read my reply before I even write it.
She snatches the paper away from me before I can write anything, and takes back the pen as well. She starts writing a pretty lengthy note to me as well. It's so long that she ends up spilling onto the back of the paper. When she hands it to me, I read through it carefully.
I feel like we're friends, Sigmund, and when I see how Portia acts toward you, I see it as something manipulative and evil. I don't want to see you fall for someone like that and end up getting hurt, that's all. I don't think she's a good person. I appreciate that she helped us, I really do, but I don't think we should take her all the way with us. Can we drop her in Whitewind and leave her there? I feel like she's going to be bad for the rest of the group. I know you're going to fall for her if she's around much longer, and I don't want that to happen. Not for personal reasons, but for other reasons. You're our leader now, Sigmund, and you're also the only one who can kill Merava. We just can't have you getting distracted by romantic feelings, not at a time like this. If you want to pursue her when this is all over, fine. But you can't drag her along, not yet. It's not healthy for us.
I guess she's not jealous, but she certainly sounds angry about the whole situation. Does she feel that Portia is prettier than her? Is that why she's so defensive?
I write back.
I won't get distracted by Portia. If I'm the leader here, you have to trust me.
She reads the paper and shakes her head. Then, to my surprise, she lets it burn up in a small Animus fire. She leans back and closes her eyes at that point.
Before long, I also find myself drifting to sleep. When I wake up, the carriage is just pulling up somewhere.