Chapter 1019: Chapter 1019 - Taming Impossible Puzzles - 3

Luna didn’t answer immediately.

She looked at Liora.

Then she reached into the shadows of her chest and took out the crystal.

It was brighter than this morning. Not dramatically, but the degree Ren had added was perceptible, that specific warmth Luna recognized in a way that had nothing to do with mana perception.

"Ren is repairing even something like this," she said, quietly but without the fragility from before, something closer to the steady voice she had when she had reached a conclusion and was holding it. "I can’t compare myself to him in any way that would justify trying to support him alone... I’d only be a burden and get in the way of his full potential."

Larissa nodded. That was the correct argument from the political perspective she managed... Ren was too significant for any individual set of interests to claim alone, possibly including the three of theirs combined. Something that was a key to the entire world didn’t get administered well in small parcels. That’s how big wars start.

But Liora jumped in.

"That doesn’t work either!"

Both of them looked at her.

"That’s not ’love’, that’s low self-esteem and admiration!" Liora went red but said it with the voice of someone being more direct than was comfortable but who had decided that discomfort was the least important cost of this conversation. "...It’s not... it’s not love."

She went redder saying the word again.

But she kept going anyway.

"You can’t build a family on that... It’s not enough." She looked at the crystal in Luna’s hands and then at Luna herself. "It has to be real love or it doesn’t work!"

Silence.

Larissa searched for the next argument, the one that left the idealism aside and arrived at something more concrete, something that didn’t depend on the word Liora had just put on the table with such difficulty, the word that was also exactly the one that made everything so hard.

Luna got there first.

"It is love."

Liora looked at her.

"I love Ren." Luna said it with a flatness even she didn’t expect saying it out loud to another person for the first time.

Truth that has been known internally for long enough that saying it out loud doesn’t change it, only makes it exist in more places.

"But it isn’t only him." She paused, finding the right way in. "When we synchronized our power to help him, when we connected to his internal network... I could feel our energies working at the same frequency, toward the same purpose, and I have never felt less alone than in that moment. That’s when I understood... You have been my support all the worst part of my life." She looked at both of them. "I love you too."

Liora didn’t respond.

"And even though it hurts," Luna continued, "even though there’s a part of me that wants everything for itself and wants to fight that with everything it has... I wouldn’t want to be one of the two who ends up outside after losing the fight. And I wouldn’t even want to have to fight you." She put the crystal away. "Because I’d carry that for the rest of my life too."

Larissa watched both of them.

Liora had the face of someone processing something she hadn’t expected to receive in this conversation. Not the political proposal, not the practical argument... This. The one that had no applicable logic because it wasn’t a logical problem at its origin. The one that landed differently because it was true and because the person saying it had more reason than anyone to be saying the opposite.

Luna was...

Selphira had taught Liora to be direct. To not apologize for wanting what you wanted and to not cede ground just because ceding it was more comfortable than holding it.

But when what you wanted was this, when it was something like this...

It was too much to digest.

Luna was incredible... The size of what she had just said and the ease with which she had said it and the fact that it was Luna saying it, of all three of them the one who had given the most and had the most debt on the other side of the scale.

Luna was...

Liora opened her mouth.

The door opened.

One of the girls’ guards leaned in with the expression of someone who had been waiting for the right moment to interrupt and had decided there was no longer a right moment, only a moment, and this was it.

"I’m sorry," said Hikari, with the discretion of someone who knew exactly what she was interrupting. "Selphira sent for you. She says she wants to speak with you asap."

The three of them looked at each other.

Larissa was the first to stand.

Liora followed with the face of someone who had considerably more to say and had just discovered she was going to have to hold it a while longer.

Luna was a storm on the inside but looked calm on the outside.

They walked out.

The conversation was incomplete.

Selphira almost certainly already knew that.

The real question, the one underneath all of Liora’s resistance, the one that hadn’t been answered yet and that nobody in this conversation was positioned to answer, was whether what they felt for each other would survive over time in a dynamic where all three of them were giving something they didn’t want to give.

Whether love would be something sustainable or whether that same love would slowly consume them.

That was the question she needed someone to answer from a place none of the other two inexperienced adolescents like her could speak from.

♢♢♢♢

Selphira’s room smelled of medicine and of the flowers someone had brought and placed on the windowsill hoping the smell would help, exactly the kind of well-intentioned useless gesture that one appreciated regardless.

Selphira was sitting up in bed, back against several stacked pillows, the arm Ren had freed resting on the sheets with some awkwardness of a limb still learning to be a limb again.

Mayo was in the closest chair, legs crossed, wearing the expression she had when she knew something the others were about to discover and it was costing her active effort not to jump ahead or start laughing.

María and Matilda moved at the room’s margins with the composure of people who had learned to identify when Mayo needed to be stopped before she opened her mouth. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

They were too late.

"Ah," said Mayo when the three of them appeared in the doorway, with the tone of someone confirming a prediction they had made far enough in advance to feel satisfied about it. "The young ladies have arrived. I hope Hikari stopped them on time from fighting each other bloody over the prize."

María hit the back of her head.

Matilda hit the top of her skull at the same moment, with enough coordination to suggest they had either practiced the movement or had done it enough times that it arrived on its own.

Mayo rubbed her head with a weird expression revealing that it hadn’t hurt but who preferred that it appeared to have.

Selphira laughed.

Short, genuine, the one that came out when something surprised her in the right way. Then she put on the face she had when she had decided something required real attention.

"Sit down."