CHAPTER 35

The dormitory was bustling when Mia was guided through the heavy wooden doors. What had once been a large sitting area had been divided up into five or six sections the furniture pushed and crowded together. Groups of women sat around each talking animatedly.

What was going on?

“Mia!” Becky rose from a smooth brown bench that had been pushed against the wall. Three other women sat with her and they had several small pots and plants before them. Becky wiped dirt covered hands on her pants absently and then pulled Mia into a hug.

“Oh god, we were so worried. They said we couldn't even see you, in case it was contagious,” she muttered. “You're feeling better then?”

She grunted at the force of the woman's affection, before hugging Becky back.

“Yeah, much better.”

“Oh! I almost crushed your flower...is that a tiger lily?” Becky pulled away and stared. The other women at her table did the same.

“Uhm...yes?”

“I didn't think anything like that grew here. Where did you get it?”

“It was a gift,” she hedged. For some reason, she really didn't want to explain the events that led up to its appearance. They still felt new and raw, and she wasn't sure she had processed it all yet.

“What's happening here?”

Becky looked around at the sitting room as if seeing it for the first time. She smiled at Mia.

Wow. When the woman smiled, she was a knockout.

“The Livarians have asked for volunteers to help make the compound more comfortable. They are looking for the women to help design the living spaces and stuff. After having nothing to do for so long, most of the women are pretty excited. They want me to make a small botanic garden and to catalog the species in the city. They bring in new ones every day. Some of the plants in the different city gardens are from all over the continent,” she grinned wider and indicated the two women at the table where she had been. “Emma and Cassidy love gardening, too. They're going to help.”

Mia couldn't help but smile in return. Draven had taken her advice. And not only that, but it was changing Becky. Her eyes had brightened and she seemed more comfortable in her skin. With the bruises and swelling faded from her face, she seemed like a new person.

“Would you like to see the garden? We're just going to put these new species in.”

“Yeah, for sure,” Mia nodded. “Just let me slip up to the room first?”

“Okay, we'll be a few minutes gathering our things. We can meet you here.”

Mia slipped away from the women, staring in wonder at the other groups. Not plants, but some piles of paper and the far table had several piles of fabric, needles, and other implements Mia assumed were for sewing. Several of the women looked up as she passed, smiling shyly. Others seemed to ignore her outright. Huh.

There was something different about the room. Mia tried to put her finger on it as she strode to her bed and opened the cubby next to it. There was no good place to press the lily, and she knew it would eventually wilt and die, but she didn't want to let go of it quite yet. She also didn't want to carry it around like a love-sick teenager. Instead, she placed it carefully in the drawer on top of the sets of clothes someone had chosen for her. Later, she would ask Becky for help finding a vase or container to hold it. She sat, for just a second, on the bed and just breathed. She studied the other beds, neatly made. The room was clean and airy and despite her first impressions, not prison like at all.

There was a bed missing. On the far side and across from her.

Mia blinked but it didn't reappear. Yes, there for sure was a bed missing, and she knew whose it was.

Suddenly, she didn't really feel like sitting by herself anymore. She rushed down the stairs to the sitting room entrance. Becky and her two new friends waited there.

“Becky, where's Phoebe?”

Some strange emotion came over Becky's face, quickly replaced by wariness.

“She's moved on from the dorm. She chose Huntak.”

Mia blinked at her. Had she missed so much? How had everything changed so suddenly? Then again, she had hardly been abducted for two months and everything had changed for her, too. But choosing was so...permanent. Despite her encouragement to the woman, she wondered if Phoebe had made the right choice. Had they been on Earth, would she have married the man after such a short time? If she'd had the option to return to Earth, would she have chosen him at all?

She shook her head, ignoring the churning in her gut.

“When did this happen?” Mia demanded, earning her curious glances from a few other women.

Becky recoiled slightly, as if Mia had struck her. “I thought you would be happy for her,” Becky whispered.

Mia could have slapped herself. She was overreacting, letting her own confused emotions mettle with her actions.

“I am...it's just...it's been a long couple days, Becks. If this was her choice, then of course I am happy for her.”

Becky smiled, relieved. “I guess it must seem like a lot from the last time you saw her, but I think she's been falling for him since before we even got here. Come on,” she led the way through the doors. They followed the path that curved in front of the dorm and then a smaller trail between buildings until they came to a section of the back gardens. A large portion of it had been devoted to the vegetables and fruit needed to feed the compound. Neat rows of green, orange and purple plants all carefully tended. Those, Mia had seen plenty of times on her explorations and runs. There was a new section of the garden ploughed up now. Stones built up higher plots and small shrubs had been freshly planted around the edges. Even now, small and in its barely begun state, the botanic garden was gorgeous. The shades of stems and leaves planted just so with little markers in the strange language, which Mia could only guess identified each, it flowed, like an artist's dream, and when it was finished, it would be breathtaking. Mia stepped along the carefully placed stones, studying some of the more interesting plants. Vivid like she had never seen before, leaves that looked like blossoms, and twisted ornate stems.

“This is amazing,” she told the women.

“Oh, it's so good to hear you say that,” Becky beamed. “Even just this plot will take years to fill properly and they already hinted that we might be able to expand when the compound does.”

Mia watched her friend and couldn't help the happy grin that came over her face. She had never seen Becky so happy and animated.

“It seems so different from before I got sick; you seem different,” she admitted.

“I'm not the only one. Phoebe and a few of the more techy women are learning the computer systems and trying to help figure out how to expand the energy field while still keeping power to our basic necessities. To hear Phoebe go on about it, their technology is amazing. She hardly came out of the systems rooms to eat once they let her in there.”

“Not to mention chef,” one of the other women, Cassidy, Mia thought it was, ventured. The three women shared a wry smile.

“Chef?”

“Well yes, everyone calls him that. He's the compound's cook. The one responsible for what we eat. When the Prime announced the new freedoms, a few of the women wanted to help in the kitchen. It's nice to be able to get back to the things that we enjoyed. Some women wanted to cook, and some were assigned the task. Ashley was given the job of kitchen and dining room clean up perpetually until her attitude improves.

“Her and Chef hated each other,” Cassidy nodded, eagerly joining in the gossip. “You could hear their snarling at each other from outside the building.”

“Yeah,” Emma joined, “but Becky walked in on them during a quiet moment this morning and arguing is not what they were doing.”

Intrigued, Mia raised an eyebrow. Now this was something. Had someone overcome Leanne's influence on grumpy Ashley?

“Well...,” Becky coughed uncomfortably, her cheeks reddened furiously. “When I got in there with the day's herbs, he had her pressed against the counter and she was definitely not protesting if her hands running through his hair were any indication.”

Mia coughed at the information and blushed a little at the description. She couldn't help remember being pressed against the wall herself.

“Hey Becky, here he comes,” Cassidy whispered suddenly.

Expecting Chef, whom they'd just finished talking about, Mia sobered immediately, looking the direction the other woman was nodding.

It wasn't Chef coming out from between the buildings, however, it was Gorth. His broad form was hard to mistake.

Another change came over Becky: nervousness, but something more, too. Her eyes lit up with hunger as she watched him walk toward them.

“He's the one bringing her plants,” Emma whispered to Mia. “A new one every day, from outside the compound.”

Gorth strode down the path toward them, his pace suggesting he was in a hurry.

“Hi, Gorth,” Becky called when he neared, her voice tentative and hopeful.

Gorth spared a small glance for the group of women, and a sneer for Becky, but he didn't even slow, he simply walked by.

Odd. The man was invariably friendly, and she knew he had a thing for Becky.

Her friend deflated, the excitement about the garden fading. Mia watched as she slipped back into the hunched depressed woman she had been.

“Don't worry Beck,” Emma consoled. “Maybe someone pissed in his cereal this morning or something. That man definitely has a thing for you.”

“Yeah. Of course. You know, I'm not feeling very well. I'm just going to go take a rest. You guys go ahead and plant the new flowers where we discussed.” Becky turned without another word and made her way back toward the dorm. One of the guards across the way broke off and followed her.

“I don't get it,” Cassidy muttered, still looking after Gorth, who had disappeared around one of the buildings. “He's been working on her very hard. Why would he hurt her like that?”

Mia frowned with her. Maybe the loss of the two Livarians was weighing on him. He had seemed especially close to Phyn on the journey to the city. And the other man had been from their same unit...

She blinked. That was odd. What were the chances that whatever was hunting the Livarians had randomly chosen those two men specifically? And if it wasn't random why would it stalk a specific group? How did it manage to get to Phyn? The men always left the compound in groups of five or more, someone must have seen what happened. But then, she remembered the conversation the night they had found Jhudur's tracks. Phyn had been missing then.

From the compound? How could that be? Unless something was inside the field. It bothered her that, even during his lucid moments, Jhudur had been so insistent about the Y'kil. More so even. What if the creatures in the story were a representation of some danger? Something the Livarians wouldn't expect?

Again, she had the uncomfortable feeling she was missing something important.

And she knew Jhudur had the answers, if she could get past his insanity.