It may have been self-serving, but she let Sol’s compliment assuage her unease. Until this moment, she’d paid little attention to her apparel. It was strange and somewhat exhilarating to learn how a new outfit could bring with it an entirely different mood.
Lunafreya was on a journey like nothing she’d experienced in her past, and she was making it in clothes wholly different from anything she’d worn before. But this new fate had been thrust upon her, and it stood to reason that new experiences and a new appearance would come with it.
“I’m done tuning the bike. Once you’ve got some food in you, we’re heading out,” Sol said.
It seemed Sol had woken up far earlier than Lunafreya.
“I’m sorry. I promised to help you.”
“No big deal. Figured I’d get the repairs done early and skip on out of here. Y’know, leave you behind.”
Sol said it with a straight face, but if she’d truly intended to abandon Lunafreya, it seemed unlikely she’d have gone to the trouble of finding her a change of clothes.
“Miss Sol, I wonder if I might ask a favor,” Lunafreya ventured.
She straightened and looked the other woman directly in the eye.
“I should like to accompany you a bit longer. There is a destination I must reach.”
To fulfill this new calling, Lunafreya knew she would need assistance. Over the relatively short distance from the underground tomb to Wael, that truth had become all too apparent. Compared to Sol, she fell far short in so many ways. Sol had means to get around and was experienced in combat. And it wasn’t only the obvious things. The previous night, Lunafreya had realized she did not know how to open cans of food for herself with a knife, let alone how to start a fire.
Sol had the learned skills of a person well-traveled in lands from which civilization had vanished. She knew so many things that Lunafreya could never have hoped to gain in her days of warm welcome at every place to which she journeyed.
“Not that I expect you to see me all the way there,” Lunafreya clarified. “I should simply like to stay with you as long as our paths are shared.”
Even a short while would be welcome. She would journey alongside Sol and learn as much as she could. Her travels as Oracle might have failed to teach her how to subsist on her own, but it was not too late to begin learning now.
“Where are we talking about?” Sol asked, her tone curt. She peered at Lunafreya with suspicion.
“I need to get to Insomnia.”
“The Crown City? You’ve gotta be kidding. I told you, that place might as well be a breeding ground for daemons. What business could the prim and proper Lady Oracle have in a place like that?”
“Please. I would ask you stop calling me that. My name is Lunafreya.”
Every time Sol referred to her as “Lady Oracle,” Lunafreya was acutely reminded of the wall that stood between them. Yesterday, she’d made no protest at the distant, cold means of address; Sol was, after all, a simple passerby with whom she shared no relationship. But now things would have to be different.
“Sure. Whatever you want,” Sol replied. “But Lunafreya’s still kind of a mouthful.”
“Then, please call me Luna.”
When she said it aloud, that familiar young face floated once more to mind. Lunafreya. Her name had been too long for him then as well. He’d stumbled over it, until finally they’d both settled on his simply calling her Luna.
“Okay. Luna it is. Then you can quit calling me Miss. Just Sol is fine.”
“Agreed,” Lunafreya responded. “Thank you, Sol.”
“So what do you have planned once you get to Insomnia?”
“I will fight. I will challenge Ardyn.”
“Ardyn? Don’t tell me you’re talking about Ardyn Izunia,” Sol said, one eyebrow raised.
When Lunafreya nodded in response, Sol first stared blankly. After that initial moment of shock, her words were incredulous and mixed with laughter. “You? You’re gonna take down Ardyn? That’s a joke if I’ve ever heard one.”
Lunafreya simply regarded Sol in silence. She had no delusions that Ardyn would be an easy opponent to fell. But if she did not fight . . . If she did not stop Ardyn, the darkness that shrouded their star would ever remain.
After a moment, Sol registered her expression and stopped laughing. “Whoa. You’re serious, aren’t you?”
She seemed to hesitate, and then mumbled to herself, “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
But Lunafreya was most decidedly not kidding. The sentiment seemed to convey itself, and Sol’s next words, accompanied with a small sigh, were “Fine. Whatever.
“First we head to Lestallum,” she continued. “Your little trip to Insomnia comes after that. That good with you?”
“Of course,” Lunafreya nodded.
She knew a sea crossing would be necessary to make it from the former empire to Insomnia. If Sol was taking her to Lestallum, it meant help and companionship through the crossing as well. It was far more than Lunafreya could have hoped for.
She bowed her head and added, “It will be a great help, thank you. I shall be most indebted.”
A look of distaste crossed Sol’s face.
“Is something wrong?” Lunafreya asked.
“Forget about it.”
Sol turned away, her eyes clearly contradicting her words. Lunafreya felt as if she’d said something wrong, but she had no idea what it might have been.
“I found one! This is one of them, yes?” Luna held a can aloft, seeming quite pleased with herself. The two had driven back to the spot where the Oracle had thrown out the “extra weight” in their panicked flight from the Deathgaze. On the road, food was precious. They really couldn’t afford to leave it.
Along the way, Sol had also given Luna a chance to try driving the bike. It wasn’t the kind of thing someone could pick up in a day or two, but they had a long trip ahead. There would be plenty of time for Luna to learn, and it’d be a lot easier on both of them once switching off became a viable option.
Sol was able to identify the stretch of road where the bag had been lost. But what proved to be the really painstaking work was tracking down the cans themselves, which had rolled off in all directions.
Luna labored without a single word of complaint. She probably felt responsible, which she pretty much was, since she’d been the one to fling the bag out of the sidecar in the first place. So Luna hunted in concentrated silence, save for her triumphant outbursts on each find.
“Here’s another!” she exclaimed.
She was quick. In the time it took Sol to find one can, Luna would pick up three or four.
“Geez. You’re . . . ”
Good at finding things, Sol had begun to say, but she clamped her mouth shut.
“What was that?” the Oracle asked.