Sunday, April 16th, Late Afternoon

Just over five hours left.

I sprinted up the stairs to the main area, where I remembered the Chess Club’s booth being. Just like last time, Mintaka was behind the booth, somewhere between sitting on and standing in front of her folding chair, harassing passersby with Chess Club fliers.

I stopped right in front of it, both hands on the table, knocking over a few pieces in slowing down. “Mint.”

“Whoa! Heya, Lyra! Saturdays at 10! We meet in Dwinelle.” Again, she slammed the Chess Club flier into my solar plexus.

It took me a moment to regain my breath. In that moment, Mintaka leaned into my face, staring.

“Lyra. Why are you crying?”

There was a ringing in my ears. One hand still braced on the table, I reached up, and touched my face. My mouth was open in a stupor. Higher, higher, my cheeks were stained with water.

“This is… I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, ‘I don’t know?’” She crossed her arms.

I wiped the tears away and shook my head. “Never mind that. I need to talk to you. It’s about someone you know.”

“Did someone do this to you?”

My hands slammed down on the table. “Mint, please, just listen to me. I don’t have time for this right now.”

Mintaka blinked. Her eyes flicked off to the side for a split second, as her lips seemed to quiver, the slightest of motions. “Just tell me something first,” she said.

It might take longer if I refuse. After a short hesitation, I nodded, slowly.

“What you want to ask me, and why you’re crying… they’re not related, right?”

“Yeah.”

A pause. “How come you won’t let me worry about you?” She asked. I shifted my weight back, off the Chess Club’s table. Instead of looking up at me, Mintaka reached for the chess pieces that I’d knocked over.

A prolonged silence.

“Remember when you broke up with Halley?”

I swallowed. That was technically not true. It was Halley who’d broken up with me, not the other way around. “I do. Wait, you weren’t even a band member at that time.” Mintaka and I had lived on the same dorm floor in freshman year. I wouldn’t have considered us very close until recently, as third years, though.

That incident with Halley was almost a year ago. I hardly remembered it until now. Call it a suppressed memory. But the details started to trickle back into my mind.

It had been messy. I couldn’t remember who Sirius had started dating around that time, especially because it didn’t last long at all. But in response, I’d started dating someone I knew was into me. And that lasted way longer than it should have.

“Do I need to be an Ireilas member to qualify as your friend?” Mintaka looked very hurt. “I am one now, does that count?”

“N-no… I mean, yes. You’re my friend.”

Her expression didn’t change.

“Even though something was very obviously wrong,” she said, “all that I know is that you have awful taste in guys.”

“Hey.” She wasn’t necessarily wrong, though.

“Kidding. Still, though…”

I remembered how Mint had reacted last loop. She won’t remember this conversation, but… this feeling isn’t drawn out of nowhere. It’ll keep being here. I trust Mint, but… there was no way I could tell her everything.

“Look,” I said, “I’ll tell you what’s going on later, but not right now. I just… I need your help identifying someone.”

Mintaka’s eyes were like a wary younger sibling’s. I could almost hear her asking, ‘Promise?’

“Fill me in on the details later, okay?” Mint said. “That’s all I ask.”

I nodded. “I will.” After this is all over. At that point, it won’t matter if she believes me or not. “I’m looking for a girl. She seems to know you.”

Mintaka nodded.

“She’s got light brown hair. Tied back in a braid… a side-plait. Her eyes are green.”

She kept nodding, slower this time.

What was she wearing? “A green hat… I think her shirt was white. Her face… round.” And, of course, in her hand, a knife.

“It… how about I go through my social media, and you pick out the face you’re looking for?”

“Good idea,” I said. Mintaka pulled out a laptop and flipped it open.

“By the way, you wanna tell me why you need this person, or…”

“I will, but not now. You’re just going to have to take it off blind faith.”

“I feel like I’ve been doing a lot of that, lately.”

Combing through social media took nearly an hour. Whoever it was, she wasn’t on Mintaka’s friends list. I even looked through the friends lists of many, many of Mintaka’s loose acquaintances. Dead end. But… Mintaka clearly knew her from somewhere.

‘Hey, aren’t you…’

Had she said anything else that might clue me in?

‘You have the mole. You’re the twin.’

So she knows how to tell me and Anna apart… and she was acting possessive of Sirius. “The fan page for Ireilas,” I said. She’s probably on that.

Scrolling through that, the results returned in half the time.

We had nearly gone all the way down. This girl had been on our page since very shortly after its inception. Which meant… she’s one of our oldest fans.

“That’s her,” I said. “Velora Navis.”

Mintaka’s eyes widened. “I do know this girl. She’s in a project group for Poli Sci,” she said. “Oh, I should probably stop procrastinating on that.”

“It’s ongoing?”

“It was assigned less than two months ago,” she said. “Long term thing.”

Less than two months ago. That’s around when Mintaka joined Ireilas. “Were you assigned groups, or…”

“Come to think of it…” Mint placed a finger on her chin, “She kind of invited herself.”

Did she join specifically because Mintaka was now affiliated with us? Just what had she done because she was a fan of ours?

I pulled up Velora Navis’s profile. Though it was private, profile pictures and cover photos never are, on this site. When she wasn’t trying to murder me, Velora was a sullen girl. Her brown hair was cut in neat, flat patches, stopping just before her eyes. Based on the shadows and the graininess, she seemed to be blending into the background in most of the photos, and later cropped out to just feature her.

And in some of them, she was smiling. The tiniest of smiles. The kind that would naturally occur when she thought no one was looking.

She reminded me of Anna. I felt like I was going to be sick.

“Lyra?”

“I’m fine.” I kept clicking through her profile. Her cover photos were just stock photos of rain with quotes over them.

“Music was my refuge,” I read. “I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back into loneliness. Maya Angelou.”

There were a number of quotes like these. The next one read: ‘Some days are just bad days, that's all. You have to experience sadness to know happiness, and I remind myself that not every day is going to be a good day, that's just the way it is!’ Spoken by Dita von Teese. Another name I didn’t recognize.

It was a cyclical progression. This was followed by a Bob Marley quote: ‘The good times of today are the sad thoughts of tomorrow.’ Then, a Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘’For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.’ And another Bob Marley. ‘One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.’

“Jeez, aren’t you a Debbie Downer, Bob Marley…” I murmured.

The most recent one had remained as her cover for the past few months. ‘Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.’

My body felt cold.

Never doubt I love. I tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle a laugh. I was laughing, laughing, laughing.

I am thou, and thou art I.

“Velora Navis… Velora Navis.” My breathing was heavy. “Velora Navis!”

“H-Hey…”

I patted Mint on the shoulder. She flinched. “Thanks, Mint. I need to go.”

She bit her lip. “L-Lyra…”

“I have what I need. I’ll explain it all--” I had to swallow the lump in my throat, “later. Later.”

“Lyra… w-w-”

“Thanks again. And… seeya.” And with that, I turned, and ran off.

Velora Navis. Velora Navis. That was her name.

Velora Navis!