I really wanted to crumple that damned invitation in my fist, but I settled for stuffing it into my breast pocket. Hard.

The trundle bed began to groan as Bira wheeled it through the room, the sound echoing through the wide space. I stood aside in the hallway to let him pass through. The meandering tattoos on his face seemed more scrunched than usual in annoyance this afternoon. I didn’t have to ask why.

“Don’t go,” he said, wheeling the bed to the side. His words somewhat muffled through the thick fabric of his scarf.

Bira minced words. Clipped them up and put them into happy little phrases like, “no”, and “don’t”, and “that doesn’t go there”. I’ve known him since he thought up the idea to wrap the lower half of his face in a scarf.

“Oh, you know, free food,” I shrugged, “can’t pass that up.”

He glowered down at me, white hair clashing with his young, and heavily tattooed, face.

“It’s professional,” I stressed, taking the card out of my breast pocket, “see?”

He didn’t bother looking at the card, “You hate it,” he said, “so why go?”

“Politics,” I said simply, standing up and off of the bannister that I had leaned onto. Together, we moved down the hallway at a slow creep with Aerie shackled to the trundle bed. Soon, a fork in the hallway would separate us and he’d be delivering Aerie back to the ward for Dreamers.

I had always wondered what he had done. Had he gone to sleep before or after whatever terrible crime landed him in the heart of the Order? But, as always, whenever I thought to ask, he was departing. Leaving me with a backward glare and a sharp nod of the head.

It was the most he could do. His emotions weren’t as bright as most, but I still loved him.

As a friend, of course.

I followed the outdoor corridor, turning around the outside of the building until I met a side door that opened into a sparsely used hallway that led to a staircase that too was covered in cobwebs and rivers of dust. I climbed it quickly, the faster I got to the third floor the quicker I’d be done with it. That was how I treated these dinners also, because I did not want to do them. Never wanted to do them. But the first couple of times Director Espen invited me, the invitation had espoused on how it was professional. And how it was to build camaraderie between the three of us researchers. But whenever I showed up to his apartments within the western block of the Order, the deep cherry wood table would be set with an extra space for Axelle. But as the night went on, she never showed. Espen would hem and haw the first couple of times, apologizing to me and promising to punish Axelle in the morning, but nothing ever happened. And as I stepped onto the third floor and walked the several paces to my door, I wondered if he thought that I either bled mercy or were just too stupid to notice.

Honestly, it was probably the latter.

I opened the door.

The room was sparsely furnished with a mahogany bunkbed in one corner and a table centered in the middle of the room. I pulled my trunk out from beneath the bed and threw it open, revealing a mirror and a mountain of rarely used dresses. We had come to the Order precisely for these experiments, so this room was a female justicars, simply repurposed for my use. We weren’t supposed to be here for over three rotations, yet here we were about to enter our fifth.

I looked at myself in the mirror. My lips were pursed. I pressed them into a hard line. I hadn’t gotten a tan, so my brown skin had somewhat lightened. I didn’t like that, but what could you do about winter? Burn it? I let my hair down out of its high bun and and sighed as the cloud-like tresses fell in a cloud of fluff about my face. I’ve thought about braiding it, but then I’d look too much like my mom.

I moved the mirror to the side of the room and picked out the first dress that would distinguish me from the blackening of the day. It was something I’d seen on sale in the Unicorn District back in Pavillon. I purchased it for the Snow Social at the Circle and got so many complements that I had to go back to my apartments and change. Attention and me did not mix. And it always brought out the worst in certain types of people. Swirling gold filigree etched the dark wine cuffs and the dress cut off at the calves, long enough to keep heat in and short enough to run in. But who was thinking about that?