It’s Sunday. Sunday meant that it had been a week since my time at Talunia started. It had only been a week since what seems to be my entire world seemed to change. Weekends.

I had texted briefly to the wolves I knew back in Nocturne yesterday, and got a few replies back. We weren't the closest, but we were still in contact. Honestly, back home, I was not that popular. Though I had a few friends, none were close. In fact, that was one reason I accepted the request for Talunia Academy instead of just studying back in Nocturne. New beginnings.

On weekends and certain days after school, students were allowed to leave the property and go to town. However, unless there was grocery shopping (which there was little of as meals were provided), I couldn’t see a reason to leave. I had spent all of yesterday finishing up homework, doing mundane things on my laptop, or checking up with people in Nocturne. It was currently 10 am and I was likely to do the same thing today.

“Hey Kiara?” Lydia suddenly asked.

I almost jumped at Lydia’s presence. Yesterday, she had been doing her own thing around town (probably going to the mall a few miles from the school) and had come back wearing new running shoes. I didn’t ask her, but I assumed that she was just going to go out again today. I was wrong.

“Lydia! What are you doing here?” I replied.

“I just wanted to see if you were doing alright, you only stayed in the dorm yesterday.”

I nodded and shut my laptop. “Do you want me to come get fresh air or something?”

Lydia said, “Yeah! Let’s take a walk together or something. You look like you need it.”

I replied, “Ok,” before climbing down the bunk leaving my laptop behind.

…

While we were walking towards the school exit, we passed by the message board near the entrance. Today it was absolutely plastered with club posters, and I remembered that the second week of school is when you could start joining clubs.

“Hey Kiara, are you thinking of joining any clubs?”

I was looking at the posters when she asked me, and I turned abruptly. “Uh… I’m not sure.” I continued looking at the options. Reading, sculpture, robotics, drama, multiple sports, community service, etc. “Lydia, are you?”

“Yeah, the track team. That’s why I bought those shoes yesterday,” Lydia answered. “Honestly, I’m not really a brawler, so other alphas kinda… don’t like me that much. I’m more of a runner.”

“That’s cool,” I replied. “I don’t know if I will join a club Lydia. You know, back home I was kind of antisocial. I didn’t really interact with people unless they were close friends.”

Lydia said, “Just think about it then. There’s still two weeks left to join most of these clubs.”

“I will Lydia,”

I scanned the club posters again. Cooking, board games, botany, greek, video games, classical music, etc. Nothing caught my eye. However, I thought about how the greek club may be helpful with that weird code from the textbook. It had been a few days, but it was still confusing.

…

Lydia took me to that mall just outside the school. It was a few minutes by bus. When I asked her why, she simply said, “girl’s trip”. I assumed she wanted to surprise me. When we got off the bus, well, I was surprised.

The mall was huge. The establishment was five floors high, compared to the two-floored mall in Nocturne! The bright lights at each store window glistened through the glass frames.

Lydia giggled. “It’s almost like you haven’t been in a mall before,”

“No, I’ve been in a mall. Just not like this,”

“This is almost like last week when you were gawking at the cafeteria,”

“Weren’t you too?”

“Nah, pretty typical. Then again, I guess alphas can be pretty privileged… But have you even been out of Nocturne?”

“Yeah, I have! I took a plane trip a few years ago,” I remembered. “It had been my first time on a plane, and it was to Arachester to visit some of my mom’s friends.”

“Arachester?” Lydia asked.

“Yeah, to the east of us…”

Lydia looked at me again. “If you say so…”

…

Bags and bags of goodies hung from my arms… well just two bags. Lydia and I stopped at Mortsdron and bought several casual shirts and blouses. There also was a small messenger bag swinging at my side. I normally don't like shopping, but the trip was really enjoyable!

"Is that Chekilgo Bookstores?" I pointed out.

Lydia laughed. "You're a pup in a candy store, huh?"

"What? Not exactly… it's just-"

"Just your rampant curiosity?"

Lydia and I had only met for a week, but we were already thick as thieves. "Yeah… the one in Nocturne closed when I was 12. Just nostalgia,"

We went in.

…

Nostalgia flooded into my eyes. All the chairs, the nook section, the shelves, even the carpet, were almost identical to my memories of the Chekilgo that was in Nocturne. Granted, all the book sections were different, but I didn't care! The spiraling of the different novels, the scent of paper, the old wolf who would sit and drink coffee while reading some philosophical text (wait what?)

I blinked. Lydia was grabbing my shoulders to put me back to my senses. "Look Kiara, I get that you're excited, but I don't want to keep you from going crazy again like in that Mortsdron. Calm down, just calm down."

A few breaths later and I was back to my senses. Calm down Kiara, you can come back next week, I thought. Now, to get exploring-while walking this time-I scanned the different shelves before strolling through. I lost Lydia soon enough, but I was enamored by the books and decided to just meet up with her later.

"Is that a fourth book to The Ultimate Army series? I loved that as a kid! Only read the first two though. Wow, I need to catch up on everything. The school library was never enough…"

Crash

With all of my excitement, I neglected to notice the girl in front of me.

"Omigosh I am so sorry, let me help you with… Kiara?"

Her books were sprawled around her, and there was now a small tea stain on her blue sweater. However, as soon as she lifted her head, I recognized her.

"Amy?"

Just my luck, it was the girl from math class, Amy Sung. "Hey, let me help," I said, as I walked over to pick up the book.

"Ancient Languages and their Origins? This seems interesting,"

"Yeah, I-I am interested in history and language."

The page that the book fell on happened to have a list of Greek letters and their English equivalents. When I saw it, I got an idea.

"Amy, can you help me with something? I need ideas on how to decode something, and you seem really good with language…"

…

"Thanks so much Amy, I'm really glad," I told Amy.

"It was n-nothing, really. I am glad to help."

It had taken about twenty minutes for the entire conversation to pass, but in that time Amy seemed to mostly crack the code. After showing her my photo of the message, she hypothesized that each letter was replaced with a near identical Greek letter. I took a picture of the table that was in her book so I could decode the message later.

"Kiara, there you are! I assumed you were reading some book related to knots and links, so why are you here in the language books?"

"Oh, hi Lydia,"

Amy panicked, probably from the presence of Lydia here. Her tail puffed and she quivered.

"If you touch me Miss Alpha, my brother is going to… to...”

She trembled. I remembered what Lydia told me last week, about how Omega were comparatively weak and that Alphas needed to mate with Omegas. I also remembered my thoughts about how I thought there was a lot of sex crime.

" What? No, I'm here for Kiara," Lydia said.

"The beta?"

"Yup," Lydia answered. "What were you doing?" she asked.

"Lydia, Amy here gave me an idea to crack the code. However, there's still a few letters that are off…"

"Like that?"

Lydia was pointing to the "𐤉" letter on the code.

"Yeah, but I think I know what this one is," Amy said while quickly flipping through several pages.

"Yeah, it is yod; A phonesian letter that sounds like the modern "j".

" Well, "j" and "q" were our only missing letters," I said almost excitedly. "Thanks so much Amy!"

"You're welcome Kiara…"

…

I sat at the smaller side table tapping a pencil on a sheet of paper. I had copied the code and almost cracked it, I swear, though some of the letters were a bit confusing.

It was night, and Lydia and I were both back in the dorms, and I sat on my top bunk. Lydia was in the main room finishing up her last assignment.

As it had been a few hours since Amy was able to solve this code. I had replaced each letter by now with its correspondent. The message was becoming clearer.

"Hey Kiara, how is your progress? Lydia asked as she entered the bedroom, having just finished her assignments.

"I think I'm just about done, it says…"

I looked down at the paper on the desk I had been writing on for the last few minutes. Somehow, I hadn't taken into account the possibility of there being multiple layers to the code.

It now read, 'zlhyjo vuspul mvy "ABOLISH" huk jspjr vu aol wvza if "mihi_nomen_est_Etta"'.

" What does it say?"

"Uhhhh… it's still gibberish..."