I stare in disbelief.

Naomi is here? In the Normal?! What’s going on here?

This is definitely not something we thought would happen.

“What are you doing here?” Sakasu whispers. She has a huge smile on her face. “I thought you were in Destiny!”

I watch as Naomi makes herself a cup of punch. “Came here on a special mission.” She winks at her girlfriend as she offers her a free hand. “And of course, we had to figure out where you are. Energy sensing is surprisingly easy here for a world with no magic.”

“We?” I ask. “What do you mean by ‘we’?”

“You didn’t think she came alone, did you?”

I glance to the side. I see a familiar elf with auburn hair. His blue eyes meet mine as he finishes letting his hair down. He adjusts the collar of his brown and pale blue suit. I can still see part of his pointed ears sticking out from his hair.

“Long time, no see.” I whisper. I shake my head a bit with a soft laugh. “What are you doing here, Soveliss?”

“Well, we have information to give you guys,” Soveliss comes by my side. “But Naomi recognized that you weren’t at Amai’s house, so we came here. Guess there’s a ball going on?”

Sakasu and I glance at each other. We both start to snicker a little as we look back at the two Destinians.

“This isn’t a ball,” Sakasu says, “It’s prom.”

Naomi tilts her head. “There’s a difference?”

“I mean, kinda?” I still try to contain my laughter. “Prom is for high school students, and it’s more casual. We have to dress up, but…” I glance up and down to see Soveliss’s outfit. “This isn't normal attire, bud.”

“Wait, it’s not?”

“No.” Sakasu holds a laugh. “But you look great!”

“What about me?”

The four of us look over to see another familiar face. A girl with platinum blonde hair in a braid walks over. She wears a silver off-shoulder top with a fluffy red skirt. She adjusts her red, wide-brimmed hat, which successfully hides her pointed ears. When her gray eyes meet mine, they seem to sparkle.

Why did I feel my heart skip a beat?

“Allisa?” I whisper. “You’re here too?”

She offers a hand to me. “Mhm! Come on, let’s go dance. I’ll tell you what we know.” She looks at Soveliss. “Find Amai, you two can dance.”

“Oh, Amai?” Sakasu says. “Pretty sure she’s with Nova currently.”

Soveliss quickly goes towards Amai. She sees him. Her eyes look at me with a sense of panic, and then she looks at him. He takes her hand as they go to the floor. I look to see Sakasu and Naomi already heading to the dance floor.

I look at Allisa again. I take her hand.

“Let’s dance.”

We walk over to dance together as the slow music plays. Allisa grins at me as she leads us. Her eyes continue to sparkle. I’m glad she’s taking the lead because I have no idea how slow dancing works.

“How have you been? It’s been almost two months since we last met.”

I look at her again. “Oh. I’m alright.” I whisper. “We’ve been trying to cover up why Violet is missing, but it seems to be going well.”

My eyes glance over to Amai and Soveliss. They don’t seem to be talking, but they’re concentrating. I’m guessing they’re speaking telepathically.

“How are you?”

Allisa smiles. “I’m great. We’ve been working hard to figure out Violet’s location,” She says, “Which is why we’re here!”

“Oh?” I whisper. “It’s related to Violet?”

“Well, sort of.” Allisa grimaces a bit. “There’s two discoveries regarding Violet’s location. But I’m not sure if I can safely discuss this here with the fact I can’t speak telepathically like all of you.”

I shrug. “That does give us a difficulty setting here.” I continue to dance with her. “I’m sure prom will end soon.”

“Can we talk about this then?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Allisa looks around again. She stops when she sees Saisho and Juniper. I also look over to see him spinning her around. Juniper giggles as he dips her.

“Saisho has a girlfriend?”

I look at Allisa again. “Um, I’m not sure. They haven’t explicitly said if they’re actually together or not.” I shrug again. I attempt to spin Allisa around, trying to take inspiration from Saisho. “So… I guess they’re just friends.”

“Huh,” Allisa says, “Interesting.”

As the song ends, Allisa and I stop dancing. She stands with me as we wait a moment. The music changes to some upbeat tune. Everyone else starts to jam again as the noise level goes up. Allisa grins again.

“Should we go sit?”

I nod. “Yeah. We should. The others will be at the table.” I mutter under my breath to her. “Now that they know you’re all here, they’re going to want to talk.”

Both of us make our way to the table. Nova is already sitting there with Sakasu and Naomi. Saisho and Juniper follow soon after Allisa and I sit down. Then, Amai and Soveliss come over. Soveliss puts up a seat as he looks at everyone.

“What’s going on?” Amai whispers. “You guys never come here.”

Saisho purses his lips. “Is something wrong?”

“Well, it depends on how you view it.” Soveliss takes a deep breath. “We found something about Violet’s whereabouts, but-”

“Wait,” I interject, “Should we be discussing this here?”

The others look at me for a moment. A few of them glance at one another. Amai bites her lip. Saisho looks at Juniper, who reaches for his hand. She looks worried when she glances at me.

They’re acting weird again.

“You do have a point,” Nova whispers. “So many people could try to listen in on this conversation. Not sure if we want to risk any information being discovered.”

Naomi pulls Sakasu close to her. “I agree… some of this is confidential.”

Juni purses her lips. “Should I be around for this?”

Everyone looks at her.

“I’m sorry,” Soveliss whispers. “Who is this?”

Saisho smiles. “Oh! This is Juniper, my ahhhh- friend. She’s my date tonight.”

“Oh!” Naomi says. “Congrats!”

“I don’t see why it’s a problem that she knows then.” Soveliss shrugs.

As I’m about to say something, the music comes to a stop. We all look up as one of our teachers picks up a microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” The teacher starts to speak. “We’re ready to announce this year’s Prom Court.”

I forgot we had to vote for that earlier this week.

At least this can put a pause on that conversation…

The teacher starts to name some guy as the Prom King. A few people clap. I roll my eyes. I don’t really know this guy, so it doesn’t particularly matter to me. The only one our group actually might care about is Prom Queen.

Well, that is, if we stuck to our surprise…

“And this year’s Prom Queen,” The teacher continues to say, “is Amai Winter!”

We all look at Amai as the room erupts with applause. She looks at us in pure shock. She shakes her head.

“Wait, what?!”

Sakasu nudges Amai. “Go on!! Go accept your crown, girlie.”

“But I didn’t-”

“We nominated you,” Juniper says. “And we got everyone else to vote for you too.”

“Now, go up there!” Nova giggles.

Amai reluctantly stands up, walking up to the front. When the teacher places the crown on her head, everyone starts to clap. We see Aura run over to her daughter, hugging her tight. I can’t help but smile a little.

At least something went right tonight.