Land of the Blades

20. Alone

The following days I went patrolling by myself, hoping to encounter a Lunarian's Sunspot. I wasn't entirely sure what I would gain by doing that, but I had been realizing I didn't know much about them on the first place. Up to the moment where I started to doubt Sensei, I had just moved by the motions, maybe there was something more about them that I had been ignoring. After all, Shiro the dog, who had started to follow me everywhere, wasn't a bad guy. At least when he was on a manageable size. I had even started carrying him around and petting him.

But my waiting was in vain, the Lunarians never showed up, or where already defeated by the time I got there. Every night I returned feeling defeated, and in one instance, my misery did got company. Zircon was having trouble as the new partner of Bort, and sought my advice. As usual, Bort sucked at expressing his thoughts and didn't said anything beside the most necessary to Zircon, which he interpreted as Bort thinking he was worthless. In his desperation, Zircon even considered losing an arm or a leg in an attempt to "grow" like I did, but I quickly stopped his dangerous train of thought.

—Bort is extremely rational and dislikes unnecessary things, or at least what he considers rational and unnecessary. He hates to talk in vain, and he is not going to hold any punches if he doesn't like something. You are fine, you just need to keep going —I said, trying to give a warm smile.

Zircon made a face of disgust and retreated a bit, so I dropped the smile.

—Did you ever think you will end up like that? —Zircon said after a moment, giving a glance to my whole body.

I looked at it myself. My arms showed the green of my original phosphophyllite, with the gold and platinum alloy showing through the never closing cracks on it. The same with my Agate's legs. I had also been pointed by others that whenever I used too much of my alloy the white powder between the cracks on my face would start to fade, revealing them. I had pretty much become accustomed to this, however remembering how I used to be also made me remember when I was innocent and ignorant of all that was hidden from me.

—Of course not, if anything... I'm jealous of my past self.

That conversation didn't went further, but from what I heard, Zircon was able to get along with Bort a bit better. That night, and the following nights I went to the library instead of to my room, and spent until morning trying to find anything that could give me a clue. I was holding to the hope that Shirou will help me once he returned home, but I couldn't just stay doing nothing. However, I wasn't able to find anything relevant, since with Ghost gone, there was no one who could help me find what I was looking for, and I lost a lot of time reading books that had very misleading names.

—Maybe you should talk with the Lunarians directly —I said, laying on the floor while holding Shiro, making a voice to represent what I imagined was in his mind.

That plan was too crazy and dangerous, so I left it was my last resource. But seeing as I wasn't able to get anything about the Lunarians from our common library, I decided to ask Alexi to teach me everything he knew about them. He agreed, and even got Yellow to help us, but everything soon devolved into a quiz test. We stayed up until the next morning, but we didn't make any progress in what I was really interested.

—Alexi, what do you think of the possibility to communicate with the Lunarians? —I said, remembering the idea I had before after seeing Shiro sleep on my lap.

—We don't know anything about their language —Alexi only half awake answered—, the time we engage them is extremely short and our data on them is only superficial.

I expected that much. I looked around, to all the drawings and info Alexi had nailed to his walls. He had even showed me a Sundry, the way a singular Lunarian was called according to him, that he had designed.