Another world, Celeste

Chapter Twenty

Tabitha the munchkin cat comes purring at my feet when the group disperses after the lead keeper announces to take a break.

I scratch below her neck while saying, "Tabitha, did you sneak out to see me again?"

Purr... Purrr...

Aww. She's irresistibly adorable.

"Let's go to the staff cafeteria before the noon bell rings," Amber urges impatiently.

Before I could say anything back, Luna calls me over by saying there's something we need to discuss and I regrettably hand over Tabitha who's perfectly nestled in my arms to Amber.

Bane and I follow Luna into her workroom. The high-ceiling room is spacious enough for Bane to fit into with cooling breeze flowing from the opened windows on one side of the room. It's similar to Lord Sol's office except it looks more like a personal library with even more books and scrolls on the bookshelves and on the left side of the wall, it is entirely covered with a large-scale map of the sanctuary. From time to time, animal figures on the map moves around. It must be live-streaming and constantly updating to keep track of their movements. Very impressive given it's all done with magic and the magi formula must be extremely complicated, like writing a tracking programme.

"I thought Maya would be here too," I note.

Luna is brewing a pot of tea, replies, "She has other things to take care of at the moment. Luda will be joining us momentarily."

I nod in response.

Lord Sol is not here too.

While observing the map on the wall, shortly after the noon bell rings, an elf carries three trays of food on a trolley along with three sets of teacups and sets it down on the coffee table then quietly leaves.

"If it's alright with you, will you join me for lunch? When I'm not working outside, I mostly spend my time working here and losing track of time," says Luna while pouring tea into the empty cups. "At some point, someone began bringing meals over every day after I fainted. I didn't realise I went on seven days without food."

I gawk at her. Seven days?! A normal person would die from starvation already.

Sitting down beside Luna on the sofa, I say, "Maya is like that too when she's too engrossed in her research. She'll miss out on dinner if I don't bring her out of her room. Ah, but every morning, Maya never missed on preparing breakfast for us even when she skips out on sleep. It's something she won't let me do no matter how tired she is."

Luna warmly smiles. "Maya has been living by herself in that house for too long. I'm glad to hear that the two of you are getting along well."

Just then, Luda walks in carrying a stack of papers. Somehow this resembles a similar situation when Kinai is delivering documents for Lord Sol to review and approves. The three of us have lunch together in Luna's workroom while talking about random things which eventually lead to the topic of golems and exchanging ideas on mimicking the skeletal structure of monsters for Luda's numerous research on restructuring his existing golems that are surprisingly still working, after suffering destructive hits from Chief.