Chapter 122: The Girl From Elaris

Astrid Vale

Two guards came for me not long after breakfast, and my stomach dropped the moment I saw their faces. I assumed the worst immediately, that Dr. Audrey had said something to Maximus about catching me in that corridor near the restricted ward, that I was about to end up restrained again, back in that white room with the medical equipment lining the walls.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

Neither of them answered.

I kept my questions to myself after that, walking between them through corridors I hadn’t seen before, my mind cycling through every worst possibility I could imagine, each one worse than the last. When we finally stopped, it wasn’t in front of another sterile door. It was an ordinary room, warmer somehow, with actual furniture instead of the clinical starkness I’d grown used to. Two beds sat against opposite walls, a small table between them, something almost domestic about the whole arrangement.

Someone was already inside.

A girl close to my own age looked up the moment the door opened, and instead of fear or suspicion, her face lit with something closer to delight, her whole posture straightening the second she saw me.

Dr. Audrey stepped in behind me, her expression as carefully neutral as ever. "Liora," she said.

"Dr. Audrey," the girl greeted, her head bowing slightly in a way that told me this doctor commanded a certain kind of respect down here, or at least a certain kind of caution.

"This is your new roommate," Audrey said. "Please help her get along well with the others." Then she turned and left without another word, the door clicking shut behind her.

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

"Is the sky really blue?" the girl asked, before I’d even fully stepped away from the door.

I blinked at her. "What?"

"The sky," she said again, sitting up straighter, clearly thrilled by my confusion. "Above ground. Is it really blue, or is that just something people say?"

"It’s... yes," I said slowly, still trying to catch up with the sudden shift in tone. "It’s blue. Mostly. Sometimes it’s other colors, at sunset, or when it’s about to rain."

Her eyes went wide. "I’ve never spoken to someone from the surface before," she said. "I’m Liora."

I introduced myself, still wary despite the warmth radiating off her, still half expecting some trap hidden underneath the friendliness. But Liora didn’t give me much time to hold onto my suspicion before the questions kept coming, one right after another.

"What does rain feel like?" she asked. "Is it cold? Does it hurt when it hits you?"

"No, it doesn’t hurt," I said, a small laugh escaping despite everything, despite the exhaustion and fear still sitting heavy in my chest. "It’s just water. Sometimes it’s cold, depending on the season."

"And clouds," she said, leaning forward, her whole body angled toward me now like she couldn’t afford to miss a single word. "Do they really look soft? Like you could touch them?"

"They look that way," I said. "You can’t actually touch them, not from the ground anyway."

She asked about the ocean next, whether it truly stretched out farther than a person could see, whether trees grew as tall as the old stories claimed, whether stars actually twinkled or if that was just something written into songs to sound pretty. She asked if the moon looked different up there than the way it was painted on the walls down here, and whether people genuinely walked around beneath open sky without a single wall or ceiling above them.

At first I thought the questions were strange, almost childish, the kind of thing a much younger person might ask. Then something in her expression made me reconsider. She wasn’t performing curiosity for my benefit. She genuinely didn’t know any of this, none of it, not the way I’d taken it for granted my entire life without a second thought.

"You’ve really never seen any of it?" I asked. "Not even once?"

"No," she said, and there wasn’t any bitterness in it, just plain, quiet fact. "None of us have, except the patrol members, and even they only see it through their masks, for a few hours at most."

I studied her for a moment, letting that settle properly. "What do you do here?" I asked. "Besides ask surface girls about the weather."

She laughed, bright and easy. "I’m training to become a doctor," she said. "Like the ones who treat people when the curse starts affecting them. I want to help. I’ve watched too many people get sick, and I want to actually be able to do something about it instead of just standing there feeling useless."

"Do you think they can find a cure?" I asked, careful to keep my voice light, testing the water without giving away how much the question actually mattered to me.

"I hope so," she said, with a conviction that struck me as entirely genuine, nothing performed or rehearsed about it. "That’s the whole point of everything the doctors are working on. If we can stop the curse from spreading the way it has been, maybe someday we could even go back up."

Something in her voice shifted when she said that, softer, wistful in a way that made me lean in without meaning to.

"You want to see it," I said. "The surface."

"More than anything," she admitted. "I want to see the stars properly, not just in drawings. I want to know what sunlight actually feels like on skin. Everyone talks about it like it’s this incredible thing, and I’ve never gotten to experience any of it myself."

I sat there for a moment, thinking about all the times I’d complained about rain ruining my day, or sunlight being too bright, or how much I hated waiting for a bus in the cold. Things I’d never once considered a privilege in my entire life. To Liora, standing beneath an open sky without fear would be the single most extraordinary thing she could imagine experiencing.

"What do you learn," I asked, "about the surface? Growing up here, I mean."

Her expression sobered slightly, something more serious settling over her features. "We’re taught it was our home once," she said. "Long ago, before the war, before the curse. Our ancestors were forced underground, and the surface became closed to us because of what happened. But it’s still ours. It always has been. Someday we’re supposed to return to it."

I thought of the dinner, the creed everyone had recited in perfect unison, voices blending together like something rehearsed a thousand times over. What lies above shall one day be ours again. I’d assumed it was some kind of spiritual metaphor, something poetic and abstract, the way religious language often felt disconnected from anything literal. Hearing Liora say it so plainly, so matter-of-factly, made the words land completely differently.

"Why do you believe it belongs to you?" I asked.

She shrugged, like the question had never once occurred to her as something worth doubting. "That’s just what we’ve always been taught. It’s ours. It was taken from us, and eventually we’ll take it back."

We sat together for a while longer after that, the conversation drifting into quieter territory, comfortable in a way I hadn’t expected given everything else happening around us. Eventually Liora tucked her knees up against her chest, resting her chin on top of them, looking at me with something thoughtful behind her eyes.

"What’s the first thing you’d show me," she asked, "if I ever made it to the surface?"

I thought about it for a moment, considering everything I could offer her, oceans and cities and forests and every ordinary miracle I’d never properly appreciated.

"The sky," I said finally. "I’d show you the sky first."

Liora smiled, soft and genuine, something hopeful settling into her expression that made my chest ache in a way I didn’t fully understand yet.