Chapter 89 – Milea, You Be Good While I Am Gone…

The sky above Seldia's general residential district was turning a pale, dusky rose -- the quiet arrival of evening.

In Milea's lab, equally quiet, the only sounds were the faint hum of the terminal and the occasional soft exhale.

Right beside Milea as she worked:

Letaria was asleep on the examination table -- the clinical, utilitarian surface ordinarily used for biological data measurements. Her beautiful dark-purple hair was spread across the cushion beneath her head. Her breathing was steady, but with a depth to it, a heaviness, like sleep that had swallowed her whole. The hem of her dress-style clothes was slightly disordered, and she appeared entirely untroubled by this. Whatever poise she normally wore so effortlessly had gone somewhere else entirely; right now there was only a small pair of lips slightly parted, and a face that had relaxed into the most unguarded expression imaginable.

"Mm..."

She shifted in her sleep, tucking herself smaller and pressing her face into the cushion that had been repurposed as a pillow.

"She really does sleep soundly..."

Milea paused in her work and looked at Letaria -- an expression somewhere between fond exasperation and something quieter, more like watching over.

A short time earlier:

With the data re-registration complete and official work now available to take, Letaria had not immediately rushed back out onto the field. Before accepting any new assignments, she wanted to make Arden -- the new Arden -- genuinely her own: fully an extension of her body. And so, for the past several days, she had been spending hours in the simulator, running drill after drill.

The simulator, unable to fully reflect the real influence of her magic on the Arden System, handled somewhat differently from the real machine. Even so, she had thrown herself into the work -- determined to grow accustomed to the new Arden's behavior as quickly and as deeply as possible. The upgraded frame with its pre-prototype components was far more demanding than its predecessor in every dimension.

When each session ended, she had taken to making her way without fail to Milea's lab.

Letaria would come in exhausted, drink the tea Milea had made, complain about the training, work through the snacks Sora had left -- it had become, over the past few days, something like a fixed routine.

Today, however, she had apparently pushed further than usual. When her session ended, she had not had the energy left to walk to her room, nor the will to cross to the cafeteria. She had come through the lab door moving barely above a crawl, and fallen asleep on the examination table the moment she lay down.

"She really does treat this place like her own room..."

A small sigh -- but even as it escaped her, Milea's hands were already moving. Without quite noticing she had decided to, she had drawn a spare lab sheet over Letaria's body so she wouldn't get cold.

She turned back to the terminal and continued her work, Letaria's sleeping form at the edge of her vision.

A few minutes passed. Then, without warning, a small, faint voice broke the silence.

"...Chia... ra..."

Milea stopped. She looked at the examination table.

Chiara. That was the name of the maid from Letaria's world -- the one she had left behind. Milea had heard that name from Letaria's lips more than once.

Letaria rarely spoke at length about her old world. But from the way the name sounded in her voice -- even asleep -- it was not difficult to imagine that Chiara had been something far beyond a servant to her. Something irreplaceable. A friend.

Letaria's brow had drawn together slightly, and her expression carried something -- not distress, not the sharp tension of a nightmare, but a quieter kind of sadness. Something that lived deeper than the surface. Milea decided to leave her undisturbed, and returned her eyes to the screen.

Some time after that, a clearer voice came through.

"Milea..."

Her own name. Milea blinked and looked over before she could stop herself.

Letaria had shifted from lying on her back to her side at some point, but her long lashes were still closed. The soft, steady sound of sleep-breathing continued. A dream, almost certainly.

(Is she dreaming about me?)

Some mix of mild self-consciousness and honest curiosity had Milea listening closely.

And then Letaria's lips moved again, with the words that followed.

"Milea, you be good... while I am gone... hehe..."

"...What on earth are you dreaming about."

Payback, perhaps, for being so often treated like a child -- the scales of the dream apparently reversed entirely. What sort of figure Milea cut in that dream, she found she wasn't sure she wanted to know.

Exasperated -- and, despite herself, smiling.

To the unlikely soundtrack of one unruly young lady's entirely unpredictable sleep-talking, Milea's work continued on. Quietly, and in an atmosphere that was, somehow, warm.