The girls had returned to the bedroom in a tizzy of giggles and hushed words tossed about the room. I tried to wrap my pillow around my head, tried to block out these things I truly did not want to hear, to know. I wanted to sleep.

"But he was just so handsome!" Wilomi's high pitched voice cut through the stifling pillow as she cooed, and I uncovered my face to watch her spin, hands rising above jer head before flopping down on the closest bed. Right on top of Dorcas.

"Ah, shove off," Dorcas muttered, a smile on her face. "You'll squish me, you brat."

Wilomi stuck out her tongue, but got up anyways. "Fine. I'll just keep dancing about then." She skipped over to the window to peer out at the street below. "I've met the love of my life today!"

Presa sighed, undoing the buttons that lined down Melle's back. "Wilomi, you say that every time the freighters come in, and every time it's a different man."

Wilomi put her hands on her hips. "Well it's not my fault they never decide I'm the girl for them. It doesn't change how my own heart feels."

Reah put a comforting jand on jer shoulder. "We're just teasing, Wilomi. I'm sure it'll work out this time."

My eyes danced about the room, counting the girls as they moved about it. They were all here. I sat up in bed with a start. "Nobody left?" I scanned again, counting each girl before me. "What happened? I thought... I thought that..."

Leanor flopped across the foot of our bed. "Don't stress it, Enori," she said into the covers, her words muffled. "This is what usually happens. We'll see them and other investors on and off for another week or so. Then they'll make their choices."

"She's right," Fia confirmed, finger brushing out the braid her hair was in. "Freighter men get to dock around a bit longer, so they take their time in making a choice." She winked at me, wiggling her shoulders. "And I'm expecting they won't be able to keep their hands off this hot stuff."

Triste threw a pillow at her. "Wouldn't call you hot stuff if you're always cold."

Fia chucked the pillow back at the other girl. "Are you really bringing up the blanket thing again? Just let it go, Trissy."

I readjusted myself on the bed and leaned against the wall, having fully given up on any attempts at sleeping while the girls were still up and talking. "And you think they will come back?" I asked, ignoring the growing pillow fight between Triste and Fia. "That they won't just leave u—" I stopped. There was no one in that group had payed me any particular attention, and I like it that way. "They won't leave you guys?"

"Of course not." Reah ran a brush through jer curls, sending them into thick waves to fame her face. "The men made promises, of course. Some leave deposits, others personal treasures that they'll get back when we leave with them."

I hugged my pillow to my chest. "Such as?"

Presa looked about us z moment, then pulled something out of her pocket, holding out a shining, golden necklace. All the girls gasped in surprise, and Wilomi ran up to her to inspect it.

"It's beautiful!" She chirped, her fingers brushing over the surface of it. "Who gave this to you?"

Presa's face was flushed a pretty shade of pink as she clasped it around her neck. "His name is Kipp. He's tryin to earn up money to join the Okeebok settlement two systems over, and he said that's where the freighter is headed next."

Melle propped herself up on jer bed. "Okeebok? Isn't that a backwater system? I thought you wanted to get away from dustcloud colonies like ours, and now you're headed for somewhere more unstable than Pestas?"

Presa wrapped her arms around herself. "The biggest difference, Melle, is that there I'll be free. I won't be tethered to this house, to doing everything Mam Dorce tells me."

"Oh, of course not," Dorcas said flippantly. "You'll just be trapped in your own house with a whole flock of kids and under his rule."

Presa's face started to crumple. "He won't be like that! Kipp is… well, he's honest and kind, and he makes me laugh." She shook her head. "I don't think he would treat me like that."

I took in a shaky breath. "Is that really what we have to look forward to, Dorcas?"

"Of course—"

"Not." Her response was cut off by Reah. She turned to face me, her blue eyes warm in the candle light of our room. "You have nothing to worry about, Enori. Most of the men who come through here want a partner in their lives, not some slave or servant. It isn't like these are the old days. We get just as much say in our lives."

"But there's no houses like ours for women to visit," Dorcas shot back. "There's no women put here trying to purchase husbands."

"Can we move past this conversation, please?" Leanor kicked off her shoes and buried herself under the blankets of our bed. "This is boring and I would rather know who all of you talked to tonight."

This seemed to perk all of the girls up, who traded secrets in a flutter of names and whispers. I sat motionless on my bed, taking in the chatter. Triste had spent much of jer evening with a man named Zeb, though she didn't like him much and would have ratherex been talking to the huddle Dorcas and Fia were in. Of course, Presa had spend the long hours of night falling for her Kipp, and though the other girls asked Melle extensively about who she liked the best, she was tight lipped.

Wilomi had, of course, found herself an ex-astro, though this one hadn't been decorated with pins as she was gushed over before.

Reah said there was a lovely gentleman named Gage, though it seemed her as if he was not wholly interested in her company, and halfway through the night he had gone to speak with one of the older girls, Kinsey. She had then spent the rest of the night just drifting around, trying to make as good an impression as possible.

"Speakin of impressions." Melle gave me a sideways glance. "Can't believe you left before the night had even really started, Enori. What, were you scared?"

My body stiffened, and I opened my mouth, ready to shoot back a retort when Leanor put her hand on my shoulder. "That's no fair," she said, sitting up in bed. "Enori had a rough night, that's all. I would have wanted to hide upstairs too, if I were in her shoes."

"I ain't talking about that." Melle's gaze seemed to harden. "I'm talkin when she disappeared right as everybody was gettin to know each other. She had gone and made a spectacle of herself, insulting one of the Investors, and then decided to hide from all of the newfound attention." Ons eyebrow quirked. "You think you're too good for these men, or something?"

"Of course not!" I blinked rapidly, feeling a sting, a red-hot pressure against my eyes. "I just… needed some space. I wasn't ready for everything, that's all."

"You have to rememver," Reah said,starting to go about the room the blow out the candles. "That this is only her first time dealing with Investors, and that her first experience didn't go so well either."

Shadows started draping themselves across the room as Reah made her away around it, and the last of the girls slipped into their beds, conversations muffled into whispers to their bedmates.

Reah carried the last candle over to her bed, setting it on her nightstand, the light of it cast dimly on the ceiling. "Good night, girls. Get plenty of rest now."

A puff of air, and the candle went out.

My eyes blinked desperately, trying to adjust to the darkness of the room, and for a moment everything remained shrouded in the wrap of night, before the small sliver of yellow light from the streetlamps outside filtered in through a crack in the drapes.

It had to be near morning at this point, though the sheer blackness of the sky pointed at anything but. By now, the dark season would have slid over the moon, and it would be months until we saw the sun again. It made me wish I had cherished its light and warmth more when it was still here…

I could hear the sounds of girls having passed into sleep, though it did not come for me, not for a long, long time. I lay there, staring up at the night around me, and it stsred back, inky black shapes moving around in the nothingness.

I could feel the scrape of metal against my skin again, the sound of heavy boots on stone and dust, his laugh echoing again and again and again in my head.

I couldn't help but think of what might have occurred if Dawson hadn't appeared to help me, if that smiling man had followed through on whatever his plans for me might have been. What would he have done to me? Would he have cut me, made me less desirable to be chosen, so that only he could have me? Or worse… would he have used me, then discarded or even killed me?

Fear crawled across my spine, and I curled into a tight ball, squeezing my eyes shut. I couldn't think of this any more, if would only serve go distress me. I needed to calm myself, to find something pleasant to think of, if I wanted to fade into the restfulness of sleep. I needed a moment, a thread of imagination or thought to pull me away from my circling worries and fears.

I needed something beautiful.

-

The sun shone down upon a thick field of luscious grass, green and almost prickly beneath my bare feet. I took in a deep breath, and there was the taste of summer, of flowers in the wind and rain carried on those fluffy white clouds that drifted above me.

The wind that caught those clouds caught me up too, and for a moment it felt as if I were flying, my dress fluttering as I spun, dizzying myself in the euphoria of sheer life around me. Me feet flew across the grass and dirt, and this was a place called home.

A hand slipped into mine, another supporting my waist as I was dipped, and music seemd yo swell around me, the light growing to a blinding quality, sparkling in my vision and the world shifted into something, something richly bright and beautiful. I spun into the hold of my partner, his hand shifting to his waist as he lifted me, my body catching the warmth of wind and sun, before being lowered into his hold once more.

His face was obscured by the sun, but something about him felt so inexplicably familiar, so comforting as we danced in the field, grass dragging along the hem of my skirt and tickling across the soles of my feet. His hands wrapped around my waist and he lifted me, and for a moment it felt as if this was what freedom felt like, like sun and grass and the brush of skin on mine.

There was a crack, a tugging of wind and the deep rumble of pain tearing through the sky as the world toppled sideways. The hands holding me up disappeared, and I dropped, hitting the ground with a gasp, pain kicking in my chest. Lightning split the sky in two, and from that terrible gash rain fell, chilling, hateful rain.

It clung to me, sticky and cold and I thrashed around, caught up in grass dissolving into a cocoon around me, a scream caught in my throat—

"Enori, wake up!"

I jolted, my head colliding with the person peering down on me, and we both dropped backwards. Head reeling, I blinked rapidly, as if this could clear up the situation. Girls were fretting, shrieking as they woke up and there was the clatter and continuous sound of… rain?

Great streams of water fled through the cracks in the ceiling above us, and I gasped as some fell right on my face. It was cold. Leanor was groaning beside me, rubbing at her forehead from where we had collided.

Rain.

The sky-busters had finally accomplished their mission. Only five years after the first one had streaked across the sky, sent by the Central Federation of Systems, to bring rain to this bone dry moon and they had done it. Rain!

But our homes were not prepared for this sudden onslaught of water, we were not ready. Rain soaked through these dry boards and we desperate struggled to free ourselves from dripping blankets, to rescue our few valuables and drag all that we wanted dry downstairs, to where the water seemed less inclined to venture.

The sky-busters had not just brought rain to the moon, though. They brought lightning, the acrid tang of electricity and great tears in the sky as thunder rippled out through the sky.

The lightning scared the youngest girls, and I would be amiss to claim that to some degree, it didn't unsettle me as well. All I could feel was that deep, bone-deep ache of worry, that something dreadful was coming on its way, and there was nothin to be done to stop it.

We stayed like that for hours, chilled by the darkness and rain, with only the lightning cutting through the sky to swathe light over the dim rooms downstairs. We had assembled lanterns and candles, yet there were no places left dry enough to keep them to light the whole rooms.

So we huddled, old blankets draped over our shoulders and a fire set in the kitchen stove trying feebly to warm that small room, despite the damp. All fifteen of us older girls had some of the youngers either wrapped up in our arms, or others crouched against us as we clung to what little heat could be shared between us. I had Jordyn in my arms, her wet hair plastered to her face as she lay in a fitful sleep, her tiny face scrunched up distress. Two others of the newest girls leaned beside me, and though I didn't know their names, the fact that they were seeking comfort from me only served to fray at my nerves.

I was not meant for comfort, for care, to make others feel loved. I was made of stine and fractured glass, and I could feel the past days heavy on my shoulders, as if any moment everything could shatter to pieces.

I would not be able to give these girls what they wanted from me, and that realization hurt, an ache in my core and a throb in my head, of tears and red eyes and sleepless nights. They wanted a mother, a sister, or some other figure to love them, and a I could offer was someone older who was vaguely in charge of their wellbeing.

Perhaps it took a mother to learn motherhood, a life I jad never known. Not when this woman, who my father said I looked nothing like, had passed from beyond us when I was only days old. He hadn't blamed me. I was only a baby, and he hadn't loved her anyways. He jad never told me much about his life, or my life, before tje move, when we suddenly left our planet and system and wandered through the Federation. A few years, before it was time to move again. But not this time. He had dumped me here, treated me like something of no meaning to him, only a price to be won, and left me on this dust riddled moon.

But this was my home now. I was determined to make it so, and I would not give it up easily. U would not let my life be disrupted by an Investor who just saw me as a price tag, and nothing more. Not again. Never again.

The rain didn't let up. Not for hours and hours, after everything on this parched moon had soaked up every drop from the sky, then refused the rest, did the storm seem to drift away.

Not that it made much difference on the outside. The sun was still hidden behind the planet, and with the rain having put out the streetlamps, it was darker than usual now.

A knocking on the door, and we all froze in our efforts to get back up and return the home to order. The other girls in the kitchen with me looked at each other, before they al ran out to the living room.

I followed them, and we stood there, waiting, breathless, as Mam Dorce made jer way yp to the door, a single, sputtering candle in jer hand. The knocking came again, and sje swung the door open before it could go on much longer.

A man stood there, startled at the sudden opening, wide eyes and soaked to the bone. Presa let out a gasp, and jis attention clicked to her, and his whole face seemed to light up upon seeing her.

"Kipp!" She cried, pushing forward through the assembled gurls to get to him. "What in the stars are you doing here?"

He ignored mam dorce entirely, stepping into the room and all but falling into Presa's arms, his own wrapping about jer in a fierce hug, his face nestling into the crook of her neck.

"I couldn't wait any more," he murmured, and we all held out breaths, watching the scene unfold. "I couldn't wait to tell you everything that I felt, and that I wanted to spend everything with you." He pulled back, a smile shining in his eyes. "Even this dreadful rainstorm seems less terrible now that I'm jere with you."

Kidget had been the one to drag us away, to leave the two of them alone with Mam Dorce, to draw up the contracts and papers. Dorcas went upstairs to pack Presa's few possessions, and the rest of us stood in the kitchen, trying to soak in warmth from tje stove, rather than cold from the rain.

"It's so romantic," Wilomi whispered, rubbing her hands together. "He braved that terrible storm to get here to be with her."

Melle rung out the water from her hair. "I bet it's dryer there on the crew quarters of the ship. Definitely beats being here right now."

"It doesn't matter," Kidget murmured, her fingers rubbing at a gold necklace in her hand. "All that matters is those two bein happy now, and us bein happy too." Her voice wavered a little and she ducked her head, as if to hide herself.

But I still saw the tears in her eyes anyways.

~
Word count: 3184
Note: this chapter has not been edited at all, leading to some details being inconsistent with preceeding and succeeding chapters.
Question: which of the side characters are you most interested in at this point?