Long, Leela discovered.

Each hour felt like a day within itself. The room seemed to grow smaller with every passing minute. Leela’s stomach shrank and twisted and ached. She was allowed water, and those moments when a novice would deliver her a pitcher or bring the bucket for her to relieve herself became the highlight of her days. It was always one of the older novices, Belladon or Cresha or Baalin. She did not see Elorin again.

She thought of Sera, of where she was now and where she might be headed. If she was on a ship, she was likely on the sea between Pelago and Kaolin, but which country she was coming from and which she was going to Leela could not say. She tried to remember all she knew of the planet, but that had been Sera’s fascination, not hers. She guiltily admitted to herself that she had never paid much attention when Sera spoke of the planet. She sifted through her recollections of the lessons her green mother had given her about it—she knew that family units were different there, with males and fathers and all that. And she knew that they worshipped different gods, not Mother Sun, though what sort she could not say. But she was hopeful that Mother Sun was watching over Sera, that she could see her even on the planet, so far away from the City.

She mulled over what Elorin had said, when she had wondered if Mother Sun even heard her prayers at all now that she knew of the High Priestess’s deceptions. But Leela remembered the way the symbols on the doors to the temple had suddenly made sense—it was Mother Sun speaking to her, she was sure of it. Though if she could read them, then why not all other Cerulean? Perhaps it was a matter of awareness—Leela was seeing through the lies now, and so it was as if a veil had been lifted. Perhaps the High Priestess had cast some sort of spell over the entire City, the way she had taken Kandra’s memory of Estelle away. And because the City believed only the High Priestess could read the symbols, then that was all they saw, a jumble of markings.

But it seemed to Leela as if Mother Sun was far away, farther than she ought to be. It was like trying to shout to someone who was in the Day Gardens from the top of the temple; there might be the faintest trace of a voice on the wind, but not enough to hear exact words. Else why had she not already righted this wrong and exposed the High Priestess herself? Leela felt as if perhaps Mother Sun had been lost somehow, as if she had been searching for the City Above the Sky and was only just now beginning to find it.