𝑷𝒓𝒆𝒕𝒕𝒚 𝑰𝒏 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑫𝒂𝒓𝒌 ꨄ

O n e

Luna wished she'd seen it coming, but her luck didn't turn that day. One moment she was blocking an opposing team player, then another a massive orange ball was being hurtled at her head. She groaned as it hit her, eyes blurry and head ringing from the impact. In the background, she heard the game come to a steady stop. Suddenly, Mira was right in front of her.

"Are you alright?" She asked, looking terribly guilty. "I- I should of seen you were occupied. I should of passed to someone else. I'm sorry."

"S'fine," Luna said, vision still a bit wobbly. Secretly, she was a bit annoyed, but Mira was the most sensitive person she had ever met. She wouldn't be able to handle it if Luna snapped at her.

"That was quite the knock out you took, Diaz." Coach Adler remarked from behind her. Luna turned around as he addressed the whole class. "I think that's enough for today, you guys can have an early break."

Murmurs of relief spread through the group of teenagers in an instant as they all spread out in different directions. Luna and Mira walked out of the gym class too, sweaty and tired.

"I really am sorry," Mira said, again.

The two of them had made their way towards the courtyard, and sat beneath a patch of shade on one of the benches.

"Stop worrying, Mira," Luna said light heartedly. "I said it was fine, didn't I?"

Although she was still massaging her head. And it still hurt.

"Yeah, I know. Still, you know I like to worry." Her friend said sheepishly, absentmindedly coiling strands of her hair around a finger.

Luna snorted. "Oh I know alright," She cast a look at the school walls looming over them, and a feeling of longing took over her. Not unlike anything she'd felt before. Bluebell secondary school was an institution she'd been going to her entire life. It was where she'd made her first friends, where she'd studied ever since she'd been able to, where she'd attended her first dance class. She didn't particularly enjoy learning any more then the next student, but this school had been a happy place for her.

Then she'd dropped off the face of the earth for six months and everything had changed. On her first day back, she'd been a wreck of nerves and anxiety. Her father had told the school that she'd been away due to personal family issues - not a detail more. Luna supposed what he was saying was technically true (what with Nyx being her mother), but that didn't help with the fact that the vagueness of it all would draw attention to her.

Seeing her friends again had been so much harder then she'd expected it to be. There were minor changes to each of them, as happened to everyone over time, but they hadn't been the ones that really changed. Luna could see that they were trying to let her back into the group, but she made it awfully hard for them - not that she wanted to. It got tiring trying to evade their questions, tiring to hide the truth and answer "I'm just not ready to talk about it," whenever she was asked about where she'd been.

Her friends assumed that the entire situation was about her mother, and it irked Luna to no end that they continued to speculate behind her back, thinking she wouldn't know. Why do they still care so much? It's been six months, for gods sake, she remembered thinking, angry once again at- what? angry at what, she hadn't known.

Maybe at the fact that she just wasn't in synch with them anymore, that whatever resonation of friendship had sounded between them before just didn't exist now. She'd tried to fit herself back in with them, to laugh at their jokes and make some of her own, but it felt like an effort to just be there. Luna didn't remember how things had been before she'd left. Had they gotten along better? Or had it always been this way, and she just hadn't seen it because she hadn't know anything else?