Sanctuary

Chapter Five - Senna

"Y-yeah," Senna agreed, mostly because he had caught her staring and that startled her. "But uhm... nervous, too."

"That's to be expected. This is no mere party, it's the most prestigious event in all of Sanctuary. There will be a lot of rich and powerful people at tonight's event."

Senna's heart dropped into her stomach.

"However," Zed continued, "they're all going to love you. You are a strong, smart, and charming young lady. All you have to do is remember to smile and breathe."

"And do not try to shake anyone's hands," Nami interjected.

"Relax. Senna will be fine and so will you." Zed smiled at Nami, but she turned her nose up with a stiff pride and he returned speaking to Senna. "That's a lovely necklace."

"Thanks. Wrench gave it to me."

"Wrench?"

"Oh, uhm... Wrench is my mentor. Was. Was my mentor." Her stomach sank with the correction. It sounded like she had died when she said it like that.

"The mechanic?"

"Yeah."

His eyes lingered on the pendant the way Nami's had, an eyebrow raised in consideration.

"Well, she must have loved you an awful lot to give you something so valuable."

Senna looked down at the teardrop terrarium, rolling it between her finger and her thumb. There was something in Zed's tone that bothered her, something that she couldn't quite put her finger on. There was more to it than he was saying, something else that he saw in the faint glow and the smooth glass.

"Is it expensive?"

"It isn't something a mechanic could afford, not unless they saved for an awful long time. It couldn't have been easy to part with."

Senna couldn't imagine Wrench saving up to buy a fancy necklace. Her Wrench wiped dirt and soot across the sweat of her brow and crawled under farming equipment. She didn't dress up for fancy balls in vinyl clothes and expensive jewelry. What could she have possibly wanted a fancy necklace for?

Who had Wrench been, before the junkyard sign—before the Rim?

-

"Introducing President Zed Arikson, accompanied by Nami Sairenson and Senna Kavindottir."

The butler announced them to the room, his voice echoing off of the bare glass walls of the ballroom floor. That glass arched over them into a familiar dome, the symbolism in it not lost on Senna. It was a mirror of the city itself, of their entire world. They were glitter in a snow globe, fluttering lives dancing and settling in their glass home. It was strikingly clear as Senna found herself swirling so close to the top of Central that she was sure she could touch its ceiling. The city breathed beneath them, but she could see out to the dome's edge and it made the buildings shrink to blades of grass with the ant sized silhouettes of people marching in lines between them.

"Senna, please stop looking so dumbfounded. People are watching you," Nami hissed through the side of her painted smile.

"Huh?" Senna brought her gaze from the city to the crowd of guests in their structural plastic clothes. They were a featureless mass, nothing but eyes that were staring through her. The room swayed, the feeling of flying replaced with a downward lurch, crashing into a heavy lump in her stomach.

"Smile," Zed prompted, "and breathe."

Senna took a deep breath through her nose, her lips too firmly stuck together in her nervousness. The air stuck in her chest.