Vella took a long, long moment to catch her breath.

The knife came out of its sheathe a moment later, held in her hand just in case something tried to fly at her and peck her eyes out, or... something. She wouldn't hold it past the castle of Mog Chothra.

Then, when nothing came at her screeching with an intent to murder her, she began to make her way deeper inside.

The castle was stranger than she could've ever imagined.

It was almost like a child's palace, but destroyed. The walls looked almost like they'd been crafted for a small child, with knit patterns and colorful things everywhere. It would've been almost cozy, except that there was rubble and debris and deep scrape marks everywhere and sparking wires that lit up often damaged or unlit hallways.

She wandered for a while, avoiding the sparking wires that almost sent little bits of fire onto her tattered dress.

She wished she had one of Car'l's- Carol's cloudshoes. The floor was littered with little bits of crumbled wall and metal, and the last thing she needed was to cut her foot open and get an infection somehow.

Not to mention, that those cloudshoes were extremely comfortable, and while the knit floor was pretty nice, it also made her very acutely aware that she didn't have socks on and that her feet were getting quite sweaty from nervousness.

Something flickered to life.

"Oh... Ray, look. It's the new one."

Vella looked to her left upon hearing the voiceand almost shrieked when she saw the sun looking at her.

"I see her, Hope."

To her right, another thing flickered to life- paler and dimmer than "Hope", who shone so brightly that Vella was surprised she could even look at the woman's face. Because the sun was a woman, with what looked like golden, curling hair surrounding her face. Her cheekbones were well-defined, and while Vella couldn't really determine any details about her face from the glowing orb floating beside her, she looked like a warm person.

"What the f-"

The sun-woman hummed, tilting her 'head'. "Hmm, Marekai usually sends them into the dungeons, though. I wonder how this one escaped."

Vella held up the knife, half in a hopefully-intimidating manner but half in just an offering gesture. What else could she do, against the literal sun and moon?

"I've, uh, got a knife."

Her voice was shockingly timid.

"Still," the sun-woman mused, frowning. "Marekai's got the Thrush on his side..."

"Honey, where are our manners? We're probably scaring the girl half-to-death. If we're going to help her, we should give her an idea of who we are," the moon man said. Now that Vella looked closer, he was a bald man with a rather impressive mustache. He looked a lot older than his wife (at least, Vella could only assume they were married- they seemed very familiar with each other, and it would make sense for the sun and moon to be married).

Though, the "age" could be due to stress and the lack of hair, compared to the woman who (even though she was nothing but a floating orb) seemed to have quite a lot of it.

She nodded after a moment. "You're right... you're quite right."

The sun-woman cleared her throat and seemed to 'straighten' up. "Well... girl with the knife... My name is Hope Volta. I am... I can't truly say I'm in charge, not with Marekai here, but I am in charge of the Castle. I maintain the Yarn Pals and the Hexipals-"

"The what now-"

Vella yelped again as a few things waddled in front of her. One was a hexagonal figure with thin arms, while the other was a rather squishy yarn creature-thing.

... well, they certainly didn't look all that dangerous...

"- and keep them on task. Marekai didn't really see fit to disable them when he took over, so I still manage them and give them orders. Alright, now it's your turn honey."

The moon grunted. "My name is Ray Volta. I patch holes in the castle's exterior and perform basic repairs that the Hexipals don't need to trouble themselves with."

"Oh," Vella said, for lack of anything else to say.

A brief pause.

"I'm Vella Tartine. I was sent as a sacrifice from the town. But I cut off my dress and used my corset to hitch a ride on a bird."

The two stared at her for a moment. It was very hard to read their expressions, except clear shock on Hope's and an arching of the eyebrow from Ray.

Then Ray laughed. "I think Shay will like you."

"Ray!"

Shay? Who was Shay? Who were they? Why were the sun and moon in here? Why were there little creatures shaped like hexagons and others made out of yarn? Furthermore, creatures made out of yarn that appeared to be sentient?

Vella had so many questions, but the moon and sun- Ray and Hope seemed surprisingly close-lipped about it all.

There was a rumbling growl from outside- she was so taken aback by the castle, that she'd plain forgotten about Mog Chothra outside.

Ray immediately sobered up. "Vella, quickly, if you escaped Marekai you'll need to get Shay to place you under his official protection before Marekai tries to lock you up like he did the other maidens. Continue down the hall and take a left in the room with the large window." He jerked his 'head' a little bit to direct her.

Hope nodded quickly, her disapproving look quickly vanishing. "Yes, hurry. The yarn pals will delay him."

"You guys can't give better directions?"

Hope shook her head. "No. Marekai's blocked access to certain parts of the ship- castle. The castle."

"Hurry, before he finds you," Ray urged.

"Oh, and, if you can... please, save Shay," Hope said, almost pleadingly.

Vella had approximately a millisecond of disagreement- no, of course she wasn't going to do what they were saying, she had to be hallucinating that the sun and moon were talking to her, and who the hell was Shay- then she heard the rumble get louder, and she decided it probably wasn't entirely worth arguing with what she was pretty sure were hallucinations anyway.

Her bare feet slapped the ground as she ran, still trying to avoid debris and whatever nonsensical thing was on the ground.

The room with the large room would've been beyond breathtaking if it wasn't half-destroyed.

As it was, Vella still gasped when she saw it.

The window had broken glass still clinging to the edges, stained glass shards littering areas where the Hexipals, currently bustling around the area, probably couldn't reach. However, that seemed to make the whole room glitter, sparkling in the faint light of the night.

The window gave way to the starry sky far above, stars glittering and almost appearing to be part of the giant room, like a window to the stars. Moonlight washed the whole room with a pale glow, softening the warm oranges and reds and making the bluish bits stand out all that much more. Ray was looking around above her, his face suddenly much larger than it had been in that hallway. It felt almost like the stars were pouring into the room, and Ray was the king of the sky (at least, right now, while the night still reigned).

Vella took a whole minute to gape up above her.

Then, as if breaking out of a trance, she remembered the threat of "Marekai" and Mog Chothra, and that there was a hallway she needed to turn left in in this room, and she reluctantly tore her eyes away from the night sky.

She rounded a corner and came to a screeching halt.

In the hallway she'd been directed into, there was a young man, standing and staring out the window, down at the town outside. His eyes looked like they held the whole cosmos within them, distant and far away from this place. His blue robes didn't hide much of his skinny figure, clothed in a strange and very foreign style of clothing- even from Meriloft and Shellmound, she'd never seen that sort of material.

The boy- or, young man, Vella supposed; he was too old to be truly considered a boy anymore- looked up before she could think to leave.

The two of them stared at each other. Vella could've sworn his jaw dropped slightly when he saw her, taking her in.

Vella Tartine, faced with an admittedly very handsome young man, shocked by everything that had happened in the last fifteen minutes, and still trying to process that she'd just talked to the sun and moon, proceeded to punch him in the face.


A/N: And there's chapter 2!

I'm writing a lot of the chapters in advance and trying to figure out a good weekly posting date so I'm not worrying too much about it. I have no idea how long this will be lmao.

If you're wondering why Vella and Shay are older in this than they are in the game... it's mostly because I'm in the age range I'm writing them both in and at this point understand their personalities a lot better that way, lol.

When I was 14 (which is the rough age range I believe they fall into in the game, or at the very oldest 15-16), I largely did not leave the house except for school and had to ask my parents permission if I even wanted to go hang out with someone at their house, so I don't exactly have many personal anecdotes to draw back on to accurately write a pair of 14-year-olds, especially not a fourteen-year-old boy.

And if you're wondering how, in this case, Shay would "pick" the girls selected... I'll explain that when we get back to Vella's POV.

Oh yeah. We're taking a break from Vella's POV for a couple chapters after this, lol.

See ya, so long, and g'bye!