Luna's Arc

Chapter 25 of 29

The children slept in a warm heap by the supply wall. Luna could not. Her father had built this refuge before he died, and she was sure his crates held more than food. She wanted to know who her parents really were. So she pried open a wooden chest at the edge of the pile and began lifting things out one by one. At first she found only tools and folded coats. But every object stopped her. A pocketknife might be nothing, or it might be his. A coil of wire might mean everything. She had no way to tell which items were plain keepsakes and which hid answers about the past her mother had erased. She sat surrounded by half-empty crates, stuck, afraid to miss the one thing that mattered. Luke woke and crossed the cold floor in his socks. He knelt beside her without a word and picked up the tools she had set aside. He knew their father better than she did. He had watched their parents when Luna's memory was still blank. "He kept things that mattered in soft places," Luke said. "Not the metal chest. Something wrapped." Luna dug deeper. Under a stack of blankets her fingers touched a hard flat shape sewn into cloth. She unwrapped it. It was a photo album, its cover worn smooth by hands. She opened it under the hangar light. Inside were pictures. Her own face, small and laughing. Luke as a baby. Harper young and bright. And a man with kind eyes holding both children at once. Their father. Page after page showed picnics, birthdays, a garden, a porch. Luna had no memory of any of it. But her hands shook as she turned each page, because here was proof. Her parents had loved them. They had smiled and held them close. Luke pressed his finger to a picture of the four of them. "I remember that day," he whispered. His eyes filled. Luna pulled him against her side and kept turning pages. Then the memories came, not fragments this time but a flood. She saw her father lifting her onto his shoulders. She saw Harper counting steps beside her, teaching her to move, to strike, to guard. The training. The love. They fit together now. Her parents had not been cold planners who threw children away. They had prepared her for the end of everything, and they had wept doing it. Harper stood behind them. Luna had not heard her rise. She looked at the open album, and her hand went to her mouth. "You found it," she said. "He made that so you'd remember us." Luna closed the album and held it to her chest. She knew her parents now. But one page near the back showed a place she did not recognize, a building marked with strange writing. Her father had left one more thing to find, and she meant to learn what it said.