THE AUDIENCE

As Aelia and Fennel finished their conversation, Elia walked towards the front of the bed where Aelia was sitting on. The bedroom was filled with natural light from the sky outside, but no sun rays entered the room, giving off a serene atmosphere, similar to how Aelia felt now, after finally letting out the mess of emotions she had felt just a few minutes ago.

"What makes sense Aelia?" Asked Elia inquisitively.

"Hello Miss. Fennel was telling me about why he thought I was wrong about what I said to Lord Ataoro." She replied, with a bitter smile on her face and looking down, avoiding any eye contact.

Elia looked towards Fennel, who seemed to be very calm about Aelia’s response. She felt relatively uncomfortable with them talking to each other without her knowing about the details, but Elia had other matters to care about right now, far more serious.

"Is that so?" Asked Elia in a rhetorical manner. "You seem to be awfully relaxed about this. I think you’re not conscious about how serious this is, Aelia."

As Inai heard this, she got closer to Elia. She could see how Aelia and Fennel felt offended by this statement, and sensing that she was the team member, with the most emotionally neutral position, she gathered bravery to stand up to her leader.

"Miss Elia, if I may. Lady Aelia froze after her conversation with Lord Ataoro. I’m sure she does care about what happened." Said Inai with a slightly shaky voice, as Elia faced towards her with ice cold eyes. "She even said she was sorry for all the trouble she was making, when she woke up a while ago. I'm... I'm sure she cares a lot about all of this."

Elia took a moment to look around to see the faces of the other two teenagers who were in front of her, who seemed to be anything but relaxed now. Elia crossed her arms, took a deep breath, and decided to change the subject.

"Well, no matter how Aelia is feeling, we have a big problem right now." She said. "After talking it over with Ataoro, we decided our best option was to have an audience with the king. He will decide the future of our team, and Aelia's future as a guardian. We'll have to present all the evidence and the statements we can to defend our case."

Aelia looked up towards Elia with eyes of surprise.

"Defend our case?" She asked, feeling the slight warmth of Elia stating that she would try to protect her.

"Listen Aelia. This is not only about you. The future career of everyone in this room right now, is at risk thanks to you." Said Elia looking at the guardian straight into her eyes, as if she was pointing towards her with knives. "I’m glad that whatever Fennel told you, made sense to you, if that means you regret what you said to Lord Ataoro. But at this point, we will need a lot more than that to get out of this situation."

Aelia lowered her head, feeling like a burden. Fennel on the other hand, listened to Elia trying to catch any useful information.

"Excuse me Miss Elia, but what should we do to prepare for the audience? Do we have time?"

Elia looked at Fennel with a sharp and serious look of approval.

"Ataoro wanted to talk immediately to the king Lenno, but the audience was scheduled for next week, on this same day." Replied Elia. "He’s very busy with other matters, but since this is a matter of national security, he gave us full priority."

Fennel and Inai looked down worried.

"A week is very short time to prepare our defense, so if you ask me, I have little faith of a favorable outcome." Said Elia in a very functional and irritated manner.

"What will happen to Aelia if we fail?" Asked Fennel worried, as he looked towards the young guardian who was tightly grabbing her wristband.

"No one knows. There are no precedents for this type of situation. But my guess is that our team will be dissolved, and if we have any luck, we might be reassigned somewhere else. But since we’ll be considered failures, I don’t have much hope for that either." Said Elia in a cold manner, not answering the correct question.

"But what about Aelia?" Insisted Fennel

"I don’t know, and I don’t want to take a guess either." Said Elia. "What’s sure, is that the kingdom won’t keep spending resources to maintain a failure of a guardian. The problem is that maintaining a guardian on itself, is very expensive, so Aelia will surely have to find a way to make herself useful insider the palace if she wants to have a place to sleep. There are not many other places in the kingdom suitable for a guardian."

This was a tense situation, and the uncertainty made Team Aelia get lost in their minds as silence reigned over the bedroom, letting only the sounds of the breeze and the chime bells take over.

"In any case, Aelia’s training will continue just as scheduled until the audience." Said Elia breaking the silence. "We’ll have to think of something, but it won’t be easy to change Ataoro’s mind in a week. Not after what Aelia said to him."

"What if Aelia made some progress with her training?" Asked Fennel with absolute seriousness.

"Hah! That would be a miracle." Replied Elia with sarcasm. "She’s been stuck for months on her fifth parallel thought, and guardians need to work their minds and bodies really hard in order to develop them. There is no way she can show any considerable progress in a week. That’s a feat not even Lord Ataoro would be capable of."

Fennel looked down in frustration, and Elia took a deep breath, feeling slightly sorry for making fun of Fennel’s suggestion.

"Look, each of Aelia’s parallel thoughts have taken between two and three years each to develop, and it gets harder the older a guardian becomes." Said Elia now with a serious and professional tone. "Any normal guardian should have mastered anywhere from eight to ten parallel thoughts at this age. Saying Aelia is behind on her training would be an understatement. It’s not for nothing that we’re in this situation, nor is it solely because of her conversation with Ataoro. That was just the tipping point."

The team was once again left in silence. Elia once more looked around, and knowing the trouble they were in, and trying to act like a leader, she decided to close the meeting.

"We’ll do our best and make everything we can to save the team. We have a week to come up with something, so let’s work hard. It might be our last project together, so I’m counting in every one of you." She said, looking first at Inai, and then at Fennel. Then her gaze went towards Aelia. "Even you Aelia. Don’t you dare slack off this week. We need you stronger than ever if we want to have any chance to succeed."

"Yes miss!" Said Inai and Fennel in unison. Aelia however only nodded.

"Now let’s get back to work." Said Elia as she left the bedroom, followed by Inai.

Fennel made the gesture of moving, but as he surrounded Aelia’s bed towards the exit, he got close to her and touched her hand to catch her attention.

"We’ll find a way out of this Aelia." He said trying to show his most reliable side to the guardian. "I have a few ideas, so please, stay strong. Let’s meet again tomorrow."

Aelia looked at Fennel’s subtle smile as he said that, and could feel how her hopelessness turned into mild inspiration. She could sense in an intuitive manner how, in contrast to her superior Elia, who only seemed to care about keeping her position, Fennel was fully committed to help her, out of warm and genuine care. This was a feeling she hadn’t felt for over a decade, since Anise was with her here in the palace. A soft smile slowly built in Aelia’s face, as she nodded towards Fennel with determination.

If he was willing to work hard just to help her, the least she could do, was to work just as hard to save him as well.