The greenhouse looked like a tornado had come through. Before, the stained glass had been cracked in places, with a few pieces missing, but there had been enough to cast a soft pink light on everything. There had been enough so that Nectaris could stare up at the pictures of the Moon, and of the butterflies, with stars in her eyes.

The bigger greenhouse was still okay, but the smaller one, in the back, where Nectaris had put her Code Piece?

Yeah. It was destroyed. All of the glass was out of the frame, except for a few pointy shards that hung on stubbornly, like teeth. Walking towards it was a minefield. The glass was scattered all over the place. Nikki would’ve had to start watching her step when she was still yards away if she cared about that.

She didn’t care. She was sprinting, hoping that her delicate butterfly shoes would hold up against everything, but if they didn’t, whatever. That was what band-aids were for.

All that was left of the greenhouse was its skeleton, and that meant she could see the Code Piece. She’d put it on a little pillar thing, but it looked like it had rolled to the ground in the middle of whatever had happened, and it was pulsing weakly.

No wonder everything was all messed up. It needed her. Now.

She baseball slid through shards and mud, which she was gonna regret later, but for now, she only had eyes for the little orb. “I’m here, okay?” she told it. “Hi. Let’s see.”

Then she stared at it for a few seconds, and it was still flickering, and she really hoped that she knew how to make it okay. It sounded like it was supposed to be some mental thing, some kind of meditation, but Nectaris wasn’t always good at that kind of thing. She’d done some yoga here and there, with all the dance stuff she’d been involved with, but she’d never gotten into that side. She always got restless during savasana.

She did have snippets of focus, though, when she was kissing her boys, or when she was laughing with her family, or when she got really into a project. The Code had to be as important to her as any of that stuff, didn’t it? It had saved her life. It had given her this place. It was the whole reason that she was still here, that she was doing what she was.

She could focus on being grateful, and it seemed like that was enough.

Maybe the magic helped, but her breathing calmed. The rubble and the Moon altogether began to feel distant, and her eyes fluttered shut.

---

Dry.

Her lips were cracked. Her eyes and lips were sandpaper. She swallowed, but all it did was burn. Everything burned. Her head did. Her wrists, throbbing under the ropes, might have burned the worst of all. Looking down, she saw red.

Then she looked up, and she saw someone there.

He burned.

Everything around her was blurry, forgotten. His face was gone, too, but she could feel that. She could feel the brightness coming off of him so strongly that she wanted to throw up.

He stepped forwards. She could hear the sound of his boot echo throughout the room as she tried to back away.

She could taste the fear.

The scene shifted.

Now she was the one standing over someone, the one at the door to a cage. This time, she knew who was in front of her. It was Ganymede, bloody and battered. Sylvite stood tall, the cape that she had worked hard for fluttering to her ankles, but the fear had not gone anywhere.

Neither had the burning. That same brightness was coming off of Ganymede in waves.

She had a glove off, and she looked at the old scar on her wrist. She was talking, but she couldn’t quite hear her own words. She just felt her heart pounding in her chest until she swallowed past the fear.

She reached her arm through a crack in the cage, out towards Ganymede, straining towards the brightness with her fingertips, and everything faded away.

Almost everything. Nectaris found that even without the memories, the light was still there. She could feel it, running through her hands, then her arms, her heart. It was as powerful as it had been before, as terrifying as lightning, but as it settled into her chest, she found that it no longer burned her.

It was her protector now, her home.

I swear my life and loyalty to Nectaris, and to the Moon.

The Code Piece in her hands was part of that warmth, part of that home.
I humbly request your aid, so that in turn I can give you mine.

---

She opened her eyes slowly. Her eyelids felt heavy. Everything felt heavy. Whatever had happened had taken energy out of her, and now she could feel the cuts on her feet and knees that she’d been ignoring in her rush to get to her code piece.

Now it was glowing steadily, floating slightly above the ground, and she scooped it up gently to put it on the little broken pillar where she’d had it earlier. It looked like the magic had fixed the greenhouse, too, at least so it looked about like what it had before, with only some damage.

She smiled at that, but only partially, ‘cause it was weird.

She didn’t know what to make of what she’d seen, but it was already starting to play itself over again in her head. She shoved her pearl bracelets up to her elbows and looked at her wrists. The skin there had always been bumpy and scarred.

For a few seconds, she stared at it.

Then, with a little wave to the Code, she vanished back to Earth.