It had been a while since Halia felt the need to get away and be by herself. She usually was just fine in her apartment, enjoying the quiet solitude of it all. But this time, she needed to go further, to have absolute solitude and silence beyond what the little apartment could give her.

So she found herself on Aruna.

Sitting in a chair in the library, Aruna once again looked over a book, trying to make heads or tails of the language. Some of the symbols were becoming familiar to her, from seeing them so much, but it didn't seem to be a perfect one to one alphabet in comparison to English. Sighing softly, she turned the page again, studying the marks and symbols. In a corner in the margin, it looked possibly like handwriting and she wondered if Aurelia had written it. Had she annotated the book with something important? Was it just a passing thought? Was it even her who wrote the note at all? She wanted to know more about her predecessor, more about the person who held her starseed prior. She wished more than anything that she could talk to her the way knights could talk to their ancestors' ghosts, get advice from the woman who oversaw the entire necropolis, but all she had was the occasional memory that surfaced.

Turning another page, something fell out into her lap. Setting the book aside, Aruna gingerly picked the object up and realized with surprise that it was a single pressed flower, one of the glowing ones she had seen growing recently. Out of curiosity, she cupped her hands around the blossom and peered at it, though was almost disappointed to see there was no glow to it. Of course there wasn't, she mentally chided herself. It had been hundreds of years, pressed between the pages of the tome.

Setting the delicate flower aside, she decided to press it between glass later to preserve it. For now, she needed to try harder to learn this language, try harder to be able to read it.

Sighing softly to herself, she set the book down and leaned her head back against the wall, closing her eyes for a moment. It was exhausting, trying to learn this long dead language without help. She wished she was better at it, wished it would be something that would just come to her, but so far, it was just a lot of staring at little squiggles that made no sense.

Picking up a different book, she gently opened the cover and began to look over the pages, once again recognizing symbols from other places but not being able to make sense of them still. She knew it would be a process, that it wouldn't magically reveal itself overnight, but it was tiring and she was impatient, as it turned out. Maybe if she brought a book home with her, she could study it there too? Maybe the comfort of her bed, filled with countless pillows and blankets and squishmallows, would help ease the struggle she seemed to be having.

Tucking a book into her subspace, she made a mental note to try reading at home on earth later. For now, she opened the book in her lap again and started once again trying to read and to learn.