In the afternoon, Finn, Lena, and Blake were sitting on a terrace on the second floor of the apartment. It was accessible from Christopher's bedroom through wide glass doors, or through a second door from the hallway.

In many ways, it reminded Lena to Kassiopeia's rooftop. Its ground was nearly exclusively covered by grass, each blade trimmed on the millimeter precisely at equal length. If every skyscraper would have turned into a tree, it would even be comparable to the jungle on Demeter.

Half in the shade, on synthetic rattan garden furniture they sat scattered around the matching table. Finn and Blake wanted to teach Lena a card game, but in spite of their effort, the azure sky had utterly stolen her attention.

"Today the sky is blue," she said to the guys.

Blake's eyes stared at Lena, whose vision was still attached to the sunny airspace, then his eyes dashed to Finn.

"How can you be so calm?" Blake said from the corner of his mouth, "She has plainly lost sanity."

"I have not!" she suddenly unplucked her eyes from the sky and shot them at Blake. "Yesterday the sky was yellow! Then red! Right, Finn? Tell him what we saw."

Finn began to double up with laughter. "She's right, Blake. If anyone on this roof is crazy, it's you."

Blake rolled his eyes with a smile, "To be fair, it's mainly blue. But Lena, why is it so fascinating to you?"

She simpered and said, "On Pluviam, when the sky happens to take a time-out from being a battlefield of storms, it's simply brown. Brown at the most." Finn nodded softly. "And here, it's so colorful! Changing from hour to hour. I mean, imagine this; trees have a brown trunk, right? What if you were walking through a forest one day and every tree would have a different color. Even if it was mainly blue, wouldn't you think it's fascinating?"

"I'd think I'd lost sanity," was Blake's brisk answer. Lena giggled, her nose aiming at the sky once more. Blake had noticed the sweeping smile on Finn's dreamy face.

"Why so happy?" Blake smirked at Finn, who quickly hid his glee. He was caught off guard and looked shocked as he did when Blake had woken him up earlier that day.

"Nothing," Finn said, "I mean, no reason. What are you talking about?" For a moment Blake could see Finn's thoughts and identified that he was just as, if not more confused than Lena.

"Focus, Lena," Finn pulled her eyes back on the table. "This game is called Parallax."

"It's always played by three people," said Blake.

Lena concentrated on the words spoken by Blake, and the cards handed out by Finn. They had a matte black finish, with glossy black symbols; a different quantity on each card, and from what Lena could tell, the game had a total of four different symbols.

"You see this card?" Blake asked and Lena nodded. "It's the most important kind."

"Each of the four families has two of those. That one is called Ace of hearts," Finn explained.

"Does it stand for love?" Lena then asked, looking at Finn, whose words all melted away on his tongue.

"It stands for desire," said Blake for the rescue. "In this game, you decide whether you view aces as treasure or displeasure. But here is the golden rule: You can never carry more than one ace, unless you have the ace of hearts, that allows you to have as many aces as you wish, but never two hearts. The goal is to eliminate other players and collect one ace of each family." Many poorly explained rules later, he asked, "Did you get it?"

"Not really," she said, confused, staring at the pile of cards lying before her. "But let's just play. I'll figure it out as we go."

Lena found herself enjoying Parallax more than she anticipated, craving to play one round after another.

The day had gone by fast and when the sun disappeared behind the forest of architecture, the group moved their little party back indoors. Finn invited Blake to stay for the night, and since he had not seen him in many weeks, he accepted. Even Lena seemed to fancy the cheerful spirit.

Lena, elated and enrapt, watched Finn cook an original Clarkson meal in his paradise-of-a-chef kitchen. Never had Lena tasted anything more delicious, and without restraint, she consumed more than the guys combined.

Driven by a blithe attitude, for one evening, they all forgot about their pain and unsolved issues and just appreciated their time together. They watched a comedy movie while enjoying dessert. Lena kept asking what the characters were feeling because she could not read their thoughts as she could in a novel. Blake chose to sit on the carpet while Lena and Finn were swimming in a pool of blankets on the sofa. Their elbows slightly touching, they sat side by side, and by the time the last credits rolled down the screen, Lena was passed out against Finn's shoulder.

Their fun had lasted until late into the night, but the next day was sure to come, and Finn was up before the first sunbeams touched Westlake's streets. Twilight settled beneath the thick clouds of heavy gray near the eastern horizon, and when the sun peaked its head to cast long shadows over the grounds, Finn woke Lena, vigilant, avoiding to wake Blake as well. She opened her big eyes heavily, only that they could fall right into Finn's deep blue iris'.

Finn spoke in a soft voice, "Come with me. I want you to meet someone."

After scanning the room once, Lena found Blake, completely out of it, supine at Finn's feet.

Silently, without a single word spoken, she followed Finn into the lobby one hundred floors below. It was still very quiet in the halls. A Sunday, with little to no activity in the building halls, was enough to give Finn the ignorant confidence to walk out into broad daylight.

He wore the purple cap for disguise, but the jersey he left behind. Alternatively, he wore a plain black hoodie paired with black shorts and black sneakers, and Lena began to wonder if she would ever see him dressed in color.

Surprisingly, the t-shirt he had given to her was of pale cornflower blue with a paragraph of tiny white words written in a ninety-degree angle as if someone had taken the text and tipped it over to the left. It was fashion, assumed Lena without questioning the design any further. It used to be Finn's favorite shirt, but he grew out of it a couple of years ago, and whilst it was still large on Lena, it fit better than the yellow rag she wore before. She asked herself; if it still fit him, would he wear it despite the color?

"Are you going to tell me where we're going?" Lena asked Finn, as soon as they stepped out on the street.

The air stood still within the alleys and already filled the morning with a pleasant heat, even with those daunting clouds that hung motionlessly over the city. Most stores were still closed, cars were all parked at the sidewalks, and the occupation of the urban area was at a previously desiderated nadir.

"Finn?" she said, having waited for an answer for as long as it took them to cross two backroads. "Are we visiting Roby?"

"No," Finn said calmly. They were neither sneaking nor sprinting. Like normal citizens, they were walking along the pavement.

"Then where are we going? Who am I meeting?" She waited a few seconds. "Is it safe?"

"Yes," Finn assured her.

Lena was nervous to be caught, but in Finn's atmosphere, her fears all shrank away and after as little as ten minutes she felt more comfortable and began to enjoy the life she pretended to have.

If two months earlier she had thought about being a girl from Kepler she would have shaken that thought right out of her head, calling herself completely deranged and laughable. Never did she imagine that, a little down the road, thoughts as such could seem intriguing and achievable. No, she quickly deleted the latter. Pensive, she followed Finn. It was not achievable. She did not belong on Kepler and felt welcomed all the less.

Finn scarcely talked. He would only open his mouth to give her instructions but he sounded caring and in no way dictating.

"This way," he said, leading her by the hand when she wanted to keep straight.

They took a left turn and walked through a stone gate. Lena had not enough eyes and ears to observe everything that was happening around her as the city woke up leisurely.

She noticed that Finn was not taking the same path as they did when entering the city on silent soles, and that this time they were walking further away from the hill they had landed on.

They walked through a park; a jungle of perfection within the city's heart. Noise multiplied in the distance behind them, but the park ahead remained as peaceful as Finn's climate. They entered a long tunnel of pleaching hedges, and Lena thought they'd have to arrive soon, for she could see the bright exit, and sure enough, they left the tunnel and stood in a private area encircled by tall pruned hedges.

"We're here," said Finn, his fingers interlocked with Lena's.