Lunete

She poked her head into the files room, where I had eventually retreated to safety. She was beautiful: tall, blonde, thin. Almost the exact opposite of me.

"I'm sorry," she said in a British accent. "Is this the records room?"

"Yes," I said. "Are you the liaison from the General Ministry?"

She smiled and said, "The accent gave it away, didn't it?" She stuck out her hand and said, "I'm Lunete."

"Lady Grinning Soul," I said. To her credit, she didn't chuckle at the unusual codename. To stave off the inevitable awkward silence, I said, "I like your name."

"She was the handmaiden of Laudine, the Lady of the Fountain," Lunete said, "who was the wife of Ywaine, the Knight of the Lion."

"Oh," I said. I hadn't realized it was a codename, but it made sense.

"Yeah," Lunete said. "The men get great names like Percival and Agravain, while the women are left with the names of wives and handmaidens. Not many powerful women in Arthurian myths." I liked her already. "Anyway, I'm here to help with the information exchange. They said you were in charge of the file organization?"

"Um, yeah," I said. I gestured to the file folders, which were stacked haphazardly. I could see Lunete's face fall. "It was worse before I got here."

"You don't everything backed up on a computer?" Lunete asked.

"Um," I thought back to what Liza Jane had told me when I asked her the same thing. "Too much risk from...Thoughtborn?"

"Ah," Lunete said, as if that explained everything. "Well, let me help you then. I don't think I have anything better to do. If I stay out in open any longer, I'm afraid I may get ogled to death."

So I made a new British friend. Yay.