As they walked, she continued looking at each of the doors, and into the occasional alcove, trying to find some clue as to the kind of people who lived here. She was not completely naïve, of course, trying to distance herself from those thoughts, but still she wanted to know something about the people who were about to become her companions.
“This is yours,” Kayla told her, gesturing toward a doorway on their right. It was the second to the last one from the end of the hallway and Sarena wondered whether that had any particular significance to her position there.
“Bathe,” Kayla instructed her, wrinkling her nose noticeably. “You’ll find clothes,” she added. “And then stay here. I’ll come back for you.”
She turned away without waiting to see whether Sarena understood and strode purposefully back down the hallway.
Sarena watched her go for a moment and then turned back to face the door. Staring at it, she discovered that it did not have a handle with which to open it. Her heart sank, realizing that any semblance of privacy was probably gone from her life now. She pushed hard against the dull-surfaced plate where the handle should have been and then stopped in surprise when the door did not open.
Studying the panel, she tried again—with the same results. She peering down the hallway, looking to see whether Kayla was still there, and wondered how the woman would react when she returned to find Sarena still standing in the hallway outside the door, still unbathed and in the same tattered and soiled clothing.
Sarena wondered if Kayla was supposed to have given her some kind of key, but had forgotten to leave it with her in her haste to leave. She turned back to the door, studied it for a moment, and then tried again. Again, the door remained closed.
Experimentally, she pressed harder on the plate, pushing until the tension in her fingers was almost painful. The panel suddenly depressed slightly, something clicked inside the door, and it began to open.
Sarena pulled her hand away as if the door panel had carried a charge. It had not, in fact, shocked her. Instead, it had only startled her with its sudden movement. Cautiously, she took a step backward and then peered into the room through narrow gap between the door and the doorframe.
She could see almost nothing of the room’s interior through the narrow gap. What it mostly revealed was a wall, a neutral beige or white in color, but that was all she could discern of what lay beyond the door. Carefully, she pushed lightly on the door, opening it only a few additional centimeters. The door, though, did not stop. Instead, it opened nearly all of the way, leaving Sarena to stare into what was to be her new home.
The interior was dim and filled with deep gray shadows. The amount of furniture that it appeared to contain surprised, for she had expected little more than a small bed and perhaps small chest of drawers. What she saw instead differed greatly from her vision.
The bed was wider than she had expected. She guessed that the mattress was at least a double in width and wondered why she might need such a large one.
Am I going to be sharing the room?
Although it was possible, that she might have the share the room—and the bed—seemed unlikely to her, based on the general extravagance that she had witnessed so far within the complex. Sarena stepped inside, pausing just inside the doorway, and looked around.
What appeared to be a sizable closet was on the opposite wall from the bed. Two chest of drawers and a smaller cabinet near the bed were the first pieces other furniture that she noticed.
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