Chapter 18: Getting bullied
"I'll be back some time before dinner," Evelyn said, already pulling on her jacket. "I want to send a letter to Aldric before the week is out."
The door clicked shut behind her. Then she was gone.
She'd smiled warmly at Elayna. The usual warmth in her smile had grown a bit warmer since the talk last night.
Elayna sat on the edge of her bed and listened to the quiet for a moment.
Kiri had left an hour ago without announcement, like she usually did. She was simply there one moment and then simply not the other moment, her only announcement of leaving had been the door closing with a soft click. Zyvara had also gone, shortly after Kiri left, with her bag slung over her shoulder and a loud declaration that she was going to the training halls to find someone to fight, apparently still very annoyed that her magic-orbs had been proving less effective than she wanted them to be.
And now Evelyn had left.
The dorm was empty.
Elayna looked around it for a moment.
Aldric, she thought about the brief conversation she just had with Evelyn. I didn't know she had a brother.
She sat with that for a second. With a slightly surprised feeling of learning something new about someone you'd just started to think you knew. She found she didn't actually know much about her friends, which was something she wanted to fix in the future. Then something else arrived behind it, thinking about Evelyn going to write letters.
Oh. Right.
The letters.
She straightened up immediately. I should write them now that nobody’s around.
She retrieved the parchment and ink from her desk drawer and sat down properly, smoothing the first sheet flat with her palm. The afternoon light came through the window at a low angle, warm and gentle. She thought for a moment. Then she began.
Father,
It has now been a week and I think you would be pleased with how things are going for me. Although knowing you, you would probably still find things to worry about regardless of what I say. So, I will tell you the good things first and then you can worry about them in whatever order feels right to you.
Training is going very well. I spar every day for many hours against all my fellow first years who each have different magic types and fighting styles, and I have been winning many of my fights. Honestly, I have been winning most of them, there's only a handful of people I sometimes lose against. We also had a joint session with the second-year students this week which was very exciting. I only lost once, to a second year with a spear and metal-transformation magic that I didn't... no, couldn't, really react to properly, he's pretty good. But I think I would do a lot better if I fought him again. I've also been working on my lightning magic in the evenings when I have time, I promise I’ve been very careful with it.
My roommates are all very kind. One of them does my hair sometimes when it needs doing. And the other two are very kind and interesting people, they’re all very reliable and they're already my friends.
The food here is good and I have been eating properly and enough. I promise.
I've had some slightly difficult things to figure out but my friends have been very helpful and I'm doing well. I really am doing fine here and I’m also still very excited and happy about studying and training here.
I miss you very much.
— Elayna
She paused and reread it.
She had not mentioned Cait.
She thought about mentioning Cait. Then she thought about what her father's face would do upon reading that there was someone Elayna was interested in. Someone Elayna was in a relationship with. Someone she had kissed. A tall beautiful, confident girl who had grabbed her thigh and—
Yeah, she told herself, firmly. Absolutely the right call to not tell him...yet.
She suspected her father probably didn't want her to really be with anyone. She was more certain of this as of late, when she thought back on how he had been when she was growing up. Now that she had better awareness of such things, she was very certain that her father had been very loving and very doting, but she was also fairly certain he had been extremely overprotective of her. Every time some people would visit and there was a person around Elayna's age, that person would first look interested in her, and try awkwardly to talk to her, but then would barely even look at her after her father had looked at or 'talked' to them. He was also the one who objected the most to her outings, and had only agreed to it if Vaelithra would be beside her at all times.
... Yeah, he was probably a bit overprotective, she thought, with a fond feeling in her chest. Probably still is. She also thought, with a small grin.
She set the letter aside.
Then reached for the second sheet.
Writing her mother's letter was a lot easier.
Mother,
I am well. I wanted to tell you about the people here because I think you would like them.
My roommates are: Evelyn, who is steady and warm and responsible, she reminds me of Selayne sometimes, in the way that she listens well and tells me things I should know. And also in the way that she doesn't make you feel silly for saying things out loud that you're not sure about. She helped me recently with something I was really struggling with, and she didn’t laugh at me, she did smile at me a lot, but those were all kind smiles.
Then there’s the fox-kin Kiri, who barely speaks and always has the exact same expression, ever, which is no expression really, it's very hard to read her but she's been very nice and so. She has the most beautiful white fox tail I have ever seen. It’s so large and fluffy.
And then there’s Zyvara, who I think you would find alarming at first and then quietly very funny, she is a Zy'kael... A race I had never heard about, I still don’t really know much about her race, she has small dark horns and the most startling red eyes, like really, they're large and the brightest, clearest red, and she's very good at staring. She's a bit loud and blunt and direct, she says exactly what she wants and whenever she wants, which is sometimes very funny and sometimes a bit rude I suppose, but she doesn’t mean ill.
I miss Selayne mom. I miss all of them, my brothers and sisters. I've been thinking about all of you more than I expected to. And how is everyone? I keep meaning to ask and then I keep forgetting.
Training has gone well but I'll spare you the details since I know it isn't your favorite topic, but I think you should know I have been doing very well and I am proud of myself for that.
There is also—
She stopped.
Looked at the sentence she'd started.
Her face went warm.
She pulled at the hem of her sleeve. Then wrote, in slightly smaller and slightly more careful letters than the rest, almost imagining herself whispering the words:
There is also someone here who I think I might like. She is...uhm, very much. I'm not sure how else to put it, she’s just a lot of things. A lot of new things for me. I haven't quite figured out what to do about it all yet, her I mean. But I thought you should know... I don't know what to say really. But she’s really pretty... And really strong. Quite tall as well...Yes, that sums her up very well.
I miss you and everyone a lot.
— Your Elayna
She stared at what she'd written for a long moment.
Stared hard at the last few sentences about Caitlynn.
Folded the letter before she would change her mind.
The letter to Mira was different.
She sat with the blank sheet in front of her and felt the very distinct and specific warmth she did when thinking about Mira. She thought about Mira’s laugh and her jokes, the way she’d be serious in the moment helping Elayna dress and then the next moment she’d pinch her cheeks and tease her. Elayna thought about Mira’s smell of lavender in her warm hugs, she thought about their late-night talks in Elayna’s room. Thought about how she basically thought of Mira as her third sister.
She put pen to paper and wrote quickly. About the dorm, the food, Kiri's emotionless expression and her fluffy tail, Zyvara's unique race and magic, Evelyn doing her hair in the mornings and the talk they had. She wrote about the sparring, much more detailed than what she’d written to her mother or father, because Mira would want to know and would ask follow-up questions in her reply that Elayna was already looking forward to answering. She wrote about her roommates and about the second years and how the joint session had gone.
And then, without pausing, without looking away, without giving herself time to think better of it:
There is a girl here, Mira. Her name is Caitlynn. She's a pink haired Cat-kin and she is unreasonably pretty and a really strong fighter, the strongest in our year, actually. She has kind of been teasing me since the very first day we met, but she’s not mean! She kissed me on a rooftop a couple of days ago and I don’t think I have been the same since... She’s uh. My girlfriend.
I kind of like her. Kind of really like her. Very much, I think. I don't really know what to do. I talked to Evelyn, my roommate, about it yesterday and that helped a lot but there’s still so many things I don’t know how to deal with. But I’m experiencing many new things which you told me to do so don’t get mad at me for already having a girlfriend, that’s supposed to be a good thing. You told me that.
I hope you’re not too bored there without me. I really miss our talks, you know those talks you'd reprimand me for getting too excited about, even though you started most of them.
— Elayna
Also. Please don't tell Father about Caitlynn. I’ll tell him myself. Some time. Promise.
She set the quill down.
Her face was warm. Her ears were warmer. She’d shared much more than she had intended to. But Mira would be nice and helpful, even though Elayna was sure she would get yelled at in Mira’s response letter.
She looked around the empty dorm purely on instinct, and found it to be completely empty, which still relieved her.
She then gathered all three letters and held them together as she closed her eyes to cast the spell.
Her father’s spell. Which he'd improved from a simple object-teleportation spell into one that went directly to a receiving device he'd created. Elayna never questioned how it worked, or how he had simply modified an existing spell so easily just to assist with something as mundane as letter-sending.
She opened her eyes.
Looked over her shoulder. Again, making sure no one saw.
They didn’t come in since I checked, she thought. Which had been about five seconds ago. She let out a small private exhale of relief, and thought: Good.
She sent the letters. Her parents and Mira said they’d reply her second letters, so she expected to hear back within a day or two. She was excited to hear from them.
Afterward she lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling.
The afternoon light had shifted slightly. The dorm was still quiet. Somewhere further in the building she could hear distant footsteps and the muffled sounds of other students going about whatever other students did on an early afternoon when classes had finished as early as they did today.
She thought about the conversation last night on the bathroom tiles.
About the candle. About Evelyn's face going pink and how her own face had probably gone more red than pink. And about the nice-funny feeling and what it actually meant now that she had a name for it, which was considerably more embarrassing than not knowing had been, and was also now considerably harder to ignore.
Then she thought about Cait.
Thought a lot about Cait.
Specifically about the thigh-grab. About the hard squeeze and the funny feeling coming after that. Then she thought of what Evelyn had said that meant... Your body is getting excited by the idea of being intimate with Cait. Which meant, Elayna thought, that when Caitlynn had squeezed her thigh yesterday, her body told Elayna a very specific thing about her feelings for Cait. Her body was telling her that she wanted to or was interested in having sex—
Her hands went over her face fast, almost slapping herself.
Stop thinking about it! she told herself.
She kept thinking about it.
... Stop.
She was of course, still thinking about it.
You, she informed herself, need to focus on other things. Evelyn said that it was completely normal for couples to not do such things for even a year.
A short pause.
... A year. Why...why does saying that it could be a year make me feel so strange!
She was still thinking about it when the door opened.
She didn't register it immediately, she still had her hands over her face, thoughts somewhere they had no business being in a dignified woman’s mind, and by the time she'd registered that the door had opened and someone had walked in and crossed the room. The someone was already there, standing beside her bed.
She lowered her hands.
That someone was Cait.
Pink hair down. Still in her combat uniform this late after classes, which suggested she'd most likely been at the training halls. She looked down at Elayna on the bed with that carefree and easy energy, the unfairly attractive teasing smirk on her face gave nothing away about why she'd come.
"Hey," she said softly.
"H—" Elayna, realizing she was still lying down, sat up slightly. "Hi."
Cait looked around the room with a glance.
"Where is everyone?"
"They're all out," Elayna said, automatically, the way you answered a simple question before your brain had caught up with the full meaning of what the answer implied.
A beat of silence.
Cait smiled.
It started at the corner of her mouth and quickly reached her eyes, a knowing and cunning expression. An expression of someone who had just been handed information they found useful and pleasing.
Elayna's brain caught up as she saw Cait’s expression become a bit unsettling.
Oh, she thought.
I'm alone.
Cait is here.
And I’m still lying on my bed...
Her face went deep pink in approximately one second.
Cait looked at her and did not comment on the pink, and before Elayna had processed what was happening—
Cait, extremely relaxed and unhurried, put one knee on the bed and leaned over Elayna then placed that one knee on the bed a bit closer, beside Elayna's thigh.
Then she swung her other leg over Elayna. Her long pink hair swept with the motion a half second behind, trailing briefly through the air before falling softly around her shoulders and over one side of her face.
She was kneeling over her now, with her knees brushing on each side of Elayna's thighs, not sitting on her, just there with the weight of her knees brushing against the outside of Elayna's thighs. Cait softly threw her head back, her pink hair now falling mostly behind her. She looked down at Elayna with bright green eyes full of mirth and a pleased smile, and said nothing for a moment.
Just looked down at her.
Realizing the situation she was now somehow in. Under Caitlynn. Who was straddling her. "Wh—" Elayna started. "What are you—"
"You're very pink," Cait interrupted, pleasantly. "Were even before I straddled you, before I came in here."
"That’s not—"
Cait tilted her head to the side. "Were you thinking about me?"
The question arrived simply and innocently. But at the same time Cait sounded completely unbothered about the answer because she already knew what the answer was.
Elayna didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. She looked to the side.
The wall was extremely interesting. Elayna realized she hadn’t properly looked at the wall she was sleeping next to, so she wasn’t sure if it would maybe do something to her in the future or something. That was something you should think about. So, she studied it.
Cait didn't push the question. Didn't move closer. Just let Elayna look at the wall with her pink face, which was its own answer to the question and they both knew it.
"Hm. I thought so. Well, I think a lot about you as well Elayna" Cait said, softly.
Elayna quickly looked back.
Cait then placed her hands next to her shoulders and leaned down.
A soft giggle. “Did hearing that make you happy?”
“...” Elayna still couldn’t find her voice, she was only capable of feeling her face heat up.
Cait leaned down further, her hot-pink hair falling enchantingly, slowly forward around Elayna's face and closing them into a small warm world Elayna instantly felt that she had no interest in leaving.
Their noses were almost touching now. Close enough that Elayna could feel the warmth of her breath, close enough that the green eyes were basically all she could see, and then Cait leaned closer and kissed her.
Softly and gently.
And then immediately again before Elayna had finished processing the first one.
Elayna, already somewhere between dazed and drunk on the closeness of it. From the warmth of Cait's breath, the hot-pink hair around her face brushing her cheeks. Kissed Cait back naturally without thinking. Without realizing that it wasn't entirely like her to kiss back so easily. So eagerly.
This appeared to be something Cait had been waiting for. An invitation. An answer. Cait made a gently vibrating, pleased hum against Elayna’s mouth and shifted forward onto her elbows until they rested right next to Elayna’s ears. Then she kissed her again. Her upper lip. Her lower lip. Then a quick peck on both lips — a quick smack on Elayna's lips before kissing her lower lip again. The kisses kept coming, unhurried and thorough, Cait’s warm mouth coming back each time before Elayna had any idea where they would come back next time or if it would even stop.
It didn’t stop. There was no pause in it. No moment where Cait leaned back and gave her room to breathe or think or to even have a chance at kissing her back properly. Cait’s full lips kept finding hers again and again and again with a calm, cruel efficiency. Cait knew exactly what she was doing and had no intentions of holding back.
Elayna’s mouth was getting bullied.
Elayna didn’t feel like one would when getting bullied.
The warmth had already arrived, the warmth she'd described to Evelyn on the bathroom tiles, and it was quite familiar now, something she could recognize. It moved downward the way only that specific warmth did, settling low in her belly which Elayna now understood and translated as her body growing excited. This was something that she wished she didn't understand in this moment, because understanding it made it much harder to ignore.
Cait's calloused hand found her jaw, warm and careful, making something warm tighten in Elayna's chest. The hand tilted her face up slightly and she kissed Elayna’s upper lip, then locked firmly with her lower lip with another pleased hum. And then yet another peck on both.
Elayna could distantly tell that she probably had a dreamy expression forming on her face.
And Cait’s soft lips were still coming down against hers.
Her lips parted slightly. Came down again.
Then Cait’s teeth and canines had Elayna’s lower lip in a firm but gentle bite, softly tugging her lower lip back and letting it snap against her mouth—
Elayna felt a sound escape her. A sound of something between a pleased exhale and a mewl.
Then Cait dove in again and almost crashed their mouths together, and again, wrapped her lips firmly around Elayna’s now slightly sensitive lower lip which drew another undignified sound out of her. Cait noticeably became encouraged by the noises Elayna was making and never seemed intent on letting up. She just kept kissing her, again and again and again.
Elayna eventually, and slightly out of nowhere, felt her heart jump as she realized this kissing truly wasn’t stopping anytime soon. Cait had been kissing her for what must have been minutes, it felt like she'd never stop. Elayna’s mind travelled to last night where she remembered Evelyn telling her she needs to communicate with Cait before moving forward, before doing something she wasn’t comfortable with.
Elayna found, internally, very much against her will, that she didn’t exactly find this to be something she wasn't comfortable with. In fact, somewhere in the last minute or so, Elayna had quietly, and completely, accepted her fate... And had also embarrassingly, found that she thought this to be a pretty good fate...
But still. Eventually, after a pretty good while, Elayna realized she'd been lying in bed kissing Caitlynn for many, many minutes, and Elayna’s overwhelmed and innocent mind abruptly came to the slightly unhinged conclusion:
—I’m—I’m not ready to have s-sex with Caitlynn yet!
Her hands which had at some point, found Caitlynn’s arms close to her head and were gently holding them, let go and went up to Cait's shoulders.
She gripped them. Tried to gently push Cait off.
And realized immediately and helplessly that Cait’s shoulders did not move. Elayna pushed slightly harder but Cait did not budge. Not even the tiniest bit. She felt that same impossible density under the deceptively soft skin she had found under Cait’s arm the other day, warm and soft and completely solid, utterly immovable under her palms.
Something in her body reacted to the fact that she couldn’t physically budge Caitlynn. That familiar tingling announced itself between her legs immediately, and her whole lower body tensed up with it.
She froze.
That feeling. That tingling feeling between her legs was something she recognized and while Elayna did not exactly appreciate recognizing it, she appreciated recognizing that, more than her body doing something new and strange.
No, she thought, with desperate urgency, directed entirely inward. I-I can’t handle my body doing weirder things now! We are not doing this right now. She tried to tell her body.
Her body did not appear to be listening. That nice-funny feeling made itself very present.
Stop, she told it firmly. Please stop.
It did not stop.
Elayna gave up on moving Cait's shoulders entirely and let her hands fall back to Cait's arms, where she now had to refrain her fingers from squeezing down. Realizing that would probably just make things worse...maybe not probably.
Cait had of course sensed the change in Elayna's mood, and no doubt felt the pushing against her shoulders. She had leaned back slightly and was now looking down at her with a curious expression and a contextually very unhelpful wide smile.
And Elayna, before she'd really decided to, closed her eyes, because looking at Cait's face while saying what she was about to say was simply not something she was capable of.
She took a deep breath and said, at a volume higher than intended:
"We need to talk first!"
Silence.
She kept her eyes closed.
“We need to talk! Before —" she continued, “before we—before we go any further we need to talk about things! We n-need to communicate and you need to talk to me before we do more... Things!” She stopped. Took a deep breath, and very slowly opened her eyes.
Cait was looking down at her with what Elayna thought was the most amused expression she had ever seen on Cait.
She looked to the side to the wall again. “Cait. Please... Don’t tease me... I don’t know what’s going on.” She added in a small, resigned voice.
A short silence passed between them.
Then Cait laughed, it started as a soft giggle that grew into a warmer laugh. Then she said, with genuine warmth while also in the tone of someone trying very hard not to break out into laughter again:
"What — what exactly did you think was about to happen? What did you think I was about to do?" Elayna thought she could hear the wide smile on Cait’s face.
Elayna's face went from a deep pink to a clear red.
Then she felt some frustration replace the embarrassment she had been feeling.
“You!... You know... We were going to! You were... You were going to do more than...more than kissing?”
Elayna was silent for a while.
Then she realized. They were, actually only kissing the whole time and Cait never did anything else than kiss her or hold Elayna’s jaw in her palm.
Elayna was, again, silent for a while.
“... M-maybe you weren’t going to do anything more but...” Elayna looked back and shyly up to Cait with an unsure and conflicted expression. “If you were... We need to... You need to talk to me before going further...”
Cait chuckled softly. "Elayna," she said, in a tone like she was gently scolding Elayna.
Elayna looked to the side again. And answered, in a small voice laced with the tiniest bit of frustration: "... What."
Another soft chuckle. "Well now. Start with looking at me."
Elayna hesitantly looked back and met her eyes.
Cait was looking at her, and not with a teasing smile, not with her green eyes dancing in amusement. But with something gentler. Something warm and real and very visibly fond. Cait’s expression was clearly very amused but not in the form of amusement which always led to teasing, Elayna instead thought she just looked very glad, truly and honestly glad... For some unknown reason...
"You are right," Cait said simply.
Elayna blinked.
“We should talk Elayna,” she said, she tilted her head slightly, and this time with a small but undoubtedly teasing smile. “We could go talk right now in—” a short pause, “my room.”
Elayna looked at her.
"...Your room?" she said, with the clear confusion coming from someone who knew Cait well enough to know she said exactly what she meant, if she said room she meant room. She still had to ask. "Don’t you mean your dorm?"
Cait didn’t answer, she only looked down at her.
And smiled.
The wide one. The smile with her short but sharp canines on display. The smile that said Cait was extremely pleased or said Cait was about to be extremely pleased.