The Problem With Pink Hair and Cat Ears

The letters had arrived that day a while after classes.

All three of them, they’d been dropped through the mail slot of the dormitory door, sealed with the familiar wax seal crest of count Aie’atelle, the fake family name Elayna was currently living under. Elayna had picked them up immediately, taken them back to her bed, and was now lying on her back holding them above her face one by one, reading in the quiet of the afternoon.

She opened her father's first.

My Elayna,

I received your letter and I am very glad to hear things are going well. I expected nothing less from you Elayna. You are my daughter after all, and I have always known you were more than capable of handling yourself.

That being said.

I want you to know sweetheart, that I think about you every day. Since you left for the academy the palace feels considerably less colorful and lively. Mira has also been insufferable company since you left.

Your training results are impressive and of course I am proud of you, though I'm reminding you now as I will likely remind you in every letter. Be careful with your lightning magic. Do not rush it. I know that you know this, but I am telling you because I am your father and I know you. And understand you are probably very eager to use it.

I am also very glad to hear your roommates are kind and that you have made friends. I of course, had complete confidence that you would. Complete confidence.

There is one small thing I wanted to ask you, completely casually and with no ulterior motive behind it.

Would you perhaps mind, if a familiar face from the palace were to join the academy sometime soon? Someone you know well and trust completely. Someone who could benefit from, let's say... some of the educational opportunities and experiences your academy may provide. I only ask because it has occurred to me recently that such an arrangement might be mutually beneficial for everyone involved, namely you and this person. I wanted your thoughts on it before anything is decided. I am simply asking. As a question. With no plans already in motion.

I miss you very much Elayna, ae'lani at irae'el

— Your loving Father

P.S. You said you have been eating enough and properly. I have no doubt you’ve been eating enough. Which is also my concern. Please tell me you’ve been eating enough. And only enough, I know you harbor a deep passion for food and especially sweets. So Please Elayna. Please eat properly.

Elayna lowered the letter slightly and stared at the ceiling for a moment.

Ae'lani at irae'el.

Which meant, 'My beautiful everything'. In Vael'in, which is what the Elves called their own language, in their own tongue. In Imperial, it was simply called elvish. Elayna felt a smile form on her face she couldn't get rid of.

"Please tell me you’ve been eating enough. And only enough... Please eat properly", she thought. And felt slightly embarrassed.

Well... perhaps I have been eating a bit more than what I should... But! I’ve also been training a lot more than usual!...

...Which wasn’t exactly true. And Elayna knew that.

Then she thought what her father also had said: Familiar face joining the academy.

She pictured her father sitting at his desk, writing that part, nodding to himself as if it was completely normal for someone to simply send a person to the imperial academy, where a few million applied each year and only a few hundred got in. And he, the emperor, was about to just send someone in only to look after his daughter.

She smiled. Then realized.

That her father had most likely already decided on sending someone from the palace to look after her, which at first sounded like a great idea. But then she realized that it would probably be someone who would be there to observe and report to her father, rather than someone who would come to be her friend and secretly be a bodyguard for her.

...She should probably try to prevent her father from sending this someone to the academy. Shouldn't she? Although it had probably already been decided. She sighed.

Elayna folded the letter carefully and picked up the second one.

Her mother's letter was shorter and warmer.

Elayna,

I am so glad to hear from you. Your friends sound wonderful. Evelyn especially sounds like exactly the kind of person I would want beside you. I am glad you have her.

Your siblings are all well. I don't have great contact with all of them as you know but I hear from them enough and can say that everyone is fine and that they all miss you. Selayne told me she’d be able to and would send a letter.

Now. About the girl.

I noticed you said she. Which tells me enough for now. But if it becomes something serious, I’d love to hear more about her honey.

I want you to be happy Elayna, more than anything. But I also know you, my love, I know that you have a tendency to trust very easily and to sometimes think the best of people before you have enough reason to even begin with thinking 'good' of them. So I am asking you, very gently and with all the love I have for you, to be careful. Not to be skeptical or untrusting of her. Just careful. Make sure this person deserves the trust you give them.

And please talk to that friend you mentioned. Evelyn. Talk to her about these things and about your supposed relationship with this girl. From what you’ve told me Evelyn sounds sensible and kind, but if you still feel you need my help with any of this, send me a letter immediately. I mean that Elayna.

The rest I trust you with completely.

All my love, your mother.

Elayna read the letter twice.

Selayne would send a letter.

She felt a small but not subtle tug somewhere in her chest at that. She missed Selayne. She missed all of them, her brothers, her sisters, her parents and her friends at the imperial palace. She missed being surrounded by her family. She missed their hugs and laughs, their nagging and scolding. She always knew she’d miss them, she just hadn't expected to miss them this much.

She laid there for a moment with the letter on her chest, looking at the ceiling with mild melancholy.

Then she picked up and read Mira's.

Mira's letter felt longer than both combined and had clearly been written at some speed.

ELAYNA!

How could you already have a girlfriend?! I leave you alone for barely more than a week and you've already, No, first things first.

I hope you have not let yourself been taken advantage of already. You are the most trusting person I have ever met in my entire life and I say that with tremendous love and also tremendous alarm. This Caitlynn could be anyone. She could be very charming and very pretty and very amazing as you’ve described her. And she could have you completely fooled and you would smile at her and nod and think everything about her and what she’d be saying to be wonderful! So you had better make absolutely certain that this person is worth your trust before you go giving it all away with that dumb, clueless, big cute smile of yours.

...That said...

ELAYNA! You have a GIRLFRIEND!? I genuinely thought we would be waiting years for this. Years! I thought you'd finish the academy and come home and I would have to personally introduce you to every suitable person in the empire before you'd come out of your innocent shell. I’m honestly surprised you even realized someone was interested in you, but I'm taking a wild guess here and I'm guessing she did all the heavy lifting. But here you are! One week! A girlfriend!

Tell me everything about her. I mean everything. Leave nothing out. What does she look like. How did she make you feel. What does she say to you. Does she treat you well. Does she make you laugh. Have you kissed yet? I want every detail you have. Every detail, Elayna... even the graphic ones.

Also, Vaelithra says she wishes you well and that she misses hitting you with a practice sword and that you had better not be getting lazy with your footwork.

Write back as soon as you can.

— Mira

P.S. Of course I am not telling your father, that old coot would send a covert army down there if he found out. And now don't you go telling him I called him an old coot. He's already been nagging at me about how depressed I've been, like he's any better.

Elayna read the postscript twice and laughed and felt warmth and something that was very close to if not outright relief.

Then she read the part where Mira demanded her to tell her everything about Cait and leave nothing out.

Everything.

When she thought to herself what everything, about Caitlynn meant. Her mind went immediately, without control to two days ago. To Caitlynn’s room. To sitting on Cait’s thighs kissing her, with Cait’s strong, warm hands on her sides.

It went to the moment both of Cait’s hands had snaked their way down and firmly landed on her rear before her fingers had sunk into it. When Elayna’s eyes had opened wide in surprise, finding Cait already staring straight back at her with a delighted expression, and she’d asked Elayna “too much?” in that ridiculously innocent voice.

Elayna had not been able to answer for a long time.

Long enough that Cait, who had been watching her with her wide pupils and a very pleased expression, had eventually tilted her head and said in a light sing-song voice:

"Should I grab your butt again so we can make sure?"

The sound that had come out of Elayna at that question was not dignified, and it was definitely not quiet or subtle. It was something strangled and bizarre which had jumped its way out of Elayna’s mouth as her mind couldn’t believe what Caitlynn had just asked her.

Cait had laughed. Had immediately and completely burst into a full warm laugh and had followed the laugh with a series of quick pecks to Elayna's lips and to the corner of her mouth while calling her cute and adorable.

Elayna had attempted to back away from the pecking onslaught, and had made the tactical error of forgetting she was sitting on Cait’s thighs.

And she had then fallen straight backwards.

She landed flat on her back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling above her for one disoriented second, and then Cait was there, above her. Cait had followed after her immediately, not lying with her weight on top of Elayna but hovering over her, the same way she had done previously that day in Elayna's room, with her long pink hair falling around both of their faces and closing them into that small warm world again.

Elayna had felt her heart tighten immediately. Had felt the warmth that had already been present in her body intensify considerably. Had felt, in a small and alarmed part of her brain that was still somewhat functioning, that she also hadn’t actually been against the butt-grab.

We're going too fast, she'd thought then. I sort of — sort of want her to touch it again!?... Wait what?! I don’t think I’m — am I ready for it? I don't know what I'm—

Looking up at a smiling Cait she’d managed quietly: "T-too much, Cait."

Cait had looked down at her for a moment. Then she’d smiled a wide and warm smile, and laughed softly.

And then leaned down and pressed one last soft kiss to Elayna's lips.

"Of course baby." she'd said then.

Cait had straightened up and she took Elayna's hands, pulled her back up sitting easily with a strength that Elayna was starting to find she had extremely complicated feelings about.

Then Cait had said they should stop there, that they couldn’t sit and kiss all day even though Cait would love to do that some time, which Elayna had gone beet red at but not commented on. Cait had told her she’d come join them all later for dinner and kissed Elayna a temporary goodbye.

And that had been that.

Elayna was still lying on the bed.

She had just finished reading Mira's letter and was currently hugging it gently at her chest with her arms folded over it, staring at the ceiling with an expression she herself wasn't aware of.

It was a happy expression. A slightly dreamy one. Elayna was replaying the memory about Cait which she found pleasant instead of embarrassing.

No, she thought suddenly, firmly. I cannot tell Mira all of... that. I cannot tell Mira any of this about Caitlynn. Mira would go crazy—Mira would—

"You know," said a flat voice from the middle of the room, "I’m not sure what I was expecting to see first coming in here. I suppose the Cait face should have been close at the top of the list."

Elayna came back to herself.

Zyvara was standing in the middle of her room on her way to her bed, bag over one shoulder, large red eyes fixed on Elayna with an expression saying she'd seen this face too many times recently and was developing distinctly negative opinions about it.

Evelyn was sitting on her bed with a book, which she had apparently lowered at some point to observe the situation. Kiri was at her desk, as Kiri always was. Neither of them had said anything, they had presumably just been watching Elayna smile at the ceiling for however long she'd been doing that.

Elayna's face went warm.

"I wasn't—" she started.

"You were," Zyvara interrupted with a dry tone.

Elayna looked directly at the red eyes with a furrow, "I was just reading my letters—"

"You were not reading your letters. Maybe your boobs were reading them..." Zyvara pointed directly at Elayna's face. "YOU, are lying there with your letters on your chest thinking about Caitlynn." She gestured vaguely at Elayna's face. "It’s so obvious it's almost boring. The Cait face."

Elayna sat up straight, letters clutched to her chest. Her face was pink. Her ears were warm.

She slowly opened her mouth.

What came out — and she would later, no forever, be unable to fully explain why this was something that ever came out of her was:

"A-are you maybe jealous!?" she said, with a small pout and a questioning look directed at Zyvara.

A complete silence fell over the dormitory.

The silence broke when Evelyn's book hit her lap. Her hand came up to her mouth. She held it in for approximately one second before the laugh escaped. And not a small one she tried to contain, it was a proper laugh, loud and unguarded and completely uncontrollable.

Kiri looked up from her desk. Looked at Elayna and Zyvara.

Zyvara stared at Elayna.

An unbelieving stare. A stare of someone whose brain had received information from their ears it could not understand or try to understand and was stuck in the process of trying to.

Elayna, watching Zyvara's disbelieving face, felt herself begin to waver almost immediately. Her pout softened. She opened her mouth to apologize—

"...What..." Zyvara said. And not angrily. Not exactly directed at Elayna. And it didn’t sound like a question. Just... What.

Zyvara walked slowly across the room, dropped silently onto her bed, lay flat on her back, and stared at the ceiling with a strange expression. Then said, quietly to herself:

“...What.”

Nobody said anything.

Evelyn’s laugh had died down and she was laughing softly, her hand was over her mouth, and her shoulders were trembling slightly.

Kiri looked back at her desk.

Elayna sat on her bed holding her letters, then lay down on her side as she felt her face go warm out of either embarrassment or shame. She didn’t know. She turned her back against the room and looked at the wall which was, as always, completely innocent of drama or awkwardness.

Elayna, agreed a little with Zyvara.

W-what? What did I just say. Why did I just say that.

The room was quiet for a long while. After Zyvara had collected herself, she brought up a completely unrelated topic and the conversations naturally followed until the dinner bell rang.

Dinner came and went. Cait didn’t join this time.

The conversation at the table had been normal, about training, when they’d fight the second years again, Zyvara who apparently had an ongoing personal grievance with a third year who kept dodging and making fun of her orbs.

After dinner they walked back to the dorm, and the evening settled.

When they got into the dorm and settled down. Elayna sat on her bed for a while before making a quiet decision.

To go train.

She changed into her training clothes, picked up her sword and holstered it at her hip and told the room she was going to the training halls.

Evelyn looked up from her book with a warm smile and told Elayna to have fun. Zyvara told Elayna to actually train and not get caught up in staring at the seniors... which Elayna innocently and firmly nodded to as genuine advice rather than Zyvara making fun of her. Kiri's eyes moved briefly to Elayna and then back to her desk after giving her an approving hm.

And so, Elayna left for the training halls.

Elayna had been spending a lot of time in her own head lately. She knew this. Her mind had been stuck thinking about her relationship with Cait, the talk with Evelyn, the letters. And all of it had taken up a considerable and probably an undeserved amount of her time over the past week. She didn’t think it had been a waste of time. She truly thought to herself that she had needed all of this time to sort her thoughts out. They’d been incredibly complicated and conflicted thoughts. And she was privately very happy with how things currently were. She had three roommates who’d become her friends, who were all pretty amazing in their own way. And she also had... An incredible girlfriend, who Elayna thought was amazing in pretty much every way. Maybe too amazing, even.

But she had also, she was now admitting to herself, been neglecting the other things she was here for.

One important thing in particular. Fighting.

She was here to get better at it. That was basically the point of Elayna coming to the academy. It was basically the point of the academy itself.

The headmistress said we’d been given the tools, she thought, adjusting her sword strap as she walked. It's up to us to use them.

I’ve been using none of these tools this week.

The main entrance of the training halls opened onto a wide corridor that branched immediately into more corridors, and those into more, and through the open archways along each one she could see—

She stopped walking.

The courtyards were enormous, which she already knew of course. Each one the size of at least a small field, and there were so incredibly many of them. So many corridors and archways that she couldn’t see from the main entrance where she was standing. All of the courtyards she could see were full.

Not full the way they were during class time, with a whole year or two split into groups organized and supervised by Karzen or Voss. They were full in the way of people flocking up and gathering over time. There were students everywhere, in almost every courtyard she could see, fighting and practicing and drilling forms and watching each other and sparring in groups. Hundreds of them. All years, she could tell from the uniforms. She spotted first years, second years, third, fourth and fifth years, and even what looked like sixth year students in some of the courtyards further away, fighting with an intensity that was easily audible from where she was standing.

She stood on the main walkway and looked.

Of course, she thought, slightly embarrassed at herself. Of course this is what they do.

The classes were introductions. Starting points. The academy gave you the foundation and the rest was yours. Your time, your effort, your choice. There was no restriction. There never had been, never would be. She could come here every evening and train until midnight if she wanted to and nobody would stop her or even remark on it because this was simply what students here did.

The headmistress had implied this on the first day.

Elayna had heard it but not fully understood it until this moment, standing in the middle of the training halls, watching hundreds of students sparring in the last light of the evening.

She felt a bit embarrassed but also suddenly very motivated.

I could have been coming here since the first day.

She started walking again, moving along the main walkway, looking through the archways as she passed. A pair of second years she vaguely recognized were helping correct each others footwork. A group of four first years were watching a fifth do something complicated with wind magic. Two older students, fifth years by the look of their uniforms, were fighting with a ferocity that made her slow her pace for a moment just to watch. She could barely track their movements, and it looked like they were maybe warming up.

This was what the academy actually was.

Not the classes and not the mana theory lectures. This, the hundreds of students here by choice, fighting because they wanted to be better, because getting better was the whole point.

She was still thinking this when she heard it, felt her long, pointy ears twitch. Elayna had always had good hearing.

And this was a very distinct, sharp sound she vaguely recognized.

Not the general noise of the training hall, that was everywhere around her. A constant mix of heavy impacts and voices of large groups and magic discharge and blasts blurring into each other from every courtyard she passed.

This was a specific sound. A blunt and sharp impact of something hard, the sound of a strike landing against metal.

She followed it.

The courtyard was large and stone-grounded, uneven and harsh, several huge boulders and rocks placed throughout it. No grass anywhere, just stone and the gaps and cracks between them on the ground.

And in the middle of the courtyard, beside a boulder as wide and tall as a small house, Cait and Thra'kara were fighting.

Elayna stopped at the archway.

The red shimmer of Cait's body enhancement was around her. And not the brief flare she'd barely caught last time she’d seen it, but a sustained glow that moved with her like a heat haze around her. Cait was moving fast, ridiculously fast. Her swords were both a blur relentlessly swinging down on Thra’kara’s forearms as she brought them up to block. The sound every time they connected was loud and sharp.

Thra’kara was bleeding from both arms, she'd been cut right under the shoulder. Dark blood was running down her scales dripping on the stone ground beneath her.

She was blocking or dodging everything. Forearms raised, catching Cait’s strikes directly on her scales and coming back immediately after each block with an attempted counter. Twice a sharp burst of wind magic came down for Cait’s legs and feet. Both times Cait didn’t budge. Just stood firm and steady, the red shimmer flaring briefly more intense as the wind hit.

Then a third much more intense burst hit Cait’s stance and her footing shifted slightly for a second.

And Thra’kara pounced on the moment immediately.

She pulled the wind-magic into herself and spun her whole body in a fast full rotation, swinging her spiked tail hard behind her.

Cait didn’t get hit.

She’d jumped forward towards it and over it. Landing to the side of Thra’kara. Her shorter sword in her left hand, grip reversed with the blade pointing back, and the tip of it was aimed directly at Thra’kara’s right eye. Half an inch away.

Thra’kara’s pupils moved to the tip of the blade, then at Caitlynn.

“Curse your fat tits you’re always so fucking fast.”

Cait smiled wide as her eyes narrowed. “I can still go faster.”

Thra’kara huffed and stepped back. Cait lowered her sword and threw the longer one up to rest flat against her right shoulder.

Thra’kara looked down at her arms, at the two cuts she had which mirrored each other exactly on both her arms, bisecting the muscles connecting her shoulder and bicep. Then she walked over to a large boulder and dropped down hard, drawing her knees up and loosely resting her elbows on them.

She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “Five minutes.” she told Cait.

Nothing more than that. Just five minutes. The words of someone who had said them enough times they'd stopped needing context.

Cait sheathed both swords. Rolled her left shoulders once. The red shimmer faded.

Then, in approximately one second with the snap of attention as her instincts hadn’t yet switched off, Cait's head turned.

She found Elayna standing in the archway.

For a moment she just looked at her. Taking in the training clothes, the sword at her hip, the fact that she was here, in the training hall, after hours.

Then she smiled. Widely and warmly. The canines showing slightly.

She raised one hand and beckoned.

Elayna, feeling slightly embarrassed as if she’d been spying, walked in.

She walked slightly anxiously on the uneven hard ground, turned her look down a bit in front of her feet and made her way across to where Cait was standing.

Cait watched her walk over with a pleased expression.

"Came to train?"

"Yes. I came to train," Elayna confirmed.

"Good," Cait said and looked genuinely pleased about it, satisfied. Satisfied like she’d been quietly waiting for this to happen.

Elayna looked shyly up at Cait. "You fought well."

Cait smiled. "Mm."

A sound came from the rock. Thra'kara had looked up.

She pushed herself up standing off the rock with her upper-back, and walked up to them.

She was... large, up close. Elayna had already known Thra’kara was tall. She’d watched her fight with Cait two times now and had seen her stand almost a head taller than Cait. But standing just a few feet directly in front of her, Elayna felt slightly intimidated by Thra’kara’s towering height. Her crown of white, sharp horns didn't help. Nor did her blood-red iridescent scales, or the sheer physical presence of her.

Thra’kara was standing and looking down at her. Looking down a lot at her because of the ridiculous difference in height. Elayna felt like a kid in front of a full-plated knight.

Thra'kara's eyes had no white in them, just like Caitlynn’s. Only for Thra’kara’s eyes, the iris was a deep burning red, brightest at the center and darkening outward until the edges were almost black, like glowing embers from a fire. Her pupils were sharp, vertical rhombuses, thin and geometric, also unlike Cait’s softer feline pupils. Those intense eyes bored down at her for a moment. Not unfriendly, just direct, her gaze implying she was simply observing and taking Elayna in and didn't feel the need to hide it.

“Thra’kara.” she said, with the slightest nod of her head.

Just when Elayna was about to stammer out an introduction, Cait walked up to Elayna’s right and grabbed her shoulder and pulled Elayna into her side.

"This is Elayna, My girlfriend."

My girlfriend. Said without hesitation, and to a senior no less. Made Elayna feel embarrassed and slightly anxious. But was also privately, very happy that Cait found it so easy and natural to call Elayna her girlfriend, she also thought Cait sounded happy to call her that.

Thra'kara looked at Elayna for another moment with something slightly different in her gaze.

Then looked up at Cait.

"She's cute." she said.

Elayna blinked.

Elayna shyly looked up at the tall, imposing, blood-soaked woman. "Y-you're very pretty," she said. Immediately. Without fully deciding to.

Thra'kara looked down at Elayna, then back at Cait who still had her arm around Elayna’s shoulder.

"Really cute," she added, with one corner of her mouth curving up.

Cait looked at Elayna with a pleased and completely satisfied expression that said oh I know, her look said that as clearly as if she'd spoken the words aloud.

Elayna, still with Cait’s arm around her in front of Thra’kara felt her ears go warm and decided the stone ground was interesting and began counting the pebbles by her feet.

Thra'kara flexed her cut arms experimentally. Looked down at them. Looked at Cait.

"Four minutes."