“Oi, Wake up... Now.”
Something roughly ruffled her hair.
“Wake up. Stop dreaming about Caitlynn and get up already.”
Elayna opened her eyes.
Zyvara was standing there, over her, fully dressed with her arms folded, large red irises and harsh eyes staring down at her with the impatience of someone who didn’t like having to repeat themselves. Her small black horn-nubs caught the morning light in a way Elayna thought looked very pretty. But her expression suggested she had some very strong opinions over how long Elayna had been sleeping.
Elayna felt her face go warm. “Sorry,” she said, feeling a bit silly for needing someone to wake her up the last couple of days.
“Sorry for what? Dreaming about Caitlynn or needing me to wake you up?” She said, red eyes drilling hard at her. “You only need to be sorry for one of those things.”
Elayna felt her face warm up even more. “F-for which one?” She said as she pulled her blanket up to her face.
Zyvara said nothing, just huffed out slightly frustrated and went to her side of the room.
Elayna lay back in her bed for a moment, staring at the ceiling while she let the last few days come back to her mind in bits and pieces.
Four days ago. In the corridor outside the dining hall after they’d had dinner. Cait was walking beside her, close, just the way she’d always walked beside her. Like personal space didn’t exist, which Elayna knew Cait knew about, it was just something she very much chose to ignore.
Elayna had asked her, very slowly but with approximately zero composure:
“C-Cait, are we — I mean just. What are we? Exactly?
Cait had looked at her. Looked forward. Then looked at her again with those mesmerizing green eyes and that large and increasingly warmer smile.
“You can call us girlfriends if that makes you happy,“ she’d said. “I wouldn’t mind that one bit.”
Elayna walked the rest of the way to their dorms with her eyes staring at the floor.
Three days ago. At the training courtyard. All five classes of the first year had been together for the first time. Azure, Black, Crimson, Dusk, Ember. All two hundred of them. A proper cross-class sparring session that had lasted from the morning all the way until lunch. Elayna had fought a lot, tens of times. Won most of them, only losing a few times to both Zett and Nyx respectively, and Cait of course. Zett found ways to get past her footwork with his strange stance and low-ground fighting style, and Nyx was sometimes too hard for Elayna to track. There was also one girl from the Ember class with earth magic that Elayna couldn’t find an answer to, that she’d lost once to, her defense was very strong.
She had also watched Cait fight, a lot. Many tens of times. Probably closer to a hundred.
Cait had never stopped fighting. Not once, not for a break or for water, she just kept going from one opponent to the other with energy that seemed to be endless. Her two swords cycled through combinations that made less sense every time, her chaotic and eccentric dual-blade style proved to be way too much for everyone. Person after person, physically strong ones, fast ones, magic casters, smart ones, tricky ones. They all used everything they had available. It didn’t matter.
She won all of her fights. Fast and easy. Every single one.
At some point in the afternoon, Elayna watched Cait finish another fight, with that wide grin and those full-blown feline pupils of hers scanning the room for the next person, seemingly not satisfied until she’d fought every single first year. And Elayna had thought, with overwhelming clarity of something that had become undeniable that day:
Caitlynn is the strongest first year. M-my girlfriend is the strongest first year.
She had stood there with that thought for some moments.
Then someone had asked her to spar, and she'd startled. then said yes and moved on. But the thought stayed. Making her feel warm and slightly dazed. Dazed for a reason she didn’t understand.
And then two days ago, Zyvara had been standing in the middle of the courtyard with her arms folded and her red eyes moving between Cait and Elayna, who were looking at each other across the yard with what Elayna had considered to be a perfectly normal amount of eye contact.
“By all the saints that ever existed,” Zyvara had said, at a volume that easily carried further than Elayna thought necessary,” would one of you just go kiss the other already. What your eyes are doing to each other is significantly less decent than what a kiss would be.”
Several people had looked over, had looked at Elayna especially it felt like. Elayna had then stared at the ground with great intensity.
Cait had just laughed softly, smiling wide with her canines showing. But she'd said nothing, which somehow made it worse for Elayna.
Then Elayna thought about the kisses. There’d been a few. Not that many, four days wasn’t long, but there’d been enough kisses that she’d stopped being so completely overwhelmed after the first couple of ones she’d experienced now.
The one two days ago, in the corridor outside of the library, had started before she’d fully registered it was happening and she had stood there for a moment afterward, touched her lips and felt that warm pull low in her stomach that she was starting to be less confused by and more—
She wasn’t going to finish that thought.
Cait's kisses were also coming mostly without warning now. Every moment alone she was kissed, several times during some of those moments. Two days ago Cait had grabbed both of her hands and interlaced their fingers before peppering small pecks to the corner of her mouth, one after another, leisurely and deliberately, and Elayna had said "Cait! Cait, stop—" and "I mean it—" and, "Cait!—" at gradually increasing volumes until Cait had leaned back with that unfair smile and finally, graciously, stopped.
Elayna had stood there for a moment afterward.
And had then been quietly, very privately furious with herself for the very specific reason that she had not, at any point during any of her protesting, actually wanted Cait to stop.
The one yesterday had been different. Quieter, just Cait cupping her cheek the way she’d done on the rooftop, tilting her face up and Elayna had then without fully intended or decided to, leaned in. Not fully, just slightly. Just slightly enough.
Definitely enough for Cait to have noticed, she always noticed. The smile afterward had been small and warm, but not the small and teasing one, and she’d said.
While brushing Elayna’s cheek with her thumb, “Mm. There you are.”
Elayna had no idea what to say to that. She still didn’t.
Then she thought about the teasing. Which had, if anything, gotten worse. Or better. Depending how you chose to look at it. Elayna forced herself to look at it as worse.
“You know. Sweetie,” Cait had said yesterday, while walking beside her after training, “I’ve been thinking a great deal about your hips and ass lately.”
“Cait—”
“It’s an involuntary thing,” Cait had said, with great innocence. “They’re just very present and hard not to think about. They’re impossible not to think about.” She'd added with a large grin and a shrug of her shoulders.
Elayna had walked faster.
Cait let her go ahead for a moment.
Then she’d caught up with her, falling back into walking beside her with no effort.
"That," she'd said, "made things considerably worse. Just so you know."
"I was just walking—"
"You were," Cait agreed. "But when you walk fast, everything below your waist just—." She paused. "Elayna. Your hips swing, your thighs jiggle, your ass bounces, and I mean that literally. It slightly bounces and it is frankly obscene. It's lewd. It should not be allowed to look the way it looks when you're simply walking quickly down a corridor."
Elayna had stared intensely straight ahead.
"I wasn't doing anything—"
"I know," Cait had said with a sigh. "That's what makes it worse." Her voice had shifted slightly, it was still warm, still Cait, but with something underneath it that was more serious. "Other people could be watching that. People I don't want watching that. Your body does things when you move quickly that you clearly have no idea about, and I'd rather you knew about it than walked around completely unaware while people get to enjoy something that is—" a short pause, "mine."
The word mine crash-landed somewhere in Elayna's chest and her heart did something embarrassingly quick about it. Her face went very warm. She wasn't sure if what she was feeling was embarrassment or something more pleasant than that.
She kind of suspected it was the second one.
"If it was your intention for me to enjoy though," Cait added, with her teasing tone back, lighter, "then thank you. I appreciated it greatly. But please don't do it for anyone else."
"I-it was not my intention!" Elayna said, at a slightly higher volume than she'd meant to.
"Mm." Cait had said, and that had been that.
And finally, she thought about how Cait had started to act around other people when she was with Elayna. Specifically, yesterday.
She'd been paying more attention lately after her roommates had told her to, Cait had also told her to, and so she'd started to notice the looks. People glancing at her as she walked past, eyes dropping, lingering somewhere below her waist.
She'd also started to notice that when Cait was with her, those looks didn't last very long.
Cait would be there, just slightly closer than usual and she would look at whoever was looking at Elayna with those green eyes, very silent and very cold, pupils narrow, but saying nothing. She apparently didn't need to say anything. Most people looked away quickly. And word had seemingly gotten around, because by yesterday people had simply stopped looking, or at least had stopped doing it visibly. Elayna wasn't sure what the word or message everyone seemed to have gotten was, or how they even got that supposed message.
But one boy hadn't gotten the message everyone else had.
He'd said something as they passed. Low and quiet, about Elayna's body, something she'd only half-caught because he’d said it quietly to himself.
Cait had stopped walking. Cait had caught that. And not half-caught it.
She'd turned around slowly, not dramatically, and looked at him with an expression Elayna hadn't seen on her before. Not a cold look, not an angry look. But something specific. An expression that made it very clear she had heard exactly what he said and was giving him the opportunity to reconsider it. Giving him a chance to save himself.
With an outwardly friendly expression, Cait had said: "Say that again." In a low voice that was very even.
Even Elayna had felt an uneasy shudder run through her at that.
The boy had not said it again. He had apologized and shivered visibly and then walked off quicker than Elayna thought someone could without it becoming a sprint.
Cait had then turned back around and her hand had found the small of Elayna's back. Firmly but gently, guiding her forward. It stayed there as they walked.
Elayna had gone quite pink quite immediately. And had thought: W-what's Cait doing! Sh-she's just holding a hand on my back! Why does it feel like I say something she'll get mad!
The hand had been light. It wasn't doing anything in particular. It was just there, at the small of her back, careful but firm. Elayna had stared straight ahead and kept on walking. She'd said nothing while being very aware of every single second that it stayed there.
It had stayed there for a while.
She'd thought about that moment for the rest of the day. About the look, and then the hand, and what the combination of those two things meant about how Cait probably thought of her.
And then she'd remembered, Cait had said mine, quietly in a corridor a day before that. About how Cait had said it like the word wasn't new information, like it was something Elayna should have already understood. It almost sounded like Cait had looked at her and seen something that belonged to her and saw no reason to be subtle about it.
Cait thought of her as hers. Genuinely, actually hers. Not as a joke or as a tease. As a fact.
Haaahhh. What do I do! What do I do!... And why don't I want to question her about it!
Something had pulled tight in Elayna's chest and lower stomach at that thought. That feeling had been finding its way a little further down and was becoming a little more intense every time. Lately that feeling had also been accompanied by an aching feeling a bit deeper, which she still didn't have a satisfactory explanation for. She wasn't sure she wanted one yet.
She remembered what Evelyn had said. When you figure out you have feelings you don't understand, come talk to me.
... Maybe it was time to ask for Evelyn's help.
She pushed it somewhere it could wait.
Elayna stared at the ceiling.
"Are you going to get up," Zyvara said, from across the room, "or are you going to summarize the last four days of Caitlynn to yourself for another ten minutes?"
"I wasn't—" Elayna started.
"You had the face."
She felt her lower lip do the thing. "What face—"
"The Cait face," Zyvara's voice was impatient. "You get a very specific face."
From her bed, Evelyn made a small sound that was definitely a laugh that had been redirected into something else at the last moment.
"I don't make a face," Elayna said, with great dignity, and sat up.
"Hm," Kiri said, from her desk, which she had apparently been sitting at for some time already. The small forward tilt. Affirming.
Feeling slightly betrayed, "you’re not helping Kiri," Elayna said.
"I don't disagree," Kiri replied, which was somehow worse.
"So," Zyvara said, dropping back onto her bed and folding her arms behind her head, staring at the ceiling. "The second years today."
"Mhm, that's today," Evelyn confirmed, from her own bed.
"We are going to fight them today," Zyvara said, not scared, just flat and matter-of-factly as always.
"Yes. We are going to fight them today," Elayna agreed, the mix of nerves and excitement settling into her chest that had been building ever since she'd heard they would.
The rumour had spread through the first years three days ago, someone had overheard something or talked to a second-year in the corridor, and by the following morning everyone seemed to know. Today's sparring session would be joint. All two hundred first years alongside all the two hundred second years. Proper cross-year sparring for the very first time.
"I want to see them," Elayna felt something like slight awe in her voice. "The second years. I want to see what they look like. Want to see how they fight."
"How much better they are," Zyvara said simply.
"That too," Elayna agreed. "Though I think — I mean, I've won a lot more than I've lost against the first years. Which..." she paused. "I didn't expect that."
"I did," Kiri said, from her desk.
Elayna looked at her, slightly surprised.
"Whoever trained you," Kiri said, still looking at whatever she was doing, "trained you strictly for a long time. It shows."
A short silence.
"Thank you," Elayna said quietly, earnestly.
"Hm," Kiri nodded.
"Who have you lost to?" Evelyn asked, her blue eyes settling on Elayna with warm curiosity.
"Zett," Elayna said. "Nyx. That earth girl from Ember once because I still haven't figured out a perfect answer to her defense... And Cait, obviously." She frowned slightly. "But only them... I don’t think I’ve kept count but I think...? I've lost less than ten times overall?”
"Less than ten," Zyvara said, and not as a question.
"...Yes."
"Out of how many fights?" Evelyn asked.
Elayna thought about this. "A lot..."
Zyvara looked at the ceiling. "She's been keeping count," she said, to no one in particular.
"I haven't been keeping count," Elayna said immediately.
"Of the people," Kiri explained. "Not the numbers."
Elayna opened her mouth. Then closed it.
"That's very you, Elayna," Evelyn said, with a small warm smile.
"What about the second years," Elayna said, lifting her chin up with a tense expression. "Has anyone heard anything specific?"
"Three," Zyvara said immediately, still staring at the ceiling. "There are apparently three of them at the top. No one in the second year beats any of them. They only lose to each other, and it's apparently pretty even between them."
"Three," Evelyn said thoughtfully. "That's interesting. Usually there's one obvious top."
“Like Caitlynn.” Kiri added.
"T-there's one I've heard about specifically," Elayna said, trying to change the subject. "A Sun-Elf. Very tall, apparently. Katana user with some intense fire magic."
"Sun-Elf," Kiri said, with a slight tilt of her head. "Interesting."
"Have you ever seen a Sun-Elf?" Elayna asked.
"No," Kiri said. "But I've read about them."
"I haven't seen one either, I'm curious what—"
"Elayna," Zyvara said.
"—the fire magic looks like combined with a katana, whether it's channeled along the blade the way the lightning nodachi user in our class does it or something more—"
"Elayna." Zyvara interrupted, something more to her tone than her usual flatness.
"What."
"You're excited," Zyvara said, with the patience of someone stating a diagnosis.
"I'm just—"
"You're very excited. It's coming off you in waves... It's too early for waves."
Evelyn smiled hard at the ceiling.
"I'm allowed to be excited," Elayna said with a cute, haughty look. "It's the second years. Our seniors. I want to see how they fight."
"And see how Cait does against them," Zyvara said dryly, unfiltered as always.
A short silence.
"...That too," Elayna admitted shyly. Softly.
Zyvara looked at her with those large red eyes with the expression of someone who was right and was giving the other person space and time to arrive at that on their own.
"She'll be fine," Evelyn said. "From what we've seen."
"She'll do more than fine," Kiri said, from her desk, looking at her desk.
"I know," Elayna said, and felt something warm settle in her chest as she was saying it. "I know she will."
Zyvara sat up and looked at Elayna. "Your face again."
"It is not—"
"The Cait face. Right now. Your face. I’ll call that the Cait face from now." Zyvara said with something subtle underneath her usual bluntness. An subtly teasing tone.
Elayna puffed her cheeks and pouted at no one in particular. "I'm going to get dressed," she said, with great dignity, and stood up.
The leather pants were where she'd left them.
The conversation had drifted into something about the dining hall food and Zyvara had opinions about the quality of the previous night's, when Elayna picked up the pants and stepped into them the automatic way and with the efficiency of someone who'd done this every morning for years.
They got to her thighs.
She pulled. They didn't move. She pulled harder.
She bounced. The small practical hop, both hands hauling the waistband up with hands which had grown considerable finger strength from always pulling her pants so hard all these years. The leather, for its part, was doing what leather did when asked to travel over Elayna’s thighs. Which was to say, protesting. Straining. Making its loud objections known through the way of being extremely tight in a way that always left nothing to the imagination about what exactly it was struggling against. The seams as always held with the heroic stubbornness of something that had signed up for a job and was going to see it through to the end regardless of how hard the job would be.
She gave one final, hard, decisive bounce.
The leather had to surrender.
"It's very fortunate," Evelyn said, from her bed, not looking up from whatever she was doing, "that Cait didn't end up as Elayna's roommate and that she isn't here in the mornings."
The conversation about the food stopped.
Everyone looked at Elayna.
Elayna gave one truly final, critical, bounce that settled everything into place.
She stood there for a moment.
It is, she thought, and felt her face go warm with a speed that was becoming familiar. It probably is fortunate.
She started to briefly think about what Cait would even do if she saw her morning routine... She reached for her combat top and said nothing.
"Hm," Kiri said, with her signature small forward tilt.
"The face," Zyvara was pointing at her. "Right now."
Elayna's shoulders drew in, she blushed. "I'm just getting dressed..."
"You’re making the Cait face and you're thinking about her seeing you bounce your—"
"I am getting dressed!" Elayna said, at a slightly higher volume, reaching for her brush.
Evelyn looked at Elayna with a warm smile. “Elayna, do you need help with your hair—”
“I don’t need help!”
Evelyn covered her smile with her hand.
Kiri looked at Elayna slowly, watched the way her clumsy, small hands struggled to brush her hair in her frustration. “... Elayna needs help.”
Evelyn was already walking towards her with an amused smile and warm eyes.
"There," Evelyn said, stepping back and assessing her work with quiet satisfaction.
Elayna reached up and patted her own hair experimentally once, then again. With the slightly sulky expression of someone who had needed help and knew it, but wasn't entirely pleased about it. Her face was pink and her lower lip was doing something it probably shouldn't.
But her hair felt nice. Really nice, the way it only did when someone else had done it with true patience and care.
"Thank you," she said instead, with great dignity, which landed slightly less dignified than intended given the pout that was still very much present on her face.
Evelyn looked at her with warm blue eyes and smiled in the way someone would when they found something adorably endearing.
"Finally," Zyvara said, from the door, arms folded, with the expression of someone who had been waiting longer than what she thought was reasonable.
Kiri was already in the corridor, casting them a deadpan side-glance, waiting for them to get ready.
They began walking to the training hall together, all four of them. The corridors were quiet and slightly dark, the morning light just starting to come through some of the windows, and the smell of a hearty breakfast drifted faintly from the dining hall where they’d just been themselves.
"How many second years are there?" Elayna asked.
"Two hundred," Evelyn said. "Same as us. Obviously the five classes, forty each."
"So four hundred people total," Elayna said.
"Four hundred people," Zyvara said. "This should be interesting."
"They'll split us," Evelyn said. "Across multiple courtyards."
Zyvara looked at Evelyn with a frown. "Obviously they will," she grumbled. "But still."
Elayna walked and thought about the Sun-Elf. About the three second years at the top who only lost to each other. About what a second year looked like after a full year of this. A full year of the sparring in all the different courtyards for several hours a day, a full year of training under Voss and Karzen and his oversized scimitar. And a full year of whatever else the first year brought that they hadn't seen yet.
She thought about Cait fighting them.
Caitlynn, she thought, shyly, is probably going to do something amazing today.
She felt warm about that in a way she was getting used to feeling warm about things. Less alarming than it had been four days ago.
"Cait face," Zyvara said from ahead of her, without looking at her.
"I don't have a face," Elayna said, frustrated, with a crease between her brows.
"Hm," Kiri said.
Evelyn just smiled with an earnestly warm expression, looking at the three of them.
They talked the rest of the way, talking comfortably the way they did most mornings now. Going from subject to subject, nothing important, just talking about their days and what they expected and looked forward to from them.
Elayna thought, briefly, that a week ago she hadn't known any of them.
It felt like considerably longer than a week.
I'm so happy I got to have these three people as my roommate. She thought, meaning every word.
She was still thinking about that when she heard footsteps behind her. Footsteps that sounded familiar in a way she hadn't expected them to be yet, and she smiled before she started thinking about it.