“It’s too small,” complained Anice, plucking a pink ball of lint from her crimson nightwear. “And it’s always so cold down here.”
“Is this the blanket that the girls knit for you?”
Looking at the poorly-knit meshing of fabric that Lessa had just hoisted up, he nodded. “I happen to like it quite a bit.” The smile that she gave him after hearing his response lent some heat to his face. “Anyway, you still haven’t told me why you guys are here. I noticed Edmun and Calum in the room next to yours, but I don’t recall them leaving it.”
Anice gave him an annoyed look. “If you knew that then why do you even need to ask? You think we want to sleep next door to them?”
“Hold on, both of you want to sleep here?”
“Is that not okay?” Lessa glanced at the floor and hesitated. “I—I know it’s improper, but Anne mentioned that she slept here the other night and that your cousins left her alone. She said you wouldn’t mind.”
He didn’t know how to respond, but his cousin did for him.
“Hold on! Is that why you wanted to stay over?”
“You asked me not to leave. I only decided to stay because I didn’t want you to be alone.” Fidgeting with the hem of her shirt, she muttered, “That’s the only reason…”
Alistar contemplated sleeping in one of the empty rooms nearby to his own, his heart racing as if he were in the midst of an intense sparring match. He also didn’t want to risk his cousins troubling the girls, but he recalled how difficult it had been to sleep the last time something like this had happened and also how embarrassing things had been the following morning.
“My bed’s not that big. I doubt the three of us could fit in it.”
The girls both climbed beneath the covers, showing that there was barely enough room for them all to sleep shoulder-to-shoulder. Unable to think of any other excuses and subconsciously unwilling to try, Alistar eventually folded and followed them into bed. Anice hurriedly claimed the middle spot by ousting Lessa to the far side, leaving him resting along the opposing edge.
After a few moments of laying in an odd, uncomfortable quiet, Anice surprised him by extinguishing the candles, a skill that she had learned a while back yet rarely made use of. Unlike the previous time, all of the flames were snuffed out.
“Goodnight Alie, goodnight Anne,” came Lessa’s voice, which was quiet despite the silence that surrounded them.
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
Alistar gulped as quietly as he could, trying his best not to move as the minutes dragged on. The soft sounds of the girls breathing were overly apparent in his ears, his eyes wide in the darkness as he tried to ignore the direct contact with Anice. His right arm and her left arm were pressed up against one another, the toes of her left foot occasionally brushing against his ankle.
Heart racing, for the first time in years he failed to clear his mind through practiced meditation. Accepting the situation and resigning himself to a long, uncomfortable night, Alistar tried his best to fall asleep.
***
Holding his head in his hands, Alistar let out a shaky sigh as he watched the sun creep over the Tall Mountains and give life to the land with a lively wave of morning light. He was sitting on a stool nearby to the stables, behind the sizeable building where nobody could see him from the manor house’s windows.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Surprisingly enough, he’d fallen asleep less than an hour after he had lain down, and had even gone on to experience a peculiar dream. He’d been in a beautiful meadow of billowing flowers on a perfectly temperate summer’s day, a soft yet steady breeze having soothed his soul as he sat there with Kaila, his closest friend. She had been older in the dream than he remembered her being, around the same height as the rest of his female friends and more mature in appearance. Her pale skin had been free of grime, her sandy-brown hair combed and her modest clothes freshly cleaned, a far cry from the dishevelled, scared little girl that he’d left behind all those years ago. Dressed in a silken pair of pajamas similar to the nightwear that Anice and Lessa had worn to bed, Kaila had greeted him with an elated smile, her precious expression painting a portrait of beauty as they locked gazes with one another from across a bed of wildflowers.
“K—Kaila!” He had rushed over as soon as he'd laid eyes upon her, tears streaming down his face as he held her firmly against his chest. “I’ve missed you so much. There hasn’t been a day that I haven’t thought about you. I’m sorry that I left you behind, Kaila. I’m so, so sorry.”
She held him just as tightly, shaking her head with a complicated expression on her pretty, honest face. “Are you safe, Alie? Where are you and Uncle Raidon?”
Unable to meet her gaze, he told her what had happened in the days following his release from the mines. They mourned Raidon together for a time, hugging one another so tightly that it seemed as if parting was the last thing in the world that either of them wanted to do.
“Wait a bit longer,” he said quietly after they had finished crying over his uncle’s passing. “Just two more years. Once I’m strong enough, I’ll come for you. Then we can be together again.”
The field that they were in was separated into two halves, one dark and barren, illuminated by a full moon that was larger than any Alistar had seen before. This was where Kaila had been standing when he’d first come into his consciousness, her toes a hair’s breadth away from the dividing line of light given off by a powerful sun that hovered high above the ground adjacent to its nighttime counterpart. Engulfed by brightness as he stood on the other side of the border between the dual landscapes, the sun seemed to give off a gentle warmth that reminded him of his mother’s embrace.
Looking up at the sky with a melancholic frown, Kaila gave her head a light shake. “The world is a beautiful place, isn’t it, Alie? If I could have had one wish come true in my life, it would have been for us to have enjoyed it together.”
“We can,” he assured her, suddenly desperate. “We will.”
Something about her tone filled him with dread.
“If only that were so…”
As the prettier, older Kaila began to cry once more, he wiped the tears from the corners of her golden eyes with a loving thumb and then cupped her face with an affectionate hand. “I promised that I would come find you. Even if I have to travel to the other side of the continent, even if I have to say goodbye to everyone I know—I’ll keep my promise.”
After pausing for a moment, she failed to suppress a light sniffle and then nodded. “Then I’ll be waiting for you.” Resting her head on his chest, they held one another for an indeterminable amount of time before she eventually pulled back.
She made to say something, but he sealed her lips with his own without thinking. He didn’t know what possessed him to do such a thing, but his heart had been aching from all sorts of emotions and she looked so pretty with her mature appearance.
“Alie,” she said, a bit of shock to her words. “Alie, you…” Her eyes softened and she said no more.
They kissed for the remainder of the dream, which came to an end when Kaila stepped back with a panicked blush and tried to tell him something in an urgent manner. He only managed to hear a single word amidst the mostly-soundless movements of her mouth.
“…Crystellum…”
He had awoken to the most pleasant of feelings, the sensation of her lips still upon his as if the events of the dream had actually taken place. It hadn’t taken him long to find out the reason for his elation; Anice had gone to the privy at some point during the night and had returned to bed with Alistar in the middle. Both she and Lessa had apparently taken him for a large pillow while they had been asleep, for both had curled up against him, hugging his arms and resting their legs on top of his. The contact had led to an unexpected and mortifying situation that had taken Alistar a minute or so to notice, which was the exact reason that he had fled his room after grabbing a pair of used pants from his wash basket.