* 49 * 7/20/12, 3/20/13
Lily was so unused to seeing Casavir upset with her that she felt entirely out of sorts for the next several seconds. That's all it took to make her follow him, but in Casavir's distraction, he did not notice until they were already standing right in front of his door.
He spotted her, and she looked disheartened. "My lady?"
"Please don't be upset, Casavir."
Casavir could not promise her that after the day's events, and thus stayed silent, his ice blue irises still averted from her face.
"Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?"
The paladin's lips pressed into a line as he finally looked into her eyes.
"Please..." His voice was strangled and low, and it forfeited some of its discomposure. "If you do that again...please promise me that you will let someone know where you are going before you leave."
Lily nodded solemnly. "I'm sorry, Casavir." She looked dejectedly at the ground.
At her sincere apology to him, the paladin's entire being softened, and his countenance gradually shed its agitation.
Lily looked into his face again after a few moments, brightening as she remembered how she fell asleep last night.
"Thank you for letting me rest on your shoulder yesterday." She smiled.
Casavir's face colored at the extremely pleasant memory. And he had just gotten his expression back to normal, too.
"I fell asleep on you," she reiterated, "and you carried me to my room."
The paladin simply nodded, but was beginning to feel a bit anxious. Was she going to ask him why?
"That was very sweet." She beamed up at him.
Casavir looked down into her iridescent green eyes, her small and elegant frame. He felt absolutely smitten when she smiled at him like that, and he knew he couldn't stay upset with her for long.
Her face now exuded the veil of shyness. "Will you forgive me?" she asked timidly, breaching the sensitive subject again.
"Yes."
A grin. "Thank you." She looked relieved, happy.
She looked beautiful.
And then she neared him. She opened her arms hesitantly and moved closer, incredibly unsure of her own actions.
Casavir peered at her with parted lips, seemingly a thousand thoughts and yet no thought at all racing through his brain. He wasn't sure what exactly she was doing, so he stood still. As she got a mite closer, it finally hit him. She was trying to give him a hug, testing to see if it was okay with him.
As soon as he realized this, he broke his stiffness and picked his arms up slightly from his sides so she could wrap hers around him. In the next second, she did.
Casavir was moved by the gesture, even though he could barely feel more than light pressure through his plated armor. To remedy this, and to prevent himself from coming off as cold or indifferent to this simple but gratifying act of affection, he settled his arms very lightly against her back, wary of touching her too much. He had held her in his arms before, but she had been crying at that time. Now, she had no discernible need for comfort, and no obvious reason to be doing this, making him considerably less certain of what to do than he once had been. This confusion did not ultimately matter to him, however; the parts of her he could feel – her hair settled against his face and her body warmth meshing with his – filled his entire being with pleasurable endorphins.
"I don't mean to make you worry," Lily explained.
"I only wish for your safety," Casavir responded, his voice quiet with the influence of their tender position. The elf nodded. In the next second, she pulled away. To Casavir, it was like waking up from a deep, peaceful slumber, one in which his body and mind were at rest yet his heart thumped nearly out of his chest.
Lily began moving toward the door, and the paladin felt a need to say something, anything. He wanted to connect with her again, hear her voice one more time this night.
So he said that something, that anything: "Good night, my lady."
Lily tilted her head. "Good night, Casavir." She closed his door gently behind her, but stood thinking for a few minutes. Then, she flipped around to go back to the main hall, but sitting in her way on the ground was a small cat waving its tail back and forth, thumping the ground.
"Ounce! Were you there the whole time?"
Ounce meowed and approached her, winding his way between her ankles. He looked up at her and meowed again, and she picked him up, carrying him back into the main hall with her. No one was there anymore, apparently having stayed up only to make sure she got back without harm.
Lily then felt very thankful for her friends.
Musing over all that had happened today, she headed to her room and set the kitten back down before undressing and climbing into her bed.
"Good night to you, too, Bishop..."
