Disclaimer – I don't own Card Captor Sakura.
Claimer – I own Sapphire after a long and messy legal battle with Ruby and Tori I have custody over her and everything. Yay me!
Queen of my Heart – First Day Jitters
"Now Miss. . ."
"Lilly English," Lilly told the man. "and this is Rita Sutter."
"Yes," the man nodded. "Now what experience do you have with high class families."
"Well we worked for the Taylor family," Lilly said reciting the first name that came to her mind. "From the Avalon Kingdom," she added almost as an afterthought.
The man seemed rather pleased by this as the Taylor's were probably the second highest ranking family in the Avalon Kingdom next to the Avalon's themselves.
"You're hired," the man said. "Let me show you to your rooms."
"Who are the Taylor's," Rita hissed to Lilly as the followed the man down the hall.
"I don't know," Lilly whispered back. "The name just came to my head.
"I'm just glad to be rid of Dominic," Rita sighed.
"Me too," Lilly agreed.
"Now ladies, these shall be your quarters," the man said opening the door to a room with two beds. Rita and Lilly were amazed at how different they were from the shabby sorry excuse for even a toilet that Dominic had forced all four maids into.
"Thank you sir," Lilly replied curtseying.
He nodded approvingly. "You need to be in the kitchen by 5am to be assigned duties for the day," he told them. "Don't be late if you want to make a good impression. I hope you settle in. Good day ladies."
"Good day sir," Rita said as he walked away. "Oh my gosh," she gasped as soon as he was out of earshot.
"I know," Sakura said as she entered their room. "This place is amazing."
"C'mon Lilly," Rita said, "we have an early start tomorrow and we all know what you're like."
"Good point," Lilly agreed.
"Sakura?" he asked suspiciously as he looked at the girl.
She looked back cautiously, as if she were afraid she would get in trouble for looking at him. She blinked several times, not sure whether or not to believe that what she was seeing was real.
"Syaoran?" she asked back guardedly taking a step closer to her love.
He smiled at her and nodded. "I can't believe its you," he told her. "I almost thought I had lost you forever."
She moved closer still. "You'll never loose me," she told him as she took his hand in hers. "I promise."
Syaoran moved his hand to stroke her hair, trying to make sure she was real, that she was just some cruel twist of reality. He caressed her cheek softly as he lifted her face to meet his and gently kissed her soft red lips he had been dying to kiss for the past two years.
"I love you," he told her as he broke the kiss.
She looked up at him and smiled, tears of joy glistened in the corners of her eyes. "I love you," she whispered back as she faded away into nothingness.
Syaoran woke up suddenly from the nightmare he had just injured. He'd been having a lot more of those lately. The only consolation to his dreams was the fact that he got to see Sakura even if she was just a heartless image thought up by his imagination just to torment him.
'You never miss anything until it's gone,' Syaoran thought to himself. The sad part was that even though he would never trade the few days he spent with Sakura for anything, they had barely known each other long enough to find that out.
He never realized that everything could just fall into place that easily until he met Sakura. He never knew that love could be so essential until he loved her. And he never realized that the ground could be pulled away beneath him so quickly until he lost Sakura.
A girl who didn't even realize she had been teaching taught the most important lessons that he would ever learn in his life. He learnt that life is too short, period. He learnt that nothing is too small or insignificant to be left to chance.
Most importantly he learnt that love isn't just a state of mind, it's the air you breathe in as the sunsets after the perfect day, it's the first sunrise of spring with its awesome range of colour as it invites the flowers to wake after the winters slumber, it's the scent of sakura blossoms as they all come to bloom around you, and its her name as it rolls of your tongue like homey. Sakura.
God, he missed her. He missed everything about her. He missed her eyes, her smell, but most of all, her smile. God, he missed her smile.
It was hard for even he to believe, but whenever she smiled she seemed to get just that much more beautiful, something he almost believed impossible.
He could still remember the first time he had seen her smile, how even the sun dulled compared to her brilliance. He remembered the way her eyes would just light up and everything about her began to shine. He remembered the dimple in her left cheek, how cute and innocent it made her look.
He remembered the way the sun bathed down on her as she watched the sunset from the library tower, how angelic she looked surrounded by its gold aura. He remembered the way her hair flowed down her back, how silky it felt as he curled his fingers through it. He remembered the smell of cherry blossoms that always seemed to surround her.
He remembered the way it felt to be looking in her eyes, how he would get lost for eternity. And the way she looked at him, the way it made him feel like the most important person on this entire planet, how it made him feel like he was all she could see.
Just thinking about her, Syaoran called already feel a tear escaping his eye and falling down his cheek. His entire life he had thought that tears were a sign of weakness, that anyone who cried was just as weak as the tears they cried. He believed that any emotion was weakness, that the only way to be strong was to keep your feelings inside. He had been taught by the best, the strongest, the quickest and all of him told him that his strength was shown by not feeling.
And for years he had believed him. For years he was cold, uncaring and emotionless. But that was before he met Sakura, now he knew better.
'Even the strongest of us cry,' he thought to himself recalling his mother, the strongest person he knew, as she sat by his fathers side, crying. It put a perspective on things.
'Maybe its just a different type of strength. Maybe it's something stronger than we could ever conceive. Or maybe its something completely different all together.'
As he lay there, letting tears fall freely from his eyes, not having the will to wipe them away, he pondered the true meaning of strength. He questioned whether to believe in his teachers or to disregard all they had ever taught him and discover what it really meant for himself.
Syaoran sighed to himself. Now he'd never get back to sleep.
"Syaoran, please. Syaoran help," she cried out. "I love you."
"Lilly," Rita said, shaking her friends shoulder lightly. "Wake up Lilly, you're having a bad dream."
Lilly sat up as she awoke, hugging her friend for some kind of comfort.
"What happened?" Rita asked.
"I . . . I," Lilly began. "I don't remember," she replied disbelievingly as she shook her head as if to clear it.
"Weird," Rita voiced. "It sounded pretty intense. You were practically screaming and calling out for some guy called Syaoran."
"Why does that name sound so familiar?" Lilly asked aloud.
"Maybe it's a key to your past," Rita replied. "Or maybe you're suffering from the same wishful thinking we've all had at some point in our lives."
"What?" Lilly asked.
"Well Prince, I mean, King Syaoran is a major hottie and now that he's finally got himself something that even resembles a heart that's a definite bonus," Rita told her.
Lilly still looked clueless, especially regarding the last comment.
"I forgot you weren't here then. Before you came, when he was still Prince Syaoran he went traveling across the lands searching for a queen, then he came back and he was really different," Rita continued. "See before he was kind of cold and kept to himself a lot of the time but when he came back he was kind of somber like, but he wasn't as cold. He was more open, he was sad but he seemed more cheerful than before and he didn't seem quite so emotionless," Rita tried to explain. "Does that make sense?"
"Not really," Lilly replied.
"Let's just say that most of us have been in love with him, even when he was the heartless prick looking down on us disapprovingly," Rita replied.
"That sure made me less nervous," Lilly said sarcastically.
"First day jitters?" Rita asked.
"More like epileptic fits," Lilly sighed.
"That bad?"
"Worse."
~*©*~
So I hope that was a good chapter. Seeing as I haven't even gone near this story for somewhere between 4 and 6 months I'm surprised I picked it up so easily.
Please review, it always makes writing that much appealing.