Sorry for the delay, I lost motivation. Don't get your hopes up for another post next week though (I'll probably lose it again). Anyways enjoy! Also, trigger warning for internalized homophobia, bad parenting, and daddy issues.

"Okay, see you tomorrow!" Lyrei smiled at Zarina as she glittered away back to Maplebranch. The school day had just finished, and Zarina was looking forward to being able to relax in her room.

Taking a deep breath, Zarina shouted "Mistyriver!" to the Leapmaster and watched as the crystal for her home moved forward. Rina steeled herself for what her mother would say when she got home, smoothing her facial features into a neutral expression before allowing the light to carry her away.

However, when she arrived at her house, it wasn't her mother, but her father, who greeted her in the kitchen.

"Set down your bags, Zarina." His voice was clipped and stiff. "Come and sit," he added, gesturing towards a chair. "I've prepared some cinnacreme for us, and I wanted to have a chat with you for a bit."

"What about?" Zarina asked as she slid into the seat across from her dad.

"Everything that's happened recently," he said hesitantly, avoiding making eye contact with Zarina. "You have been arguing so much with your mother lately, that I've never gotten a chance to discuss it with you myself."

What is there to discuss? she wondered to herself, but bit her tongue and instead just smiled and nodded for her father to go on.

"Zarina…" he paused, "is there something you'd like to tell me?"

Choking on her tea, Zarina slammed the cup down onto the table and forced herself to swallow so that she wouldn't spit all over her dad. She didn't have anything to tell him, per se, but the question had caught her off guard since Zarina wasn't sure that there wasn't something she was hiding from herself.

"No, I don't think so?" Her voice pitched high at the end of her sentence, making it seem like a question.

He raised his eyebrows at her but didn't say anything, just looked at her questioningly over the rim of his teacup. A hot, prickly feeling spiked down Zarina's spine and spread along her back, making her shift uncomfortably.

They sat like this for a while: Zarina, fidgeting in her dad's presence, and her dad, simply enjoying his tea while engaging in an awkward silence with his daughter.

There is something I have to tell you, Zarina realized, and she wanted so hard to just blurt it out, get it over with.

It was now or never.

But she couldn't do it. Not now, not when she'd worked so hard to persuade her parents to let her stay friends with Lyrei. There was too much at stake in her life, and Zarina didn't think she could handle losing her best friend, the only person in life who truly understood her, again.

So she continued to sit in silence, sitting there at the table across from her father, ignoring the cup of tea he'd made for her until it was too cold to drink.

I'll sit here forever if I have to.

She didn't notice that her entire body, her hands which were gripping the edge of the table with white knuckles, had tensed up. In fact, she only realized she had tensed up so much when she unclenched her hands and relaxed her shoulders. Her father hadn't seemed to have noticed either, too intent on trying to squeeze the juice out of a lemon, so to speak.

He won't get it out of me.

It would be too painful to say it. She was caught between a rock and a hard place, stuck in the middle between a daughter's obligation to love and obey her parents, and a best friend who understood her more than the parents that were supposed to love her unconditionally.

As she stared back at her dad, trying to communicate to him the idea of I won't tell you, no matter how hard you try, she noticed something in his face. It wasn't exactly a concerned expression—she wasn't sure either of her parents was capable of concern when it involved her, unless it had to do with grades or social status—but something close to it. His eyebrows were both raised and angled downward, the way that people's faces got sometimes when they were worried. Zarina's father was also frowning, and she could almost see the gears turning in his head as he tried to puzzle out what was wrong with his daughter.

She broke the staring contest they'd been holding to glance out the window. The sun hadn't set yet, but it was fairly close to it.

Another argument ensued, this time inside herself. One side of Zarina said, Just say it! The other screamed, He would never understand. He'll tell Mom, and then where will I be? Grounded.

Zarina wanted to punch the wall, or the table, or anything. She just needed to somehow release the well of frustration and anger that had been building up inside her, ready to burst from underground in a geyser of boiling hot water. This would only make her father more curious, more insistent, however, so she forced herself to stay put and smooth her face into a neutral expression.

Finally, she'd had enough.

Just get it over with already.

"Okay, fine!" she blurted out, throwing her hands up in the air. "There is something I want to tell you." She fell silent after that, trying to figure out how to say this next part.

"Then say it," her father replied, waiting for her to continue.

"Ugh. I don't know how to say this, but…there are a lot of things about my life that I hate. And most of it…" Swallowing, Zarina closed her eyes so she didn't have to see her father's reaction to what she was going to say next. "Most of it has to do with you and Mom, how you control my life."

"Are you saying you want to tell us how to parent you?" Her father's gaze sharpened his face almost completely mirroring her mother's face whenever Zarina and her got into an argument.

So maybe he won't understand. Maybe I was wrong.

"Nevermind, it's…it's stupid. Sorry for wasting your time." Zarina stood up, walking away towards her bedroom, leaving the still-full cup of cold tea on the table.

He didn't try to stop her. Zarina didn't even hear him getting up from the table. Then again, she did storm away, making enough noise in her angry departure that she couldn't hear if her father called after her, either.

She was too angry to care, even if he had.

I trusted him. He gave me tea, he's my father, and I trusted him. And this is what I get? Distrust and likely further punishment once Mom hears about this.

Once inside her bedroom, Zarina locked her door, flung herself face first onto her bed, and screamed loudly into the pillows. She would have screamed for an hour if she could, but unfortunately, even elves couldn't last forever without taking a breath. In reality, she screamed for about ten minutes before sitting up and taking a few deep breaths to stop herself from being too dizzy. It was one thing to hold her breath underwater; it was something entirely different to let out that breath for long periods of time, while maintaining a loud volume.

She didn't care about homework that night. It can wait until tomorrow during study hall, Zarina told herself, instead opting to treat herself to a long, ice-cold shower to cleanse herself of what had just happened with her dad.

Zarina was also fairly sure she'd started her monthly cycle because she cried three separate times in the shower, all within the span of a minute or two of each other. Crying wasn't very uncommon for her, nor, she was sure, was it for anyone else her age, but usually she cried once and that was it.

After her shower, she changed her mind and decided it wouldn't be a bad idea to get started on some of the longer assignments for school. However, she once again got sidetracked, this time by doodling on a scratch piece of paper.

"What the—"

She stared very intently at the sketch. It wasn't good—in fact, Zarina was pretty sure that most people would classify it as an abomination—but it was still very clear as to who it was supposed to be.

Her face began to feel quite hot. When she looked at herself in her bathroom mirror, Zarina could distinctly tell that she was definitely blushing.

How the heck had one badly drawn picture of someone—a girl, no less—caused her to blush profoundly? Was it just the residual anger from the incident that had occurred with her father, and seeing Lyrei's face had caused her to remember it?

That must be it, Zarina decided, and left it at that.

But later, lying awake in bed after she'd turned off the lights and closed the curtains, she wasn't so sure. She'd gone back through her memory of drawing Lyrei's portrait and not once had she even thought about anything relating to her father. Her thoughts had all been on Lyrei, how pretty she looked with her hair down, and—-

NO. Shut up. Don't think like that, girls shouldn't think about girls in that way.

It was what her mother had always drilled into her: girls and boys. Men and women. Only ever that—girls were just friends with other girls, same with boys.

Never had Zarina entertained the notion that friends who were both girls could be more than just friends. But…

No. No no no no no no.

NO.

She wouldn't. She couldn't. Her parents would lose their absolute minds, and most likely would disown her the same as if she were Talentless.

Plus, that wasn't her. Zarina had had crushes on boys before…

Right?