Page 14
Her face scrunched in confusion. “What thing?”
“The… you know! The distant thing,” he replied, waving a hand toward the window.
“That is not helpful, Caelyn. Could you be any more vague?”
“It may not be helpful, but it’s accurate. You get all glassy-eyed and your face slackens. Your eyes are focused on something far away, and to pull you back to the present? Well...” He shrugged before looking back toward the lantern he was working on. “...it’s not always easy to do.”
Elowynn blinked at him, having had no idea he noticed these things about her, but she brushed it off and rolled her eyes before turning back toward the storm outside the observatory windows. “You are irritating this moon.”
“I am irritating every moon. Or so you often remind me,” he quipped back at her.
“That is true,” she mused, her eyes moving toward him. Elowynn smirked before a light chuckle escaped her. While she may call him irritating often, she enjoyed his company immensely.
The corner of his mouth lifted in his own small smile before he lowered his attention back toward the lantern.
The easy quiet between them had become natural now. Though perhaps it had always been.
Elowynn often found herself seeking him out without thinking. Meals would become more enjoyable if Caelyn sat nearby, and she occasionally stole the cherries from his dessert since he never ate them anyway. The library, once vast and imposing, felt different when he occupied the chair across from her or reshelved returned tomes while she studied. Even the endless chores Sister Agatha assigned the two of them seemed less burdensome with him beside her. Somehow, her smile always came more easily whenever he was near, especially when he muttered quiet complaints beneath his breath.
Caelyn had become woven into the shape of her suns so gradually, she hardly noticed that it was happening.
“You missed breakfast,” Caelyn observed after a moment.
Elowynn stiffened. She had hoped he would not have noticed, but she was finding that Caelyn always seemed to notice things about her.
“I was studying,” she deflected.
“So you forgot breakfast,” he said. “I stand corrected.”
“I remembered to eat eventually!”
“You remembered after the mid-sun bell!”
Elowynn wrinkled her nose as she pouted, before looking away from him. “That still counts, though. I ate...”
Caelyn sighed as he set the lantern aside. He turned, looking toward her fully. “El,” he began in his recently adopted nickname for her. “You cannot survive entirely on tea. You will wither away to nothing.”
“I absolutely can,” she said stubbornly. “Tea has lots of beneficial nutrients.”
He scoffed. “That may be true, but there is no true sustenance in it. And you know it! Sister Agatha says your bones will become brittle before thirty.” He clucked his tongue. “I am inclined to agree with her,” he smirked.
Elowynn whirled toward him, eyes wide. “She says that because she believes tea is morally offensive and that it costs too much to import when we could be growing the leaves right here in the abbey!”
Caelyn deadpanned before raising a single brow toward her. “That is because you drink enough for four people, El.”
She sniffed dismissively. “What happened to you over these last moons? You are suddenly taking quite an interest in my wellbeing.”
“That is because someone around here needs to possess common sense,” he mumbled. “Right now, you’re certainly lacking it. How else do you expect to keep studying and growing that brilliant mind of yours if you don’t nourish yourself.”
Before she could answer, or even pick apart his words, the observatory doors swung open with enough force to slam against the stone wall.
Freezing wind swept through the room alongside Sister Agatha herself.
Snow dusted the shoulders of her dark robes while several weathered books remained tucked beneath one arm. Her amber gaze swept across the observatory before narrowing toward Elowynn.
“You skipped breakfast again!” she accused.
Elowynn looked betrayed. “How do all of you know these things?” she asked as she tossed her hands in the air, exasperated.
