Niamh was standing at the window of her dorm room, holding one of her vespercats in her arms, and petting it as she gazed out, thinking. It had been a long, and tiring day. Sathe had walked her to and from classes, as usual, but when he was not there, she had heard some people making nasty comments about her. Ones about what she must have done to get Sathe to help her out, to be her friend. What she must do whenever he came over, and they hung out behind her closed doors. Even some really nasty comments about why she had all those familiars, too. Niamh had some vague ideas about what adults did with each other, but she had yet to take the class on the topic, so most of this had been very strange and, frankly, disturbing to her to hear, especially the part about her familiars.She had not said anything to Sathe about it. When he had asked her how she was, why she was so quiet today, she had simply said she was tired. He had accepted that, and she felt an incredible sense of relief when he did not push the issue. Normally, she would be perfectly happy to tell him about her day, and what had upset her, but this evening, she wanted a chance to think, and to process, what all had happened to her. It was a LOT, too, for her. She had never encountered such thoughts before. Oh, she had heard some whispers about her and Sathe, but nothing ever this blatant, or this nasty.
She had noticed a couple of the girls giving her vicious looks when they whispered that, almost like they were jealous of Niamh or something. And to Niamh, that made absolutely no sense. What did they have to be jealous of? Niamh was scrawny, flat chested, not very pretty, and a burden on Sathe. All of them had been pretty girls who knew how to wear makeup, and dressed pretty, and had curves. What would anyone want with her, when girls like that were around? So there was obviously no reason for them to be jealous, and if they liked Sathe, they should tell him...
And then Niamh froze, because to her surprise, that thought had made her heart squeeze a lot. She froze, her hand on the vespercat's head, her eyes wide open as she tried to work out what was going on inside of her. Why had her heart reacted like that? Why did the idea of Sathe dating someone else... Ahhh, there it went again!... make her heart squeeze and oh good gracious, were tears welling up? They were welling up, and she had no reason to cry! Sathe was her friend, and her promised guard, her... Her kind knight who protected her. But she was not his girlfriend, and she had no reason to think she ever would be... And oh that was the problem. That was it, right there.
That thought hit her in the face, so hard she swayed in place, and then set the 'cat down, so that she could race over to her bed, the bed they had napped on together the day she met him. She threw herself onto it, pulling her pillow over, and she began to sob into the pillow, as these feelings she had not realized were inside of her took over, and soon she was weeping hard, unable to cope with the overwhelming feeling of dread and sorrow that filled her. She was sure he would never see her as pretty, let alone in the way she had just realized SHE saw him, and she did not know how to cope with that. She had been convinced she would be alone forever, and until tonight, she had been able to cope with that. Sure, it was not the best thing in the world, but she had her familiars and she had Sathe as a friend.
Now... Now she still had those, but it was not what she wanted, and not what she could be happy with anymore. Oh, sure, she would pretend to be happy with it, but inside of her, she knew that whenever he found the love of his life, her heart would break, and it might never recover. She had no idea how to handle this. This knowledge inside of her, it had changed her view of her life and her life plans forever. It was insane. She cried for... well, she had no idea how long she lay there crying, only that the dinner bell had rung, as had the end of dinner bell, and she had not gone. Did not want to go, honestly, because her stomach was in knots and her head was now pounding, and she felt terrible at heart and in body.
In fact, the only thing that stopped her sobbing was exhaustion... She fell asleep, several of her familiars curled around her. She had no idea that one of her vespercats managed to paw the door open, or that a small group of them, led by her Spectrefox, went hunting the halls for Sathe. She had no idea that some of the other animals controlled the idiot Griftoos or her cockatriels, who had been about to start screaming with how upset they were. She slept, exhausted and internally hurting, for hours.
When she finally woke, she found her head still pounding, and she was still tired... But she had calmed down, and could handle things now, even if she did not want to. She went to her sink and washed her face. As she did so, she whispered into the mirror "I love him. And I promise to never hold him back, just for my own well being. If I must, so that he can be free to live and love for himself... I will free him from it." She finished washing her face, still not aware that some of her 'children' were on the loose, and went back to bed, red faced and exhausted, but determined.