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Adaine's pet is non-euclidean, in the sense that he was rounder than any frog she'd ever seen. A small child would probably mistake the Elven Oracle's familiar as a rubber ball. Sam Nightingale stares at Boggy, deliberately ignoring her sorcery homework. Next to her on the bed, Adaine's nose was as wedged into a spell scroll as it could get. Although her posture was usually perfect, it was even more ramrod straight than usual, uncomfortably so.
Boggy blinks as Sam makes a bubble with the flick of her hand, and they both observe as it floats towards Adaine's head. It bursts gently in her hair turning into soft shimmery sparkles. She turns to meet Sam's eyes arching her eyebrow so expressively, Sam can hear the silent 'what the fuck' in her gaze.
"Are you alright?"
A loaded question. Sam likes to check in, but doesn't necessarily expect an answer. She'll take whatever the girl in front of her wants to give, watching her think in the comfortable silence between them.
Adaine huffs, then pauses to put down her spell scroll, "It's my dad's birthday today."
Oh.
Sam closes her textbook and sits up next to Adaine and listens.
The Elven Oracle looks out the window. Her face hardens, "well it would be his birthday, if he wasn't dead."
A beat of silence. Mordred Manor bustles with life downstairs, the swell of Fig's bass guitar, rumbling laughter, and someone cooking something in the kitchen. The noise fills the space, allows the conversation to find a lull.
Sam prefers to be in the manor. It's much better than the Everpetal mansion. There are too many memories there, and she'd like to forget them. It's too easy to get lost in the past in rooms that smell like Chanel perfume and crisp floral shampoo. The empty mansion is full of things that haunt her at night, but when she looks at Adaine: grieving, angry, and steely eyed, Sam knows she's not the only one who's haunted.
"Is it bad that I-" she pauses, voice wet, and plays with the hem of her jean jacket, "is it bad that I don't regret what I did?"
"No." Sam answers. Hard, sure, and with no room for questioning.
She takes Adaine's hand in her own. Tries to find the right words. She wants to say that they both understand what it's like to make the hard choice, and to live with it's repercussions. Instead she just smiles softly, and presses Adaine into the crook of her neck. They lean on each other for an amount of time that feels short and like an eternity, and when they pull away the house is quieter, and the hum of bass has been silenced completely.
"You're alive. So is Aelwyn," Sam rolls her eyes at the mention of Adaine's sister, making the girl beside her laugh, "that sounds right to me. I'm sure Jawbone would say the same thing."
The elf besides her let out a laugh again, much breathier than her first, and nods with watery eyes, "homework?"
Sam huffs at the mention of homework (senioritis has hit her like a truck), but presses a kiss against the blonde's cheek in agreement anyway.
"Homework," she says, "but let's put a crystal movie on in the background."
Adaine grins watching as Sam scrolls through titles. After a bit of looking, she's found a promising film noir, but pauses at the feeling of a hand against her cheek. She looks up into her girlfriend's eyes, and feels the breath punched out of her. She kisses her so gently that Sam feels like porcelain, her cheeks cradled in Adaine's hands.
They pull apart, breaths intermingling, and Sam's lips split into an uncontrollable grin.
"Whatever you want, Sam,” Adaine mutters softly, before kissing Sam at the corner of her mouth, and Adaine is so sweet, and so honest, and so smart that Sam finishes her homework and does extra credit in record time with advantage on all of her intelligence rolls.
Sam gives Adaine bardic inspiration to help her convince Aelwyn out of their shared room. Aelwyn is hard to convince, but it’s way easier when Sam pulls the ‘you locked me in a crystal card’.
Snuggled up next to her girlfriend, giggling about something stupid that happened on their last trip to Basrar’s, Sam can’t help but think how lucky she is to be here in the tallest tower of Mordred Manor with the girl she loves.