¤ The Pillow Wars

Jaysen was still there, like he promised, waiting for her to wake up. His eyes were closed and his head slightly tilted backwards as he dozed lightly at where he sat next to her, propped up against the back of his chair. Silver looked up at him, enjoying the warmth of the bed against her back and the peace in the room.

It did not seem proper to move now, Silver thought lazily, and with nothing else in mind to think about, she let her thoughts wander back to the dream she had just recently woken from, shreds of the vision still crystal clear in her memory.

Surely it was a vision, or perhaps nothing more than her own construction of what could have happened between Aurora and Verchiel. It was perfectly logical for Verchiel to attempt to win, or even coerce, a potential candidate for the Advisor seat to his side, the meticulous manipulator he was.

Then again, what she saw was too vivid to be just a simple dream, the scene too emotionally charged to be just a mental extrapolation of facts, like the rage and indignation that Aurora felt that was so painfully familiar-

Then everything else that had happened hit Silver like a train rushing at top speed into the Kerning Subway. Brandon, the Lycanthrope, the fear of being crippled and useless, that last humiliating attack at the archery range…

She shuddered then, her languid mood shattered. Was that too simply a bad dream? However, the dull throbbing pain on her right arm denied her even that comforting illusion.

Suddenly loathing to keep lying there in bed, Silver sat up and shifted to lean against the headboard of the bed, half hugging her knees to herself. It was so absurd, she thought, that something from so long ago must come to haunt her again. But luckily…

Her gaze fell on Jaysen again, taking in the way his mouth hung slightly open and his head nodded as he slept. Then again, wasn’t it equally absurd that a random stranger she had met in Orbis would be the one to help her finally untangle the mess of her past?

In the end, the great philosophers conclude that nothing ever makes sense. Silver let out a low derisive chuckle.

Just then, her thoughts about Jaysen took a sharp turn towards amusement: Jaysen’s head had started to droop even more, until it looked as if he was about to fall off the chair. Deciding to save Jaysen from that particular fate, Silver reached out and gave Jaysen’s arm a gentle shove. ‘Hey, Jaysen, wake up.’

Jaysen snapped to awareness immediately, instantly sitting up straight in the chair. ‘Negative, Dark Lord sir! I really wasn’t sleeping on guar- oh.’ Recognition dawned as his light blue eyes alighted on Silver and he stopped spluttering to give her a sheepish smile. ‘My dearest lady is awake, I see. Why this urgent seeking of my attention?’

‘Oh, nothing much. I’m sorry for the rude awakening, but I didn’t want to mop bandit off my floor.’ Silver said, her matter-of-fact tone spoilt only by the hoarseness in her voice, still recovering from the strain of her weeping.

Jaysen mock-saluted Silver. ‘The lady has her sense of humour back as well. Let the heavens sing in joy.’

Silver rolled her eyes. ‘I guess we’ll discover if angels are tone-deaf then.’

‘It matters little whether they are or not, my most luminous pearl of Victoria. There are always ear plugs.’

There was a knock on her door just then, before Rei nudged it further open to admit himself, holding a tray of food in one hand as he manoeuvred himself through the door. He made it look easy, but there was also a thick stack of parchment balanced on one end of the tray which threatened to slide off anytime. Quickly setting down the tray on the desk, he looked over to Silver’s bed and smiled. ‘Hey, you’re awake.’

‘And the lady’s been delightful company too,’ Jaysen grinned.

‘No doubt,’ Rei nodded back seriously. ‘But I bet she was better asleep, eh. Smaller doses of grump, zero levels of sarcasm.’

‘Absolutely cor- Oi, that was completely not chivalrous of you, violent lady!’

‘Hey!’

By the time Jaysen and Rei recovered from the pillows thrown at each of them, Silver was already standing before the desk, examining the stack of paper on the tray. ‘What’s this?’

‘Oh yes. Master Solomon sends that with his regards.’ Rei tossed his plump, overstuffed attacker back onto the bed. However, it hit Jaysen at the back of the head instead, as the bandit also tried to replace his own feather-filled missile.

‘On guard, you knave!’ Jaysen spun around quickly and proceeded to smack Rei with the pillow still in his hands. Rei yelped and dived past him to reclaim his own pillow to put up a defence.

‘Hmm.’ Paying no heed to the pillow fight breaking out, Silver detached the folded piece of parchment attached to the top of the stack and spread it out to reveal a message written in the precise script of Solomon.

Librarian Silver

Please find attached exactly thirty-seven facsimile pages of the damaged tome you have submitted to the Archives for restoring.

(A cry of outrage from Jaysen. ‘Oi, that is completely unfair, you cannot pilfer both pillows! That’s my job!’ )

It is with greatest regrets that I report my failure to deliver as I have promised. My Restorers have tried their level best to restore the book. However, precisely eleven pages after the one hundredth and twenty-five page of the book remain unrecovered; there had been magical injury applied directly to them, and the damage dealt to these pages are simply too extensive and are beyond any Restorers’ ability to reverse.

(‘Ow ow ow, get off me!’ A series of strangled noises that sounded as if Rei was getting, well, strangled.)

The loss of these pages are truly regrettable, and I beg for your forgiveness and apologise for any inconvenience caused by my incompetence. Should you require any further help, please do not hesitate to seek me out and hopefully I am able to bridge whatever loss of information you might encounter.

I offer you my most sincere apologies.

Master Solomon
Head of Archives

Knowing the overly sober Master, Silver figured that Solomon must have been beating himself up over this failure of his. However, despite feeling sorry for Solomon, Silver felt a twist of disappointment and apprehension in her heart at this second dashing of her hopes.

All that was forgotten for a moment as a soft squashy lump sailed towards her at top speed and smacked her on the back, almost making her drop the disheartening note. She turned back to the guys, exasperated words ready on her tongue. ’Quit it alr- What in Ossyria?!’

At her annoyed cry, the pillow war between the guys abruptly ceased, both Rei and Jaysen freezing on the spot at where they half-stood, half-kneeled on her bed.

‘Uh.’ Jaysen first spoke up. ‘I was defending my honour?’

‘No, I was defending my honour!’ Rei injected, as both of the guys clambered off the bed shamefacedly.

‘And both of you were doing that with my pillows.’ Silver rolled her eyes at them, watching them pick up aforementioned and abused pillows. ‘Remind me never to let you near my bed ever again.’

‘What, never ever?’ Jaysen turned, his light blue eyes wide in shock. ‘Why, cruel lady, I am absolutely heartbroken. Are you sure you want to give up that sort of fun even before you tried me?’ He raised one teasing eyebrow, grinning roguishly from ear to ear.

It took a while for the other two to get it, but to Rei and Silver’s credit, the pillows they threw simultaneously got Jaysen so good that all three agreed unanimously that it was the best shot in the entire Second Pillow War that resulted.

Needless to say, it also took quite a while for the three of them to settle down and pack up Silver’s room to her satisfaction, before they could finally return to the facsimiles that Solomon had sent.

‘Maybe those pages wouldn’t be important?’ Jaysen said hopefully, flipping tentatively through some of the pages that Silver laid out on her now neatly made bed.

‘I hope so,’ Silver muttered glumly. ‘But what are the odds that all eleven are unimportant pages?’

‘Well, we’ll find out if we read them, wouldn’t we.’ Rei pointed out from where he sat on the floor next to the bed.

And so they did, diving right back into Salmer’s recount of Aurora’s story without much further delay.

The finals for the Advisor trials loomed ever closer as the days passed, and the more I worried for my Aurora. Even though she passed through one round of tests after another, I could not help but keep feeling as if something was going to stop her ultimately. And heavens help me, I dearly wished that something would. I hated the sound of the Orbis court, and I did not want Aurora to even go near there, much less plot her revenge in that place.

But nothing stopped Aurora. Her progress through all the trials seemed almost charmed, as she advanced ever closer to her goal, and finally, despite with all my wishful thinking, that day finally, finally arrived…

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Links to previous chapters:
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In which there is evidence that I have talked too much to certain people. >.>

But anyway. Time to move on from Silver. ^^ Maybe there is too much fluff (and pillow feathers~) right after the angsty episode, but I don’t know how else to stop the emo. >< Do throw a stone or two at me if you think the transition was too abrupt, because I really want to know.

Cookies before I persuade you to move on to the next chapter. *throws into Chapter Sixty*