#pining!rayla

“Okay,” Rayla whispers, scooping Stella off her shoulder and into her pouch. “We’re going to try our—”

Stella squeaks at the silence…and Rayla swallows down the lump in her throat.

“—his old room first.”

It’s a long shot, she thinks. It’d be too good to be true—to find him there in the room they’d shared, waiting for her like nothing had ever changed—and she knows that, even if she hopes differently. Never mind what she knows, though, her pulse still pounds as she maps out her downclimb to the window, as she peeks her head into the dark room, as she slips silently to the floor, as she stays hidden despite how obviously alone she and Stella are.

This isn’t the moment, and as much as she wishes it were…she’s glad for the chance to collect herself.

Rayla leans back against the cool stone castle wall, her rushed heartbeat calming with the slow breath she knows he’d tell her to take. Callum’s not there…but his stuff is, she realizes, stomach fluttering at knowing that their room is still his room, smiling with relief that her hopes hadn’t been that crazy.

He’s not here, but…he will be.

Stella chirps from her hip, tilting her head and then climbing atop Rayla’s knee.

“No Callum,” she sighs, smoothing back hair that’d fallen into her eyes mid-climb. “That’s okay, though. He’ll be back, and hopefully I can get myself a little less edge-frazzled before then.”

Rayla chuckles as Stella climbs to her shoulder, clinging on as if to pull her to her feet.

“No, no, we’re not going to just go find him, Stella. Callum and I…we need to talk first, before we go traipsing all over the castle,” Rayla explains, pulling a moonberry from a pocket in apology. “Then, I promise, you’ll get to meet Ez and Bait too.”

The moonberry is quickly gone, but Stella still nibbles at her collar.

“Okay, okay,” she sighs again, doing Stella’s bidding by heading to her side of the room…or, the side that had been hers, at least.

“This…”

Rayla stops before she starts, hesitating at calling the plain, made-up bed hers—even if that’s the same stack of pajamas Callum had left for her every night, even that’s the same cut her blades had left in the headboard, even if that’s the same pillow she’d cried into—

“...is where I used to sleep.”

Maybe she would again, she thinks, chest tight with the thought that it’d no doubt be hers if she would’ve just—

Stella trades nibbling for nudging, urging Rayla to turn.

…and the weight on her heart lifts almost instantly, regret overwhelmed by fondness.

That’s definitely Callum’s bed.

“That’s Callum’s. He’s…a little messy, obviously.” Rayla breathes a laugh, her bottom lip tucked between her teeth as she scans over his rumpled sheets, his scattered clothes, his overflowing nightstand, his cluttered desk. She makes her way a little closer to look at the spines of the books at his bedside. “I bet—yep, these are all books about magic, it looks like, and ooh, look, Stella! He drew this, for sure.”

She takes the drawing at the top of the pile—of King Bait, she tells Stella—to the desk, sure she’ll find more…and, of course, she does. There are more of Bait, of course, and tons of Ez—who looks so grown up, she could cry—and Soren is there with Corvus, and Opeli, and—

Her.

“He’s an artist,” Rayla explains, not trusting her shuddering voice for more than a hushed volume, and stacks that sketch of herself at the top of the pile, hardly recognizing herself at fifteen, “and a mage, and—”

Stella jumps down onto an open scroll on the other side of his desk, and in shooing her off of the paper, Rayla sits for a closer look at the familiar signature she’d caught a glimpse of.

“Oh, apparently the high mage now,” she says, running her fingers overtop of his name with a swell of pride that Stella answers with a chitter. She ignores the rest of the ink-splattered draft, though, curious about the uneven lump beneath—

His scarf.

She can’t help but hold it up to her nose, breathing in the castle soap scent it’d had those couple of weeks here in Katolis along with the rest of that comforting Callum smell—paper and charcoal and just…Callum.

Rayla can’t help but let the scarf muffle her words and catch her watery eyes, unwilling to part with any of these pieces of him she could only remember for all this time.

“He’s…kind of dorky and really talented,” she gushes on, smiling and teary-eyed while Stella listens, “but dumb and sweet and so kind, and…well, you know. I’ve told you. That’s why we had to come here.”

This is already better than she’s felt in years, tears included, Rayla thinks, looking around the room, amazed at how nice just this alone is: just being here with all of his things after so long, nevermind the anticipation of seeing him—actually seeing Callum—again.

“I need…I need to fix this, Stella. I love him, and I miss him, and…” she gasps, catching her breath with the tears now free-flowing, with Stella nuzzled in close at her neck. “He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and—”

“—and, ugh, I’m rambling. Callum does that too.” Rayla stops herself, forcing a choked laugh through a sob when Stella backs away and looks at her wonderingly again.. “I’m sure he’s coming back here to his room soon. Guess I need to figure out what to say…I don’t think crying all over him is going to work out.”

Rayla wipes at her eyes one last time with the scarf before hanging it on the wardrobe with a sigh, and Stella is standing pointedly atop the pile of blank paper Callum’s scarf had been covering when she turns back.

“You want me to…write it down?” she asks, tilting her head, sitting again in his chair. Stella scurries to the inkwell this time with an insistent chitter, and Rayla picks up the quill, but…

Honestly, she’s not sure where to start.

—

“Hey.”