The Princess's Guard

♤7♤

"Hey." I whispered as I came out of my room to the shared room of the quarters. Clement had just come back from night duty and was sitting on the shared desk, reading a thick book to pass the time.
"Why the hell are you awake, Theresa?" he said, looking at me surprised. It was 5 in the morning and I had waken up in a cold sweat after barely managing to sleep for three hours. "Don't you have like... a very long trip tomorrow?" he added while looking at me slightly judgementally.

"Yeah, the palace is apparently located at the north of Meliora, which is going to take more than a few hours..." I huffed in frustration. "...but I can't sleep. I've tried counting sheep and everything else. I think I'm incredibly nervous about everything." I pulled the empty chair accross Clement and sat in it.

"I can understand that." Clement said, lifting his head from his book once again. "I don't think I'd marry just anybody on demand either if I were a princess, especially not some prick whose father writes shady letters to my kingdom." I had been talking to the princess about the idea of getting married. She was pretty much in favor of it, but she was also very clear in that she wouldn't marry anybody who wouldn't treat her like a goddess, and the king of Meliora had been trying to renegotiate the policies on resources with us for years, so the prince definitely wasn't going to treat her as well as she liked to be treated. I had been talking about my interactions with her to my roommates without going into much detail, so Clement more or less knew what I was worried about.

"The worst part is..." I said breathily. "...she doesn't know the aim of this trip is to marry her off. She just thinks it's diplomacy stuff. I don't know how she'll react once she finds out." i was fidgeting with my hands, my elbows leaning heavily on the table.

"You're definitely going to be the one to deal with her response once she finds out." Clement responded with a slight smirk. "From what I understand you're basically assigned to be her unusually strong gal pal for this trip." he paused for a second. "You want me to brew you some coffee? I'm gonna get one for myself, and I figured it might help you stay awake for morning duty." 

"Wow, you being a gentleman? That's rare." I said, giggling upon seeing clement's smile turn into slight anger. "I don't have morning duty today, though. I was commanded to rest until noon." I smiled.

"Okay then. I'll just drink my coffee and go to sleep. Ask Edna to make you some magic-infused green tea when she wakes up. My mama always used to make some for me. I'd sleep like an angel." he said as he got up from his chair and slowly headed to the kitchen.

"Uh... coffee and sleep? Are you sure that'll work?" I asked.

"It makes me sleepy, actually. I've no idea why, but I like the taste of it aswell so it's a win-win in my book!" he said, raising his voice slightly so that I could hear him clearly from the distance. "Good night, Theresa!"

For the next hour or so, I decided to pass time by snooping through the main room, mostly the bookshelf and other things Clement and Edna had left for public use. I personally didn't own anything that could be considered fun or interesting. I didn't really have any skills or craft I enjoyed outside my job, and most of my free time consisted of either reading or just socializing with the people around me. I had a few books that I had brought with me, but nothing else of that sort.

It wasn't always this way, though. Before my father's passing, I'd had an interest in many things; I was a tiny jack of all trades of sorts. My favorites amongst those however were painting and sparring. My parents had always told me i excelled at both of those things, though my father's death had laid the harsh, cruel truth in front of me: I was mediocre at best at those things, as a family friend told me; and I was never going to make money off of painting, as my mother told me.