The Princess's Guardian

25

That night, we stop at the side of the trail later than usual. Luna groans outloud in pain as Mikael and Leonardo assist her out of the carriage. Despite Luna being in obvious pain, she insists on helping out with the cooking. Sunny is tasked to collect firewood while Elena wanders off into the woods to gather any food available. 

Apparently students of Caeli Academy had to go through training on survival in the wild as one of the compulsory subjects. Having young warriors in our midst proved to be helpful when we are all running for our lives. 

While I'm still stuck in my cat form, I follow Sunny with her ears being chewed out by me. Weeks of no communication has made me a very talkative person. I am thankful that Sunny doesn't mind my endless chatters as she listens and occasionally tries not to laugh out loud.

"Yousef was so annoying this one time that I was minding my own business. I was napping while you were training and then he came behind me and 'accidentally' stepped on my tail!" I rant. 

Sunny giggles as we walk towards the small woods. 

"You don't understand! You don't have a tail! Imagine someone stabbing your toes with high heels! It feels like that," I continue to rant. "He didn't even apologize to me! What a stuck-up son of a ..."

"Don't curse, Jord."

"He's so annoying! Talia's more chill than him, but they both still expect me to live up to their unrealistic expectation. Well, I'm sorry that I didn't have fighting skills that I was trained for the past 10 years like them!"

Sunny looks visibly upset, which instantly made me feel horrible for being ungrateful in that moment.

"Sunny... I'm - "

Sunny shakes her head violently. "You have the right to rant, Jord. I know that it's not the future that we both expected since we were planning to go to college and live the best years of our lives... I was really thought that I had the time to pursue higher education before I return to Oppenheim..."

I walk up in front of her and make her stop walking. She looks down at me in confusion.

"Lift me," I demand.

"That sounds so wrong in different ways," she tries to joke as she does as I say. She instinctively hold me to her chest when my body lets out comforting purrs.

"Don't blame yourself for everything that's happened, Sunny," I say sternly, staring hard at her. "What happened to us was an unfortunate event and we can only move forward from here onwards. Sure, I'll complain once in a while, but I gained this amazing gift to defend you and I wouldn't change anything. I love you, Sunny, and you didn't deserve to be attacked by a humongous talking spider or had a close call with death when you were younger."

Sunny sobs, unable to contain her feelings. This time, she lets out everything without Elena or anyone else seeing her moment of weakness. My protective Guardian instincts pushes me to provide comfort to my Handler as she holds onto my tighter. Her tears dampens my bright fur yet it doesn't bother me in the slightest. My only concern is of my best friend.

How did Yousef and Talia surpress their comforting instincts when their Handlers were upset? Maybe it's due to the fact that I wasn't trained to anticipate these senses prior to being a Guardian. Or perhaps I just don't care. 

After a while, Sunny manages to calm down and lets me down.

"Are you gonna give Elena a chance?" I ask casually, sitting on my hind legs as I watch her snapping branches. 

My best friend coughs in surprise. "What? What chance?"

I roll my eyes at her trying to act dumb. "You like her and she likes you."

"Of course we would like each other," she rationalises. "We are friends after all."

"Yeah right, friends..." I say sarcastically. "Did you not see the way she looks at you? She admires you! She respects you! Heck, she even flirted with you and you didn't even know it."

Sunny instantly straightens up and whips her head towards me. "She didn't flirt with me!"

I want to facepalm myself so hard. "Okay, I'd admit it's a more subtle flirting and knowing you, you just assumed that it was her being 'nice'. Ya know what, just listen to her carefully, watch her reaction when she's with you as compared to others."

"What do you mean by her reaction?" Sunny asks cluelessly. I stubbornly stay silent, not wanting to destroy Elena's chances of wooing Sunny. That is if Elena even knows what she's doing to my best friend. 

As far as I can remember, Sunny doesn't seem to pay anyone as much interest as she did with Elena. Even back on Earth, Sunny was so painfully shy and didn't express any feelings towards anyone in school. I was the one going on dates and getting my heart broken by immature boys whereas Sunny seems to be content believing that she'll be alone forever.

Now with Elena, I hope that Sunny's willing to open her heart to her too. 

Without any further words exchanged, we walk back to our makeshift camp with the others. Leonardo quickly got started on the fire with the wood collected by Sunny. Mikael has gone to do his patrol and Elena has returned with some plants I don't recognise. Luna works on cleaning the vegetables with limited water source, leaving Sunny and Elena to themselves. 

"Are you alright?" Elena asks my Handler softly when they were seated a distance away from Leonardo and Luna. I guess she's observant enough to see Sunny's still damp cheeks from the crying earlier.

Sunny flashes her a small appreciative smile. "Yes... Jordan and I just had a much needed talk after all these weeks."

Elena nods in understanding, not asking further questions. Feeling intrusive, I wander away from them to give them some privacy and hopefully Sunny will make her move. 

Instead, I concentrate on finding myself food since I don't fancy eating vegetables again as a cat.