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Lysithea hates hot days. She hates the feeling of sweat trickling down her forehead into her eyes; hates the cloying smell of the candles in the entrance hall. She hates the constant bustle of the harvest, filling the monastery with crowds of new people who all - without exception - treat her like a child.
She hates that most of all. How anyone could stand being patronized and assisted at every turn, she didn’t know. To be treated as lesser. As weaker. That she could never understand.
As if on cue, the painter she doesn’t understand rounds the corner, and he offers her an all-too-cheery wave.
“Oh, hey.” She doesn’t bother to wave back. “It's you. Going for a walk again today?”
He shakes his head. “No, I'm on cooking duty today, and I have to head into town for some groceries.”
“All on your own?” Lysithea puts her hands on her hips. “Hm, I'd better go with you. I'd be worried if you went by yourself.”
“No, please! I can manage on my own.”
“But won't you have a hard time carrying everything back?”
“Not at all. I'll be fine. I'm just replacing a few ingredients. Also, I may not look it, but I'm actually quite strong.” He holds up an arm, pride beaming from his smile. “I've been exercising every day!”
“You're right-” Lysithea crosses her arms, “you don't look it. Your biceps are a fraction of the size of Raphael's. If you start fumbling around under the weight of all the groceries, and then you trip and spill everything everywhere…”
Ignatz’s arm and smile have both dropped. Lysithea shrugs.
“Look, I'm just saying, that could be your future. It could happen. It doesn't look pretty.”
He looks down toward his shoes. “That's what you think of me, huh?”
“Yep. You're honestly a bit of a mess.”
“I see.” The painter lifts his head. “If that's how you feel…”
Lysithea feels her lip curling up, and she does nothing to fight the disdain. “Oh, knock it off with the wounded puppy-dog eyes! As though I'm some sort of villain in your story…”
“I'm sorry. That wasn't my intention. I'm just a bit sensitive, that's all.”
Of course he is.
“You're talking like you don't respect me.”
Lysithea snorts. “I see. So now it's my fault? No matter how grown you seem to think you are, there's so much you're incapable of. You can play at being a mature adult, but it only ever complicates things. And that's exactly what makes you look like a child.”
“Oh, enough already!”
Lysithea has never heard Ignatz yell before. The sound is startling and shrill, grating in a way she never expected his soft voice to be. She’s never seen him angry before, either - his eyes hot and face flushed as he clenches his hands to his chest.
“Would you just leave me alone?!”
The boy turns and darts away- and for a moment, his eyelashes glitter with a wetness that wasn’t there before.
A long moment of silence hangs over Lysithea as she stands alone. Finally, words return to her tongue.
“Maybe I… went a bit far that time…”
She shakes her head.
“But he's so stubborn despite his ineptitude. I can't just leave it be. He's so foolish—constantly making a mess of things. Wait... But then... No matter how much we stretch, some things are always beyond us. I think it's fine to be vulnerable and ask for help sometimes. What he said to me before…”
She stops.
“To everyone else, do I seem just like Ignatz?”
***
Lysithea von Ordelia wasn’t in trouble - at least, not yet.
It seemed that despite Ignatz’s many shortcomings - the artist was indecisive, absent-minded, and woefully inadequate at any attempt to care for himself - he wasn’t a tattletale. Though, Lysithea thought, that probably had more to do with his scaredy-cat nature than anything else. The kid acted like a baby at the sound of thunder. The first and last time he’d ever been on a pegasus ended in an emergency trip to the infirmary when he’d panicked and flailed himself off the animal mid-flight, leaving him concussed, confused, and blind as a bat without his glasses - and the rest of class time had been wasted in a house-wide search on hands and knees in the grass for the blasted things.
Ridiculous.
But he would crack. Eventually, he would crack.
Lysithea sighed, leaning her head on her hand. At the very least, a good tongue-lashing from the Professor and Manuela would mean Lysithea wouldn’t have to sit with this strange heaviness in her chest anymore.
She could move on.
One day passed. Ignatz was nowhere to be found. No one said anything about it, not even the Professor. Leonie was put on cooking duty in his stead that night; at least she used less vegetables than her predecessor did. Still not enough sweets… but Lysithea wasn’t sure she had the stomach for cake today, anyway.
One day turned into two. Ignatz’s seat at the front of the lecture hall was still empty. The Professor reminded everyone to be careful- winter was just around the corner; she didn’t want to worry about anyone getting sick due to changes in the weather. Like always, Marianne excused herself after class- though Lysithea was pretty sure that the stables were in the opposite direction of the lower student dormitories. Where Ignatz’s room was.
Two days turned to three. Claude was sitting in Ignatz’s seat today, lounging comfortably like he had been in that spot all year. His own usual place next to Hilda in the back- well, the door creaked open a few minutes into the lecture, and Lysithea ducked her head to peek. There was Ignatz, somehow even smaller and paler than she remembered, being shepherded toward Hilda by an unusually solemn Lorenz. Hilda pulled him down to sit beside her and bumped her cheek gently against his shoulder.
Three days turned to a full week - and Lysithea realized she hadn’t seen Ignatz in the dining hall for a while. Raphael shrugged it off when she asked him why he was leaving the dining hall with two plates- one specifically full of his best friend’s favorite foods. As her fellow student disappeared out into the late morning, Lysithea found herself wondering how much of it Ignatz would actually eat.
Soon, an entire moon had passed. And still, no one had come to reprimand her for her outburst.
She hadn’t moved on.
***
Ignatz wasn’t in the library. He wasn’t in the stables. He wasn’t in the cathedral. He wasn’t in the training grounds, or the sauna, or the market. The infirmary only held a tipsy Manuela, and the knight’s hall had an arguing Catherine and Shamir- but no sign of the be-spectacled artist.
At this rate, all the courage Lysithea had summoned over lunch was going to dissipate before dinner. She shook her head as she pushed open the door to the greenhouse-
"There you are!"
The boy crouched on the floor with a sketchbook jumped like he’d been struck by a bolt of lightning.
"L-Lysithea-"
"I've been looking everywhere for you."
It was ever so slightly, but Lysithea could still see it: Ignatz had paled at that statement.
"Ah," was all he said.
An uncomfortable silence fell between the two. The artist stared down at the ground, hunched over his sketchbook like he was hiding something naughty.
Lysithea took a step forward. "What are you drawing?” She tried. “Flowers?"
"I'm not drawing." He clutched the papers a little closer to his chest.
"You've got charcoal on your hands," she pointed out, "you've been drawing."
He gulped, turning wide, frightened eyes to face her.
"I- it isn't anything important."
"Can I see?"
"U-uh-"
He hadn't said no.
Lysithea walked over next to him, peering over his shoulder. He scrunched down a little lower, but his narrow frame couldn't hide the massive bouquet of flowers sprawled across the page. One huge lily was the centerpiece, entangled in a rich bundle of baby's breath and forget-me-nots. A doodle of a bumblebee, as fuzzy and soft and round as the real thing, sat sleepily on the lily's petals, resting delicate legs against the flower's elegant throat.
Lysithea's breath caught in her throat. "That's- really good."
"It's… not done yet." The boy fidgeted. "I wanted it to be finished first… before you saw it, I mean."
"Before I saw it?"
Ignatz nodded once, somehow shrinking even further into his uniform. "Lilies are your favorite, I thought, a-and I wanted to get it perfect-"
“They look done to me.”
"My shading isn't right-" The boy shook himself. "But- I guess that doesn't matter anymore."
Lysithea glanced up. Now was the perfect time to say it. She opened her lips; and all of a sudden, her mouth felt drier than the Sreng desert. The two were just staring at each other. Funny- Ignatz’s ears were bright pink, she noticed, the same color as the carnations behind him.
Then, like water spilling through a broken dam, the words came tumbling out of his mouth. “I wanted to apologize- for yelling! I shouldn’t have yelled at you before-”
Lysithea's mouth dropped open and she stared at the red-faced boy on the ground in front of her. He - Ignatz Victor - was apologizing to her - Lysithea von Ordelia?
Surely she had heard him wrong.
“That’s what the flowers were supposed to be for. And-" Ignatz dove into his bag, rummaging frantically, "and I asked Hilda what perfume she wears, and she helped me find some. It took a month for it to arrive in the caravan, but-"
"Stop it, Ignatz."
Ignatz froze, clutching the tiny crystal bottle to his chest. “S-sorry.”
"No, just-” Lysithea bit her lip. “Listen. Is that why you've been avoiding me?"
Ignatz stared down at the ground. "I just wanted to apologize properly."
“Oh, Goddess-" Lysithea pressed her palms into her eyes. "If you were literally anyone else, I’d think you were doing this on purpose.”
“Doing- what?”
She dragged her hands down her face and blinked at him through her fingers. "Just- piling on the guilt."
The painter blanched. "I'm sorry, I-"
"Stop saying that."
Like magic, Ignatz fell silent.
Lysithea looked down at her hands. "Stop saying it, because… um…"
She swallowed hard.
"Because I'm the one who needs to apologize."
Her face flared hot at the look of shock on his.
"I- I yelled at you first. And- and I said some really… really awful things. To you. About you- just because I was mad. And- I felt like it, in the moment… I called you an incapable child."
He winced.
"And-" she pushed on, "and I was going to let it go. I was going to let it sit and not say anything because, surely, the Professor would find out and scold me, and then I'd be done. But that didn't happen."
There was the apology, forming on his lips; she cut him off before he could start up again.
"And it's good that it didn't happen. Because I would have forgotten it. Like a child, I would have let it go- when… a real adult would say sorry."
She took a deep breath.
"And I am. I'm really, really sorry."
He stared at her, his brown eyes like saucers in his thin face.
Lysithea's heart sunk into her shoes. The thought hadn't crossed her mind until now, but- he wasn't going to forgive her, was he?
She deserved that, she supposed. After all she'd said-
"...can I still give you the perfume?" Ignatz held out the crystal bottle with a shy smile. "I won't use it… and I'd like you to have it. As a token of- my forgiveness? Though…" He flushed. "That sounds silly- a token of our friendship."
A wave of relief crashed into Lysithea's knotted stomach and she smiled back, reaching for the pink vial. "Thank you."
Ignatz paled as she pulled away. "Wait-"
She looked down. A dark line of charcoal was smeared across her little finger, right where her hand had brushed his.
"I'm so sorry-"
"Stop it." Lysithea rubbed her hand on her dress. "See? Gone. Can't even tell against the black uniform."
She dropped to sit next to him, and her hair fell over his shoulder. Normally, she would have avoided sitting that close to anyone- it made her look even smaller by comparison. But today- today it would be okay.
He tapped his paper. "I still want to finish this before I give it to you, though."
"Can I watch?"
"Oh- um…" He blushed. "If you want to. I'm not sure it'll be much fun-"
"I'm too tired for fun right now, I think."
They smiled at each other.
"Me too."
The two sat in silence as Ignatz's stick of charcoal slid across the page with a gentle scratch- but this was different than before. This was mutual. Comfortable. Calming and soothing in their togetherness.
A little thought bubbled up in Lysithea's brain.
"I've been thinking." Lysithea turned to look up at the boy sitting beside her.
His hand paused and he tilted his head at her. "Yes?"
"Maybe… maybe I should try something new. Something I'm- not… good at… right away. And- and learn how to accept help."
Ignatz shifted slightly. "...I could teach you how to paint."
Lysithea looked up. "Huh?"
"I could teach you how to paint," Ignatz repeated, pushing his glasses up his nose with an excited twitch Lysithea hadn't seen in a long, long time. "If you wanted to, of course, but for something new- something different… something I can help you with-"
He stopped, a blush shooting up his neck into his cheeks.
"Not that I think you'll be bad at it, I just meant-"
"I think I'd like that."
Lysithea smiled.
"Thanks, Ignatz."
***
It’s been a while.
Lysithea looks up at Ignatz’s bedroom door. She can hear him on the other side, humming pleasantly to himself as he muddles about the room. He’s got a nice voice, she thinks. It isn’t clear and full from years of training like Manuela’s, or bright and soaring like Hilda’s. It's soft, and a bit wavery on low notes, but it's warm and sure. Like an old, familiar hug after a long journey.
She puts her hand on the door, and it gives beneath her fingers.
“Um, hey…”
“Oh! Lysithea.” Ignatz turns with a smile. “Something I can do for you?”
“Can you help me out with my shopping?”
“Yes, of course. You need me to carry stuff?”
“Actually, can you pick up some tea for me? I'd do it, but I'm drowning in work.”
”You're so busy you can't go shopping? OK. Do you have a favorite kind of tea?”
“I'm not too picky. I just like having it around, really. Whatever's cheapest works for me." She holds out a palmful of gold. "Here's some money.”
Ignatz doesn’t accept the coins. “One question. Why me? You don't really need my help for this.”
“I just thought I could lean on you a bit. You know,” a smile creeps across her lips, “rather than trying to do everything on my own.”
“Right. I see. Well, good! I'm glad you decided to approach me.” That old familiar blush crosses his cheeks. “Ah, but, for this particular task, you might be better off doing it yourself.”
“Oh?”
“There are so many different kinds of tea, and I'm not very discerning." He rubs a hand against the back of his head. "What if I get you one you don't like? When I do my own shopping, I pick a tea at random. Otherwise I'd be paralyzed by all the choices. It's the same with food. Sometimes I stare and stare at the options and never decide.”
That, Lysithea thinks, is a burden I can take off his plate- and put some cake on it instead.
Aloud, she adds, “You looked like you were just fine when you went to get groceries the other day.”
“I really had to push myself to do that alone. I don't think I can do that again.” His head dips ever so slightly. “Sorry…”
Lysithea pockets the gold with a half-smile. “Aha. So you've stopped trying to do things on your own, then?”
“Yeah. Still, though…” he looks around the room. “For today, how about you have some of my tea? If that'll do…”
“Sounds nice, sure. Do you mind brewing mine while you're at it?”
“OK!” He grins. “Though I can't do it as skillfully as Lorenz, I'm afraid. I'll get it ready right away. Feel free to start focusing on your work.”
His smile still has a hint of the nervous boy from years earlier. He hasn’t changed completely.
Lysithea smiles down at the worn carpet on his floor. “Heh.”
Ignatz tilts his head at her. “What?”
“I mean," she glances up at him, "you seem plenty reliable to me.”
“I do? Really? How so?”
“You're fun, you're easy to be around, and you rarely complain when you help others.”
Ignatz chuckles. He has a pleasant laugh; gentle and sweet. “Well, I'm just pouring you some tea. I'm not sure that qualifies as ‘help.’”
Lysithea isn't going to let him deflect praise this time. She leans forward, an insistent gleam in her eyes. “It's not easy for me to rely on people, but with you, it's different.”
“Well, there aren't many things I can do, frankly."
Lysithea furrows her brows at him with an exaggerated frown. He laughs outright at that, raising his hands in a gesture of placation.
"What I can do, I will do! So if you need anything, ask me, and I'll try to help.”
Hmph. Verbal praise does very little for her artistic friend, it seems. If he won't take it, then-
She sighs.
Ah, well. What was the harm in one childish action?
Like a cat, she pounces. She throws herself at him, squeezing his ribcage as tightly as her weak arms could manage.
This will have to do.
“You really are unreliable, as it turns out!" She laments,"Guess I'll just have to take your word for it.”
Ignatz laughs again- and this time the rumble in his chest tickles against her nose. A gentle pressure slides around her waist: it's his arms, she realizes. Strong despite their slenderness, he's returning her embrace. He's hugging her back.
Lysithea can't stop the hot flush of embarrassment. This is so undignified. So immature. So unlike the perfect image she has worked so hard to cultivate.
And yet, she thinks, she doesn't really mind.