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Evening.

Jennet returns quietly into the empty room and sighs. Now considered a part of the cooking staff, she was allowed to eat her meal in the back, before helping with the evening clean up. Part of her was sad... But another part of her just didn't even want to see the squirrel again, and so not having to eat in the open was a blessing.

Olyvia wasn't back in the room yet either. Without distraction, Jennet stripped down, and climbed up to her bunk, curling up to pull her knees to her chest. She wasn't a bad girl, she kept telling herself... But Olyvia's cold words and images of the Lynx's stare both haunted her as she softly cried in her bed.

Olyvia comes back not too long time later, in a more chipper mood than when the two wordlessly woke up for the day this morning. Having gone from mopping the floors, to down to the furnaces deep within the Fortress, to learning she has magic in her, today has been one heck of a rollercoaster for the squirrel and she's forgotten about her friend... roommate, until now.

Carefully she opens the door, and is entirely unsure what to do or say right now, so she doesn't say anything just yet even though she notices the mouse.

Jennet hears the door open and with an extraordinary work of effort she sucks up her tears and grows silent, unsure what else to do or say. She didn't ask Princeton about switching her and Olyvia. She wasn't even sure she wanted to ask anymore...

Instead she just shrinks into a tighter ball.

Olyvia swallows. Her heart feels like it's a steel ball slowly sinking into honey, and taking her with it.

"Um. H-hey."

Jennet is quiet for what feels like a very long time before at last her voice creaks out a very quiet, "Hey..."

She doesn't move or turn to look at Olyvia.

Olyvia frowns slightly, uncertain of much at all. Some part of her telling her she did something wrong, which...

"Um... Everything okay, Jennet?"

Jennet finally turns her head, her eyes red from the tears, but her face is otherwise stone. "'m fine." She huffs out, then turns her head back and mumbles under her breath, "Doesn't matter to you anyways."

Olyvia blinks, feeling her heart sink further. "What? It does matter to m-"

She goes quiet as the weight of her words in contrast to her behavior of last two days hits her like a runaway freight train. On fire.

"... T-to me." She stares at the wall, stunned.

Jennet pulls herself in tighter. "I'm just some country nothing, right? I didn't even want the stupid kitchen job, you know. I didn't ask for it."

Olyvia stares at the wall, replaying all the awful glares and terse words she's said to someone she wanted to call a friend. For a moment she doesn't reply at all.

"... I am an idiot.", she finally half-whispers.

Perspective sucks when all of it crashes on you at once.

Jennet finally breaks into a sob, the mouse having been admirably (or stubbornly) keeping herself together for weeks, only for it to all break now.

Olyvia swallows, and the sound of sobbing makes her look up. Her heart really sinks into that proverbial honey as she looks at the mouse... No, as she looks at her friend.

Letting out a small whimper, she finally says, the words that have waited to come for a while.

"... I am sorry."

Jennet tenses, then pulls her head back up to look at Olyvia, now crying ugly tears. "S-sorry?" She stares at the squirrel in uncertainty, as if afraid this is yet another trap that she's so stupidly stepped in over the years.

Olyvia swallows: "I... I am sorry. I... It's..." She gathers her thoughts, much as she can from her own budding tears. She steels herself to say it out loud. "It is not away from me if you get a better chance, Jennet. I am sorry for how I... How I have treated you." She feels surprised herself at the words, but can't deny the truth of them.

Jennet blinks, uncoiling herself with eyes full of tears, "I... Y-you mean it? I..." She reaches her hand out as if to reach for Olyvia, but pulls it back to her chest, "Are... Are we friends? I... I thought... But then... And now..." She swallows, sniffling.

Olyvia swallows: "I uh... I..." She sniffs, ears laid back, looking up at Jennet: "... I-if you'll still... have me around, a-as your friend... we g-got into this together, and I... I treated you like trash after... after that, and..." She trails off, tearing up as her own guilt attempts to choke her from even saying more out of shame.

Jennet clutches her tail with one hand, and slowly lets it go. "I... I want to be. I still want to help you... A-and I really thought... We get out of this together, yeah? That's... That's what I want."

Olyvia nods, then winces: "Uhm... yeah. I agree, but also... to add a bit of an 'about that' to it..." She takes a breath, then looks back at Jennet: "I may, um... I may have a chance, but we're talking less 'weeks' and more 'y-years' of me potentially getting out..."

Jennet slowly lifts her hands up towards Olyvia, wanting to take the squirrel's hands, but still uncertain. "You... You found someone? ...years...? Oh, Olyvia..."

Olyvia hesitates, but then takes Jennet's hands in hers: "I... there's this... Wizard, apparently, working in this place. And..." She swallows: "...long story short, she noticed, somehow, that I have a lot of magic... a lot of volatile magic in me, and is taking me as an apprentice of sorts." She looks at her free paw, the memory of magic dancing across her fingers still fresh on her mind.

Jennet tenderly takes Olyvia's hands, though they squeeze at the mention of a 'wizard' "Oh no! D-don't make bargains, Olyvia! You don't know if you can trust Wizards."

Olyvia winces: "Um... I w-want to believe her, Jennet. She uh... sort of proved that I have magic, I felt it..." She blinks, pausing: "...or I think I did. What if she did trick me? But why would she do that? I was just lobbing coal when she did...?"

Jennet seems to be about to pull away at Olyvia's admission of her own magic, but instead squeezes her hands tighter. "Y-your magic? Lobbing coal? Wh-what happened to you while we were... N-not talking..."

Olyvia swallows, then winces again: "I uh... I said... words to our, uh... bosses, kinda, and got... punished..."

Jennet frowns, "And... The coal was the punishment. Not the wizard, right? Are... You okay?"

Olyvia considers, then just gives a weak shrug: "I think... better off than I was this morning. I have... hope, I think." She pauses, then gives her friend a small smile: "You?"

Jennet slowly nods, "Better than I was this morning... I have a friend. Just... Be careful with wizards. They're supposed to come into towns and grab folks up and get them into all sorts of um..." She pauses as she considers exactly how they've both been grabbed up by this castle and are being whisked off who knows where. "Errr... Maybe that's... Just old folk stories, you know? Unless the wizard runs this place somehow..."

Olyvia tilts her head, one fluffy ear flopping to the side: "I guess? I didn't really get that feel from Devana, she... more like she's not into all that Royal stuff at all, I think. But..." She hums, then nods: "Well, I will ask her I guess."

She mm's: "...though, on the off chance that she is right and honest with me, then I have a lot of magic in me that could cause... dangerous things unless I learn how to use it. So er... not sure I can take that risk, either."

Jennet glances down for a moment, "Royal stuff and Wizards and Headmaids... It really is all over my head, Olyvia. Just be careful. Don't hurt yourself."

Olyvia starts to nod as she climbs up to Jennet's bed, but then pauses to blink as she's on the edge: "Wait, Headmaids? Whose head are we talking about?"

Jennet helps Olyvia up with a sigh, "Mine? I think she wants to cut it off my neck. The chef who hired me almost got in trouble for it with the head of the kitchen, a big scary maid who doesn't like me. After you..." She shakes her head, "W-well, and then she was watching me. Honestly the wizard is probably a safer bet than the kitchen is for me."

Olyvia blinks: "Buh? But you're the..." She pauses for a second, picking for words in her mind: "...least-dangerous fur I've ever met. Why would she be watching you?"

Jennet looks down at herself, that same crushing weight on her that she felt back at the Farm... Her ears droop down, "Because I'm small... useless... And I don't belong. Probably watching for a moment where I screw up... Then it'll be me shoveling coal."

Olyvia frowns, getting up to the bed: "N-no. I won't let..." She pauses: "...well, admittedly I probably can't do much. But the point is, you're... like, good. You deserve this, too."

Jennet frowns, then lets out a deep breath, "I'm trying... I don't want to be a delinquent or a criminal."

Olyvia sits down on Jennet's bed, tilting her head: "... Are you?"

Jennet shakes her head vigorously, "N-No! That's why I ran! That's... Why I disobeyed my family... And left everything behind. So... Maybe I am bad..."

Olyvia tilts her head the other way: "I disobeyed my family too, and that's why I am here I guess. So are we both bad?"

Jennet slumps slightly at Olyvia's words, grasping her tail again, "It's not how I wanted it all to turn out..."

Olyvia sighs, touching her own (considerably fluffier) tail out of sympathy. "Me neither. And I still want out. But... I'm starting to think that's not in the cards."

Jennet sighs. "Not for a long time... I'm sorry..."

Olyvia frowns, then thinks of something. Despite everything that has happened both inside and outside of her head, despite the utter chaos her life's been thrown into, she's pretty certain of this one thing.

"Hey. Take my paw."

She offers her paw towards Jennet, palm upwards.

Jennet blinks, then releases her tail to take Olyvia's paw again.

Olyvia grasps Jennet's paw with her own: "If... if we want to, if you want us to... still in this together, r-right?" She gives Jennet a hopeful look that betrays just how much she also wants to have a friend in this crazy situation.

Jennet hesitates as she tries to figure out what Olyvia is doing, but as she looks into the squirrel's eyes, she straightens up and nods, "Right!"

Olyvia smiles with a bit of hesitance: "A-and if nothing else... sounds like neither of us will be mopping floors tomorrow."

Jennet returns the smile, still uncertain, but nodding more confidently, "...Right."

Olyvia grasps Jennet's paw with a squeeze, then lets out the breath she didn't even realize she was holding. "...right. I just..." She looks down: "...I think I want to have a friend up here. And... you have sort of become one, I think." The squirrel's usual posh demeanour seems to be gone. Jennet might get the feeling not many have seen this side of Olyvia.

Jennet squeezes back, her own vulnerabilities out in the open as well, "Right. I mean... I have. And you have... Th-that's why what you did... Hurt. Because you've become one too. And you still are. And will be."

Olyvia sniffs: "I messed up. But... I am glad." She gives Jennet weak, but warm smile: "...even if we can't get out, we can... be there for each other, right? It's... weird, we've only known for a short amount of time, but I feel like I can trust you."

Jennet pulls Olyvia in for a hug, "Pa always said you find your best friends when you need them most..."

Olyvia hugs, then squeezes tighter when she realizes how good it feels. "Mmm. May have been onto something..."

Jennet sniffles, squeezing back. "He was a stubborn mouse... but he was usually right."

Olyvia finds herself tearing up again, some combination of pent-up emotions flooding out. "S-sounds about right..." She sighs as she leans onto her friend's shoulder: "... My family is always going on about 'connections', like... Anyone you get to know, you need to weigh the benefits for you in it... S-sounds pretty stupid now..."

Jennet releases the hug, but stays close as well, just enjoying the feeling of someone by her side. "I grew up in a big family... but I was the odd one out. Never felt like I fit in with my siblings... never really had a friend."

Olyvia pauses, thinking: "Err... Is it weird if I can kind of say the same thing? I never felt like I fit in the family plan of furthering the prestige of the von Royceston name..."

Jennet quietly laughs, "Maybe not so weird..." She pauses, then clenches her hands, "Oh-okay. Y-you... you asked early on if I had any hopes or dreams of my own... Promise you won't make fun of me for this?"

Olyvia nods: "I promise, Jennet."

Jennet blushes, "I... I wanted to be a singer. That's why I ran away from home... to become a performer."

Olyvia blinks: "Huh. That's..." She pauses: "... Possibly more of a solid dream than me, actually."

Jennet shrugs, definitely embarrassed, "Maybe if I hadn't been so naive about it..." She trails off and sighs, "You have your own dream as well?"

Olyvia hums: "Er... I haven't really..." She gathers herself, thinking: "I guess I have spent more time avoiding the destiny road-mapped for me than really finding out... What I want."

Jennet folds her hands in front of her. "Well... there's time now, I guess. If you're right, we're not going anywhere for awhile..."

Olyvia nods slowly. "Yeah... I get the feeling, I've gotten the feeling that no one really leaves this place without connections. My family name does not seem to have any meaning up here..." She swallows, emotions threatening to well up again.

Jennet sighs, "I don't have connections... But maybe this wizard can help? I'm just... Afraid. For you."

Olyvia nods: "I'm a bit afraid too..." She perks up, grinning: "Correction, though. You do have a connection."

Jennet blinks, then laughs, "Guess I do, hm."

Olyvia: "If nothing else, you can now say you know a noble daughter." She hmm's: "Er, much as that does you good right now."

Jennet nods quietly, "...I think it's doing a lot of good. It feels like it matters a whole lot that I know you right now."

Olyvia blinks, then nods because she finds herself agreeing. "Someone to... Talk to at the end of the day, figure out this madness with, right?"

Jennet smiles. "Right. Even if we're not mopping side by side all day, we're still in this together."

Olyvia finds herself smiling again. "Someone to... Call a friend, even if I occasionally screw up."

Jennet grins, reaching up to wipe away the wet trails along her face, "You said you were sorry... And I believe you. I- I'm sure I'll screw up too. I... I want us to be friends who are greater than a few screw ups."

Olyvia blinks, then smiles: "I have never had one of those... I would be honored, Jennet."

Jennet giggles, "Me either. And me too. Never had a real friend... And I am Honored and all as well, Olyvia."

Olyvia giggles: "Too posh? I guess a bit." She gives a bit of a stretch: "Mmm! Guess we should sleep. Devana wants me up there early."

Jennet laughs a bit awkwardly, self-conscious about her own lack of knowledge, "Oh uh, I just don't know any of the words I'm supposed to say, if those are things... But yeah, I guess we should. Th-thank you, again, Olyvia."

Olyvia nods, then moves to get off the bed... But then turns to give Jennet a quick hug anyway, before dropping down. "Thank you, Jennet."

Jennet hums as she hugs back, watching Olyvia drop back down to the floor of their little room together. She smiles, "Good night. I'll see you in the morning."

Olyvia gets to her own bed, smiling. "Good night, Jennet."

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