"Uh Lirris?" Lirris opened her eyes to see a worried Benaret looking down at her. She could hear Talmur chittering nervously.
"Good morning," she said, smiling up at him. "Did you sleep well?"
"Very well," Benaret answered tersely. Lirris sat up. Something was wrong. "Your flit is going crazy," he said.
And it did seem like Talmur was going crazy. He was screeching and flying at the door, even though, had he wanted to go outside, he could have just jumped between. When he sense that Lirris was awake, he flew over to her and, with an urgent chirp, showed her the image of her parents again.
"Talmur, they're gone! They won't be here for another six days!" Lirris tried to calm the flit, but he would not be calmed.
"He's very insistent that my parents are here," Lirris told Benaret, a bit worried. "Talmur would not be doing this if they weren't."
"How could they be back!?" Benaret exclaimed, leaping out of bed and pulling his clothes on.
"I don't know, but they are," Lirris replied, pulling on her clothes just as fast. "If the knock you can go into the cl-" before Lirris could finish her sentence, there was a knock on the door and it swung open. Lirris' father stood in the doorway.
"Who is this?" Rainsorl asked in that dangerously quiet, silky tone of voice that meant he was so mad he couldn't even yell.
"This is Benaret," Lirris replied, hoping her father wouldn't recognize him as being a drudge or ask his rank.
Too much to hope. "He's a drudge, isn't he?" Rainsorl went on in that same tone. "I can't believe it. I leave for one day and my daughter beds down with a lower-than-dirt drudge."
"Master Rainsorl-" Benaret began, but Rainsorl cut him off.
"Don't even talk to me, you lowly pile of dung. Get out of my daughter's quarters this instant and you'll keep your life- barely," he snarled.
"No!" Lirris exclaimed. "If you or anyone tries to harm him I swear I'll..." Lirris' voice trailed off into frustration as her father started chuckling.
"Don't try to be brave about it, Lir," he chuckled. "I won't harm him any more than it takes to make sure this cannot happen again."
Benaret fled the room then, dashing down the hallway. Lirris watched him go and then turned on her father. "How dare you!" she hissed, eyes flicking to her belt-knife.
"How dare I?" Rainsorl repeated, still chuckling. "Oh, very easily, dearest. This will all be for your own good one of these days. Nothing good could come out of a one night stand with a drudge."
"You don't understand!" Lirris screamed in frustration, close to tears.
"Oh, I understand very well. You'll get over him, especially when he has no reason to be attractive to young women anymore," with those ominous words hanging in the air, Rainsorl strode out of his daughter's quarters. "Oh, one more thing. We're leaving again tommorow, and you're coming with us."
Lirris threw herself on her bed, staring up at her ceiling, willing the tears to stop. She knew what her father had in mind for Benaret though she tried to push it out of her mind. But she wouldn't let it happen. There had to be something she could do.
Suddenly, Lirris knew what she would do. Closing her door, she changed into more presentable clothes and went down to the kitchens to talk to Benaret...