Arvell remembered hearing this voice multiple times in his past, but he could not remember exactly where...
Consumed by curiosity, Arvell slowly opened his eyes and saw her. He groggily woke up and rubbed his eyes.
He saw a cute young girl with aquamarine hair looking at him with visible excitement.
Looking at her face, Arvell instantly remembered who she was, after all, she was the person he loved spending time with the most. He proceeded to slowly sit up and greeted her.
"Hey Lily, do you need anything?" he lazily inquired
Arvell let out a loud yawn and stretched his arms.
"Is the first thing you say when you see me?" she pouted.
She put her hands on her hips and leaned over him.
"Also, you knew I was visiting today, so why did you decide to sleep under a tree? I looked all over for you!" she chided.
pαпdα-ňᴏνêι·сóМ "Ok-ok sorry."
Arvell stood up and gave her an exaggerated bow.
"Arvell Relas Vispia, prince of Vispia hereby greets Lilianna Astrea Elantrya, princess of Elantrya" he thoroughly recited.
However, his efforts only seemed to make her angrier.
Seeing her pouty face get even more scrunched up, Arvell started bursting out with laughter.
Hearing his jovial laughter, Lilianna's face could barely handle her forced seriousness any longer and joined in with his laughter as if it was contagious. The two of them laughed until tears began to slip from their eyes, and only after a few minutes did they stop and greedily gasp for air, before returning getting back to normal.
"Sorry Lily, I was just teasing you," he admitted. "How are you?"
"I'm fine Arv, but please don't do that next time. You know I hate being teased!"
Arvell looked away from her suspiciously as if to let her know that he was not planning on stopping anytime soon.
Since they were both so close to each other and were going to be married to each other, the two of them decided to come up with nicknames for each other that only they could call each other. He chose to call Lilianna 'Lily', while his name got shortened down to simply 'Arv'.
Lilianna let out a cute little sigh and produced a basket. She opened it and Arvell was able to smell the smell of fresh-baked cookies. She took it from the basket and gave it to him.
When he took the cookie from her, he saw her hands fidgeting a little in nervousness. Arvell took a bite and noticed that they were a little salty when he expected to eat a more sugary taste.
Lily probably made these cookies herself and mixed up salt and sugar in the process.
'Knowing her she probably put in a lot of effort to make them. I can't let her know they taste bad, it'll break her heart' Arvell thought to himself.
Arvell felt a warm feeling in his heart after thinking about how she put all of this effort in just for him.
Throughout his childhood, he only felt somewhat close to his mother and a few of his siblings, but his mother was normally too busy to spend time with him. His father was worse, as he only saw him on rare occasions, and he doesn't have any memories of spending time with him. The only people he could spend his time with were those select few siblings and Lily.
Arvell pretended to enjoy the cookie and made sure to eat every bite, lest waste the hard work and care that were put into these cookies.
"How is it?" She asked him.
"It's really good!" Arvell responded while doing his best to not let his true emotions show.
Her face visibly brightened and blushed a little.
Before he could finish the last bite, Lily quickly leaned in and ate it before Arvell could put it in his mouth.
Momentarily shocked by the recent turn of events he stared blankly at Lily, who reciprocated with playful eyes.
"That's payback for teasing me!" She childishly proclaimed.
Upon chewing her cookie her face paled and she hurriedly spat out the half-chewed cookie from her mouth. Following that she stuck her tongue out in disgust.
"Whai dith tha salth onths geth in thith batsh?" (Why did the salt ones get in this batch?)
She rinsed out her tongue with some water and stared at him questioningly.
"Arvell, why did you not tell me? That was a cookie from a batch in which I mixed up salt and sugar. I could have just given you another one. Why did you eat it and keep quiet?"
"You put the effort into making this, I can't just say no after seeing how much love and care you put into making these"
Her face burned with a deeper shade of red. Lily was someone who could go on the offensive, but not someone who can take compliments with a straight face. At least not from Arvell.
She took an object from inside of the basket and presented it to him. It was a sleek metallic amulet with what appeared to be a magic circle engraved in the middle.
"This is the amulet my father gave to my mother when they were younger. My mother passed this on to me to keep. However... I want to give it to you! It's a little something to remember me by!"
She proceeded to shyly hand Arvell the amulet.
Arvell dug into his pockets and produced a pair of luxurious purple hair clips that he saved for this exact occasion and presented them to her.
"In that case, I have something for you as well. It might not have a history, but I spent four months of my allowance on it!"
She looked at him and then hair clips and her eyes lit up. Arvell could have sworn her pupils turned into the shape of stars from her sheer excitement.
Lily pounced onto Arvell and gave him a tight hug, ignoring the audible popping noise his back was making. Arvell gave up and patted her head with a pained expression.
After he finally managed to escape from Lily he looked her in the eye
"Lily, would you mind putting the amulet on me? I'll put your clips in your hair in return"
Lily visibly blushed after hearing this, awkwardly nodding her head.
'This girl just hugged me for two solid minutes, and she's blushing when I offer to put a hair clip in her hair?' Arvell wryly smiled.
He reached out and put the two hairclips in her turquoise hair, then allowed her to put the amulet around his neck.
The two of them laid down next to the tree in the courtyard, talking, laughing. After many attempts of trial and error, Arvell and Lily were able to find out which cookies were the normal sugar-based ones. This finally gave Arvell a chance to enjoy them, and he could confidently state afterward that they were arguably far better than their salt-filled counterparts.
Feeling a sense of sudden nostalgia, Arvell looked up at the grand blue sky hoping these blissful times would never end.
"Do you remember? This was the first time you and I 'met'." the person beside him said in a mature manly voice, completely different from Lily's young feminine voice.
Arvell was momentarily shocked as he turned to look beside him, only to see a handsome young man who looked to be in his late 20s sitting where Lily was before.
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