"I don't hate you."

"That doesn't make sense. If you don't hate me - then why won't you - " Her throat closes up on her before she can let anything that sounds too needy, too desperate to be loved out of her mouth. 

"Your worth is not tied to whether or not I fuck you." Deep breath. "You have- a greater purpose. And I," breathe in, breathe out. "Do not want to stifle your potential. In any way."

That vicious, biting thing in her chest is thrashing around in a way physical pain never does, and she scrunches her face up, her eyes blurring with tears she doesn't want to let fall.

"But you do," she shouts, her tone spiraling out of control, her words ripping themselves from her mouth, rising unbidden from the dark shadows where all the feelings and thoughts she can't have go to die, ancient skeletons of old pains rattling to life. "This is - the only thing I'm asking for, everything else is okay but I need - I want - "

(One of those old pains cuts back to before memory, an old vein like coal in her mind.)

"No one loves kids," she says then, her voice breaking as that vein cracks open and spills all its pent up venom into her. "I want to be an adult."

Oh hell.

She steps forward and hugs the girl tight.

She tries to struggle. Not very effectively, though. 

She's still not physically stronger than Eldarra, and Lily absolutely doesn't outmass her.

She starts sobbing, slumping into her teacher's arms. 

Soothe soothe pat pat.

That seems to be calming her down, though she's upset enough the overall process is slow. But, after a while of cuddling, she murmurs, "I just want you to love me..."

"I do," she says back, just as soft.

...Confused, overwhelmed noise. 

"My name is Eldarra, Lily, and I love you."

...Yeah she starts crying again. At least she's actually participating in the hug this time. (At this point it might be a good idea to get her somewhere more comfortable; she doesn't seem likely to stop anytime soon.)

Back to her room, maybe.

One advantage to uncontrolled crying is she doesn't have the spare brain to process having never been to Eldarra's room and still being shirtless.

Not of critical import right now.

(She might appreciate a shirt once she's back with it, but, yeah.)

She calms down again eventually, sobs fading into sniffles and then into a bleary, exhausted lean.

"Do you want a new shirt, Lily?"

...Ack having an opinion is hard. So. She shrugs, very awkwardly. (She would maybe feel more comfortable with one on, but - a lot has happened recently and there's been wild veering between getting a choice and not, and all her surface-level preferences around this were built with the singular focus of getting the Demon Queen - Eldarra - to love her, and it's... Easier to suspend having preferences, when everything is so uncertain.)

Yeah, shirt it is. A loose wrap, that'll fit around the wings.

She's pliant, though if Eldarra isn't actively touching or moving her will default to curling into the older woman. (...And the shirt does, in fact, make her feel more comfortable. More on firm, comprehensible ground.)

"What do you think you need, to reach your potential?"

...That's a hard question. "A lot of things," she says, quietly. "...A different bedroom. One with - one with a window, and a door that locks, but only from the inside." There's probably some stuff that represents in her head, but she's tired and doesn't feel like expanding on it right now, and... She's vaguely wanted that for a while. 

"We can start there."