>>5788306The carriage-ride there was filled with laughter and jibes at everyone’s expense, inevitably, in the manner of close and long-time friends. Any especial teasing of you was soon forgotten, and good cheer abounded—most especially for Blanchette, who materialized a flask from somewhere in his robes.
“Why are wearing your school-clothes?” Testa asked.
“Why are you already DRINKING?” Pearce asked.
“Plebians!” he cried. “Firstly, these are NOT my school-robes. I had them commissioned specially at the Lacewing Boutique—”
“You commissioned them to look just like our school-clothes?” Testa interjected.
“—in the STYLE of the TIMELESS FASHION of our NOBLE PROFESSION.”
“And the flask?”
“It is called ‘pre-gaming’.”
“It’s called getting sick again just like two years ago,” Pearce grumbled, and you held back a laugh.
The farmlands owned by the Pearce family were not far from Hawksong, slightly to the southeast, in the vicinity of the hills between Sparrowton and Crowhurst. You’d sort of been picturing something small and quaint, like many of the family farms you’d passed ranging to and from Old Maple Hill, but what you ACTUALLY found was a quite-expansive ranch-house, pens and paddocks for all sorts of pigs, cows, sheep… And, yes, a pen for rabbits. You counted yourself lucky that Henzler hadn’t come, actually—you wouldn’t want to have to carefully watch Muffins around potential prey or paramours the whole time, had the carriage-driver even been willing to take him.
Aside from the abundance of animals, there were sweeping fields of wheat, barley, and canola, and from how Pearce casually described it, much of what stretched out within sight of your eye belonged to his family or to a smattering of other cousins and kin, though some were leased out.
“Wait,” Testa began with a spreading smirk and a hungry look in her eyes. “Are you RICH, Mister Pearce?”
“We get by,” Pearce had said, “but I’m the youngest of seven sons, so… You know. No inheriting it all or anything.”
“So don’t marry you for money,” Testa sighed. “Got it.”
“I guess you’re lucky you’re a mage, huh?” Blanchette remarked indelicately.
“Seventh son’s a spellcaster,” Efron remarked wistfully. “That’s a classic.”
“Are most of you not, then?” you’d asked, realizing you didn’t know much about your friends’ families.
“Two brothers,” Blanchette said.
“Brother and a sister,” Efron supplied.
“Just a sister,” Testa said. “What about you?”
You shuffled awkwardly, turning away, and said: “Only child.”
“Right,” they all said at once, and Pearce gave you a light shoulder punch.
“Come on,” he said, “let’s have a drink… Or ANOTHER, DIFFERENT drink, for Blanchette, I guess.”
You all laughed at that, most noisily Blanchette himself.
