Some Adventure

a story
mature
2016-03-11 15:17:27
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Normallity Always Reassert's Itself.

      It's a rather warm day, especially for this early in Fi, so I've been sitting on the balcony since school got out, observing the city. All the buildings in this part of town are draped in pink bunting, because our neighborhood is full of Antifordians, who still keep the old gods, and the first few days of Fi are set aside to honor the goddess Mell. The festival was fun, but all good things must come to an end, and today, I had to be back in school. It wasn't so bad. School here is rather interesting, and today we learned about the first human settlers in Prussian territories. I'm glad that I have the chance to continue going to school. Given how old I am, Catharine could very easily have asked me to work to support the family, and I couldn't refuse her that.

      Anna is still in school as well, but she ran off after lessons were done to play with the other children in the neighborhood. She gets alone quite easily with them, and the half-Prussian slang seems to come to her naturally. They meet after school to play some sort of street stickball, I think. I don't play, so I understand the game. I pretend to when Anna talks about it though. I'm glad she's doing well, at least.

      There's a light thud, and Danial sits down beside me, unnaounced. "Some rusty adventure Conwell turned out to be."

      My brother has been doing that for too long for me to be anything except mildly startled. "I thought you weren't to be back until later?" When we moved to Conwell, Richard found Danial an apprenticeship with a mechanic, and he usually doesn't return until right before sunset.

      Daniel shrugs. "He let me go a bit early." He turns to look at me. "You called this place home."

      "I did," I agree. "It almost is."

      "It's so boring here," Danial says.  "I'm sick of life in Conwell."

      "Sicker than you were of life in Antiford?" I ask him.

      Danial sighs. "No. But after everything that happened, I didn't expect things to be so...normal."

      I've been thinking along the same lines recently. "It's not bad is it?"

      There's a commation down in the street below. There are a pack of children in the street who are having an argument about something. I can pick out Anna's voice among them. Only half the words are in Antifordian, but I can recognize some of the other words their using, and I understand what they're saying. Danial turns to look down at them. "It really isn't bad."