Canon: Remove if not applicable.Four weeks had passed by far too quickly. Astolphe did miss not being warm all the way through, but he had enjoyed his time in Ellvaldez more than he initially thought that he would. The food was firmly bland and unremarkable and he wouldn’t miss it, but his experiences had left an impression. Both in ways that he might tell, and ways that he would not speak of to anyone else. The kiss was definitely only their secret.
“You’re leaving too soon.”
Astolphe paused on his way to his room, where he still had to make sure all of his things were properly packed before his bags were moved to the carriage.
He heard his father laugh a quiet laugh. It sounded fond. “It’s your fault for becoming ill, Randi.”
Randi. Gralat had been right.
“Hardly. That was the fault of the ice that I stepped through.”
Astolphe decided that it might be better if he didn’t listen in. Though it was because he didn’t want to be found nosing around; he still was curious about them.
He heard his father comment, “Right, it was the ice’s fault that you didn’t make sure that it would hold your weight before you headed out on it. How silly of me to think otherwise.” But then Astolphe was out of earshot and he was not any closer to the truth.
“I’m glad that you’re his friend,” Lord Randi— Lord Ragnfríðr, said. “Gralat doesn’t get along with Sigsteinn or Arnfinnr but it’s been fairly calm between them, during this time. They’re always squabbling.”
Astolphe blinked up at Lord Ragnfríðr, not really sure how this conversation had happened. He had been putting the final touches to his packing, and Lord Ragnfríðr had showed up saying that he wanted to say something to him before he left.
“There does seem to be some animosity between them,” he said carefully. He wasn’t sure how to handle a conversation like this, because he had never been told something like that before.
“Yes.. And I’m not that good at mediating peace between them, unfortunately. It seems I’m better at saying the wrong thing than the right thing, or like they are intent on misinterpreting everything, when they have riled each other up.” Lord Ragnfríðr looked genuinely concerned. “I’m glad he’s been able to relax so much. He needs that.” He smiled at Astolphe. “I hope that you might be willing to visit us again, sometime. During summer, perhaps? There are not much differences between our seasons, but we don’t suffer as much from the snow during the summer.”
“I would like that.” Astolphe knew that at least. He smiled an honest smile at Lord Ragnfríðr. “I like Gralat, he’s my important friend, so I would like to see him again.”
Lord Ragnfríðr’s expression turned soft. Astolphe had to wonder if Gralat was capable of an expression like that. If so, he would like to see it some day. “Thank you,” his father’s friend, his friend’s father, said.
“Oh.”
“Oh?” Lord Ragnfríðr tilted his head with the same birdlike motion that Gralat sometimes did.
“I was wondering if you cared.” Wai— He didn’t mean to say that out loud. And judging by Lord Ragnfríðr’s expression, he had not expected to be told that, either. But the surprised look on his face changed into a sad smile. “Of course I do.” Then his smile shifted into something less sad. “You certainly are blunt, too.”
Astolphe blinked up at him, and he nodded. “I guess I’m learning to be.”
...Gralat might not see just how much his father cared for him. Astolphe hoped that he would, some day.
“Why do you look so guilty?” Gralat asked him, when he entered Astolphe’s room to accompany him back downstairs once Astolphe was finished with his bags. Lord Ragnfríðr had disappeared only a few short moments ago, and Gralat had just barely missed him.
“I’m not feeling guilty, so that can’t be it. I’m just confused, because,” he leaned closer to Gralat so that he could talk to him in a quiet voice. “I heard our fathers talking.” He decided to not tell him about his previous conversation with his father. Not yet.
“You’re really fixated on that,” Gralat commented drily. “It’ll come to light at some point, and even if it doesn’t, it doesn’t really matter.”
“Says you,” Astolphe muttered when they stepped out on the courtyard. Gralat adjusted his scarf, so it covered his chin and mouth more, to shield them against the wind.
Gralat’s fingers brushed lightly against Astolphe’s temple, and he felt how cold they were. They buried in his hair for a few moments, and Astolphe raised an eyebrow at him. Gralat bent forward to lean his forehead against Astolphe’s, and Astolphe felt his cheeks heat up. Thankfully they were already growing red from the cold. To think that it was supposed to be springtime, even though the snow was still so deep and the temperature so low.
“I will write,” Gralat promised. “I will practice, before I go to bed tonight.”
Astolphe chuckled. “It’s alright if they’re bad. Don’t worry about it. I won’t mind.”
Gralat looked unimpressed and stubborn. “If I decide to do something, I always fully intend on doing it well.”
“Oh, I apologize, I didn’t know it was that important to write good letters.”
“Of course it is. It’s not important to you?”
Astolphe paused. He had been sarcastic, but Gralat was most assuredly not. His eyes held that intense look again, filled with the mountains and the howling wind.
“It is important. Sorry, I didn’t mean to make it sound as if it weren’t.”
Gralat nodded. “Good,” he said. Then he looked away with a blank look on his face. “Father, please stop embarrassing yourself and put on a coat.”
“Oh, I’m being scolded by you too. Is only Astolphe on my side?”
Astolphe frowned up at Gralat’s father in surprise and disapproval. “You should put on some more clothes, sir,” he said. Lord Ragnfríðr made a strange face, that reminded Astolphe of when his older brother pretended to be wounded. “Woe, I am completely outnumbered. Camus, your son is cold.”
“And you’re on the verge of turning blue. Go back indoors, you fool.”
Gralat and Astolphe exchanged glances. They were unable to exchange more words, beyond parting ones, before Astolphe was ushered into the carriage by his father. But they would discuss this further.
Because that was never not going to be strange.
Astolphe looked out into the darkness, trying to make out the shape of the manor they were leaving behind, but he could only see the lamps fade as they got further and further away.
They faded into nothing, and all that existed around the carriage was the darkness of the Ellvaldez spring morning. Astolphe decided to read, in the dim light from the lamp inside their carriage.
“Astolphe,” Astolphe turned his head from the text in his book, to look at his father. His father lifted his chin from his fist, eyes trained on Astolphe. “Why do you have flowers in your hair?”
Astolphe blinked at his father in confusion, and his father reached forward to pick a flower out of Astolphe’s hair. Astolphe took it, and looked down at it. A small, white bell on green stalks. Snowdrops. Astolphe looked at them in silence. From the corner of his eye he glimpsed his father tilt his head curiously to the side.
Astolphe smiled to himself, and he placed the flower between some pages in the middle of the book. He found the rest that were twined into his hair, and placed them carefully with the first one. His father gave him a quizzical look, but Astolphe didn’t explain that it must have been Gralat who put them there.
He already had some pressed flowers at home. He liked reading about them and learning what properties different flowers had, damaging and healing. He liked to learn what happened if they were mixed together. But this flower was not a flower of curiosity. It was a flower of friendship. He may not know what it symbolized to Gralat, but it was his and Gralat’s flower, it didn’t belong to his father and had nothing to do with him.
If his father could have secrets with Lord Ragnfríðr, then Astolphe could have secrets with Gralat.