Canon: Remove if not applicable.They were going to stay for nearly a month.
Astolphe had already known that, because his father had told him before they had headed out. Before he had agreed to let Astolphe come with him. But he couldn’t help but think that nearly a month was a very long time.
He had asked his father to come with him on one of his trips. He had wanted to go with him somewhere—anywhere—for years, but he was too young and his mother always refused to let him go. She wanted him home with her, and thought it was enough that he had to learn how to fight. She hoped that he would never have to go to war, Astolphe knew that. She didn’t want him to be put in harms way.
Once father finally agreed to bring him along - partly thanks to Astolphe’s older brother - and the time to leave came, Astolphe quietly suffered through his mother’s kisses without protesting. She had probably given him about a thousand of them before she let him out of her tight embrace.
His mother had been reluctant to let him go, but it was only now that he was actually there that Astolphe could understand why.
Because Ellvaldez really was cold. Even after changing out of his frozen clothes and being guided to a lit fireplace in a sitting room he wasn’t getting rid of the cold.
Gralat was a quiet boy, and combined with a height which made him tower over Astolphe, it was what mostly gave him his air of intimidation. Neither boy had really said much since they had met; Gralat had shown him to the bedchamber that he would be using during his stay, had pointed out Astolphe’s father’s room, which he had apparently stayed in before, and had allowed Astolphe time to change into fresh clothing while he waited outside. After that, they had ended up in the sitting room with the fireplace.
Gralat kept watching him. It left Astolphe feeling awkward. He might not have a lot of friends back home, but he had some that he got along with very well, and he had thought himself at least capable of holding a conversation without much problem.
He had been wrong.
His mother had, repeatedly, made him promise to stay away from danger. He felt like he might already be breaking that promise, because he got the feeling that Gralat was, or could be, or would become, a dangerous individual.
Astolphe cleared his throat, and Gralat blinked. He assumed that was a sign of him listening. “Would you mind showing me around? If I’m going to be staying a while, perhaps it would be good to know my way around. I wouldn’t want to constantly impose. I’m sure you would rather do other things than keep me company all the time.”
Gralat blinked some more. He might be considering Astolphe’s words, or he might think Astolphe was rude for even asking. It was impossible to know what the other boy was thinking.
“I guess that’s fine,” Gralat eventually said. Without waiting, he stood up and headed for the door. Astolphe hurried to his feet, and he couldn’t stop looking at the way Gralat’s long, pale hair moved. It looked so smooth, like Astolphe’s fingers would slip right through, effortlessly. Astolphe tugged self-consciously at one of his own locks of hair, which was nowhere near as smooth as Gralat’s looked, even after hours of brushing it.
The manor was fairly empty, and there wasn’t much to it. There was a dining room, bedchambers, a few offices, a parlor with a piano, a sitting room, kitchen, servant quarters. The most basic rooms. And, most interestingly, a library. It was a small room, comparable in size with maybe two combined bedchambers, but the shelves reached all the way up to the ceiling and they were almost all filled.
Gralat noticed Astolphe’s reaction and saw his appreciation, because it was immediate and unmistakable.
“Do you like to read?” he asked, and it was the first question that Gralat had asked him. Astolphe nodded. “Yes. Not everything, but some things.” He let out an ah as he remembered something that he had intended to look into once he got to Ellvaldez. “What sort of plants do you have here?”
Gralat tipped his head to the side. A little like a bird, Astolphe thought. His hair moved with the movement. It was almost childlike. And that thought made Astolphe scold himself, because Gralat was a child. Much more so than Astolphe was.
“Grass,” Gralat said, and Astolphe blinked. “Moss,” Gralat continued. “Mountain ash.”
That was a very short list. “There’s nothing else?”
“Fir, pine.” For a moment, he almost looked hesitant, but then he added; “Snowdrops.”
“Snowdrops?” Why would he be hesitant to mention snowdrops, though? He was about to ask, but Gralat turned to a shelf, ran a finger along the backs of some books, and pulled out a specific one. He offered it to Astolphe. Astolphe took the book, and looked down at the title. It was titled Sé Flora ond Fauna of Elfvaldeşberg in old-fashioned lettering, had an unpronounceable author’s long name on it, and seemed to be quite old. Astolphe looked back up at Gralat.
“It’s alright if I read it?” He wondered if Gralat thought that was a stupid question. But he had already asked it and it was too late to take it back.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” For the first time, Astolphe could detect some actual emotion in Gralat’s words, on his face. Incredulity was not the first emotion he had expected from him, but it did make him look less intimidating.
“Some people don’t like it,” Astolphe said, and Gralat frowned. And the intimidating look was back on his face.
“If you weren’t allowed in I could simply have said it was another bedroom you can’t enter,” he said. Astolphe frowned back at Gralat. That meant that there possibly were rooms that were not at all bedrooms, even though that was what Gralat had said.
Gralat seemed to realize that his words implied that as well. “If you go snooping, you’ll just get yourself into trouble.”
“Snooping,” Astolphe repeated. Gralat’s frown deepened. “Yes, that is what I said.”
“It’s just that, it’s an unusual word to use.”
Gralat shook his head. Some of his hair ended up on his shoulders. It looked like a thin veil “Just don’t do it, it’s better that way.”
That really made him wonder what this family might be hiding in those rooms.