Canon: Remove if not applicable.Gralat had promised to shove Astolphe’s face in the snow, and he kept that promise.
It hadn’t happened, as Astolphe had expected, during training. Astolphe had been tense all morning because he had waited for it to happen, and it had made him distracted and he had sprained an ankle during training. Gralat had wrapped it up for him, and then pulled him up by an arm that he used to support him as he led him back toward the Berlurik manor.
Gralat trained at a military compound, together with other young boys and teens. They were all training to become part of the famous elite mountain troop, and they were crude and rough and so much people of the mountains and it was them who taught Astolphe that the people of Ellvaldez stood out from the rest of the Empire territories’ people.
Astolphe limped beside Gralat, but his help and support wasn’t of much use. He couldn’t wrap Astolphe’s arm around his shoulders or his own around his back or waist; he was too tall for that.
“Not paying attention could kill you,” Gralat pointed out to him, and Astolphe huffed. “I know that, I wasn’t distracted on purpose and it was your fault.”
“You are blaming me for a lot of things, lately.”
Astolphe found that an unfounded accusation, and wanted to make that clear to Gralat. “Only today and yesterday,” he said in protest.
Gralat ignored the protest. “I’m sensing an oncoming pattern.” Gralat also ignored Astolphe’s protests when he picked him up in his arms. Astolphe wrapped his arms around Gralat’s neck with a startled yelp.
“What are you doing?! Put me down!”
“It’ll take an hour to walk home if you’re going to walk on your own,” Gralat said, and he was probably right but—! “You might be bigger than me, but I’m still older!”
Gralat glanced up at him, and simply kept walking. “So?”
“You’re not supposed to carry around your elders like this!”
“But you already knew that I don’t have any manners, so what is there to be surprised about?”
With a huff, Astolphe leaned his cheek against Gralat’s head and grasped some of his hair in one of his hands and tugged at it. “Not that I particularly care, but you’re a prick.” Gralat hummed and Astolphe could feel him drum his fingers against his back. He tightened his grip on Gralat; he did not want to be dropped. He tightened his grip even more when Gralat shifted his grip on him. “I guess that I am. And you’re going to become a strangler if you keep holding on so hard.”
With a grumble and some reluctance, Astolphe loosened his grip on Gralat. He felt Gralat relax, and realized that even if he had not realized it, he must have gripped Gralat way too tightly.
“...You’re seriously going to carry me all the way back?”
Astolphe felt Gralat’s shoulders move, which probably meant that he was shrugging. “It’s decent enough training, even if you’re light.” So, apparently, he was.
“You train far too many hours a day though. You could use a break once in a while, instead of training every day of the week.” Gralat glared up at him. If it wasn’t for the fact that it was so rare that Gralat had to be the one to look up at Astolphe that it was a novelty, he would have been much more intimidating. Nearly two weeks in the other boys company, and he had already gotten used to his friend.
...were they?
Astolphe bit his lip, and looked down at Gralat. Gralat looked back at him, with a puzzled look on his face.
“Gralat?”
“Yes?”
“Are we friends?”
Gralat stopped walking to look at him with a thoughtful look on his face.
Then, without a word, Gralat neatly tipped Astolphe out of his arms and face first into the deep snow by the side of the road. Astolphe sputtered when he pushed his upper body out of the snow, and flailed feebly when Gralat shoved him right back into it. Then he pulled him back out of it, and Astolphe suddenly sat upright in the snow, still with his face, hair, and clothes full of the cold white stuff.
“I’m going back to the compound. I’ll see you at supper.”
Astolphe watched him go, then looked up ahead in the other direction. The manor was not far away. He blamed Gralat’s long legs. It was so close that one of the stable hands had managed to see what just happened.
Well, that was embarrassing, but he had known it would happen at some point. But now the entire house would probably hear about it. He would have preferred if they didn’t.
Astolphe hit the snow with his gloved fist. “He didn’t answer,” he grumbled. The only one that heard him was a beady-eyed bird with red breast. It looked at him in a way that somehow made him feel even more embarrassed.