Sten was ready to go. The anticipation had been building for months, but tomorrow was the day. The rest of the [Guild] would be leaving for Brunner’s soon, and it was time to make his final play.

Lovi was watching him like a hawk at the breakfast table, together with one of their younger brothers, and Sten felt sure she had asked even her kids to keep an eye out.

Their father Birgir on the other hand was keeping his apparent confidence up, convinced he could make what Sten had been telling him about having learned his place be true through sheer effort of will and wishful thinking.

“Are you not going to see your friends off Sten, I heard they were leaving today with Lena and a bunch of others?” Soon as she finished talking she was back to shoveling the customary morning gruel into her mouth, making mad eyes at him over the rim of the bowl.

Sten was infuriatingly relaxed, but it just made her all the more suspicious. It was what he was known for after all, striking like a snake from any stance or expression. Impossible to read, one step ahead. With Skills involved it was different of course, but nowadays he had his own.

It had been a sobering day when it finally happened.

It had just been about to, but then Sten had suddenly gone and denied his ordained Class and insisted on learning to heal. It had infuriated their father, who wanted him to start training with a Class as soon as possible, but Lovi really did not mind it. It had been the last season where she still felt that she could be her usual domineering self around him.

Sten knew she had other sides to her as well, not least to her kids, but to strangers and pretty much anybody who was not both in her team somehow, and stronger than her, she had a habit of acting rather obnoxious.

Just one lad’s opinion. “Are they? Who is taking over the Hare’s Retreat then, Lena was a good pick.” Nobody was in a position to deny it, it was another old friend of Lovi’s.

“Like you don’t know, who are you kidding, hah.” That was their brother André.

If Lovi had a hard time riling Sten up then their brother was even worse, because he had never managed it once, and had a habit of walking headfirst into any trap that Sten laid for him. It felt a bit mean to even think it, but he was very alike Birgir in that way. Not necessarily the way Birgir was now, but at the same age as André, in his youth. I would have ate him for breakfast.

“I only trained them a dozen times or so, it was no big deal. But they are good people so I would wish them the best, no need for you to read into things.”

Lovi glared at them both now.

They finished eating and got up to go out and do their morning workout.

André was trying to find a way to recover. He knew they wanted to make Sten somehow confess to wanting to go, but he did not know how they could possibly go about it. Or even why Lovi was acting so damn suspicious in the first place. She saw them at the lumber mill, so what?

“So you don’t care at all, not even enough to go say goodbye to them, huh.” Lovi said as they stretched.

“Yeah, just another day for you then,” André continued, watching Sten carefully.

Sigh. “That much should be obvious by now, you are both acting weird for no real reason.”

Sten did not even look at them, but kept his eyes closed and kept stretching. It was what he usually did, but it still made him provokingly difficult to read. And suspicious.

The two siblings exchanged a look and suddenly both had the same idea, Lovi gestured a direction with her head and got a nod in return. “Then what do you say about us two heading up to Blackenberg for a little bootcamp, how about it? We haven’t done one since last summer bro, you were still teaching me that tree kicking technique, ey?”

Sten still would not open his eyes. Blackenberg was the other direction from Brunner’s farm.

“Sure, sounds like a cool plan if you have a few days off.”

The response made alarm bells go off in Lovi’s head. She was not supposed to let him leave Salcret, not without alerting their father who was sleeping off his itis upstairs after his pre-dawn workout routine and subsequent ravaging of their food stores.

She could not let Sten go with André alone. “I will come too then, it has been far too long since this momma took a week off to blast some trees down without having to make it all into planks too because of those damn [Arborists] at the mill.” She crossed her arms, like she was expecting that to make Sten come up with some excuse to change his mind. Simpletons.

“Sounds like a plan.” Sten finally opened his eyes, looking straight at them both.

Then he went to say goodbye to his little cousins. He was going to be gone for a few days.

At least.