“Some people consider ancestry and lineage to be a highly important part of their lives. Others couldn’t give less of a shit even if they tried. It greatly differs on the person in question, really,” - Saying attributed to the Silver Maiden.

“Erm… Would Miladies please wait here for a moment? I am afraid this goes far above my paygrade and would need my superior to check,” said the guard at the entrance of the Veros estate, which was just a fenced-off part of land around the mansion with a simple shack for a guard post. The guard stationed that day looked rather lost on how she should respond to the letter Lucea wrote and Aideen presented.

“Certainly, take it easy,” replied Aideen lightly. The guard had every right to be nervous and uncertain as it was not every day that a visitor came bearing a letter with the seal of the Empress herself and claimed to be a relative of the master of the house. The three of them waited calmly as the guard asked the other one on duty to keep watch while she ran to the house to deliver the letter herself.

Aideen, along with Celia and Kino just waited patiently by the guard post with the other, clearly nervous guard. She was well aware that the sort of situation her arrival portended was not a typical one, as it was not a common thing for people of high standing to visit each other without having sent some correspondence prior to their coming.

That said, it was not like she could guarantee she would arrive at a certain day and time anyway, as her travels were partly at her whim, and both she and Lucea found it a bit amusing to shake up the day-to-day humdrum of the current Erstgertsog of the Western Regions by way of a surprise visit from one of his ancestors, certified by the Empress herself.

Sure enough, before five minutes even passed, they noticed a group of people coming from the mansion itself, led by a tall and brawny lion therian male dressed in comfortable but fine robes. Aideen was no expert at distinguishing therian faces from one another unless she had been close with them, but she felt that there was some familial resemblance between the face of the man coming towards her and the family of her late husband from over a hundred years ago that made her feel nostalgic.

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“Erstgertsog Oleg Veros, I presume?” she asked as the therian man stood close to the guard post and observed her with some curiosity.

“That would be me. Considering the letter from Her Imperial Majesty, I believe there is no doubt that Milady would be Aideen deVreys, or rather, my great-great-grandaunt by marriage, yes?” replied the therian man with a spreading, toothy grin on his face. That grin was one that made Aideen certain that he was definitely one of the family, as all of them had a slight tic to their grin that made them expose their right fang a bit more than the left.

“Just aunt will do, please,” countered Aideen as she shook her head with a wry smile. “I already felt old enough even without you adding all the greats and grands on top of that!”

“As you will, aunt,” replied the therian man with a guffaw. “Come, come, please partake in the hospitality of our humble familial abode!” he added as he gestured to invite the three women in. It was a short walk from the guard station to the mansion itself, which while relatively simple in construction, had both the size and aged feel to it that made it look more imposing than it would have otherwise.

“Ah, Yan, good timing. We are going to have three more guests at dinner tonight. They will eat like we do, so please be sure to cook up a bit more,” said Oleg shortly after they entered the mansion as he ran across one of his retainers, who was a human man with black hair and eyes and lightly tanned skin, a rather uncommon combination of features in the southern continent.

“That’s Yan, our cook. He’s a refugee from the Huan Confederacy far to the north-west,” explained the therian man when Celia noted the man’s unusual features a moment later. “From what he told me, his homeland was engulfed in fighting, so it wasn’t uncommon for people from there to look for a better life elsewhere if they didn’t want to be part of the fighting.”

“I’m surprised that it still happened so commonly,” commented Aideen. “The man who taught me how to fight nearly three centuries ago was also from there. At the time, he said he left because he didn’t want to see his children swallowed by the infighting that was raging there, if I remember correctly. It’s been a long time.”

“Yan said that there’s a war in his homeland against people from another tribe, the Aqwa or something, that’s been ongoing for like a couple of generations without any end in sight,” replied Oleg with an understanding nod. “He himself left with his family because the war was encroaching on the region where he lived and he wanted no part of it. I happened to meet him when he was working as a cook on a ship I was traveling on and offered him work in my estate, where he could stay together with his wife and children.”

“A good offer he took on the spot, I assume,” noted Aideen. She knew that Artair’s family was one of those noble families that treated their retainers much more kindly than most, and from what she could tell, Oleg seemed to have carried on that part of the family tradition. The easy smile at the Huan cook’s features was that of a man content and happy with his life, rather than one plastered for show, as far as she was able to discern.

“It was a good decision too, as he’s probably the best cook I’ve ever hired so far!” added Oleg with a guffaw. “You’ll see what I mean at dinner tonight, Aunt.”