sea of time

6

Caspar ended up missing class again. Apparently, the time he had woken up was not very early. It was only around 20 minutes until class began, but the whole interaction with the angry boy, and his interaction with Ashe took up more time than 20 minutes. Fortunately, it was only archery practice, and Caspar had no interest in archery.

“Oh, Caspar, do you want to join me in the dining hall?” Ashe asked.

“Sure!” Caspar began to follow Ashe.

“Oh, I’m not going yet, I have to put these books back in my dorm.”

“Oh.” Caspar’s face flushed pink, embarrassed by the miscommunication.

“You can come with me if you wank, though!” Ashe sent out a metaphoric lifeboat for Caspar.

And there was no way Caspar wasn’t going to take the hand given to him. “Sure! Oh, and I can give you a hand with your books.”

Ashe nodded, then handed Caspar a stack of hard-cover novels. Judging by the covers, they were about knights, but Caspar did know the saying “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover” so he couldn’t be too sure. There was one quick and easy way to be sure though. “Knight books?”

Ashe started walking, “Yeah, Loog and the Maiden of Wind. I’m surprised you don’t recognise them. Most of my classmates read them when we were younger. Do you read much, Caspar?”

“No, not really.”

“Oh, well you might still like Loog, though. I won’t spoil it for you if you want to borrow it.” Ashe smiled a little smile.

“Sure, I’ll borrow it.” Caspar smiled a large smile. It would be a waste to say no when Ashe was so hopeful.

—-

They dropped the books off in Ashe’s dorm room, then walked until they arrived at the dining hall. The room was huge - Caspar was beginning to notice that was a trend around Garreg Mach.

“Here, you can just follow me.” Ashe walked ahead to where a few ladies stood behind a counter of sorts, where Caspar followed him.

“See Ignatz? There aren’t that many people!” A muscular man from the entrance said, looking over his shoulder.

Wait, is that a student’s uniform!?

“Rapheal looks really strong, right?” Ashe said.

“Yeah.” Caspar said, still in awe.

I’ll have to ask him how he got so ripped!

“Here’s your meal.” One of the ladies behind the counter said, handing two dishes that looked mostly made of fish to Ashe and Caspar.

Ashe started walking over to one of the tables, where Caspar followed him. There were many students around, and teachers too by the looks of it. Caspar sat next to Ashe, who had chosen to sit across from a blonde boy and a much taller… man? It was hard to tell if this guy was 30 or 17, grey hair aside.

“Don’t stare.” Ashe whispered to Caspar. He put back on a smile, “Hello!”

The blonde boy, who kind of looked like the cheese-strings mascot, nodded to him with a smile.

“Good to see you, Ashe.” Said the other student.

Caspar decided to look at his surroundings while Ashe had a little chat. First thing that caught his eye was the couple of students approaching their table - which were a red haired boy and a blonde girl, who looked familiar.

Caspar gulped when he realized that the reason they looked familiar was because they were the students who were in the training area. Caspar backed up his chair a bit to leave.

“Oh, I forgot to introduce you! Caspar, this is Dimitri and Dedue, they’re in my class. Dimitri is the Blue Lions house leader and Dedue is his vassal. Dimitri and Dedue, this is Caspar.” Ashe smiled. There was no getting away now.

“Oh um, nice to meet you guys.”

Cheese-string boy nodded. It was unclear whether he was Dimitri or Dedue.

The red haired boy - Sylvester, was it? - sat down first. “Heya Ashe.” He winked, but then he noticed Caspar. “I just realized that I have somewhere important to be. Goodbye-”

“Wait, let me introduce you to Caspar! Caspar, this is Sylvain. He’s also in my class. Sylvain, this is Caspar.”

Sylvain nodded, then left. The blonde girl who was behind him seemed to take his cue and followed him.

“Huh. That was rather odd, Sylvain isn’t usually like that unless he sees a girl he’s dumped. Sylvain wouldn’t happened to have gone out with you, Caspar?” Cheese-string said, then laughed.

The other guy smiled, and Ashe laughed too.

Caspar smiled for a moment, not quite getting the joke. “Actually,” Ashe and the other two looked over to him. “I definitely did something wrong, but I don’t really know what exactly.”

Ashe looked confused. “What happened?”

“Well, I went to that training place,”

“The training grounds.” Cheese-string interjected.

“Right. Well, I went to the training grounds, and I saw some guy training, while Sylvain and some girl were arguing. He looked lonely, so I told him that his dad or brother or whatever must’ve been a knight because he was doing awesome with the sword, which caused him to look at me with a death-stare, so I said sorry and I ran away. Still don’t know what I did wrong though.”

Ashe, Cheese-string and the other guy looked nervous. “What did the boy who was training look like?” Cheese-string asked.

“Well, he was ‘round your height, and had black hair tied up in a ponytail.”

The other guy looked away. Cheese-string’s eyebrows were raised, but the corners of his mouth were not. Ashe looked shocked.

“Caspar…” Ashe leaned a bit closer to him. “That’s Felix. His brother, who was a knight, was killed in the Tragedy of Duscur.”

“Damn.” Caspar shook his head slowly. “I really messed up.”

“It’s okay, you didn’t know. Just… be a bit more careful about that sort of thing. A lot of kids here are missing some of their relatives.” Ashe looked a little bit less somber. “And don’t take it too personally- Felix hates everyone.”

“Especially me.” Cheese-string laughed.

“Me as well.” the other student nodded.

Cheese-string held up a finger. “Well, I’ve only ever heard him be kind to Annette.”

“That’s true!” Ashe laughed.