Corin returned to Solmere three days before the rest of the students, the coach depositing him at the academy gates on a cold, quiet morning with the whole campus still wearing the particular hushed stillness of a place not yet properly awake from its winter recess. He had left home with considerably more settled inside him than he'd carried arriving, the promise made and accepted, the awkward early fumbling of learning to help his father transformed, across two weeks, into something approaching genuine competence, and the whole journey back east had passed in a kind of quiet, contented reflection he hadn't expected to feel this soon after everything. He made his way toward his dormitory through the mostly empty grounds, and caught, drifting from somewhere near the groundskeeper's quarters, the particular warm smell of something cooking, and the sound, faint but unmistakable, of genuine laughter. Curiosity, more than anything else, drew him toward it. He found Briar and the groundskeeper, Bevan, seated at a small table just outside the modest quarters, a pot of something rich and savory between them, both of them apparently in the middle of some story that had Briar laughing hard enough that he'd nearly knocked over his own bowl.
BRR: -and then he just looked at Instructor Pratt, completely straight-faced, and said the plant had eaten his notes on purpose, out of academic jealousy-
BVN: I'm telling you, the boy meant it sincerely. Wasn't joking in the slightest.
BRR: Nobody actually believed him, though.
BVN: Course not. Didn't stop him from trying. Committed to the excuse right through to his final grade.
Briar caught sight of Corin standing at the edge of the small clearing and straightened, wiping at his eyes.
BRR: Corin. You're back early.
COR: The coach schedule worked out that way. I wasn't planning to interrupt.
BVN: You're not interrupting anything worth protecting from interruption. Come sit, if you like. There's plenty.
Corin hesitated, the particular unfamiliar uncertainty of someone unaccustomed to being invited into something so casually, and found, somewhat to his own surprise, that he wanted to accept.
COR: I wouldn't want to impose.
BRR: You're not imposing. Sit down, Corin. Bevan makes considerably better food than anything the refectory manages, and I'm not above admitting I've eaten here more often than I probably should have this break.
Corin crossed the small distance and sat, and Bevan, without asking further, ladled a generous portion of the stew into a third bowl and set it before him.
BVN: Eat up. You look like you've been traveling for days.
COR: Four, actually. From Castelgard.
BVN: Long way. Good to be back?
Corin considered the question with more genuine thought than its casual delivery required, turning over the whole shape of the past two weeks, the difficult first evening, the slow accumulated competence, the promise made in the firelight of the east study.
COR: Yes. Actually. Good to be back, and good to have gone, both at once.
BVN: That's often how home works, in my experience. Good to leave it, good to return to it, and both feelings entirely genuine at the same time.
Corin ate, the stew rich and warming after four days of travel rations, and listened as Briar and Bevan continued their easy, meandering conversation, stories about previous students, about the particular strange demands of groundskeeping at an academy full of ambitious young Alchemists, about nothing in particular and everything at once, the comfortable, unhurried talk of two people who had clearly settled into genuine friendship across the quiet stretch of break.
BRR: How was home? If you don't mind my asking.
Corin considered how much to share, the old careful instinct rising automatically, and found, somewhat to his own surprise, that he did not particularly want to guard this the way he guarded most things.
COR: Difficult, at first. Better, by the end.
BRR: That's good. I'm glad.
COR: My father was injured. Some months ago, at our northern border. He won't walk again.
He said it plainly, the particular honest directness that had, across two weeks at home, slowly become easier to summon, and Briar's expression sobered immediately, genuine sympathy replacing the earlier easy amusement.
BRR: I'm sorry, Corin. That's genuinely difficult.
COR: It was. It's becoming less so. I learned a great deal, being there. About him. About what actually needs doing, when difficult things happen to people you care about.
BVN: Sounds like a hard kind of learning.
COR: The hardest, probably. Also, somehow, the most worthwhile.
Bevan nodded slowly, refilling Corin's bowl without being asked, the same quiet, unassuming generosity he'd apparently offered Briar throughout the entire break, and Corin, accepting it, felt something in his chest that had remained carefully guarded across most of his time at Solmere so far settle, unexpectedly, into something considerably warmer. Briar told another story, something about Finn's increasingly elaborate attempts to convince the whole cohort that a particular hedge in the eastern gardens was, in fact, sentient and mildly hostile, and Bevan interjected his own dry, unhurried commentary throughout, and Corin, sitting at the small shared table with warm stew in his hands and the cold winter morning settling comfortably around them, found himself, without any particular effort or decision behind it, genuinely, thoroughly smiling. It was not his usual composed, careful expression.
It reached his eyes properly, unguarded, the particular full warmth of someone caught entirely off guard by simple, unearned happiness, and Briar, noticing it mid-story, paused for just a moment, something quietly pleased crossing his own features at the sight.
BRR: You should do that more often.
COR: Do what?
BRR: Smile like that. Properly, I mean. Not the polite version you usually manage.
Corin, catching himself, felt the old careful composure attempt to reassert itself automatically, and then, for reasons he couldn't fully articulate even to himself, simply let it be instead, the smile remaining exactly where it was.
COR: Maybe I will.
The three of them continued through the meal together as the winter morning slowly warmed toward midday, easy conversation and shared warmth settling comfortably over the small table, and Corin, four days removed from a promise made in firelight and considerably further removed from the guarded, composed boy who had first arrived at Solmere months before, found the whole moment settling into something he recognized, with quiet surprise, as genuine, uncomplicated belonging.