After saying goodbye and getting the meat from Henry we go inside. And after putting the meat in my pocket, after which half of it disappears, Astonax shows me around the house. There are 5 bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, 2 bathrooms, and a basement. He let me pick one out of 3 spare bedrooms, as he sleeps in one and uses the other for one of his projects, he might show me later he said.
As it is close to dinner time already Astonax proposed to get some vegetables from the garden and then start preparing dinner. Coming outside I'm disappointed at the state of the garden, all the plants are only half alive.
"Yeah.." Astonax started while scratching the back of his head. "I'm not really a good gardener, I just put the seeds of what I eat back into the ground and hope for the best." Maybe this would he a good job for Fi, I can't hide that I'm able to summon forever right?
After collecting some sad looking carrots and beans we go back to the kitchen. He asks me to hand over the meat and so I do, he looks a bit confused when I give him the pack, but then just shrugs.
"Sit back and relax, I'm pretty good with anything that I need to use my hands and fire for!" And good he is indeed. After stoking up the fire he gets to work, he cuts the meat into bite sized cubes and covers them in a sauce that he grabbed out of the closet. Then he first slowly cooks the vegetables till they're soft, and then turns up the heat by turning something. When the pan is very hot and the vegetables get a brown outside he adds the meat. A few minutes later there are two plates with shiny golden brown vegetables and meat.
"Nothing fancy, but dig in!" He gives me a plate, the smell is great. "Thanks!"
I pick up the fork but before I can stab it in the meat Astonax called out "Stop! Who taught you how to eat!" Which resulted in 5 minutes of learning how to hold a knife and fork, this only got me a "Passable, if the food wasn't getting cold I still wouldn't let you eat."
The food was good! But it was kind of sad that I spend the next 30 minutes being taught how to behave while eating. There was a bit of pity in his eyes after I said that I couldn't help it cause I had no one to teach me or even food to practice it with, but this pity only resulted in more teaching. I just tell myself he means well. It's also good to know these things, just so people won't see me as a beggar anymore.
After he judged me as "Better then the average hillbilly" he made tea, which also needed to be drank correctly. But after that shorter lesson he started talking about his past.
"You know Gosamu, my life was pretty great. And I don't mean to brag! But it was, my parents loved me, we had money, lived in a beautiful city. My father was a blacksmith, a great one at that. He fell in love with my mom when he was 8 years old! Can you imagine?
The day after he fell in love he picked up the hammer, my grandfather told him that if he wants to catch my mother's heart he must show her that he can take care of her, that she wouldn't have to work a day in her life. And so he became an apprentice of the local blacksmith, the smith didn't really think much of it, he mostly thought it was funny and he might even get a helper out of it who could do the easy and boring things for him. But my father turned out to be a genius blacksmith.
My father became the best blacksmith in town by the age of 12, just as old as I am now, and he married my mom at 17, the day after she turned 16. They had me a year later.
My mom stayed home with me and always took care of me, she taught me how to read and write, she taught me etiquettes, she basically taught me how to live. She always called me her little genius, and asked me to become just like her big genius, that always made me smile.
My father was at work during the day, hammering the metal all day, but he always came home before dinner. He always said that he wouldn't want to miss my mom's dinner no matter the price they offered to hurry the job. After dinner we often played, or he taught me different crafts he picked up over the years, we've started learning a few together, always having a competition who could make the nicest present for mom. He always won whenever something needed strength, I always won whenever something needed finesse. The best things were those we did together though.
But everything changed 3 years ago, a noble family from a city over who always fought with the local noble family asked my father to make a high quality greatsword, and my father always told those people that quality took time. And that noble family said it was okay and even paid a lot up front, saying that there will be more when the sword was finished.
Some time later they returned, the sword wasn't finished yet and they got angry. They said they'd return the next day and the sword would better be ready by then. This was the first time my father missed dinner. It was an almost impossible job to finish it by the next day, but he succeeded, it was a masterpiece!" by this time tears fell down Astonax' face, but his voice was steady and his face neutral. His eyes however were gray, there was no pink or red, just a lifeless gray.
"The next day the noble family returned, but this time the entire fighting force of the family came. They weren't allowed to enter the city. So my father climbed up the city wall, surrounded by guards and the force of the local nobles for protection.
He called out to them, saying that the sword is done. He threw the sword out, it dug till its guard into the ground right in front of the one who ordered it, the son of their family head.
He looked furious, but he bowed down to grab the hilt and pulled the sword out. It was a beautiful sword. My father stood on top of the wall looking down as their next family head bowed down to him.
After that everything went wrong, their young master declared the sword to be 'subpar', saying that they waited so long, paid so much for 'only' this sword." There are no more tears, there's also no more gray, his irises are completely dark red. The words subpar and only are spit out like venom.
"The noble family decided that it was enough reason to execute my father, but the locals didn't stand for it. From commoners till the nobility, they all stood behind my father. This made the family outside of the city smile and laugh.
A cloaked figure stood out from them, he walked to the front. Then something happened even I could feel all the way back home, the walls opened. Not the gates, the walls. They just opened outwards, seeing that everyone ran from the walls back down, but by that time the other family was already inside the city, killing everyone they saw, setting fire to the houses.
My father challenged the young master of their family to a one on one, everything stopped. And they had their match.
But my father wasn't a fighter! He was a crafter! He knew how to handle most weapons, just so he could make them better, but he wasn't truly proficient in any of them! You know Gosamu, he was just stalling for time, sacrificing himself to let the people escape.
And you know what I did! I convinced my mother to go to my father! We were just in time to see him being stabbed by his own masterpiece. My mother and I ran to him, but when he saw us he only looked terrified. He wanted us to run. I made his sacrifice be in vain.
After that everything is a blur, I needed to fight the son of the next head, but I lost. Of course I lost. I can still hear the screams of my mother as I was dragged on top of the city wall. I still see the town burning as I was being suspended by my throat with nothing under my feet. I still feel myself falling and looking forward to seeing my mom and dad again.
But somebody caught me, he just kept running away though. I still remember something of stone spikes shooting out of the ground as we run. But I passed out after.
The next thing I knew I was inside a government building, and I got a choice, join a normal school of my choice, or join a military school. I got a night to think about it.
That night I found myself in a room, a circular pink room with a little fairy floating on top of another floating platform. It looked magical. Then words appeared in my head, and I spoke them.
I felt something leaving me and with every word it hit the floating little stone fairy, with every hit the something gave a part of itself to the fairy while also strengthening it. It felt oddly familiar to forging.
When my words ran out the something that left me returned to me, although slightly weaker. Then pink light in the room started pouring into the little fairy, and then it started moving, it's rock skin disappeared and it flew towards me, then she sat down on my head." the red disappeared and while it turned into a light pink again surrounded by the light gray, talking about this fairy calms him down.
"I can also summon this fairy into the real world, and it I focus I can go back into that room, but there's nothing there right now. Showing this fairy to those people gave me a third choice, waiting 3 years to go to the college. Of course I chose that.
Gosamu, I don't expect you to reply to anything. I just never told this story like this to anyone yet, but I though that as we're going to spend a few years together, and that I like you already, I might as well make you the first I tell it to. I'm going to bed now, it's not even dark yet, but I'm tired."
And like that Astonax walks away, leaving me sitting there, not knowing what to do, as the sun slowly sets outside. "Goodnight."