The two stayed up all night sharing stories. At first, Leon felt a bit reluctant to speak causally with a commoner, but not having many friends himself, he longed for real human interaction.
"Are all commone- I mean villagers this funny?" giggled Leon, after Streya had recounted an incident where Gray and Arya had to run away from Lillian after they pulled a prank on Armin.
"Only the funny ones," she giggled back. For a moment the two just looked at each other in silence, it was a warm kind of silence, the type you would share with someone you had known your whole life.
The two of them were like two peas in a pod, their circumstances more or less the same. They were both the talentless middle child, they both felt that they weren't good enough for their parents, and they both felt like outcasts in their own families.
It was like they finally had gotten a companion to share their burdens with. Although none of them had explicitly revealed what was bothering them, deep down they could vaguely feel the same aura radiating from the other.
"It's morning already? That means you're probably going to leave soon, huh," said Streya reluctantly, as she turned to look at the window - which was actually just a hole they had in their wall.
"I-I'm not going today. I'll have to send a letter to my father to tell him what happened. He'll probably send some guards out to fetch me," he said abruptly.
"I see, that's... nice."
"Are those two idiots awake yet?" yawned Arya as he walked out of his room lazily.
"Huh? What are you two doing there?" asked Arya once he noticed Streya and Leon sitting suspiciously close to each other next to the window.
"Don't you have books to read?" asked Streya in an annoyed tone.
"I'm watching you," whispered Arya as he walked back into his room to read a few books on magic.
***
{What are you looking for?} asked Esla as Arya rummaged through the pile of books that lay next to his straw bed.
{The book on templates. Where did we put it?} asked Arya, still rummaging through the pile
{You haven't read on templates since you were a three, why the sudden interest?} asked Esla as she looked through her memories.
{The beast that attacked us in the forest, it was able to stack templates. I wanted to see if perhaps I missed something.}
After searching for nearly 5 minutes he finally found it buried at the very bottom of the pile.
{Nothing, nothing about having more than one template active on a single spell.}
'The closest thing to it is multi-casting, but that's the same as running two different calculations simultaneously. What we saw was probably a direct relationship between two spells,' added Esla as she read over what Arya had paged through in her mind, to make sure they didn't miss anything.
{Do you still remember what the template looked like?} asked Arya.
Since Esla didna have an actual body, it seemed like her mental aptitude was significantly higher than a normal being. It was sort of like how blind people had a better sense of smell to compensate for their lack of sight.
{Photographic memory for the save,} quipped Esla as she pulled up an image of the beast's template into Arya's view.
{Seriously, where do you get these phrases from?} asked Arya before looking at the template.
{Huh, two templates rotating parallel to each other, and there seems to be a heptagon construct in between them,} studied Arya as he looked at the image in his mind carefully.
{Can you perhaps isolate the construct from the templates? It's not often you see a heptagon construct,} he said, taking note of the runes that were on the templates.
{Just like I thought, there's nothing different about the structure of the templates. The reason it was able to do that was likely because of the construct. It seems that magical beasts can combine constructs and templates unlike humans,} he continued thoughtfully, trying to identify what runes were used.
{Though I've never seen these runes before,} he realized after trying to recall which class they were from.
{Perhaps Argen will know something about this?} proposed Esla.
"Arya! Come get breakfast!" shouted Gray from the living room, disturbing Arya's research.
{Yeah, let's head over after breakfast.}
***
When Arya walked into the living room, he found Gray and Armin staring dangerously at Leon.
"And when did you two get so close?" asked Armin as he noticed how close Leon and Streya were sitting next to each other.
"Why don't you come sit here next to us guys? Maybe we can talk about a few things. You must be bored having to speak to a girl," added Gray, a cruel smile on his face as he stared at Leon.
"Can you guys just leave him alone," barked Streya, holding Leon by the arm so he wouldn't move.
"We just want to make friends with him, after all, we did save his life, didn't we?" insisted Gray, still staring at Leon.
Leon reluctantly sat between Armin and Gray, the two of them puffing their chests so wide that Leon had little space to even eat his bread.
Arya took the seat that Leon had been sitting on a few moments ago, raising his thumb at his two brothers as he sat.
"I can't believe you guys," murmured Streya angrily as she took a bite out of her bread.
"What's going on?" asked Lillian as she walked into the living room.
"Nothing much," smiled Arya, making a show of biting a piece out of his bread while looking at Leon.
"Cassandra said you should prepare what you're going to write to your father. We don't have any paper, but I'm sure she has some at her house as well," she said, taking a piece of bread for herself as well.
"By the way, I heard the village crier say that the men are returning from the mine later today for a few days. Apparently, they found something at the mine and are closing it for inspection," said Lillian happily.
It was at times like these that you really noticed how young Lillian was. On earth standards, she looked to be in her late 20's, meaning she probably had Gray at the age of 16. Which by Merrum standards, was one year older than the standard age for adulthood.
"Father's coming home!" shouted Gray in joy.
"Yhup, father's coming home. We should probably get a new table, what with how massive he is," smiled Arya, painting a terrifying picture in Leon's mind.
*Gulp*