Chapter Text
By this time in the night, the Fraldarius Manor tends to be quiet. Quiet, but not entirely silent.
Felix’s father reads a book in his favorite armchair in the living room, just a couple feet from the crackling flames of the fireplace. Occasionally, the sound of his fingers grazing the pages and the sound of the pages turning can be heard. Enraptured in his book, he pays little attention to his family lying on the large rug before the fireplace, though he seems to enjoy their presence if the smile that he wears when he glances up to see his wife and sons is anything to go off of.
Felix’s mother hums softly as she cuts a few apples into the cute bunny shapes that Felix likes. The blade sinking into the crisp skin and flesh of the apple when she carves the bunnies and the dull clatter of the pieces of apple onto a plate accompany her humming. It isn’t a song that Felix recognizes, but his mother enjoys watching the local opera shows when she isn’t feeling too weak to make the trip to the theater. He assumes she picked up yet another song from there.
Glenn tends to his sword diligently, hunched over his precious weapon. Stray strands of his long, dark hair flop forward, coming free from his loose ponytail. As he polishes his sword clean, the smell of the oil thick in the air, he huffs air up at his bangs, though it’s a futile effort to clear his vision since his hair flops back in place not long after. When Felix giggles at him, Glenn only flashes him a smile and does it again, a little more exaggeratedly.
Felix, curled up on his favorite pillow with his own sword a few feet away from when he was play-sparring with Glenn, watches his family with a small smile and contented eyes that droop with sleep. The room is so silent, so warm, so relaxing, that Felix just about falls asleep. He lets out a snore, and the sound is enough to jolt Felix awake, earning a soft chuckle from his mother and Glenn.
He smiles.
It’s nights like these that Felix loves—when his father and Glenn aren’t too busy training or tending to adult matters about the land or when his mother isn’t too busy being fussed over by the live-in doctors, so they can spend time together. He doesn’t care that they’re not even playing a game together or that Father isn’t reading him a story. He just likes that they’re all together.
While Felix carefully watches Glenn’s movements as he finishes wiping away the last of the debris from his sword, a smooth back-and-forth with the rag over the shining blade, their mother sets the plate of apple slices between them.
“There you go,” she says. “It took a little longer than I would have liked, but they’re all bunnies, Felix. Just how you like them.” She reaches over to run a hand through his hair and smiles, the light of the fireplace making her features glow softly.
Felix beams back at her and sits up, reaching for the apples. He picks the smallest apple-bunny first, admiring the precisely-cut V-shaped peel as the ears, and he bites into it, savoring the crunch and the immediate flood of flavor that follows. Glenn stands up to go wash his hands, setting his sword aside in its sheath. When he returns, he takes his seat at the fireplace again and reaches for a few slices for himself too.
Their mother clicks her tongue and grabs Glenn’s hand, looking down at it with a frown. “Glenn! Your hand is all rough.” She runs her thumb over the calluses of his palm and clicks her tongue again. “Look at this.”
“This is a good thing,” Glenn retorts without a beat. He smiles over at Felix. “It means my training is paying off.”
Felix looks back at his hands. Glenn is much older than he is, so his hands are bigger with longer, slimmer fingers. Felix’s hands are still small and kind of pudgy, and when Glenn takes him into town, holding his hand so he doesn’t get lost, his hands are swallowed by Glenn’s entirely. But he’s been training hard. He’s been getting a few blisters and calluses too. They hurt, especially when he peels at the hardened skin, but it means he’s getting better, like Glenn said, so Felix doesn’t mind.
Amidst the regular calluses, Felix finds a new blister on his left hand from training earlier on in the day. Excited at his find, he shows his palms off to Glenn. “Me too, me too! Look at my hands!”
Glenn pretends to inspect them deeply, leaning in and turning Felix’s hand at all sorts of angles. He nods sagely and pats Felix’s hand. “Your hands are looking stronger already, Fe!” Felix puffs out his chest in pride, making Glenn laugh and reach over to ruffle his hair.
“Glenn, don’t teach him to be so uncouth.” Their mother sighs, but despite the slight scorn lacing her voice, she bears no true anger in her expression. “You are a knight, but you are also a noble. It’d be nice if you could keep your hands a little more kempt. And if you could teach your brother to do the same.”
Glenn shrugs. “It doesn’t matter, Mother. I’m sure that there aren’t very many people who will look too closely at my hands. Even if I had dainty, noble hands, they’d just get messed up anyway because of my duties as a knight.”
“And because you keep getting into fights with your fellow knights,” Felix’s father cuts in from his seat without looking up from his book. Pride graces the small smile he wears on his face. Felix craves that same kind of smile, of approval.
“Nothing wrong with that, Father. It’s all just training.” Glenn turns his gaze to Felix and grins. “Hey, Felix, you know that no one’s beat your big brother just yet?”
Of course Felix knows. When even Father and the other knights talk so highly of Glenn, how can Felix not know? Glenn is the best knight in all of Faerghus. He’s the strongest and the fastest, and he’s everything that Felix aspires to be.
“Yet!” Felix smiles, his eyes alight with determination. “But I’ll beat you, Glenn! When I’m older! Watch me!”
Glenn laughs. “That so? Well, little brother, I won’t go easy on you, so train hard!”
Felix nods. “I will!”
He casts his glance over at his mother, who is still holding onto Glenn’s hand and looking down at it. Glenn seems unperturbed, using his other hand to eat the apples. Felix is expecting her to release his hand, but she instead peers at his palm and even holds it up to the light of the fire warming the living room. She squints her eyes.
“What are you doing, Mama?” Felix asks. He stares at Glenn’s palms too, hoping to see whatever is interesting his mother, but he finds nothing but the same old blisters, calluses, scars.
She smiles. “I’ve been reading about something called palm reading. You can tell someone’s future by looking at their palms.” She traces a crease with her finger. “See this line, Felix? See how this crosses right here? It means that Glenn will be very wealthy in the future.”
Glenn playfully rolls his eyes and tugs his hand away. “Mother, I don’t care about money. Just as long as I can be a knight, I’m content.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” She chuckles, though there’s a strange look in her eyes. She looks to Felix. “Do you want me to read yours too?”
Felix nods ecstatically and thrusts out his hand to her. She hums. When she traces the creases of his palms, it tickles a little and draws a laugh from Felix.
“Stay still, sweetheart. I’m trying to read your palm, remember?”
“Tickles!” Felix replies, but he tries his best to stay still anyway.
“It says here that you’ll be very happy in the future! Just like the meaning of your name—Felix. Happy. Exciting, isn’t it?”
Felix beams. “I’m already happy!” he tells her with a great big grin, the kind that she says makes him look bright as the sun, but she isn’t looking at him, humming noncommittally in reply.
Felix’s mother is still looking at his palm, still wearing that strange look from when she read Glenn’s palm. A crease forms between her eyebrows, and the ends of her lips dip down into a frown. She runs her thumbnail over a crease of Felix’s palm, the crease closest to his own thumb. She traces up and down the line, and when she reaches the bottommost part of the palm line, she gently sinks her nail down and drags her thumbnail towards his wrist.
“Ow! That hurts, Mama!”
“Ah, sorry, sweetie,” she muses softly, a faraway look in her eyes. She rubs the pad of her thumb over the palm line in little circles, as if to coax the pain away.
“What were you doing?” Felix asks.
“Hm? Just trying to make this line here a little longer.” His mother smiles sadly. “Looks like you inherited this short line from your mama.”
“Why?” Felix looks at his palm and paws at his mother’s hand. Just as she said, the palm line closest to her thumb looks like his, not quite following the thumb muscle down to their wrists. However, hers is still longer than his.
But Felix can’t see the problem with it. It’s just a line on his hand, and it’s just a line on her hand. Are they supposed to go that low? Does it really matter? What does it mean?
“What does it mean, Mother?” Glenn asks, looking down at his own palm. “Mine’s short too.”
She averts her gaze. “Well, I read that the longer that line is, the longer your life is said to be.”
Felix blinks. “Then… If it’s short…” He looks down at his hand. The short crease of his palm, a predetermined fate, stares back at him impartially, definitively.
Stupid line! he tells himself. Grow longer! For me and Glenn and Mama! Because if you don’t… If you don’t…!
“Aw, no, no, no! Shh, it’s okay, Fe! No need to cry!”
Felix doesn’t realize he’s crying until his mother pulls him into her arms with a small chuckle. Then and only then does he start to cry harder.
He doesn’t want to live a short life, not when he still needs to beat his brother and hear that wonderful praise from his father too. He wants to live a long, happy life with his family around him, just as they are right now. They still need to eat apples and stay warm together by the fireplace and tell stories for years and years to come. What’s he supposed to do if he dies young?
And what about Glenn and Mother? Glenn’s work as a knight is nowhere near complete, even if he’s got a high status on him. Mother still has much to do too, tending to the garden outside her window that she loves so much and helping Father deal with the Fraldarius territory.
And what about Father? Is his line short too? Is he going to be all alone?
The more Felix thinks, the more he cries.
“Alright, don’t scare Felix too much,” says Felix’s father, sticking a bookmark in his book and coming to join them at the fireplace. He scoops Felix out of his mother’s arms with a small chuckle. “Look, Felix. Look at your father’s hand.”
Felix looks at the hand that his father has outstretched. His line seems quite short too.
Glenn butts in, “That’s right. Father’s line is short. But he’s an old man. Right, Fe?”
Felix’s father shoots Glenn a look, a look so rife with exasperation that it only Glenn laugh. Felix’s mother smiles too. Her smile, soft and healing, eases the flat look on Felix’s father’s face from Glenn’s slight, and it steadies Felix’s aching heart just a little.
Felix sniffles and places his own tiny hand on his father’s wrist, tracing the line with his index finger. Father is much, much older than Felix and Glenn. And Mother is older too. So maybe the palm reading isn’t right.
“Does this mean I won’t be happy in the future?”
Felix’s mother sighs, the smile still present on her face. “Maybe I didn’t read the book right about the life line,” she says, reaching forward to cradle his face in her hand and wipe away the tears with her thumb, “but I know deep, deep in my heart that you’ll be happy in the future.”
Felix smiles, the last of his tears fading from his eyes.