“I’ll be working on one of the orchards outside the city grounds.”

“Really? I would have thought with all the options around here you would do something you couldn’t do back in the countryside,” your mother comments.

Da is looking over at you with a glimmer of astonished pride gleaming. It seems to mean something to him that you would still be interested in working the land even in a sprawl such as Camelot.

“Better you than me,” you hear Ariana murmur.

Adam is, to no great surprise, much blunter with his criticisms.

“What a waste. Grueling manual labor? Do you truly aspire to so little? Mark me, you’re doing yourself a disservice, once you get out there you’ll see that there’s no liberty to be found in such work.”

“Yeah well at least it gets me some space from you,” you retort.

“Alex! You shouldn’t talk to your brother like that.”

“Sorry. I just… I need you to trust me to make my own decisions. I am an adult now and I’m standing by this decision.”

Your determined gaze locks on your mother’s equally intensive look, and for a moment there is nothing but the two of you communicating a lifetime of struggle, shared and opposed. You know why she’s worried and she knows why it matters to you to do it anyway. The silent conversation is no longer then a few heart beats yet in that time you feel like an understanding has been reached.

“Well then… good luck sweetie,” Mom says finally.

The rest of the meal follows in silence, though no one seems bothered by it. After helping to clean up the family disperses to their own areas for the evening. This would be a good chance to talk to someone in your family before you get bogged down in your new occupation.