Father crashes the birthday celebrations

Over a year has passed since. Arti and I just turned 10 last month, and Tia turned 7. The birthday celebration was a similar affair to previous years. That is, we celebrated with our mom and her close servants, Sabrina among them. Sabrina is still as beautiful as she always was. Yes, I still have a crush on her. We had become a bit more familiar with each other over the years. She doesn’t bow to me every time she enters or leaves the room and she speaks more freely with me. Good progress so far.

One thing that was different about that particular birthday was that our father decided to stop by for a short time.

As Mom, Arti, Tia, and I had been feasting on the delicious dishes that our cooks prepared for us, the door to the dining hall we were in opened and in walked our father. I was so surprised to see him that my hand froze mid-air moving a chess piece on the board. I was playing with Arti while eating. Tia had already finished her food and was watching us play, happily wiggling her legs. Usually, we had to wait until after we finished our food to play, but today was a special day after all. Our father walked past the long table we were sitting at until he reached the end where we were sitting and stopped.

Mom straightened her back a bit more and said, “Would you like to join us, husband?”

I noticed, as usual, that her words lacked the same warmth they had when she was speaking to Arti, Tia or me.

“No,” he replied shortly in his gruff voice. “I am here to inform Artias and Zenovia. First of all, congratulations on your progress in your general studies and magic tutoring. I have been informed that you both make steady progress. You will both be finishing your general studies and moving to more subject-orientated studies. As for the wind and fire magic tutor, I have been told that she is almost finished with her research at Roredenian Academy and will be traveling here soon. She indicated in her correspondence that her research should take seven more months to finalize and she will be journeying her right after that. We are expecting her to arrive in eight months. Second, you will be starting your martial training next month. That would include training in various weapons, including swords, bows, spears, and others, as well as hand-to-hand combat. Your trainers will train and observe you before focusing on one or several weapons that they deem you most suitable for. That is all. Happy birthday to you three.”

That said, he turns around and makes his way out of the hall. Perhaps the strangest thing from all that he said was wishing me and my siblings a happy birthday. He has never done that before. I even started thinking he didn’t know these words.

I look at Arti and see the look of surprise that must have been on my face just now as well. Tiana has one as well. Mom has her expression under control already.

“So, martial training, huh?” I say and finally place down the chess piece I was holding. The game was over with that move because it was a checkmate against Arti. He frowns seeing the chessboard. In all these years, he hasn’t won even once against me. Probably because of all the books on military strategy I have read in the library. Of all the books Arti has read over the years, he avoided military and strategy books. He finds them boring, while I enjoy them more than other subjects.

When he got over his defeat, he spoke up. “Yeah, I am not looking towards that. I would rather spend more time in the library.”

“You spend too much time in the library, Arti,” I say to him. “You are basically cooped in there whenever you are not training or studying. You need to try other things.”

“But I like reading,” he replies. “It is interesting and extremely helpful.”

I sigh. “I am not saying that it is a waste of time. On the contrary. But spending all your free time reading when you can try other hobbies and activities is a waste.”

“Other activities like training with weapons?” Arti raises an eyebrow. “I think it will be boring. I just started reading a book on the agricultural advances of the Kingdom of Markadia. It is really interesting.”

“Oh, come on. If you don’t give it a break, you will end up reading all the books in the library before you are 15,” I chuckle in response. “Martial training will be fun. I have been looking towards it for a long time.”

“We have different definitions of fun,” Arti replies and sets the board for another game. For all his defeats, he hasn’t lost hope to win against me.

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