Let's have a chat with my father

But first you should let everyone know where you're going. No need to worry anyone with your disappearance, Edin's was traumatic enough.

Wow already looking for an excuse to not follow through.

I am literally going to tell people that I am leave how is that an excuse?

And I am sure nothing will happen that will distract you while you tell everyone you are leaving to visit home. It's not like that has happened, every, single, time, you have approached them with a single goal.

Arguing with yourself was annoying.

Yeah you should go and talk about this with someone. If only you had someone, like a friend, who you could discuss things with without being distracted by sex.

You are sure you aren't this sassy with everyone else.

You are with Lucia. Oh that's who you could be discussing this with. Shame you fucked that up.

Oh fucking right.

You activate your magic and create your elliptical wings. Sending a jet of magic from the tips of each you leave the ground. Shooting up into the air you shift into your passive soaring wings and expand the out, each one as long as you are tall and with a smaller jet flowing out of the tips and a wedge about your head to reduce your drag. In less than three seconds you had gone from feet on the ground to high enough to be barely visible to everyone on the ground.

Happy now?

I don't know are you?

You might need to give a few apologises when you get back. Not just for disappearing but because you are an insufferable wanker.

Well at least you're aware of it.

You expand the jets to speed up, how anyone can spend time along with you you have no idea because this is fucking miserable. The lack of reply from ... yourself made you feel like you had made, your own point for, yourself ... yeah that is what happened. You do not remember you being so chatty with yourself in the last eighteen years.

That had more to do with how you suppressed your own loneliness because you had some serious intimacy issues stemming from no one being able to connect to you. There are kids that are mature for their age and then there is being mature for your age and being treated like a kid when you aren't, apparently does create some issues. The fact you've managed to form any relationships at all is a massive step in the mentally healthy direction. Something you should feel good about honestly.

This is the strangest therapy session you have have been involved in. Though, the visual of green fields wiz past underneath you was a soothing addition.

As you flew you did the rough math in your head for when you would arrive. It was a two day carriage ride to the capital from home traveling from sunrise to almost sunset. Watching the fields zip by under you this should take threeish hours. You'd be there before dinner but after lunch.

Oh you should have grabbed the roadside inn's owner's basket and dropped it off. You remember eating the cookies he had given you when you left in the morning with Anastasia. Those were nice cookies. You don't think about going back because honesty you don't remember where you left it. When you get back you should try and find it and fly it back. He was nice and had asked you to return it on your way back, though he probably hadn't meant it this way.

The fields gave way to forests and you kept an eye on the horizon for the building. From how high up you were there was no way anyone could see you from down there, even if they had been looking. The flight itself is really nice, been ages since you went for a proper flight without trying to ditch a Goddess, or show off for Lucia.

You should think of a way to apologise to her before you get back. You can't buy her anything as an apology not that you would know what to buy her anyway. Well unless one of the brothels sell gift cards, but Auria might make the redundant. You could try offering her an actual dedicated lesson. She's a fast learner and she did have an issue with scaling up her dragon during her performance. But you'd help her with that anyway, not really an apology is it, here is something I would do anyway please accept it as an apology despite that fact. Actually there is one thing she wants that you said you wouldn't. Keep Oriana occupied so she and Auria can fool around. It's a bit crass, but it's not that bad of an idea, if Oriana is still keeping them apart when you get back.

You look down at the forests. You'd been following the road until recently but the tree cover was making that a bit harder from this height. You could kinda see the gap in the canopy caused by a road but since the trees were growing naturally that line appeared and disappeared and was easy to mistake for a small clearing or river.

You were starting to get worried you were lost when you spotted a larger clearing. The sight of a thatch roof made you smile. It looked very different from the air but it had the rough shape of the inn. Shame you didn't have any money, you were going to miss lunch and you are burning through a bit of magic. You won't be exhausted by any means but you'll be hungry when you arrive.

Slowing a bit over the inn you see if you can spot its keeper. There's a few people milling about but all you can see is small dots and the slightly larger dots of those small dots mounts. Your stomach grumbles as you remember the magically infused stew you had been served.

Oh that just brought back a memory. You had assumed magically infused food wasn't something nobles eat because peasants eat it. However, you'd been in the capital for two weeks and tried the full range of the academy's buffet and none of the was magical. You hadn't checked out the city or it's food but there was no indication the any food was magically imbued. The inn keeper had said his enchanted pot was storied. Made by an arch-mage and handed down for generations. Oh, oh that is something else. Where are all the enchantment stores? On the tour of the city Lucia hadn't mentioned and you hadn't seen anything to do with magic. Your understanding of scale had dramatically shifted since you had seen the magic pot and it's perfectly reasonable to assumed that enchantment is complex enough to not be something you could set up a store in the street for but instead have a noble patron and work exclusively for them. Which then begged the other question, where was all the enchanted shit. Not the big stuff like the academy's baths, its locks or even it's books, the shit stuff. The sparkly broach, the hair pin that kept your hair soft. The last enchanted clothing item you saw was two years ago at your debutante ball worn by what's his face.

You should ask someone about that at some point. Could be it was just that the current fashion had enchanted items as gauche and that would change as time went on and you weren't exactly in a position to see if people had enchanted items for daily work. An enchanted hammer could make building easier and could be widely used it's just that you'd never see that in your current social standing. Anastasia managed to renovate the Royal Estate at the academy in under a day after all.

You're still going to ask about it. With your development of your imbuing maybe enchanting wasn't a lost art for you, maybe it could even make your imbuing easier. Learning how to make externalised magic last after you stop directly controlling it could only help right?

Awfully quite around here all of sudden.

You resume your pace, the inn long since having left your view. More than halfway done with the journey. Your mouth curled into a smile at that. You did miss your dad, and all the staff. You wouldn't say they were your friends but you had grown up around them.

Ok I can see I'm going to be needed for this. When you meet the staff members do two things for yourself. One think about the moments you can easily recall with them. And two remember what Clare had said about you missing things.

What?

Oh fine be like that.

The forest gives way back into fields. Familiar fields. You remember flying over them years ago. Much safer than flying over the forest, for your clothes at least, trees really demolished your clothes when you crashed into them. You felt a blush on your face you remember coming back from caked it dirt after crashing into the field. You felt so bad about damaging the crops you couldn't even look anyone in the eye for a whole day.

The local village comes into view and you slow down. When was the last time you'd gone into the village?

I thought we sorted out the whole looking for excuses thing.

I'm not. You let out a sigh. Fine I'll go home. You speed up a bit and see your fathers estate peak over the trees. You smiled again as memories of that sight came back to you. You should fly in the capital more, it's nice being up here.

Shrinking your wings you decend. When you see the front door you remember all the times you'd crash into the ground in front of it. You could actually still see where you had last done it. You'd skidded along the ground so fast you left a ditch deep enough to stand up it. The grass had never quite grown right in that patch afterwards.

Touching down you feel a bit proud at how much better you were at flying these days. Walking to the door you pause, thinking about whether you should just enter or if you should knock first.