Talking over some food

John made his way down the staircase, only to see his mother at the dinner table, setting up the table for them to eat.

It was pork chops on rice with sauce and some vegetables tonight. While probably not entirely made from scratch, John appreciated it nonetheless, after all, she’d put hard work into the meal.

As he sat down at his side of the table, he glanced towards Brenda. “Thanks for making this, Mom”

“Oh, you’re welcome. Even though I’m not legally **** to feed you anymore, I’m more than willing to,” responded Brenda with a smile and a chuckle.

John proceeded to serve himself from the dishes sitting in the middle of the table, selecting some pork and rice for now, making sure he didn’t completely drown it in sauce and, not taking more than he could eat, though.

“Anything going on at work?” John asked, it’d been a while since her last update in that department, and he wanted to keep up to date with what was going on in his mother's life.

“Weeell, I think I might finally be moving up in the paperwork mines. I’ll be interviewing for a promotion tomorrow.”

Money had begun to run a bit tight as of recently. His tuition fees had been taking a toll on their savings these past few years. Even though Brenda was trying to hide it, John was able to tell. But he pretended to be fooled for her sake.

“That’s great news! Do you think you have a good chance of getting it?” John asked between mouthfuls.

The food tasted excellent, as it always did.

Shrugging, Brenda sighed and responded, “Maybe. While I put a lot of effort towards my current job, I was always passed up before. But… I’m going to try my best tomorrow. We’ll see what happens.”

“Well, I’ll hope for the best.”

“Me too.”

An awkward silence fell upon the two of them, leaving them to focus on eating their food. His mother was the first to break the silence.

“So. I can’t help but notice that you’ve been spending some time with your friends lately outside of school. And well, this hasn’t really happened before, as you know, so I’m going to set some ground rules.”

John’s mind raced as he thought of all the bad that could come from this.

With a small laugh, Brenda continued, “From the look on your face right now, I know you’re just as eager about this as I am. Don’t worry, I’m not making this too restrictive on you, you’re, well… your own person now, an adult, really.

“I have faith in your judgement. Your father and I didn’t beat that into you for nothing.” With a small pause and a quick smile towards John, she continued, “Just make sure your homework is finished and that you don’t let anyone take advantage of you.

“But please try and make some time for your mother at the end of the day, alright?”

John smiled, “Of course I will… You’ve done so much for me, it’s only right,” and quickly darted around the table to give her a quick hug.

Brenda was taken aback by this. But she quickly wrapped her arms around him too.

They stood there for a moment, contemplating what was to come.

Until John raised his voice, “Well, this is nice, but I do want to continue eating the food you made for me. Can’t let it go to waste, you know?.”

With a moment of hesitation, Brenda released John and let him return to his seat. A look of obvious relief on her face. So he picked up his fork, and began to shovel his mother’s food into his mouth once more.

The rest of the meal progressed in near silence, only minor small talk filling the gaps between bites, a stark contrast to what had occurred earlier.

“Actually, have you done your homework?” rang out as Brenda looked up from her plate as if realizing for the first time that he may still have some more to do.

“Uh….” A look of slight panic appeared on John’s face as he attempted to figure out if he did in fact have an assignment. “Maybe?” he finally responded after a few moments, with a wince.

Sighing, Brenda replied, “Just… get it done. Might as well cut this short, anyways.”

She finally ate what remained on her plate and got up to do the dishes in the next room, leaving her purse by her chair.

John quickly shoveled what was left of his meal into his mouth, and stood up to go put the plate with the rest of the dishes.

As he stood up to do that, he quickly spotted Brenda’s purse. I still feel guilty about what I did this morning… So he quickly took out some money from his inventory in the form of some loose change and a couple of bills, totaling about sixty dollars.

It would be a bit suspicious if a bunch of money appeared in your wallet at once, so he’d have to spread this out gradually. John took out her wallet from the bag as quietly as possible before placing the money inside, placing it back into the purse once he was done, trying to position it as if nothing had happened.

Then John walked into the kitchen, seeing his mother unload a set of washed dishes from the dishwasher. She currently stood at one of the cabinets; he could hear her say “Didn’t we have more jars at some point? I... might just be misremembering stuff.”

Completely ignoring this, he walked towards the sink to begin washing the dirty dishes inside. But he was stopped by Brenda, who only waved her hand. “It’s alright, I can do this myself. You need to do your homework, anyways.”

John nodded, placing his plate and utensils inside the sink with the rest before retreating back to his room, where he actually needed to finish his homework.

Two hours later

John sighed, resting his pencil on his desk. The homework hadn’t been too bad, all things considered, he’d done a good bit of it in school, but it was a bleak contrast to what his life had become lately.

He glanced over at the digital clock on his computer, reading that it was still only around 9 o’clock.

With a grunt, he felt a surge of energy pass through his body, restoring the expanded capabilities the mana capacitors had granted him. Convenient. Also, man, that felt weird.

John decided to take a look at the local news; it might give him a bit of insight as to what was going on in the Abyssal side of things.

After googling the name of the local paper, he went to their website. John scrolled through a list of articles. After giving them a slightly closer look, they turned out to be almost completely irrelevant, nothing quite drew the eye. Mostly just stuff about the opening of a few stores, a report of local football games, and likely **** up Amish hippies protesting against modern technology, which had seemingly become the norm over the last few weeks.

Wait, was that last thing really normal? He’d gotten used to it, along with the rest of the town, but it really seemed out of place when you thought about it. He should look into it further, perhaps he could ask Faith about it tomorrow after school.

It seemed as if the Abyssals really did keep to themselves extensively… or censored anyone reporting on anything related to them. Considering what he’d seen so far… it was likely the latter with the whole Gaia smiting thing. Maybe censorship was the best case scenario, but that may be assuming too much.

By the time John’s research was done, an hour had passed, leaving him slightly more exhausted than before. So he stripped and got into bed. He closed his eyes and let the warmth of his bed envelop him entirely.