Chapter Text
Chapter the first.
Amaya stared at the thick stack of paperwork that sat in front of her, a good couple of inches high and full of tick boxes and dotted lines and… GAH, how she hated paperwork with a passion. It was the boring and slow and very, very, very unexciting parts of her life that she could really do without, but with power (ie. Being a Military General, especially of her ranking) came responsibility. And a butt tone of paperwork.
But at least this stack in particular was special, and needed her upmost attention. One wrong move, and she would have to start the paperwork all over again- which would drive her insane. If all the boxes and endless lists and signatures needed did not tip her over the edge first.
She took another swig of tea, and squinted at yet another endless list of tick boxes and sign here spaces and mentally wished that she could get her hands on the person who decided that something as simple as name, age and profession needed to be broken down into a whole page of little boxes, and possibly feed them the whole form.
After beating them with it.
Sarai had been so much better at this paperwork malarkey.
Amaya huffed, and reached for her dip pen, and her best black ink, along with her official stamp, and got to work.
These adoption papers were not going to do themselves, after all.
-
Soren stared at the paperwork that he had been presented with. the jumble of official words and phrases made his head spin, and all the fine print kept jumping about all over the place.
A small part of him wished that his fath- Viren had pulled this stunt a year before, when he was still legally a minor, which would mean that he would not have to do part of the paperwork himself.
But, on the other hand, if Viren had tried to do what he did the year before, then his head would of ended up on a pike before he could leave the capital.
Or by the time he hit the border. One of the two.
It would depend if Harrow or Amaya got hold of him first.
Callum had come along after a while, and had taken pity on Soren and the paperwork hell that had been dropped on his head. Admittedly, it was a quarter of the size of the stack that Aunt Amaya was slogging her way through a couple of rooms over, but it was still enough to make most people flinch at the site of it.
Callum was pretty sure that Soren’s head was going to explode if he stared at the stack for too much longer.
So Callum made a deal with Soren. He would read out the important bits and decode the legal jargon, so all Soren had to do was tick the correct boxes and sign on the line when needed- it was a system that worked out well for the two of them, and the stack was completed in less than 20 minutes.
After they fudged up the first attempt.
There was a reason that legal documents like this were sent out in copies of two or more, the first was for making mistakes on.
The second was the one that got sent off.
-
“are you ok with this, I mean, me being your cousin. Legally.” Soren tapped his fingers together, not meeting Callum’s eyes.
The two teens stood together on the battlements of fort Ferris, overlooking the lava stream. The fort at the breach was acting as a hub for the ongoing peace talks between the human kingdoms and Xadia, with General Amaya on one side, and The golden knight Janai on the other, plus a good amount of soldiers, keeping watch over the border.
Prince Callum and Soren were guests at the moment. The still reforming pentarchy was not… thrilled at the thought of Callum staying in zadia, despite pleading from both him and a small army of elven scholars and mages who really wanted to teach and study the first human in recorded history with access to primal magic.
Especially since Callum had proven scary good at picking up and using new spells.
So the deal was that, for now, Callum would stay at the breach, as close to Zadia as possible, under the watchful eye of both battalions, until some sort of arrangements could be made.
Callum gave the older blond a strange look.
“Soren, be honest, if I had a problem with Aunt Amaya adopting you, I would not of helped you with your part of the paperwork involved in said adopting.”
“Yeh… but..” Soren trailed off, staring off across the bubbling lava. “… um.. even after… all that.”
He made a gesture out towards Zadia, and the chaos that had gone down just two weeks before.
“Even after all that.” Callum poked Soren In the arm, grinning. “besides, someone needs to try to teach me how to sweep the leg.”
Soren snorted in amusement. Like that was going to happen. Rayla was a better teacher then he was to Callum, where ever the spunky moonelf had vanished to.
“besides” Callum’s voice was quiet, but sincere, “me and Ez have kinda considered you family for a while now, Viren and his bull droppings be damned.”
That, at least, made Soren laugh out loud.