hey, brother, there’s an endless road to rediscover. Who: Conan Deirgard & Ryul Varus What: Catching up (Bonus: food). Where: Messhall, Shieldwyrm. When: Today, late afternoon. Rating: G Status: Complete.
Lunch hour at the mess hall had died the hour before, but the smell of their slapdash feast lingered on heavy in the room. Fighters clattered their empty plates, elbowing each other as they scrambled like vultures for the last pieces of food. They were bound together by blood in battle. At the
Conan Deirgard strolled in with eyes closed, following only his nose to reach this destination. His eyes fluttered open to catch sight of a familiar curved back at the end of a wooden table. Adjusting the strap of his quiver, the young boy switched to his stealth mode.
“Guess what?” the squire asked (yelled, to be accurate) and thumping the other fighter hard on the back.
Hunched over his food as usual, Ryul Varus turned to the voice with his mouth full and a nearly-demolished chocobo leg held in one fist. He almost choked at the thump and coughed, covering his mouth with an arm and his eyes wide. It took him a little while to realize he was not going to die. He swallowed down his food, eyes still bright and wet from the unshed tears that came from a particularly tough coughing fit.
“What’s up?” he asked, clearing his throat still. No hard feelings at all. Conan was one of Ryul’s favorite squires - reminded him a lot of himself a few years back, actually - and besides, any excuse to linger longer in the mess hall before Cressida dragged him to practice was a good one. If she happened to drop by, maybe he could even trap her in the conversation and keep her from noticing his favored evasion technique. Well, next to just outright hiding. “Wait, let me guess: you’ve been working out?”
“Close but not what I meant!” He held up his bow and, with his thumb, pointed to the arrows swung around his back. “My mentor’s Zach now. The ranger! I’m gonna try archery.” Like you was left unsaid, unnecessary.
The younger fighter grinned up at his senior with more enthusiasm for this new career path than he had ever had before. It had been a while since he had been able to properly catch up with Ryul. Standing this close with the other fighter reminded Conan of the news that filled the space between them. Conan had struggled finding his own place in the guild and its multitude of weapons options (swordsmanship taking the lead with his family’s tradition), but now he began to realize that ranged fighting might be his future.
Diverging from his parents’ specialty struck a chord in Conan’s heart but if it meant being more like Ryul or Zacheus… well, he knew he could come to accept this readily.
That caught his attention. Ryul’s face broke into a grin. When he was interested, it showed. For one, he was certainly not trying to duck under a table and hide from Conan the way he did when he could see one of the senior fighters looking for him to reprimand. He took another bite from the food in his hand, chewing and talking at the same time. Who had time for table manners?
“That’s awesome,” he said approvingly. Ever since he had himself chosen archery a few years ago, Ryul had a soft spot for the class. Not that he had ever abandoned his dreams of becoming one of those proud, shining knights he had so often seen in his childhood walking in the streets of Emillion. Just that the dream had - shifted a bit. There was something very respectful about long-range fighting. Or at least, he had more respect for it now that he had joined their ranks. “Zach is fucking good too. So what made you pick that?”
He patted the seat next to him, indicating that Conan should join him on the bench. Conan plopped his butt down in the empty space, leaning into his elbows on the table.
“Haha, yeah. Well, Unc—I mean, Councilor Bram was getting fed up with me messing around with all my old mentors, so he assigned me to Zacheus,” he admitted with a shrug. “I’ve never tried archery for real before but Zach says I’m okay at it and I suck at everything else so why not, y’know?”
“I know the feeling,” Ryul stated, cleaning the last bits of meat off the bone before throwing it carelessly on his plate. It clattered, almost missing it entirely - but it was hard to hear anything over the casual din of the dining hall. Having finally polished off the last of his meal, he gave Conan his full attention. He wasn’t going to say anything like Conan didn’t suck at everything else - he really had no idea, and he wasn’t going to go reassuring him of something that wasn’t necessarily true - but it wasn’t as if archery was anything to dismiss as a last resort. “Archery’s hard, you know,” he said, moving to lean his elbow on the table and spreading his legs out in the way he often did, without concern for how much space he was taking up. Conan found his own limbs copying his elder’s motions, miming the loosened posture as he relaxed around the old friend.
The guild member next to him glanced at Ryul’s legs pointedly, but he either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He continued, “But if you’re not totally shit at it, well, you’re better than half the squires out there. I saw some practicing and like half of them can’t aim for shit.” He gave a nostalgic sigh that probably shouldn’t have been coming from someone who was only twenty-three. “Missed every single fucking target.”
Conan laughed with his head thrown back for a few seconds before trailing into a hesitant silence. “Hey, uh. Ryul?” He rested his chin onto a his fisted hand, pondering the difficulty of his new journey. Conan pictured himself as an archer more than anything else now (shooting arrows off the back of a blue-scaled dragon) but he was a dreamer if more than a fighter. “If I make it as an archer, we’ll get more time together, right?”
“Huh? Yeah, of course,” Ryul said, surprised. “Probably. I mean, if you’re an archer, we’d be doing the same stuff most of the time, I guess.” Practice-wise, it would make sense. Not that Ryul liked to practice.
“Awesome!” Already the gears in Conan’s mind began to click, piecing together the nonsense the pair could get into as part of the same class. Naps together? Pranks together.
Completely unaware of the montage running in Conan’s mind, Ryul reached for a mug of water, emptied it of its contents by pouring all of it down his throat, and then swung his legs over the edge of the bench. “Well, it’s about time I head to practice,” he said, which meant that he was going to go find an inconspicuous corner and nap. He ran a hand through his hair. “Cressida’s gonna kill me if I keep putting it off this afternoon. You headin’ out too?”
Nearly leaping out of the bench to follow Ryul, Conan grinned and said, “Yeah! Let’s go.” They strolled out the mess hall at a leisurely pace, chatting away about their recent goings-ons until finally their steps took them to different directions.