In the name of courage.

decent time skip

I awoke feeling sluggish. I had been left to grow my meager knowledge of reading and arithmetic, a task that felt amazingly cruel after the glorious and other worldly experience of the nomiatur. The entire ordeal still rang in my mind even though it had been almost a month, the beauty struck me so that the memory was almost as clear as when I had actually laid eyes upon the scene, I felt some estranged sense of grief every time a detail blurred slightly. I wished it would stick with me, coming to haunt me with its grace in the wee hours of the night like the horrors of my youth .

I rolled over and began the routine that had instilled itself in my day to day life within the past month. I shivered as I left the enclosed warmth of my cot by the fire. I donned the clothes of my station, a white cotton shirt and grey woolen trousers, a winter issue, given the proclivity for extreme cold around the border at this time of year, regaining some semblance of comfort inside the thick fabrics. Goosebumps surrounded every inch of my skin, as the tantalizing warmth of the dying coals reached through my clothes from a few paces in front of me. I sat beside it warming my hands and feet as I began putting on my sock and leather boots. The only consolation of my reluctant wakefulness was that today would be one of the final days of our endless literary monotony. 

As I sat considering this thought, I felt a light pressure on my back followed by a rubbing sensation, signalling I had woken one of the many animals present from their own slumber and they had come to collect recompense for the action. I gently laid my hand limp by my side and waited for it to sniff around my side and find it. It nuzzled my hand lazily with it's short muzzle.

"I thought you didn't like me all that much." I said to the white cat that now sat before me. He cocked his head.

"Don't give me that, I think you know that you were wrong." He turned his head down a little more, narrowing his pupils and gave a contradictory mew as if to say, 'nuh uh'

"Can't you loose your pride, take on a humble approach maybe." Arthur (the cat) swished his tail and pawed at my hand.

"Fine, I'll let you win this one." I obliged, resting my hand lightly on his head. He lowered his ears and closed his eyes in response, pressing his forehead into my palm and sliding it forward and back again until I indulged him and began scratching him behind the ears. 

I continued muttering to him in a low voice, lightly berating him for his prejudice and hypocrisy, while I kept up a constant flow of scratching and rubbing.

He had just sat before again me and started pompously licking his paw when there was a quite pattering of feet behind me.

"Arthur, who on earth are you talking to."

Both the cat and I looked toward the sound of our shared name, giving Rosy a questioning look. She chuckled lightly at what I imagined was quite a comical sight this early in the morning. 

I cocked my head and based on the elated look from Rosy and another short outburst of low chuckling, so had the cat.

"I was under the impression neither of you had a taste for one another." She said giving way to a few more bouts of chuckling.

"Sorry, sorry, everything is always much funnier when you're exhausted, sometimes I do worry if I'm crazed."

"No I'm sure it was funny to view." I gave the cat a sardonic look. "I was simply admonishing him for dropping his obviously unstable moral compass when he wants something."

Percy came in stretching as I said it. He looked at the cat and nodded sagely

"Oh yes, That cat is rather susceptible to bribery I find."