Of Black Ink & Feathers

3. Soup and Confessions

The dining hall was a modest room, sparse and drab. Wooden tables were placed in a square to allow all attendees to peer towards the centre of the room without obstruction, matched by benches along their outer length. Simple wooden plates and spoons decorated the tables while the faint scent of chicken broth ebbed from the attached kitchen. Iron oil lanterns fixed to the walls lit the room - as well as every other coordinator and chamber within the Order walls - basking the darkened stone in a smooth, orange glow.

Upon entering into the dining room, Dorothy was greeted by Edith from her seat at the proposed head of the table: in the middle of the furthest table from the door. Edith stood with her warm smile, bowing her head.

"Welcome to the dining hall, Dorothy," Edith said as she motioned to the members around her. "Now that you have arrived, I am glad to introduce the rest of our coven."

"This is everyone?" Dorothy asked as she peered around the near-empty room; she had never seen a dining hall so empty.

"It is," Edith confirmed softly before gesturing to her side. "To my left is Nicholas, who is seated beside Nathan, then Nelson, Marge, Caleb, Nora, and Arthur. Myra is preparing dinner and Miles is still absent."

Dorothy looked to each person named, all with their own distinct appearance: Nicholas was a muscular and youthful man in a red tunic; Nathan was an older man - early forties - with a yellow tunic; Nelson was an oddly thin man, almost too much so for his ill-fitting yellow tunic; Marge was a robust older woman with a red tunic; Caleb was a meek man in a blue tunic; Nora was a strikingly beautiful woman in a red tunic; and Arthur, in a blue tunic, was the only member to adorn reading glasses.

After nodding to each, Dorothy jested while taking a seat beside Edith, "There are a lot of names starting with 'N' and 'M'. Was there a new ruling I was not aware of?"

"No," Nelson grumbled as he buffed his loose, yellow smock. "Unfortunately, some Keepers simply go down an alphabetical list when naming the orphaned children. We were dedicated within the same few decades here, raised within these walls."

"Did Edith choose your names then?" Dorothy asked with a hint of playful intrigue.

Nathan chuckled. "Edith wasn't serving here when I was born. A man named Aaron was the Keeper at that point. He lacked a lot of imagination."

Myra, whose youth was underscored by the grey of her student tunic, pipped up softly from the kitchen, "He was a good man though."

"As good as a man with a crooked cane can be," Nicholas jeered and spun his cup between his calloused fingers. "He had his favourites. The rest of us were toughened by that wooden cane."

"Nicky was the only one that wasn't his favourite," Marge teased. 

"Sure, sure," Nicholas sighed. "Still, his retirement anniversary will be a sacred day to me alway. Four years and counting." Nicholas winked at Dorothy before taking a gulp of his wine.

"You shouldn't say such things," Myra muttered from the kitchen.

"Myra is right," Marge sighed through a smirk. "He may come back to punish you for your sacrilege, Nicholas."

Before Dorothy could ask more about their history, the dining hall doors flew open and Miles stormed in, face flushed, with a righteous wrath written in the stomps of his footfalls. He waved a journal heatedly with his eyes squarely fixed on Dorothy; she immediately recognized her reference tome that had been stowed away in her luggage.

"Y-you-you heathen!" Miles stammered furiously. "You admire craw; you w-wrote all about them! T-their bodies! Their br-r-reeding! No xanthos of the Order would publish such shame!"