Cursed with immortality, Mars goes on a journey with his lifelong more-than-friends partner Astral, a painfully average future-seeing mage, to find the root of magic, in an effort to ease the side effects of Astral's visions - and to finish their th...
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Finally seeing Heatherhills College felt like coming home. They had been notified of our arrival and we were welcomed as if we were locals. As if we had always lived here. It looked much like our own college, in the sense that it was in a repurposed castle. But instead of lying next to lakes, it was surrounded by trees. Large curly trees like in the haunted forest, but the growth wasn't as tight. It was much nicer here. Lots of space to practice more explosive magic – something Zeke and Astral were going to do now when we had space and time for it. Meanwhile, I'd get very comfortable with the library.
"Well, I've escorted you to the college," Keefe said as we were getting shown to our rooms. "That was what I promised I'd do."
Astral frowned. "So, you wanna be on your way or?"
Keefe shifted his weight from one foot to another, looking awkwardly large and too aware of his size.
"You don't have to leave our party, Keefe," I said and took Astral's hand in mine. "We won't even be staying at the college for that long. We'd still need protection for the remainder of our journey. So, if you'd do us the honour of staying, I know, I'd be grateful."
"And you're our friend." Astral frowned. "I mean, if you wanna go, then..."
"No!" Keefe exclaimed and furiously shook his head. "I-I wanna stay."
"Good. Now let's go to our rooms, unpack, and find the food court, so we can have a nice dinner together. As a family," I said a bit too sternly and pivoted around, going to the dorms.
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"Family, huh?" Astral asked and opened his rucksack.
"Isn't that what we are?"
"So what, we've adopted Keefe and Zeke?" he snickered and crouched down, pulling out a dirty shirt and discarding it on the floor.
"We're good parents, I think." I shrugged and folded my shirt neatly in the chesterdrawer.
Astral came up behind me, wrapping his arms around me. "You've always taken such good care of others, Mars," he murmured softly. "Don't forget yourself in all of this, alright?"
