Growing Pains

Chapter Nine: Joining Ranks

"And that's why I don't eat meat unless I sniff it first!"

Cliff finished his sentence with a proud grin and turned expectantly to his coworker. Erick was just putting his face in his hands and begging the gods for a quick death. The boy never shut up and never left him alone.

"Helloooooo, Berk to Erick!" Erick looked up and jumped when he took in the sight of Cliff's face less than an inch from his own. "You okay, man?"

"Look," Erick sighed, "can we just work in silence?"

"What's the fun in that?" Cliff scoffed at his idea. "I mean if you really need silence, we can stop talking but then it'll get boring and monotonous and the whole day will drag and then in fifty years when we're telling our grandchildren about our youth, we'll talk about the long stretches of silence and how we wish we could go back and fill them with the sounds of birds singing and the laughter of children and all the amusing anecdotes that never got told-"

"Cliff, I swear to Thor if you do not shut up right now-"

"Okay, okay!" Cliff held up his hands in a surrendering position.

Blissful silence permeated the room and Erick breathed a sigh of relief. It had been a week and a half since Cliff had started working at the shop. His work was quite good and he enjoyed beading, which meant that Erick could now avoid that aspect of the job entirely. But the Smedley boy had an exceptionally annoying habit of chatting constantly. Even break times weren't very restful because Cliff had apparently decided that, as peers, they needed to spend every moment together. Horst was no help at all; he seemed to enjoy the boy's enthusiasm and humor.

"Well boys, that's about it for the day." Horst announced, walking into their workshop with a smile. "I'll see you on Monday."

"Great." Erick grabbed his satchel and was about to hightail it out of there when Horst stepped in front of him.

"You go on ahead, Cliff." Horst told the other apprentice. "I want to talk to Erick for a minute."

"Sure thing. See you Monday!" Cliff chirped before rushing out of the door, presumably to the Great Hall for some dinner.

"How are you doing?" Horst asked once Cliff was out of earshot.

"No different than yesterday." Erick sighed deeply. "Look, she hasn't forced me to stop coming in again, okay? Your orders will come out on time, as promised."

"My orders aren't why I ask." Horst sat down on Cliff's vacated chair. "And they're not why your mother and I argued."

"I know." Erick reluctantly sat back down in his own chair. "Well don't worry about it. Mom knows better than to forbid me from working again. You certainly set her straight."

This was true; the day after Cliff had started, Horst had stormed up to the Larson home and bellowed at Lara until she finally agreed to let Erick come into work. Erick had been half asleep at the time but he had heard Horst shout something about him needing to be out of the house and asking his mother how he was supposed to heal when he was locked up at home. Lara had some choice words in response to that but it was the threat of barging into her home and dragging Erick out despite her protests that won out. The youngest Larson truly was grateful for his mentor's actions that day but with Cliff chatting his ear off day in and day out, there wasn't much relaxation in his life.

Horst was quiet for a few seconds after Erick's previous statement. His eyes flitted to the bandages on the boy's wrists. Erick had claimed he'd burned his wrists in a cooking accident but the older man suspected he was lying, particularly since he hadn't met the man's eyes as he'd said it. There was something suspicious about the whole thing but if Erick was unwilling to discuss it, there wasn't much Horst could do about it.