I woke up the next morning to the entirely novel experience of a real bed, actual quiet — relatively speaking, given the dorm — and no shouting guards demanding anyone get up for labor.
I laid there for a solid minute just appreciating it before finally dragging myself out to find breakfast.
The guild hall was already half full by the time I made it down, and Erza was there too, sitting stiffly at a table like she still hadn’t quite decided whether she was allowed to relax yet.
I sat across from her with a plate of something that actually smelled like real food, and we ate in comfortable enough silence until Gray and Cana wandered over again, apparently taking it upon themselves to be our unofficial guides to guild life.
“C’mon,” Cana said, waving a hand toward the rest of the hall.
“You two should actually meet people.
Can’t just sit in the corner being mysterious forever.” “We’re not being mysterious,” I said.
“We’re eating.” “Same thing, with you two.” She wasn’t wrong to push, honestly, so we let her drag us toward a table where two men — one with that same ambitious pompadour from our first day, the other with the wild dark hair — were already deep into some debate that sounded suspiciously similar to the one they’d been having when we first walked in.
“Macao, Wakaba,” Cana said, by way of introduction.
“The guild’s resident old married couple, if you ask literally anyone.” “We are not married,” the pompadour one — Macao, apparently — said, without much real heat behind it.
The two of them turned out to be easy enough to be around despite the constant bickering — Macao with a kind of laid-back warmth under the teasing, Wakaba puffing on a pipe between sentences like punctuation, both of them clearly fond of each other in the specific way people get after knowing someone for way too many years to bother being polite about it anymore.
“You’ll want to meet Reedus too,” Macao said, gesturing across the hall to where a large, mustached man sat with an easel propped in front of him, dabbing paint onto a canvas with theatrical focus.
“Guild’s resident artist.
Fair warning, he’ll probably try to paint you before the week’s out.” As if summoned by the mention of his name, Reedus glanced up, spotted the two of us, and immediately looked delighted.
“New members!” he said, already reaching for a fresh canvas.
“Hold still, hold still, I capture the moment!” “We’re eating breakfast,” I said.
“Perfect!
Breakfast portrait!
Very rare, very special!” Erza, beside me, looked deeply unsure whether this was a request she was allowed to refuse, so I just let it happen, sitting there awkwardly mid-bite while Reedus sketched with alarming speed and enthusiasm, occasionally muttering to himself about lighting and composition like we were posing for something far more serious than two kids finishing eggs.
The finished piece — when he proudly turned the easel around to show us — it looked like a picture toto me Somewhere across the hall, a small commotion drew my attention — a blond kid, standing near Makarov with an expression that managed to be both bored and faintly superior at the same time.
“That’s Laxus,” Cana said, following my gaze.
“Master’s grandson.
Keeps to himself, mostly.
Bit of an attitude, if you ask me, but don’t tell him I said that.” Laxus glanced our way for exactly as long as it took to register two new faces, decided we weren’t worth further attention, and went back to whatever conversation he’d been having with his grandfather.
“Friendly,” I said.
“He grows on you,” Gray said, in a tone that suggested he did not, in fact, believe that very strongly.
By the time breakfast wound down, I’d collected more names and personalities than I could probably keep straight for a while — Macao and Wakaba’s endless bickering, Reedus and his relentless art, Laxus and his general disinterest in existing near other people, Cana’s card tricks, Gray’s apparent inability to keep a shirt on for more than an hour at a time.
A whole ecosystem of strange, loud, warm people, all somehow fitting together into something that made the word “family” feel a lot less abstract than it had when Makarov first used it.
Erza, beside me, still hadn’t fully relaxed into it — but she’d stopped looking quite so much like she expected the floor to fall out from under her, which, for now, felt like enough progress for one morning.
Guess we actually landed somewhere good, big brother.
Told you.
Should’ve trusted the old man’s judgment a little sooner.
You didn’t say anything about trusting him.
I was thinking it very supportively.
Same thing.