Chapter 82 - Alamar (1/2)
The following morning we both woke up sore from sleeping on the couch but Al seemed much more refreshed. And determined to visit Nyla's mother.
We had to eat breakfast with the rest of the royals and I had a very dull tea party with the queen and Rosenia first. Once that was over and done with, I changed back into my comfy clothes and we made our way over to the back wall.
Nyla had been right; they weren't hard to find considering the group of children running around the neighborhood with black hair and gray eyes. Her home was on the end farthest from the castle.
Was it intentional? Nyla said that the few Kanta clansmen who hadn't fled Annalaias entirely had assimilated into the families of citizens so they wouldn't be killed. The king couldn't come after them without cause or riots would start but they still most likely tried to stay out of royal notice as much as possible to be safe.
As we approached, some of the children eyed us curiously. It made sense. They might not have ever seen another Kanta they weren't directly related to.
We knocked on the door that a neighbor had directed us to but no one answered. One of the little boys spoke up, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. ”Who are you looking for?”
He was missing a few teeth and seemed a bit taller than the other black haired children in the group. Possibly the oldest. He was also wearing one of the hats I had crocheted. At a second glance, about half of these kids were wearing my handiwork.
They must be Nyla's children. Were the others her nieces and nephews? She mentioned that she had half-siblings with the Kanta look. This sort of familial closeness was more similar to the way things were in my world than the distance between the nobles and their extended families.
I suddenly found myself wishing my soul had been transplanted into the body of a commoner instead. Life would have been harder but from what little I had seen, it also would have been more similar to home. After all, they did wear sweaters.
With a smile, I got down on the boy's level to appear as unthreatening as possible. ”Your mother bought those hats from us yesterday and invited us to come visit.”
He seemed much less suspicious after that. If I weren't telling the truth, how would I know about the hats? A friendly expression crossed his face. ”Follow me; she's out back in the barn.”
The barn was a fraction of the size of the royal stable and consisted of a single horse, two goats, and to my delight, a litter of kittens. I hadn't seen any animals that could be considered pets in my world since arriving here so I had assumed they didn't exist.
It made sense that I hadn't seen them. Catherine du Pont was a noble and cats were considered wild animals. But things were different on a farm—they probably used cats to keep rats and birds away.
Not that I would consider this an actual farm. Based on everything I had seen, there were signs of a vegetable garden buried under the snow and they only had a few animals. If I had to guess…this family made a living by selling milk and cheese. None of the other houses we had passed had a barn.
Forgetting myself for a moment, I rushed over to the kittens, completely ignoring why we actually came. There were four of them and they were rolling around in a scattered pile of hay.