Third Floor Common Room, Friday Afternoon

[doesnotkneel]

'Twas the end of the school week, and Edward had plans to celebrate it. Plans he was currently putting into motion: he had a bottle of something fizzy he'd nicked from one of the other common rooms, he had a bowl of nachos he'd stolen from yet another common room, and he had a sofa he was just borrowing to put his arse on.

It'd been months, but he was at least starting to adjust to the television. It no longer seared his eyes to look at it, and even the noise it made had started to sound almost natural.

So he turned it on, hit some numbers at random, and got... mice. Mice, dressed up as pirates, commanding a ship and raiding other ships for... cheese? Right. Well. Edward couldn't say he understood, but he could say he was too lazy to change the channel again. He'd asked Lady Luck for her recommendation, and this was what he'd gotten. So be it.

"Arrrr," he echoed one of the mice, idly.

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Comments

[doesnotkneel]

Edward shrugged. "They ain't exactly heroes, from what I've heard," he said. "Though a damn sight freer than the rest of us, I suppose."

[wildandbrave]

"Yes, there is that," said Cosette, and there was a distinct touch of wistfulness in her voice. "I suppose that's what drew me to those stories in the first place."

[doesnotkneel]

"Freedom from meddling nobles and their demands?" Edward said. "Aye, I can see that."

[wildandbrave]

"No," Cosette said slowly, because that hadn't even occurred to her, "but being able to go where one pleases, whenever the mood strikes, and see all sorts of new places. I never strayed very far at all from any place I've ever lived, up until I came here, and got to go on trips to entirely different worlds. That's the kind of thing that appealed to me most out of those stories."

[doesnotkneel]

Edward's mouth curved a bit. It took on a dreamlike quality of its own. "Ah, now that's a dream worth aspiring to," he said. "Though privateering's likely safer and won't lead to as much bloodshed among your own, I think. But that's wonderful about this place, isn't it? All the goin' places?"

[wildandbrave]

"Oh, yes," said Cosette, with evident enthusiasm. "Nothing I could ever have imagined quite lives up to places like Bali or Skyrim, and there's plenty of adventure to be had without even leaving the island, some days."

Though she could still do without eau de flying eel.

"I think I'd prefer my adventure without the bloodshed, if I had my choice. Is that what you want to do, be a privateer?"

[doesnotkneel]

"I've thought about it, but my parents'd never let me abandon the farm," Edward said. He sighed. "But it's a nice thought. Go out, see the world, come back with enough gold to live comfortably."

[wildandbrave]

"What brought you here, then, if you don't mind my asking?" Sorry, Edward, she was incurably curious. "At the very least, you're likely to see more of the world while you're here than if you'd never left the farm."

[doesnotkneel]

"I fell into a haystack and woke up here," Edward said honestly. "Best haystack I've ever found, I'll say."

He'd been drunk off his arse and angry at the world, and he hadn't spoken to his parents since. 'Accidentally.'