FE3H Siblings Week Day 3 // Ingrid & Bro (Evin)
Ingrid was going to the Officer’s Academy tomorrow. It had been her dream for longer than she could remember; she used to hang on each and every story Glenn would tell her about his time there. She knew, however, that the main reason so much of their already scant funds had been put towards her tuition was not so she could go and train and become a Knight. That was a dream that had died somewhere around the time Glenn did.
Still, she was excited, it was a chance to escape her predictable schedule at Galatea and as much as they worried and frustrated her, she really did miss Sylvain, Felix, and Dimitri. They hadn’t seen each other on such a regular basis since they were children.
She would miss home, she knew that already, as well as she knew the sounds of her youngest brothers scampering through the home, running themselves ragged and expertly avoiding breaking anything. (Not that they had anything of any real worth anymore — most of it had been sold off ages ago.) She also knew that as well as she could always tell when her eldest brother was in the kitchen.
Ingrid could smell the Daphnel Stew (though Evin insisted on calling it Galatea Stew) from two rooms away. She let her nose lead her towards the kitchen where Evin was adding fattened chunks of meat that had been recently seared to the stew. They probably weren’t chicken, the chickens hadn’t done well this year and Evin usually used a few different kinds of meat, any root vegetables he could find, and enough earthy spices to mask too much gamey flavor. It still smelled wonderful.
“Hello Ingrid,” Evin said without turning around.
The worse his sight got the better his senses were getting, Ingrid noticed. “Did you recognize my footsteps?”
“No, I’m making meat in the kitchen,” Evin smiled, “it’s always you.”
“You’re making my favorite,” Ingrid pointed out.
“You have a lot of favorites,” Evin said, breezily.
She crept closer to see the bubbling liquid starting to turn an appetizing shade of brown and her mouth watered, even though she knew it would be hours until it was done.
“You’re going to miss me,” Ingrid said, staring up at him.
Evin shrugged and then leaned a little towards her to gently jostle her with his elbow. “Only a little.”
She wondered what he would do with a bigger kitchen. If she married someone who could infuse enough funds into Galatea that they could afford a bigger kitchen and a regular staff.
“Did you ever want to go to the Academy?” Ingrid asked him.
He was ten years older than her, but his sight had started to dim when he was younger than she was now, so the more traditional options for the eldest of a noble house went away faster than his eyesight. Besides, by that time Ingrid had been born, and their father had put all of the family’s future in her hands, which usually came with all the finances.
“Not really,” Evin said, reaching over for a container that had a notch on the top of it and then moving onto the next one after he brushed his thumb against the notch and repeated the process until he found what he was looking for.
“Why not?” Ingrid asked. “Didn’t you want to be a Knight?”
Evin snorted as he added salt to the stew. “No. Knights are always being told what to do and where to go, what’s the point in being a noble, even a poor one, if you can’t at least have some freedom.”
“Besides,” he added. “As our mother before me, I am shamefully uninterested in the Faerghus approach to always being combat ready.”
“You taught me how to use a lance,” Ingrid countered.
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t be good at it, Brandy-Wine,” he said, using her least favorite nickname in the history of anything anyone had ever called her, including the time Sylvain had called her ‘mother’ before she’d thrown a crabapple at him. “Maybe not as good as you,” he added, the praise making her feel like she’d grown ten sizes taller.
“It’ll only be a year,” Ingrid said, rather than saying she’d miss him terribly.
Evin frowned and then turned towards her, not quite giving her a direct look, but she could see his eyes tracing down the outline of her. She was too afraid to ask what she looked like to him now. The healers said he’d likely be completely blind by the end of the year.
“Don’t marry Gautier,” he said.
Ingrid choked a noise out between a laugh and a scoff. “That has never been an option!”
“I have to deal with whoever you end up bringing home and it’s bad enough you’re leaving me alone with the twins for an entire year, but if you marry someone that annoying, I’ll never forgive you.”
Evin had loved Glenn. Ingrid tried not to think about it. “So who meets your high standards?”
Evin seemed to think about that, tapping his fingers against his pant leg. “Not His Highness either, I need someone with tastebuds and I know he was the one who ate the centerpiece last time they were here.”
“Sylvain dared him,” Ingrid said, sighing. She hadn’t really talked him out of it, when it looked like Dimitri might do it. That felt like ages ago, it was one of the last times they’d all been together.
“Like I said, don’t marry Gautier,” Evin repeated. “And… don’t give in to every marriage proposal Father sends your way, he’s being too pragmatic.”
“He’s never too pragmatic,” Ingrid said, remembering the clutter and glad she could deal with keeping things clean and orderly in her own dorm at the Academy soon, no Frey and Kelby to mess things up or litter everywhere. She’d miss them too.
Evin raised his eyebrows and went to stir the stew again, without comment. The moment the wooden spoon shifted the ingredients around Ingrid’s mouth began to water again.
“It’s going to be a while until this done, Brandy-Wine,” Evin said, but he was smiling.
“I can wait,” Ingrid said and settled herself to lean on the counter next to him.
Evin leaned toward her briefly and his hand wavered for a moment somewhere around her head until she moved towards it a bit and then he pulled her in so he could kiss the top of her hair. “Don’t you dare like their food better than mine.”
“If I do, I’ll be sure to lie about it,” Ingrid said back, beaming at his rare open affection.
“Like I said, pragmatic.”
It was their last dinner all together and having Daphnel (Galatea) Stew was the perfect choice. It meant they had to pass bowls around, scoop for each other, and tear off pieces of hard bread to soak in the stew until it softened. It was a perfect send-off meal and made her excitement war with instant worry about how homesick she’d end up being.
