Antoine's eyes shot open.  They darted around for a moment, assessing his surroundings.  He was in his room in the Asinine dorms of House Plaque, one of the male hostels for the university.  He shot up off his bed.  He grabbed his bathroom essentials, and moments later he was rushing into the dorm's washing room.  He scrubbed himself in a minute, rinsed off, and quickly cleaned his mouth while drying off.  Less than half an hour after leaving his room he was back in it, dressing.  The sun was just peaking over the hills to the east of the city when Antoine, dressed in his university uniform, rushed out of the dorm.  Today was post day, and Antoine didn't want to miss his letters.

"Morning, Antoine!" one of the people along the road greeted Antoine as he darted past them.

He stopped and jogged on the spot.

"Morning, Mrs. Bigot!" he replied.

"You're in a hurry as always, aren't you?

"Of course!  It's post day after all, isn't it?"

"Yeah I know, well, get going and see if your parents wrote anything this time!"

"On my way!"

Antoine resumed his sprint and quickly disappeared into the post office.  Mrs. Bigot’s smile faded as she watched him vanish.

"Poor child," she whispered to herself, "His parents haven't written to him in three years, and yet, despite that, he darts by every fortnight on post day to come and see if there isn't anything for him.  Breaks my heart every time I see him puffing along."

Some water gathered in Mrs. Bigot's eyes for a few moments before she wiped them away and got back to work.

Antoine burst into the post office.  No one bothered to lift their heads.  Antoine trotted up to the nearest desk.

"Good morning.  Is there anything in the post for me today?" he asked, smiling.

The clerk looked at him unenthusiastically for a few moments before turning around and disappearing through the door behind her.  Several minutes passed, eventually a quarter of an hour had come and gone.  The clerk reappeared, waddling through the doorway lazily.

"Nothing, as usual."

"Oh, thank you," Antoine said, hesitantly, "maybe next time."

"Yeah, maybe next time," the clerk slurred.

Antoine turned around and walked towards the door.  Reaching the door he reached out for the knob.  Just as his fingertips touched the knob, the door suddenly burst open in his face.  He was struck full-force by the door and sent staggering several steps back.  After three steps his feet couldn't keep up with him and he embedded himself in the floor.

"Antoine!" the culprit behind his predicament yelled as she burst through the door.

"Antoine, where the hell are you?" she yelled impatiently before spotting on the ground, "What on earth are you doing sprawled on the ground like some see urchin?  Get up, man.  You have post!"

The energetic, ever impolite girl was Lily.

'Ah, I should have known,' Antoine thought as he rubbed his sore nose, feeling a little hot liquid coming away with his hand, 'She's always the one who rams the door in my face.'

"You're the one who slammed the door into me like i was a punching sack!" he protested as he struggled to get up.

"You should learn to react faster!  Maybe we should start training with doors.  You could be doing better in combat training anyway."

"I don't need to pass Physical Combat; I have no intention of becoming a soldier."

Lily frowned, "No graduate from the Royal Academy has ever failed the physical combat course!  Don't shame the university you lazy boy!"

Antoine only shook his head, there was no winning with Lily.  The only thing he would accomplish by resisting would be to have her on his case for the next month.

"You said something about post?" he asked, trying to draw her attention away.

Lily's eyes lit up, "That's right!"

She plunged her hand into her pocket and withdrew from it a dirty envelope, water stained and crumpled up.

"I got a letter from your parents!"

"What?!" Antoine yelled, "How on Gaia did YOU get a letter from MY parents?"

Lily laughed, "No you idiot, it wasn't for me, I merely happen to get it."

Antoine looked at her with narrowed eyes, "And why did you get it if it wasn't meant for you?"

Lily blushed slightly.

"I asked the postmen to look out for any letters addressed to you and give them to me."

"And why would you do that?"

"You idiot!" Lily's cheeks were tomatoes by now, "I thought it would be more surprising to get the letters from me!"

Once again Antoine shook his head.

'I'll never understand you, Lily,' he thought.

"Well, give it to me."

The letter exchanged hands.  Antoine's hands were shaking severely as he took the letter.  They were shaking so badly, in fact, that he nearly dropped the letter twice while trying to open it.

"We should probably get out of the doorway," he said, trying to delay reading the letter.

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Lily didn't say anything, she merely grabbed him by the hand and dragged him outside.  The two went to the nearest bench where Lily plopped him down and sat next to him.

"Well, are you going to read it or not?" she asked, "You seemed pretty eager when you demanded i give it to you."

"I'm going to, I'm going to, stop pestering me."

Antoine gulped.  He turned over the letter.  On the back was a simple, crumbling wax seal.  He loosened it and opened the envelope.  Inside, slightly water stained, were four sheets of paper, which he removed slowly.  The paper was coarse in his hands.  The fibres could be seen crisscrossing, clumping, and weaving together just beneath the surface of the paper.  The paper was cheap, not just cheap, it was the cheapest paper out there.

The moment Antoine thought this, he felt feint.  Despite being cheap, several thousand times cheaper than silkweave paper, and at least three order of magnitude cheaper than the paper he had gotten used to at the university, each sheet still cost a day of his father's salary.  He held in his hands three days' worth of his father's work.

Most commoners never saw paper.  Though the mandatory education ensured that all free men could read and write, paper was ridiculously expensive.  Commoners mostly never had any reason to write in the first place, and if they did, they would generally use cheap leather.  Most businesses would instead use fibre scrolls.

"Antoine, you're tearing up," Lily said, leaning towards him.

"Come on, you haven't even read the letter yet," she said pouting.

Antoine wiped his eyes, 'For my parents to go to such lengths.  It must have taken them this long to send me a letter because they were saving up to buy the paper.'

The four sheets unfolded scrapily.  Silkweave would unfold almost like fine cloth - which wasn't an entirely incorrect description of the material - but the coarse paper still had the fold in it even after it was unfolded.  Antoine had to bend it perpendicularly to the fold just to keep it from constantly folding in half again.

The ink the pages were written in was smudged frequently, and parts were almost unreadable from the water damage, but Antoine managed.  The four sheets made two letters, each of two pages.

My dear boy.

Hey there.  It's mom.  Sorry for only writing after such a long time.  I had wanted to send you animal skin letters several times, but your father kept insisting that we save up for actual paper.  He won't say it, but he's worried for you.  He's been working late nights since you left.  He says it's to save up money so we can write to you more often, but we both know it's because being at home only reminds him of playing with you when you were little.  Really, you'd think I would be the one who'd take your absence the hardest, but he's taking it much harder than I am, even though he doesn't show it.  But enough about your father, he has his own two sheets on which he can write about himself.

I miss you, son.

I miss having you around to help me with the laundry early in the morning.  I miss our long conversations after dark at the back of the house, how we'd stare up at the stars for hours as we chatted away.  But most of all, I miss being able to walk into your room late at night and watching you sleep.  I still remember those days all those years ago when you were just a baby.  You had the loudest voice.  You rarely cried, for which I am grateful, because when you did, you woke the entire village.

You've been the talk of the village ever since you left, you know.  Everyone's talking about how you are the first kid in the entire province to get into the Royal Academy.  Everyone's so proud of you.  Even the local common lords have been paying above market price for our produce.  Of course your dad refuses to keep the extra money and instead gives it to the Du Bois, the Du Pontes, and the Vilets.

Miss Du Pisane has been spreading rumour, what's new there really?  She keeps telling everyone it was all thanks to her that you managed to get into the Royal Academy, thanks to some connection she has there.  of course, when anyone asks who exactly it is she knows, and how they were able to get you into the academy, she's quick to change the subject or to remember something she forgot to do.  It's entertaining, really.

I would tell you so much more, but I'm running out of paper, so i suppose this will have to do.

Antoine, my little boy, please be safe.  I know you'll work really hard, that you'll do your best and that you'll make a success of this opportunity that heaven only know how you got.  But don't forget to take a break every now and then, okay?  Make some friends - I'm certain there must be one or two good people amongst all those nobles.  Enjoy the sites, heaven only know what amazing things you can see over there.

Always remember: you're my boy, my handsome, smart, hardworking boy.

I love you so much

Mom

 Several circular blotches were next to the final words on the letter.

Antoine wiped the tears from his cheeks, smiling.

"Your mother sounds so sweet.  She has some strange ideas about nobles, though.  Aren't commoners the ones that are mostly rotten apples?"  Lily asked.

Normally Antoine would have knocked her over the head by now, but he had already begun reading his father's letter.  Seeing that he had just ignored her, Lily pouted for a moment, but finally sighed and decided to read the letter as well instead.

The writing on this paper was quite a bit different from Antoine's mother's.  The former had gentle, soft writing.  The letters flowed from one curve to the next like river water.  The latter, on the other hand, was written as if by blade stroke.  The letter looked like they had been chiseled from stone.

Son.

It’s your dad.  It's been a long time since you left.  Things are going good on the farm.  The rains have been regular and the bugs few.  Harvest was particularly good last year.  Everyone is gossiping as usual, though I have no time to listen to their stories, as it has always been.

The village has several new families.  They moved in last summer.  One of the men is a carpenter, it's high time the village got one of its own.  It was getting tiring to travel two towns over just to get a chair, or to have to wait for the annual caravan and then have to fight with the others over the limited furniture they would bring.

One of them joined the town guard, and the last one has rented grazing rights on my land, amongst others'.  Don't worry, the rent is good and he only grazes his flock on the lands that have recently been harvested.  It’s actually part of the reason First Harvest was so good this year.  The animals eat the harvested land clean, and their droppings work better than just ploughing the dead plants back into the soil.

Your mother misses you terribly, of course.  I've had to spend many a night comforting her, but you know how emotional your mother's always been.  You don't have to worry about her, though, I'm keeping an eye on her so she isn't too sad.

You don't have to worry about your room, I've instructed mom to keep it just like you left it, so you can come home any time.

Remember to keep working hard.  I don't want my son to get kicked out of the Royal Academy unless it's for over achievement, you hear?  Show the no good idiots in the village you're better than them.

At the very bottom of the letter, written much smaller, and in far lighter, slower strokes than the rest of the letter, were five words.

I'm proud of you, son.

Antoine's eyes, which had been teary from the first letter, were fountains when he read those words, and yet his smile couldn't be larger.