Matinus sat in his room and looked over his books. He had to decide which ones to take, which ones would fit into his suitcase and still leave room for clothes. Not that he had many anyway. He was excited anyway and not because his family was moving to the place where Orn lived, but because he could see, for the first time on his parents face, that they really loved each other.
It was weird for him, feeling things other people felt. He didn't know he could do it, he didn't know why, but the longer he sat with someone, if he looked at them, he could feel some of what they felt. Today, while Sanria and Gilean sat in front of him, telling him that they were going to be halfway married to Colin (a fact that made him ask Gilean if he was marrying Colin - an emphatic no there - whew), all of a sudden, they weren't nervous anymore. All of a sudden, they were in love... like, really in love.
He watched them look at each other and smile and hold hands and felt it like a piece of fabric on his skin- whisper thin and light, then wrapping around him warmly. They said they loved each other before. He knew they kinda meant it, but this was different. Matinus didn't know what changed, or even why, but this time it was real.
He paused in his packing to sigh as Nioma came into his room for the seventeenth time to say they were moving. 'I know, Nioma. Go pack.' It was a little tiring, feeling her crazy energy each time she came tornadoing into his room. She left and Matinus could think again, and his smile came back unbidden. He didn't know what it would mean to have a dad, a kinda dad, Orn as his real big brother right there for him to talk to any time he wanted, Mirin there whenever he wanted to be around her, to be an uncle, to be an adventurer in the woods, by a water fall, by a stream, in a cavern... but he did know that his family was going to be together... and that was the best part of the whole thing.
