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.

  Stolen story; please report.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.