I pledge my life in service of your House,
That I may uphold your values and observe your customs;
Let your enemy become my enemy,
And your ally become my friend.[a]
In all things, I shall serve you.
—from The Neophyte’s Oath
“Have you seen the new fashion line from Anton Chingar?”
“I heard the birds had set up camp near Trotpass Keep.”
“Is it just me, or does the staff table look different this year?”
Sometimes, Maria Everfree was very glad that she wasn’t meant to speak at the table, unless she was spoken too. It could be very lonely, but from the sounds of it, she wouldn’t want to get involved with the mundane conversations that the other students were holding.
Resting her forehooves gently on the table before her, so as not to rely on them to maintain her posture, Maria gently reached out with her hornglow and picked up a ladleful of bread sauce, carefully spooning it beside the carrots and parsnips on her plate. Her hooves felt restless—though she had now mastered her control of levitation (at least of one object at a time), Maria was still struggling to get over the habit of serving up manually.
As she returned the ladle to the pot, Maria happened to catch the eye of a colt who was sitting a little ways down the table from her. A first year, Maria guessed—more from the look of nervousness on his face than his height. It was a look she knew well, if only because she had worn it so many times in her first few weeks at the Arcana, which meant the poor colt was probably a neophyte-to-be. Where’s his chaperone?
Maria nodded her head towards the bread sauce, and the young colt smiled back at her and nodded. She reached out her hornglow once more and carefully—very carefully, since her accuracy generally got worse with distance—floated the ladle down to the young colt, and poured a little bread sauce onto his plate, only to see that there was nothing else there.
Sighing, but still smiling, Maria carefully floated roasted vegetables and stuffed mushrooms from across the table to the colt’s plate. His chaperone should be doing this. Why would you leave a colt without the ability to feed himself? When his plate was relatively full, she picked up her own goblet of water and raised it in a gentle toast to the colt before she started to eat.
“Thank you,” he said, and the bubble of chatter around them stopped.
The colt’s eyes grew wide with embarrassment as every eye fell on him. Maria pushed down and controlled the rage that was building in her chest—It’s his first day!—and tried her best not to let her smile falter. The kid would need every friendly face he could get.
“Did you have something you wanted to say, Oats?” That was Abigail Forthnall, Maria realised. Oscina, now—she was a sixth year, and had taken her rites. So this colt—Oats—was part of House Forthnall? That would explain Abigail knowing his name.
Oats glanced up pleadingly at Maria, who forced her lips into an encouraging smile even as they were trembling. She didn’t let her posture break.
“I…” Oats began, his voice faltering at first. He took a moment to compose himself, and then turned to look Abigail in the eye. “I was merely thanking an older student for their assistance with my meal. I would not wish to spurn their House with a lack of gratitude, nor bring shame upon y-yours.”
Though his voice had faltered again at the end, Oats had held up remarkably well. Maria made a mental note to tell Professor Everfree to watch out for the kid in Oration: any colt who can almost hold his own at dinner with Abigail Forthnall was going to excel in her father’s class.
Abigail hesitated, no doubt gauging the mood of the table around her, before replying.
“Very well. But in future, you should wait for me to serve your dinner until you can do it for yourself. There is no need to demean yourself with pleading glances to older students.”
And as the bubble of chatter returned, and Oats turned to his plate with a relieved expression on his face, Maria found herself once again pushing down hard on her rage. A chaperone was meant to make a neophyte-to-be their priority—in her first year, Arpeggio had always made sure that her plate was full before tending to his own, and he was an Everfree! She wanted to stand up and yell at Abigail, to throw in her face the books and books of recorded tradition that she had just broken, to make sure that Oats knew that it wasn’t his fault…
So Maria lifted up her fork, only barely remembering to use her horn instead of her hoof, and forced herself to chew on a parsnip. It wasn’t her place to criticise.
[a] the change from ‘ally’ to ‘friend’, here, is a recent one. There was much debate among the Thaumata over this alteration: on the one hoof, the traditionalists would argue that the repetition and reinforcement of the structure had originally been intended to strengthen the magic of the oath; on the other, several esteemed academics had been working tirelessly to demonstrate that the new wording would actually tighten the bond. The debate was settled when Headmistress Midsummer Nucifera Whitetail simply used the new wording at the bonding ceremony without the permission of the Thaumata—when all had seen that the bond was stronger, they passed the necessary reforms, but Nucifera was stripped of her title for her insolence.