Home, Heart, Hearth

"Well, well, well, the prodigal brother returns...Nice of you to finally call. Now what were you up to that kept you from calling for a whole two weeks?" said Catherine.

The red-haired, green eyed, young miss on the display sat with a stern expression on her face.

"Er...well, you know….things, and stuff, and more stuff...like er, married people stuff...So 'that' is why I was busy. And...that's why I didn't call." said Walder. Carefully meeting his little sister's gaze and wondering where the smooth operating, master manipulator, he'd used to be, had gone.

"Ehem, right...Stuff and things. Alright, well I've got you now. So...er...how are things? You long different…" said Catherine.

"Different?" said Walder. Resisting the urge to touch his face, or check in a mirror to see if his adjustments to his appearance were indeed off the mark.

"I-, I don't know? M-, Maybe you've gotten even more funny looking than you used to be, Wally?..." said Catherine. Her expression flustered. A red glow seeping into her cheeks.

"Huh?..." said a confused Walder.

"Nothing. I'm just messing with you, Wally. Anyway, you're sure, you're alright, right?"

"Of course. How about you? How's school." said Walder.

Catherine was a student of a University of Rubrum III, The prestigious Alcide College of the High Sciences, a school that had, had a lot of influential people pass through its halls and had a lot of Cerveny money invested in it.

She was there doubling majoring biotechnology and botany. She normally telecommuted taking the classes via VR for most of the academic year.

This changed during the last two years, as she entered the latter half of the program and Catherine had been having a rough time adjusting to life on campus. Running home every instant she could do so. When she saw Walder and Henri off with Florence, she was home on one such break, and Walder was naturally still concerned.

"I'm fine. School's okay…" said Catherine. Answering with a shrug. Her gaze turning slightly flat.

This time Walder caught the change in expression.

"Are you sure about that? Is school really okay?" said Walder. Putting extra emphasis on his words.

"Yes…, big brother. It's fine and I'm not little anymore. I don't need you to swoop in trying to solve all my problems."

Walder smiled with a look of chagrin, despite doing his best to keep a low-key, it was well understood within the expansive Cerveny household that young Catherine was the young man's reverse scale.

There were people who'd gotten off scot free with slighting him that found themselves in very unfortunate positions, after they'd made the unwise decision to try and make a move against Walder's adopted sister. While no direct evidence of Walder's involvement in these incidents could ever be found, 'somehow' people caught on.

Perhaps, realizing that in the same way that anyone who went too far in trying to trample the quiet boy would find themselves with an inexplicable case of bad luck, trying to trample the boy's favorite sister would result in a case of worse luck.

"Well, you know where to find me if you need me…" said Walder.

"Except for when you want to go missing for weeks on end…" said Catherine. Replying with one eyebrow raised.

"Er...right...Except for that." said Walder. Smiling weakly as he accepted the guilt-harpoon that had been fired his way. Wondering if his mother knew how much her adopted daughter took after her.

Catherine relented from her verbal castigation of the troublesome young man after seeing how hang dog he was looking. Sighing, as she bemoaned how her Grimwald could be as clever as she knew he was, and still not know how much he made her worry.

After the girl decided to magnanimously decided to move on, the conversation continued, in a more agreeable fashion. Walder and Catherine chatted until Catherine had to leave her dorm and head to her afternoon class.

Then a tired looking Walder would look at his call log and sigh in relief. Finally calling his sister had been the harder of the two calls he'd have to make today. Calling his mother would be relatively easy because her job in the Red-Jericho System's Interplanetary Senate kept her so busy that it was very possible that she might not have even noticed that he hadn't called for as long as he had.

Walder loved his mother, but she could be a bit neglectful, which was ironically part of why they got along as well as they. After being the apple of his parents' eyes during his last life, to the point of being suffocated by them, it was nice to be given a little breathing room.

The woman tried her best, but generally had too many balls in the air to pay her oddball son a lot of attention. Which generally meant he could get away with bloody murder.

The fact that Walder had been a fairly well-behaved child requiring less of the scrutiny and constant monitoring of Florence's other children, led to the parent and child sharing a mutual-appreciation.

Once both video calls were over and done with, Walder took off the relatively neat polo shirt and jeans he'd been wearing, and then wandered back to bed in his boxers.

While he was pretty sure that his physical condition was better than it had ever been, in the last few days he'd been feeling strangely exhausted.

He suspected that he was going through the so-called adjustment period that all extradimensional beings had to go through after entering this universe. He'd already gone through something similar before when he was a baby, but now that his extradimensional traits were in full effect it looked like he'd have to go through a second period of adjustment.

*************************************************************************************************************

An unknown amount of time later, Walder would wake up in bed and find that he wasn't alone. Henri was next to him on the bed, sitting on top of the covers, using console in his bedroom to play an old moba-type game.

"....Morning." said Walder.

"It's actually 2AM…" said Henri. Her eyes focused on the screen that had been painted onto Walder's bedroom wall. Her graceful fingers moving across a solid-light keyboard.

"Oh….Okay then." said Walder.

Still sleepy he turned around and pulled his head back under the covers. The gameplay in the background didn't really bother him. Henri had been considerate enough to keep the sound low, and even if she hadn't Walder was a man who'd fought in several wars, and had long ago mastered the trick of being able to fall asleep no matter what was happening around him.

The next type Walder awoke would be several hours later. He still wasn't alone in the bed. Henri lay beside him sleeping under the covers.

Walder gently got out of bed, careful not to wake his bedmate. He left the room quietly, but before he did, he looked back at the woman in his bed his expression thoughtful.

He still remembered their freshly confirmed arrangement, and knowing that the two of them weren't just going to drift apart like he'd expected them to, made Walder reassess some of the plans he'd had in store.

It was nothing big, from what he understood from his and Henrika's subsequent conversations, their plans for life together weren't that different from what their plans for life after they eventually separated would have been.

All that same, it made Walder keep the woman in mind. Adding her to the number of considerations and factors that would play as part of his quiet, low-key, hopefully happy, future.

For the present, that meant that he'd be preparing her gear sooner rather than later. After all, what kind of 'savant' would Grimwald be, if he let his life partner wander about using inferior equipment.