A/N: Dumb drabble I did a long time ago. I based it around my headcanon that Yurick actually likes to buy groceries with Mirania because of the slice of life experience the opportunity offers.
Yurick finds himself dragging behind Mirania again, the latter having an extensive grocery shopping list and he being her accomplice in purchasing. It isn't that he genuinely likes to go outing with the healer whenever the company needs food, nor is it because he's usually the only member available with "legs t' spare", according to Dagran, to be waiting in line for sixteen different stalls, twenty, if he counts the ones he inherits when Mirania gets distracted. Quite opposite to what his friends would expect, the mage never minds waiting in line because it makes him feel like a normal civilian kid again. Before his mother died, buying groceries was the most common errand that she didn't do on her own. It was always Yurick's responsibility to buy food, and it was, in this sense, a hallmark of his life before his parents passed. He never tells his friends this in the same way that he doesn't tell them most things that he finds pleasant. They wouldn't understand and they quite frankly didn't need to.
He supposes that joining Dagran's company was the catharsis of his "actual" childhood. He'd been living on his own prior to becoming a member within the mercenary group, but he still managed to contain much of his (stolid) boyishness when he wasn't, and instead, a struggling mage. Simply put, he'd learned to be precociously pernicious.
But today, he's waiting in line again with the boys his age, and it feels nice. It feels different.
"If y'er the twentieth buyer, y' git a free roll," announces a voice behind him, and Yurick, startled, makes a half-turn.
He sees the form of a small, ginger girl through his good eye, and turns around again, deciding that she probably wasn't addressing him. Most people didn't unless they wanted him to set an enemy on fire or wanted him to perform something highly menial that they could very well do themselves. Nothing is novelty to Yurick anymore, so he rarely ever doubts his own assumptions. The magician realizes that he's made a mistake, however, at the tug of his sleeve. The girl's grinning at him again, her freckled face radiant.
"Hey mister, yer the twentieth buyer," she cheerfully says with a smile. "'Ay was countin'!"
It takes him a moment to register that she's speaking to him.
"Oh." is all Yurick manages to tersely say, and the eight-year-old's forehead scrunches up, her expression making Syrenne's angry one seem much more tame by comparison.
"What do y'mean, 'oh'?! Madame Terfait's bread is t'BEST BREAD of ALL THE LAND," she cries and huffs, her chagrin apparent in her body language. Several people look over at the two of them, and Yurick wants her to shush, but doesn't for the sake of his better judgement. Instead, he offers the softer side of himself, the one that he usually doesn't let people witness but values nonetheless.
"Ay' didn't know," he admits with a rare smile, aboveboard, "So it's a bit o' er surprise."
She brightens at this, and accepts it as an apology.
"Ha! Ay' didn't know either until mum told me this mornin'," she proudly announces, gesturing towards the baskets for bread in her own arms, empty. She manages to free one of her small hands and motions towards herself. "Ay'm Tasha!"
"Yurick," he replies, feeling more lighthearted than usual, and he feels as if he's in an out of body experience.
He is making small talk with a child, and such things are improvements to his life. His usual conversational partners arethe mercenary group: Syrenne or Zael with Mirania on the side. He doesn't particularly dislike them, in fact, he's aware that he's become too accustomed to them. It didn't help that the mercenary group themselves were quite opportunistic with him, and had grown comfortable around his stark being, more comfortable than Yurick would have liked. Now, conversations with adults feel so natural that speaking to a child becomes offsetting.
Thankfully, Tasha isn't affected by him and assumes that his character is a decent one. She grins toothily again and lifts her chin up.
"Hey! Move up!" she orders, and Yurick quickly progresses forward in line, for he'd been distracted by the child and forgot that the lining up process is a relatively quick one.
He purchases Mirania's bread in addition to his free roll, and chews on it, knowing that the company wouldn't mind if he took that one for himself. He lingers, hidden near the side of the stall to ensure that Tasha's given the change that she deserves, and not taken advantage of because she's a child with minimal mathematical know-how.
After he affirms this, the magician returns to the waiting spot to regroup with Mirania only to find that she isn't there.
She's probably late again because of "alterations to the shopping list", he inwardly grumbles. He swallows his bread and looks around the marketplace at the boys his age, the children, and the overall familiarity of the marketplace tradition. He closes his eye and pretends that it was his mother that had asked him to buy bread and not Mirania, and feels like he belongs in the marketplace's social climate, and less so like an outsider.
It's not bad, though.
It's not bad at all.