Lukas pulled the door shut behind him just as Emil was tumbling out of bed.
The younger boy glanced up at him and yawned, "Why are you so irritated?"
"I'm not."
"Yes you are. Why?"
Lukas sighed. He sometimes wished that his brother wasn't so good at reading him, no one else in the village would ever have noticed his current mood. "There was a group of knights in the village square, one of them started pestering me."
Emil got up and moved over to the hearth, scooping up a bowl of porridge from the pot Lukas had left to cool. "Oh, what did he say?"
"He said my eyes were pretty."
"Why is that such a bad thing?" his brother garbled, mouth full of food.
"It's annoying!"
"It's a compliment."
Just then there was a knock on the door and Lukas turned to open it with a small tut. The intruder, as Lukas would like to think of him, was the same young, wild haired man who had stopped him on his way home.
He snarled, "What do you want?"
The man bounced on his heels, his armor thumping the dirt and tinkling like wind chimes as he moved, "You left! But I never caught your name! Mines Mathias!What's yours?"
His voice was distastefully loud. It was too early in the morning for this.
"Why should a king's knight such as yourself ask for a healer's name?"
"Because I want to know it!" he shouted, "and I refuse to give up! If I can win wars than I can learn your name!"
Lukas shook his head, "you'll be waiting quite a while then," he stated, beginning to close the door.
Befor he could complete his task Emil came and wedged his foot between the door and the door frame. He nudged the door open with his foot and stepped outside, the skirt of his nightgown flapping about his slight frame in the early morning breeze and a bowl of steaming porridge teetering on his palm.
"Is this the knight you were talking about?" He asked, directing the question a Lukas. Then before the question could be answered he turned to Mathias, "His name is Lukas, mines Emil. Your cavalry came in this morning didn't it? You must be hungry, come in and have some porridge with us. I'm sure there's enough."
Lukas glowered at his brother, and begrudgingly let the knight inside before pulling Emil just outside the door so they couldn't be heard, "Why would you do that? You don't even know him."
Emil gave a small smirk, "No, I don't, but he makes you angry and I think it's funny."
"Insolent child!"
"I'm not a child anymore!"
"Of course you are. Now go inside and be a good host to our guest seeing as you're so insistent on letting him into the house."
Emil huffed and went back into their cottage with Lukas trailing him closely.
Once inside they found Mathias tugging and sniffing at the many bundles of dry plant that hung from the rafters.
"Leave those alone," Lukas scolded.
Mathias dropped the bundle he was playing with and gave the floor a guilty look, "Okay, but um… what are those things?"
"They're herbs," Lukas snapped, "You know you really shouldn't grab at something until you know what it is, and didn't you mother ever tell you not to touch other people's things?"
"Sorry they just smell really nice."
Emil broke off the impending scolding by holding up a bowl of warm, goopy meal.
"Here, eat this," he said, sitting back down by the hearth and patting the place beside him, "sit down."
Mathias did as he was told, taking the bowl and scarfing down its contents. Lukas only watched with exasperation, deciding that this day could simply not be good anymore.
AN: mmmm... I don't like this chapter too much but I hope you like it anyways. I know it's a lot of dialog, I'm sorry.
Reviews are appreciated! Fell free to give me ideas on where the story should go, I have a vague notion of what I want to do with this but nothing is set in stone until I write it!
I don't own Hetalia