2
Tess got up bright and early for the first day of classes started and was greeted as she opened the door by a bright and cheery Derek. She growled at his "Good morning little cousin!"
"Derek, sometimes you're too much like your mother!" Tess grumped at the unperturbed older page. The two stomped off to breakfast with the other bleary eyed pages.
Arielle of Pinewood, her sponsor James of Laurel Valley, Alexah of Oakwood's sponsor, Annabell of Jesslaw, Jordan of Golden Lake and Malorie's peak's sponsor, Terrin of King's Reach, and Mikael of Kennan and his little sister, Natalie, who he was sponsoring all sat with Tess and Derek. Their breakfast was apple porridge with bread and butter. Natalie looked at the mush and muttered, "wonderful!" Several murmurs of assent came from her friends, sitting around her.
The training master came up behind her and said in a clear voice that startled everyone in the room, "Yes, and very nutritious!"
After that the pages ate in silence except for the necessary things like, "pass the juice" or "give me back my spoon!"
The pages trudged out to the training yard for their first lesson. Padraig haMinch cleared his throat to introduce their teacher, "Pages, your teachers for hand to hand combat will be ... the Shang Butterfly, Delilah Shilomino, and the Shang Bobcat, Samuel Shilomino."
Padraig haMinch stepped aside to reveal a delicate and very breakable looking young woman and a tall (gigantic) young man with long hair for a Shang warrior.
"All right, pages stop your yammering! It's time to pair up for some exercises!" shouted the young man, "this is Delilah and I'm Samuel, but just call me Sam."
The older pages paired up, but the new first years held back not knowing what to do. Delilah calmly walked over to them, unlike her large counterpart who was shouting out instructions to the older pages.
"I'm going to need to know your names if we're going to do any learning," She said as another page ducked into the dirt floored, fenced in arena. Her dusty sable colored hair hid her face, but she walked over to stand next to Arielle and Alexah, who exchanged whispers with her. Delilah cleared her throat, "Since you seem so eager to join us why don't we start with you, newcomer."
The new girl looked up and said, "Huh? What are we doin'?"
Delilah only calmly replied, "What's your name, newcomer?"
The girl declared, "Oh, my name is Niccolla of Birchwood, I'm Arielle of Pinewood and Alexah of Oakwood's cousin." Delilah nodded and said, "Ok, who's next? How 'bout you?" pointing to Tess.
The younger girl replied, "Um, ok. I'm Teressa of Queenscove, eldest daughter of Nealen of Queenscove and Yukimi Noh Diamoru." Delilah only smiled.
"Next, you." Derek brushed his hair away from his face revealing his telltale widow's peak, as he was pulled from a group of lounging second year pages, having finished their exercises, to be introduced to the new teacher.
"My name is Derek of Masbole, eldest child of Sir Domitan of Masbole, Second in command to Lord Raoul of Golden Lake and Malorie's Peak, commander of the King's Own, and Lady Knight Keladry of Masbole, formerly of Mindelan and former squire and aide to afore mentioned Lord Raoul." He coughed and flushed in embarrassment as a small group the King's Own rode up. Lord Raoul and Captain Dom both had a wide, ridiculous grin pasted on their faces and started laughing hysterically.
"That's a lot of big words for someone who's not studying to be a public speaker!" chortled Raoul. Derek's friends and family started laughing while he turned an even brighter shade of red, because everyone knew how much he hated public speaking but loved drama, like his Da's cousin, Sir Neal, who was also among the group of riders.
After an hour working with staffs and hand to hand combat and an hour working with bow and arrow, the pages trudged up to the stables. The pages without horses of their own chose from the King's supply.
Tess immediately ran to Galaxy, who was about to break the stall door down. After soothing the young mare and saddling her, Tess looked around at the other horses. Derek was teasing his Hunter, a light bay; Alexah was waiting patiently with her black Raven, Arielle with a strawberry roan named Melody, and Niccolla with Alibaba. Jordan was trying, unsuccessfully, to not get bitten by a tall dark, and handsome, stallion named, Yellow Feather, who had been a gift from his father.
Once all the pages were in order, the training master and horsemaster brought them out to the riding ring in a line. Today they were just exercising the horses, but later they would learn weapons on horseback.
After a long riding period the young people ran up the steep hillside to the palace to wash and change before lunch and their afternoon classes.
Tess's afternoon classes were Arithmetic, Language, History, Magic (this was the class for Gifted ones), and Decorum. Tess and her fellow pages had an easy first day of lessons, but were assured it would be harder tomorrow.
After dinner, where almost all of the first year pages dozed off in their food, everyone went to their rooms to do as much homework as they could before getting into bed and falling into the bottomless pit of sleep as soon as their heads hit the pillow.