"He's gorgeous!" Canadena stabbed a finger at two boys casually sauntering along the road to the mess hall. "Milita, look!"
The second girl followed Canadena's finger. "Which of them?" she said teasingly. She already knew the answer.
"Are you daft? Him!"
Milita grinned. For a moment, she contemplated baiting her excited classmate a little longer, but there was something like behaving according to one's stature. "So you prefer them a bit skinnier?" To be truthful, so did Milita, but proper girls didn't discuss preferences, especially not when it came to boys.
"He's not skinny! Just look at him!"
Canadena was uncouth and foulmouthed, but she was so full of life you just couldn't dislike her. Besides, the shorter of the boys was indeed good-looking. "You'll have rivals."
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"I have a plan."
"You have a plan?" Things just took an interesting turn. "What's this plan of yours?"
A bubbly laughter rose from Milita's left. "Why fight over him when we can share?"
As plans went, this one was outlandish enough to merit support. "Share? Like how?"
"See the way he walks?"
Milita looked again.
Both boys lacked the federation gait; neither the common, submissive one belonging to most commoners, nor the aggressive, self-confident one of the nobles. Canadena's object of fascination carried himself like a freeman from one of the surrounding kingdoms, and the other, larger one, walked like he owned the world but was too uninterested to care. Outworlder, and one from a family of power, even though they all adamantly talked about how every human was born equal. It was like they had lost the ability to even see who held power and who didn't.
"Share, you said?" Milita suggested.
"I'll find a way. I can do anything."
Maybe she could. Still, some helping and a little nudging couldn't hurt. She was interesting enough, and Milita just loved interfering when interfering was allowed. "Sure, anything. I think I have an idea."
