Ber was loosely aware of the foot traffic around him, but with his attention focused on the meal, he paid it little mind until a somewhat familiar voice from the side caught his attention. The soldier looked up to see Shannon approaching him, and even though he was about to obligingly nod and move more to the side, she immediately plopped herself on the ground at his feet before he could do either. Ber blinked at her as she turned the seat of the bench into a makeshift table. Why bother asking for permission if she was just going to do so anyway?

Still, he finished his movement to the side anyway, adding a dry, “Sure,” as if his agreement still mattered. While he turned back to his own food, Shannon bit into her bread and offered up a complaint regarding its quality. With his own mouth full, Ber glanced toward her and shrugged. “Not sure they know the difference,” He said after swallowing the bite. “The soup’s not bad though.” It was, of course, all relative. But having spent a childhood falling asleep with an empty stomach more often than a full one, he had learned to eat what he could, when he could, and with little complaint.

“They’d probably say it’s training,” Ber said offhandedly, spooning more soup into his mouth before rattling off the usual excuses offered in the face of the frustrations familiar to the youngest soldiers. “Or that it is what it is. Or that it’s need to know and we don’t need to know why we’re doing something as long as we do it.” Not that the quality of food, specifically, was anything more than the product of putting relatively unskilled soldiers in a kitchen, but Ber was generalizing to include the typical responses to the typical complaints. “Doesn’t matter what they say. Bet you they do half the stuff they do just because they can.”

It was neither a flattering nor generous perspective, but Ber couldn’t see any other reason for the way things were. Be there promptly at this time, which was always long before the birds started singing, only to stand around for hours until they actually began whatever activity they were there for. Perform this pointless task in this entirely inefficient manner, but wait, the minute they finished, they needed to do this other thing that would require them to undo all the work they just completed. Do something one particular way even if it was easier to accomplish a different way. And if you don’t listen, Stormcrest, that’s extra laps or push ups or chores or whatever other punishment for you. It was all fine and exactly what he’d signed up for by enlisting - he knew this - but sometimes, sometimes it all got to be a bit much.

A lot much.

With a spoonful of soup, Ber swallowed down the simmering annoyance sparked by those particular thoughts before it could flare into something larger. Shannon had moved on to try her own soup anyway, judging it as resolutely not great but not the worst either. A fitting conclusion for just about all of the food that originated in the mess hall. “Better than the soup my mother used to make, too.” An inside joke that could be appreciated by only half of the parties involved. Shannon wouldn’t know, as her conversation partner wasn’t one to divulge much - if any - information about his past, but Ber’s mother had never made him any soup at all. The young man had been found as a baby on the steps of an orphanage twenty years ago and spent the years that followed stealing what he could to supplement the meager meals provided by the establishment. Up until Ber had met Temperance, the mess hall had won any competitions for home-cooked food by default.

He didn’t quite know what to say in response to Shannon’s brief reveal regarding her family dinners; he hadn’t asked, and he didn’t much care, either. “That’s good.” The words were neutral and non-committal: a pleasantry demanded by society. “Is that why you’re eating here instead of there? Because she burns water?”

“Spend enough time around Woodwick,” Ber replied, his words carrying the weight of personal experience. “And you won’t need to wait until you’re as old as he is to become jaded.” He glanced over at her, noting the same sort of freshness that clung to Sliva and Parric and every other new recruit who enlisted right after their mandatory six. At twenty, he wasn’t even that much older than all of them, but sometimes he felt like those two years made all the difference. “You’ll see.” Woodwick. Towers. Abbott. They all had a way of stretching minutes into eternities.

When she asked after his mother, he made a noise somewhere between non-committal and agreement. “Something like that.” He was distracted soon enough by the revelation regarding her family and their current states of being. “Oh,” Ber said, awkward. Emotional comfort had never been a particular talent of his; it was considerably easier to simply punch things than it was to try to find the right words to fix a hurt he didn’t feel. “That’s… rough.” What else could he say? Intellectually, he understood the grief that accompanied the loss of a loved one, but given that he’d never had any family to lose, he had never experienced it himself. The unfortunate fates of her family meant nothing to him since he had never actually met them, and it wasn’t as if he and Shannon were friends. In lieu of saying something more, Ber spooned more soup into his mouth and let the moment pass.

He might have asked what had made her sign on, but the military had a penchant for catching those who had nowhere else to go. It offered a path of self-sufficiency and opportunity to improve one’s standing in society that could be walked by commoners and nobles alike, though of course it was hardly that easy. With her family dead, Shannon presumably had had nowhere else to turn. But he hardly wanted to wallow in the struggles of being born to poverty, let alone do so with someone whom he really only knew by name. “Food aside,” Ber began after swallowing his next bite of food. “Any regrets on enlisting?“

“They’re both assholes.” In Ber’s opinion, both Woodwick and Abbott were pains in the ass, and the notoriety of one man did not exclude the other man from being among those whose presence he would wish on no one but his worst enemies. The soldier paused as a thought struck him. For maximum efficiency, then, the two men ought to spend every waking moment in each other’s company. Perhaps they’d be so busy distracting each other that they’d forget about the poor soldiers who had to obey their every order. That would be ideal. “Abbott’s a pain in the ass for the new soldiers like you. Woodwick’s a pain in the ass for the rest of us.” He let out a dark, amused chuckle. “Do us all a favor: if you’re going to curse one, you might as well curse the other.”

Sometimes it was truly a shame that Ber hadn’t been born a witch. He had more than enough thoughts regarding what particular magical retribution would be fitting for Woodwick but no means by which to execute them. Alas, he was limited to punching the man instead – which would be no less satisfying in its own right. One day.

Ber made a noncommittal noise as Shannon admitted that her problem with military work was that it was messy. While he didn’t particularly enjoy unnecessary messes, he had no problems getting his hands dirty when the situation called for it, and he thought that perhaps she ought to find a different career if she wanted to stay clean the entire time. Especially with the looming war. “No,” He said simply as she turned the question back on him. With no family and no prospects and no other way off the streets, Ber couldn’t afford to have any regrets, so he didn’t.

Something in Shannon’s tone as she posed the idea had him pausing and glancing over at her, eyebrows raised. “You would actually do it, wouldn’t you,” He said, tone neutral as he considered her. “If you were given the chance.”

Well, she had said that she fantasized about it, and Ber supposed he would gladly punch Woodwick if given the chance. But physically striking a superior officer was very different from actively cursing them. A punch could be explained away with any number of excuses - Ber was personally waiting for his chance to punch the lieutenant within the context of a spar, which seemed the most likely - but casting a curse felt different, particularly with the effect which she had posed. It felt riskier. Much harder to explain away if she was caught. All the soldiers talked shit when they could, but he could think of very few who would actually follow through with their threats against a superior officer. He suspected, however, that he was sitting next to one now.

Was she stupid or admirable? He couldn’t decide. Perhaps a little of both.

Shaking his head, the soldier let out an amused huff. “He wouldn’t be happy,” Ber said, stirring his soup with his spoon. “But I don’t know if he would get angry about something like that.” Woodwick got loud and short on patience, certainly, but Ber had seen him truly angry only once: when the murderer Alfric Whitby had stolen a horse and escaped them. Being peed on was disgusting, but it was nowhere near that. In all other matters, the lieutenant was consistently, frustratingly unfazed. After a moment, Ber looked over at Shannon again. “It would probably make everyone’s day if you cursed either of them,” He mused. “But if you do, you’d better hope you don’t get caught.”

In the privacy of his own mind, where nothing could incriminate him, Ber would freely admit to pushing boundaries a little more than he probably ought to, when he thought he could get away with it. His mandatory six years followed by two years of enlisted service had given him plenty of practice with seeing just how much his superiors would let him get away with before pushing back, and the amount and nature of the wiggle room allotted to him varied greatly by officer. In that sense, it was probably better for his own sake that he had no magical abilities of his own. Ber could think of no one who would stand for being cursed without making the witch’s life a living nightmare afterward.

When Shannon raised an eyebrow at him, he merely looked back at her with both eyebrows raised, watching as she worked her way through a denial that he thought ended up as more of a ‘maybe not’ than a definitive ‘no’. As far as he could tell, most witches would have denied the observation in a manner that left no room for question. But Shannon? She had questioned herself, and once planted, some ideas were hard to uproot. “I don’t know,” Ber responded, having never given the topic much thought since it was ultimately irrelevant to him. “But it wouldn’t be good.”

The soldier made a noncommittal noise as he spooned the last of his soup into his mouth. Like Shannon said, they were all Nevermereans at the end of the day, so hurting their allies only weakened them as a whole. Ber paused. Punching Woodwick would, he supposed, technically hurt the man, but it wasn’t like he would be mortally wounding him. He’d only be giving the lieutenant’s face what it asked for every time he saw it. Woodwick could take it. With a face as punchable as his, there was no way he hadn’t been punched before.

“If your curse is too subtle though,” Ber began as he swallowed the soup. “Would they even know they’d be cursed? I thought you would want to curse them so they would know about it but do so in a way where you wouldn’t get caught.” Or maybe that was just him. Either way… “Thinking about it never hurt anyone,” He added, shrugging. “And everyone talks shit the moment the officers’ backs are turned. But actually doing it? That’s different.” A pause. “I bet it would be satisfying, but, yeah, it would also probably be pretty stupid.”

He let that linger between them for a moment before glancing over at her again. “Have you ever cursed someone before? Outside training, I mean.”