CH 24

We will digress from the story for a moment. 

What you are about to read happened just before where we are in the main story. 

Cain was in one of the several gardens around the Duchy manor. It was a small garden and had a small wooden bench with a roof over it, which on rainy days was somewhere between useful and unreliable. This was Cain’s favorite garden. 

Cain would sometimes find himself there when his tutors had errands to run and class was canceled. 

Cain’s schedule was so packed with classes and training that it was cause for worry, but it was Cain himself who had requested most of it.

Ever since Ilvalino had become Cain’s chamberlain, he had been sitting in on Cain’s morning classes. He was told that this was because anyone who was to be employed as Cain’s chamberlain would need to be just as educated as Cain. 

The classes were strictly aimed at Cain, though, so if Ilvalino didn’t understand something or was hung up on a certain subject, the class would not wait for him. Ilvalino had taken on the daily practice of reviewing the class material every night before going to bed, so as to not be left behind. 

During afternoons, while Cain was busy with his arts and etiquette classes, Ilvalino learned about the various skills needed to be a chamberlain from Elise’s handmaid, such as how to serve tea, how to wait on nobles, how to coordinate schedules with other servants in the manor, and how to dispatch messages.

On this day, he had been learning about how to properly serve light meals at teatime. 

He received notice that one of Cain’s lessons had been canceled, and so Ilvalino went to Cain’s room, but Cain was nowhere to be found. 

Ilvalino guessed that Cain was at the small garden, and when Ilvalino went there, sure enough, he was there. 

Just as Ilvalino was about to call out to Cain, he stopped himself and put down his waving hand.

Ilvalino heard singing. 

“Butterfly, butterfly, stop on a flower. If you tire of the flower, stop on Diana.”

Cain had Diana propped up on his knee, and he was gently tapping her on the shoulder to the rhythm of the song. 

The lyrics were clearly made for a child, and they were simple lines that seemed to have barely any meaning behind them, repeated over and over. Ilvalino assumed that it was a nursery rhyme, but it was one that he had never heard. 

He recalled the singers that were sometimes dispatched to the orphanage on what were called “sympathy visits”. Some nobleman would dispatch the singers there on a whim, and they would come, sing a few nursery rhymes that they thought the children would enjoy, and return home. 

Cain was singing a song that none of those singers had ever performed. [Read this novel and other amazing translated novels from the original source at the “Novel Multiverse dot com” website @ novelmultiverse.com]

He was singing with a young boy’s voice that was a little high-pitched and delicate, but Ilvalino could tell that he was singing it gently and earnestly. 

He sang a song about butterflies, then one about flowers, then one about acorns. 

They were all simple songs about butterflies flying, flowers blooming, and acorns falling from a tree. None of them had much substance to them, and they were simple enough that a child would be able to learn them quickly. 

As if to prove this point, by the second time the lyrics were repeated, Diana had already grasped the words and melody, and she sang along with Cain. 

Just as he had noted when they had all first met, Ilvalino thought about how the two of them got along exceptionally well. 

On one hand, Cain was just an older brother doting on his little sister, but Diana was actually listening very closely to everything that Cain said. 

Cain seemed to attend to every one of Diana’s complaints, but he also gently showed her right from wrong, and his advice always included a clear explanation as to why things were good or bad. 

It might seem like he was spoiling her at times, but he was also guiding her, and teaching her to act properly on her own. 

Diana never looked down on Ilvalino for being an orphan, and never avoided him. She loved him and treated everyone at the orphanage as a friend. All of this was thanks to Cain’s attitude that this was the natural way of seeing things. 

Diana was always carefully observing Cain’s actions. 

She followed him and mimicked him because she wholly trusted him, and believed that Cain’s actions were always correct. 

Even now, as she swayed to the rhythm of Cain’s songs and sang along with him, she did so with a sense of utter comfort and security. 

Her hair was golden, and her eyes as blue as a summer sky. She was still so young, but she was already beautiful. 

They always made such different facial expressions, and so people often said that they didn’t look alike, but as they sat there, singing together peacefully, they looked so similar to each other that there was no way that anyone could deny that they were siblings.

Ilvalino decided that he would hold off on calling out to them until they were finished singing. 

He watched over the two siblings from the shade of a tree, a little ways off. 

When a butterfly grabbed Diana’s attention, and her line of sight drifted, she spotted Ilvalino. A game of “singing in rounds” was announced, and Ilvalino was, of course, included.