Breakfast was large.
His mother had clearly decided that the last meal before the departure warranted the full effort and had been in the kitchen since before dawn producing something that occupied every surface and required significantly more time to eat than their standard morning meal.
Nobody rushed.
Seventeen people at the extended table — the five blank multipliers, Maren and Calder, Sera and Hael, Lira, Calla, Ora, Prya, Kel, three second-class students who had become permanent fixtures of the morning table, and his mother who sat and ate rather than standing and serving, which she almost never did, which meant she had decided this morning was different.
Kel asked three questions before the food was finished.
Ora answered two of them and redirected the third to Calder who had been waiting to be redirected since Kel started talking.
