Lady Vera of Beit-Orane (v_eritas) wrote in caeleste, @ 2010-02-10 22:51:00 |
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Entry tags: | a ruined way, npc, vera of beit-orane |
How To Be Light [ narrative ]
Vera used to believe he truly was so absorbed in the papers he studied. When she was a child she would wait patiently at the edge of the office desk, covered in parchment and leather-bound manuscripts, until High Lord Arand finally peered at her and invited her to sit.
She always came here when she wasn't supposed to. Over time, Vera would enter his libraries or offices and begin to pick at the texts he had fanned out over his tables, reading without permission. The longer Vera stood there, waiting for his eyes, the more questions she had. Inappropriate questions that her mother would later scold her for ("I can not believe you questioned him on the pay he receives..." or "Why on earth would you ask High Lady Linde's age?") were the ones that always made the edges of the High Lord's eyes crinkle. It took time to learn that the crinkling was a form of a smile. Even when it wasn't stretching his mouth upward. Eyes could smile. Vera always thought it strange until she began to see such smiles in others. Until he taught her to smile that way too...
"Be careful with those smiles of yours," High Lord Arand told her with mock sternness, "You never know what havoc they could cause."
She tugged at a piece of paper on his desk tonight. Her fingers bent the edge back and forth. The large fire in the hearth to their left disguised the sound of the parchment so that it did not disturb the High Lord. Vera saw the text, but did not have the heart to read it. Instead she listened to the sharp edge of the High Lord's pen scraping along thin paper. Harsh, quick, precise and without pause. Normally Vera would play the game of guessing what he was writing. This would ease her heart. Instead she kept thinking about...
"What would you like for your Birth Day?"
Vera looked up and found him peering at her. He had no regard for the normal rules of their game. He wasn't supposed to ask her questions, she was supposed to ask him questions. And when had he ever asked her about her Birth Day? Vera frowned.
"I mean no disrespect, but that isn't something worth thinking about at a time like this, my Lord," she said. Her hand dropped from the paper.
"Why not?" High Lord Arand readjusted in his chair. He set his pen down. "I think it is extremely relevant."
"Your city is in chaos and a lot of people are dead, for one."
"Yes, I witnessed that earlier."
Vera's frown deepened.
"People are trying to kill you."
"As you have pointed out so nonchalantly about threats on your own life, that is nothing new."
Vera slammed her hand on the desk. Papers slid in soft wave to the floor, covering up the rug and in some cases one another. Vera stepped on them without regard to the writing there.
"How can you be so light?" Vera angrily gestured at his papers. "How can you be sitting here, like you always are? How can you...how can you not be heartbroken and angry and pacing about when everything that can go wrong is going wrong? You know as well as I do that we should have never gone out there with all of those people around us!"
"You are being too explosive tonight. And the rudeness of angry questions spilling forth, however compellingly, when you still haven't answered my last question..." High Lord Arand trailed off. He sat back and watched her with cool eyes. There were no crinkles at the edges of his gaze.
"I did."
"Not honestly." He pushed a few more papers to the floor. As if they had turned into snow instead of important government documents. "You came in here near...twenty minutes ago looking as if someone had wounded your very soul. And instead of asking for help, you stood at the corner of my desk trying not to weep."
When Vera opened her mouth to speak, the High Lord held up his hand. They were both silent, both restraining their words in the moments after. He knocked more papers to the floor. Then a book.
"You are right," he said, his voice strained. "I have watched my people die. I have watched our work torn to shreds. I have allowed others to treat me with contempt in my own halls. Yet I have not displayed any of my personal feelings. But I will tell you...I have never come so close to losing hold of my anger as when you entered my office, looking like all hope had been broken in you. So. Answer my question."
Vera shook her head and looked down at the litter on the floor. She knew he was watching her. Leaning against the desk with his elbows, messing up the lines of ink he had spent hours putting to parchment and knowing that it would upset her to make him redo whatever he had already done. No one had known her as long or as well, except for her mother. And High Lady Tainn would never require her to say it aloud. She would have known and been silent. Or called her a fool and chided her over lack of focus. High Lord Arand still waited.
"My Birth Day isn't worth thinking about because I will not survive this war," Vera said. Her lips were almost cracked, they were so dry. Her heart felt wild in her chest. The grief hadn't left her from Birloch's death, or Eragos'...she didn't want to think of it as a betrayal. Even if it was. "And if I do live, somehow, I am not sure I will be deserving of whatever gift you have for me."
She forgot to address him as Lord. Forgot to look him in the eye when she spoke. They were close as mentor and student, as colleagues, even perhaps as friends, but he was still deserving of the utmost respect. Was she so unraveled? What was worse was that Vera did not hear him rise from his chair. She did not hear him cross over the many papers on the floor and stop just in front of her. She could not look up. Vera's tears blinded her more than any smoke ever had. She did nothing when High Lord Arand put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her into him; she just let her head rest on his chest.
"Vera."
The High Lord put a gentle hand on her hair.
"If the gods had allowed me a daughter, it would have been you," he said quietly. "There will never be a time when you are unworthy of gifts or regard from me."
"I don't know what to do," she whispered. Vera was wetting his robe with her tears but did not want to move. "I should."
"Should you?"
She could hear the breath move in and out of his chest. He never released her shoulders when he guided her to the old couch by the fire; a piece of furniture too ruined to truly have a place in the High Lord's home. He always said he kept it there because the hearth would simply ruin a new piece of furniture, but High Lady Linde said he loved the couch. That he often slept on it when the night was unkind to him. The High Lady had tried to have the couch removed for years. When Vera sat down together with him on it, though, she could understand why he wanted to keep it. The couch was a comfort.
"I think," the High Lord continued, "That for a very long time, we all assumed that you would. Not that you should. You were a child when this started--don't look at me with angry eyes, I am not insulting your ability. This conflict has spanned your entire life. You survived loss and horror, more than most people could stand, but you never grieved. You were never given the opportunity. You were always expected to move to the next thing, choose the next path, to know what to do. We...I...have been utterly unfair to you. When have I asked you about your Birth Day? Or if you've fallen in love with someone? Or what you want for yourself?"
Vera shook her head and sat up. "I wanted this duty. I trained for it. I said yes every time you sent me away. I don't regret anything."
High Lord Arand sighed. "I am not saying you should."
"Then what should another year gone matter?" Vera asked, anger seeped into her voice. "What should it matter if my love is thrown away? I never had time to love anyone. What should it matter if my house was burned? I could not live there. What should it matter that people I'd die for can't speak to me on the street? That I had to abandon a friend? I chose this."
"Nothing was chance. You were guided to this--"
"I chose it! Premonitions, manipulations, Fate and curses, maybe they are real but damn them! I am still the one living my life! While I draw breath, my decisions were and are my own."
The fire crackled in the absence of all other sound. Vera's eyes fell from the High Lord's to her hands. She thought the truth would have been enough, but it felt as empty as everything else. Eragos had still walked away from her. Birloch was still headless and buried beneath rubble. Raed was gone. Hasna was lucky. Maybe the High Lord was right about grief, but she couldn't help but think she was wallowing. She had felt close to this void before, when her company of Riders had been slaughtered outside of Astarii. Even after locking herself away from duty for a month or two, she had not been able to recover until she moved on to another mission. And Tyrus had been more awful than the one before.
High Lord Arand's hand covered hers. His skin was softer than hers. She was reminded that he had never picked up a knife in defense of himself. He had never slept on the plains. Yet he still teased her for being afraid of the water...
"You have more spirit than anyone I have ever met. You might have chosen your duty, but you did not choose to lose everything that you have. You do not belong in a grave."
Vera, suddenly tired, leaned against the couch and rested her head on his arm. She didn't reply and could tell that it annoyed him.
"You do not belong in a grave," High Lord Arand said, less gently. "When this is over, however it ends, promise me you will find something that makes you happy. I don't care if it is a night drunk in some awful tavern, sleeping a night with a man you won't remember or wandering the northern lands for a while. Find joy somewhere...and have that be the thing you move on to."
"What if I can't?"
The High Lord leaned back into the couch. "There is nothing to cure grief but time. Joy is only a catalyst," he said. "But it will work."
"Then...I promise."
There was no more conversation after that. The fire was healthy and continued to billow up through the hearth, throwing warmth in their faces and rhythm of crackling wood that spat embers. Vera thought that she could hear the High Lord humming now and again, but whenever she shifted, the melody would stop. Eventually he lifted his arm and draped it across her shoulders, but when exactly that was she couldn't remember. No one came to pick up the parchment they had dumped on the floor. No one knocked on the Lord's study door. High Lord Arand seemed as content as she did to stay still. And somehow she fell asleep...for once, without dreams.