Slide Rule: V
V.
Adolescence is an arduous affair regardless of your species. Apparently the shorter-lived ones only have to deal with a few years of it but still complain - and I suppose that having one's physiology so drastically changed in less than a decade would make anyone whinge. On the other hand I don't think the humans know how easy they have it. It might be true that fifteen to twenty years is ultimately a brief period in a four-century lifespan, but puberty still crashes in like lightning and lingers like thunder. When you're living through those awkward years they feel like a lifetime all their own.
Add to this equation a terrible stutter, a terrorist of a sister, and the awkwardness of discovering a fancy for other boys. My adolescence was a bit of a wreck.
Having been born into a good family did help. The Lastdawn house has never been particularly powerful or wealthy or important; what we've always been is well-connected. For my elder brother Tharestes and our younger sister Scinylla this meant good marriage prospects, and for the middle child (that would be me, for those keeping track) it meant apprenticing to the best. All this came by simple dint of social networking. My parents brokered in favours - financial, social, political - and the family did well for it.
Naturally there was still some disparity among the three of us, a fact of which Sinny never missed an opportunity to remind me. It grew increasingly more obvious as we came of age. Thare joined the Farstriders as soon as they would take him and went headfirst into the fight against the Amani. I looked forward to studying under a master botanist and learning the secrets of life-magic. As for Sinny, all she seemed to think of was dowries and courtship and the most recent gossip her equally-vapid friends had to share, all of them obsessed with becoming pampered trophy wives.
In short, not much changed in twenty years.
While they daydreamed about valiant rangers vying for their affections I paid closer attention to the reality of things. I helped my father organise meetings with attourneys for vicious divorces. I attended classes with the children of broken homes, noting their depression and violent outbursts. I sat, shy and gangly and silent, through soirées watching friendships dissolve into threat-displays over two men's mutual love interest. I worked in the family gardens while my mother consoled friends over cheating husbands, or admonished them for their own infidelities, or offered advice to one couple after the next who bemoaned the loss of what they called "the spark."
Scinylla saw the very best in marriage; I, the very worst.
One such instance stands out in my memory more clearly than the rest. It was spring, and I'd just turned fifty-one. The frost we induced via magic to keep certain plants dormant through the winter months - for it's never truly winter in Quel'thalas - was just then allowed to thaw. I was trimming away the dead ends to expose living stems to the warmth and light with the sun on my back and hands ungloved. I felt like an overgrown spider kneeling there: all lean limbs that felt too long for my body.
A stone's throw away was a little gazebo with a lattice canopy and walls, all covered in vines; white roses bloomed overhead to symbolise that the conversations within took place in confidence. Sub rosa. My mother had three friends over for tea that afternoon. I believe the conversation had began with Vilaiseth Bladefalcon - dragonhawk breeder and serial divorcée - attesting that her newest brother-in-law "heard things," then wended its way through discussions on mental maladies, the relationship between madness and genius, and reproductive viability. At some point Vilaiseth said that if the brother-in-law were one of her 'hawks he'd have been either castrated or put down. My outburst of laughter at that finally drew their notice.
"Does the young botanist disagree?" That was Naomel den'Taran: priestess of the Light, part-time counsellor, and aunt of Sinny's friend Kessindra. She peered at me with kind, cerulean eyes.
With their attention on me I felt a sliver of panic racing up my spine. I closed my hand on a branch to make a thorn prick my palm; its sharpness gave me something to focus on, something visceral and immediate.
"I'd s-say th-th-that's a l-little extreme," I told them. "L-love t-t-transcends f-faults...s-so, so I hear."
Vilaiseth laughed around a cigarillo. The sound was just as harsh and bitter as the smoke exhaled with it. "Not all faults, my boy. We aren't talking about snoring or birthmarks here. His fault could be fatal."
"Th-then d-d-doesn't he n-need some-someone to help him?"
"Compassion is a great virtue," Naomel remarked. My mother nodded agreement. "As is tenacity, to see one's loved ones through troubled times."
Vilaiseth made a sardonic little harrumph and leaned forward. "Both compassion and tenacity can do just as much harm as good. Compassion can blind you to the knife at your throat and tenacity can chain you to a hopeless situation." From all I'd heard she was the voice of experience in such things. "I've outlived seven marriages and three husbands. Neither compassion nor tenacity could save them. The fact that I've come to realise is this: marriage is a most terrible curse. It snuffs out passion, strangles affection, smothers kindness, and drowns love. Storybooks tell grand romantic tales of courtship and falling in love but they don't tell about being in love. They cop out with 'happily ever after' because a wedding means the chase is over and there's no pursuing left to do. The excitement of fresh love gives way to dull, dull rote."
My mother kept her chin tipped up through the entire tirade. She and my father had been married for over a century, and as far as I knew they were utterly devoted still. It helped that my father was a true head-in-the-clouds romantic.
When she spoke it was in the quiet, even tone that usually told my siblings and I that we were about to get it. "You know that I sympathise with your soured relationships, Vil, but marriage is hardly a universal curse. It might be a mistake in some cases, but...a curse?" Her lips curled into a smile as she shook her head.
"I will agree that it can be a mistake," muttered Siyreph Calambre, a master sculptor. Unlike Vilaiseth he alluded not to his own marriage but to another's - in which his lover had wed someone else for political reasons.
"In any case," Naomel said quickly, "this is hardly the manner of talk to be had in front of a young man only just reaching betrothal age."
My back straightened. "Ac-actually I'm g-g-going int-into ap-p-pprenticeship."
Siyreph's brows rose at that. To be fair it was unusual for someone of my age and breeding. "Not looking forward to finding a lovely wife...?"
Instantly I thought of Sinny's friends: shallow, vicious gold-diggers gossiping about whether they want a man who's more handsome, more wealthy, or more powerful. I thought of their painted lips and robes that clung to their developing curves. My stomach turned.
"I d-d-don't want a w-wife," I said, tone flat.
The sculptor gave me a cockeyed look and glanced at my mother. Her equally-flat words were almost inaudible: "Oriseus has discovered boys."
Ohhh here we go. My face went red right away, but Siyreph was quick to correct himself. Though his voice was cheerful and inoffensive as birdsong I still turned away. "Finding a husband, then? Or simply a lover?"
Now that last part gave me pause. Instantly I thought of my soon-to-be master, Thaldarian Summerlight: tall, ice-pale with glacial blue eyes and hair like frosted gold, quiet, graceful, ingenious. I thought of his deep, soft voice, so seldom-used, and the mystique of his silence. My stomach fluttered.
"I d-don't real-really want to g-get married," I muttered in protest.
Vilaiseth nodded in approval. "Wise beyond his years, this one. Heed me well, boy. Don't make the same mistakes I have, marrying for love or money. The first will be ruined and the second runs dry or leaves you married to someone who makes you miserable. Make your own fortune and don't smother love with ritual."
"Really, Vilaiseth," Naomel huffed, but her umbrage came too late. I remember those words now as clearly as if it been a mere day ago, as well do I remember how I vowed to myself to follow that advice.