Halfway

Re: Halfway

Postby Niabh » Mon Jan 15, 2018 8:14 am

Just because he held his tongue during the actual letter-writing did not mean he was not fully alert in observing the process. Dousing a whole page in ink was a new one on him, though he restrained his initial chirrup of alarm: the tultharian used those lightweight, abundant paper-hides, anyway, not proper skins. Even the word for them: leaves, meant to drop off, drift away, be replaced. The lady had a habit of brutally stabbing her letters with a pen knife whenever she grew frustrated with them. To each their own extravagance. Instead he waited, absently preening, until Glenn addressed him again, before he dropped down to eye-level on the writing desk.

“I’m a raven,” he said, bluntly if rather redundantly, consider that he was on full display as such: rumpled satin feathers and glass-grey eyes blinking from candlesmoke. “I don’t get to have an opinion on what she puts you back together as. I’ll deal with it, whatever it is. She turns you into a larch, I’ll leave letters in your needles. Don’t act like you don’t have an opinion on it, though. You’re the one’s gotta live with it. Your…whatever the hell it is you do here—” and his wings rustled faintly in an attempt at gesturing around them “—they’re the ones’ll have to live with it.”

He shook his head, then sputtered, “Dammit, now you got me speakin’ your language. Everything always life or death. You say shite like that, can you wonder when I get nervous? She’s not glammin’ you. You’re not, y’know, compelled to write back, which is what I was afraid she’d done. I like you as well as the next tultharian; I don’t want her to screw with you just because she can. But she’s the Niall. If you’re tryin’ to screw her over, that becomes a priority.” As the only Niall ambassador in the immediate area, he puffed self-importantly and glared at Glenn. “All I’ll say is go down to the square right now. That big cathedral-deal with the windows. There’s a dead-ass dove on the cobbles there. Whole feckin’ sky and the idiot fixes on the one spot she can’t fly through. That’s how it ends. Either the window breaks or you do. Thing is, both of you together gotta have more brains than a dead dove between you. The only reason for anything to end up broken is if one of you breaks it on purpose.”


Dear Glenn Burnie,

A fine one you are to talk of repetition. Had I a gold sovereign for every time you say how you wish better for your people, I could buy myself a manor house; if I had another for every time you reminded me that you will try again, I could have a title to go with the manor. So too have you called me to journey with you on this road once before. Do you remember? And do you remember how I answered then?

Now, at least, you ask if I am willing, which is an improvement over being grabbed by the arm and dragged along your dusty road after you. That you have learned to ask at all shows progress. I have found little in the world that I am not willing to try, if only for the sake of telling people I have tried it. But you did not ask if I am able, and so I must ask it of myself, and ask again, for there is nothing so rude as to offer what one does not have. The trouble is I wonder if you wish not for a companion along your road, but a convert.

The figurative made literal. The abstract concrete. Nature overcome. We have had that conversation, too.

I believe there are times when you near forget what I am. I forget what you are too, for we seem so near, until some single word snaps me back into my skull and I remember, and the gulf is as wide as ever it was. Sometimes it is as if you would convince me that you are the only one in the world who dwells on such matters, and sometimes I almost believe you. If the only point at which we may meet is the point at which we forget ourselves, what good does that do us? You say you seek a new path, but what you do not seem to see is that we would have to be whole new people to tread it. Mayhap I am younger than you, but still I have still more years to know myself and to harden in my habits. I cannot be aught but what I am, Glenn Burnie, and you are well to fear it, for it is my way to crack open men like hazelnuts and dig out their hearts (this is a metaphor). Sometimes that heart is sweet and sound and sometimes it is rotted through like a bad tooth, but whatever it is I will have it. You would conquer what I would unleash.

There lies my objection. I do not think the world you would shape is a world I could live in. Therefore by all reason, for the sin of mere ambition, you are my enemy, and by opposing it, I should be yours.

And yet, here we are.

There are stories you do not know, and they all begin like this one, and they all end the same. But you will say, that is because the stories never before met you. I tell you that in all the stories there is not one man who did not make the same boast.

You have me, sir, against my better judgement. Where do we go from here?


Finn
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
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Re: Halfway

Postby Glenn » Tue Jan 16, 2018 4:37 pm

"There are things I don't yet understand," which, when said by Glenn Burnie, was one of those statements that generally caused birds to fall out of the sky as ripples jutted through reality. It was particularly rude considering who he was talking to. "I'm pretty certain that she wouldn't make me into a what, but a who. For a while, it might have been a fish. Do you eat fish? Little ones? The rum cakes thing was just by chance. I was going to settle on worms next, but I always lean towards the over-indulgent." The words that had followed softened the blow of what he had began with.

It couldn't last.

"Anyway, I think it's too late for that. Making me a what is too much a mercy. There's a balance to this with them, right? The punishment has to fit the crime. The affront. I'm as human as human can be so to turn me into anything else would be a mercy. If she changes me, it'll be along those lines. If you like me now, I don't think you'd like me then." Then he paused to look his friend up and down for a nice, long moment, before exhaling as if releasing some secret, silent burden. "If it got particularly bad, I could see her making me a raven, but I don't think she regards you as highly as she should. That'd be an honor." He even managed a little bow of his head. "She'd do that out of fear of herself. There's only one thing I'm worried about and it's not that," and the tone indicated he probably wouldn't say it anyway.

Finn,

Many, many letters ago, you mentioned a story about a bard. Here is the thing that stands out to me about that bard. He acted as if he, himself, did not know stories. Oh, for it to work, he had to be able to sing a thousand songs and tell a thousand tales and captivate a fairy queen and all of that. Yet despite all that, he had no greater sense of the sum of his stories. He categorized nothing. He organized nothing. He found no great truths. He searched for no great truths. In the end, he was lost.

I do not tell great tales. If I have a skill in writing or oration, it is more about the message than the method. What have I done, then, to captivate a fairy queen? I have been inscrutable, giving her many things, none of which being what she thinks she wants, perhaps, but that, I think is secondary. No, what I do is all of that he did not. I organize. I piece together patterns. I try to work out the way of the world. I am but one perspective gathering many and ultimately, I am limited by man things, most of all my short, paltry mortal life. That is my strength as well, as we have repeatedly, repeatedly discussed.

I am not him.

Are you, then, the fairy queen from that story? To be that fairy queen, to be her truly and surely, you must not know your own story. You must not be able to learn from him. Is that you? It's not you at all.

I forget what you are because I learn more every day who you are. Some of that is whether the rain makes you sleepy or gloomy or at peace, yes, but some of it is what you feel about your people, what you feel about justice in this world, what you feel about freedom and truth and wisdom.

In some ways we'll never escape what we are. We both embrace it. Do we embrace it at the cost of the who, though? Do you want that for me? Do I want that for you? Of course not.

You think like a queen in this, like a what. This is one disconnect between us. When I see that word, that "us," I see two people and not a human and a fairy. I do not see a queen and a governor (or whatever I am now). I see you and I me.

To look at this, I am surprised at my own sentiment.

I like how you wrote a whole paragraph about what you do and will do and would do and have done and then you end it with one sentence. "I do all of this. All of all of this. You do that to this." Your metaphor was lovely. I am glad to have followed it as a conqueror.

Can we start with this: what does a world where both of us can thrive look like? Can you imagine that? Can we imagine that together? Will you try with me?

Glenn
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Re: Halfway

Postby Niabh » Fri Jan 19, 2018 5:09 am

It would take much more than a mere statement—one that anyone under the same strange circumstances might have a perfect right to voice—to knock a raven out of the sky. The world did not warp and ripple over the voicing of a question, no matter where or from whom or how much it seemed it should. “What kind of things don’t you understand, then?” Perhaps the raven did not know Glenn well enough to realize how rare it was for him to acknowledge doubt, but he knew him well enough to accept that he probably wouldn’t get a straight answer if it was personal. It felt personal. But it didn’t seem right not to at least offer.

“You’d make a shite raven. You’d pry open all the letters and add commentary. Correct the spelling.” Still it was nice to have one’s importance recognized. The raven had a few small points of pride and that was one. He dipped his head modestly. “Eh, we get along all right. Her, at least, she’ll chitchat. Ask me if everything went well or if I’m wet through. I do the same thing to her and she gives me guff about how it’s not my place. She needs it, though. Hell, I need it too. We’re both a long ways from home.” His feathers fluffed in something between a shimmy and a shrug. “She asks about you, too: does he seem well, did you have a talk with him, does he look like he’s getting any sleep. I’m like look, you’re already writin’ him a letter, can you not spend a couple lines and ask him yourself? He’d probably appreciate it.” This time the furtive glance was more apologetic. “Not to put words in your mouth or nothing.”

The glow of the lamp had gotten too warm for him, and he stepped away, the shadow cool on his back. Something as large and wild as he should have stuck out like a sore thumb, but ravens are social birds: they find ways to use whatever environment is around them. He could look a man in the eye with the same wry regard he might have for a fellow raven. “If it’s not that, then what is it? Because sometimes you talk like all this is inevitable and the only drawback is that you might not get turned into anything ironic enough to suit you. Or like you can’t understand why it hasn’t happened yet.”

Dear Glenn Burnie,

I remember telling that story. I remember you missing the point of it, and then, later, you saying that I would say you had missed the point of it, after which I was forced to hold my tongue for spite. But you did miss the point. You missed a point I did not even realize was there to be missed.

True Tom was never a bard, but a musician. It may seem petty to make such distinctions, but to place the standards of a bard upon a common musician is something like complaining that an ivy tree bears no apples. A bard undergoes long training to (as you would say) categorize and examine the old tales and histories in order to interpret them, whereas a musician is expected to have a broad repertoire, a good feeling for an audience, and enough sense to avoid insulting anyone. This is hardly to disparage musicians. They must read mood, which is most subtle. In that respect he must have been a champion of his kind, for there is not one tale about him that does not praise his charm and his wit and the way he could play the crowd as if they were but another instrument, moving them to pity or sorrow or laughter as easily as with a glamour. Think of that: to be recalled for a thousand years not for a war or a law, not for land or wealth or title, but for a song well sung.

I wondered why you were so harsh a judge upon him. I thought then that it was all a backhand slap at me, that you thought I was threatening you and that you must show how dismissive you were, and how easily you could undo all should I try. Still I wondered at the vehemence with which you recoiled from the very idea, as though you could not separate yourself from it fast enough. Half a page of adamant rejection. I hold it now.

We have spoken more since, and now I must wonder if you wanted it once, and have since grown old enough to be horrified at your wanting. There is a sense with you that you reject things on principle, because you feel you must, because they do not fit with the image of what you wish to be, or because they are too near to what you once were for comfort.

The point you missed is that the queen violated him greatly, and that—if you go by the version with my ten-greats grandmother, and I do—she never made amends. If she wanted him badly enough to take him, she should have kept him, not hurled him out the gate seven years later with a consolatory gift. And if her gift brought him to grief and he begged her to take him back, it was cruel that she did not. (I expect your answer would be that a truly reasonable person would not go about snatching errant minstrels from under trees to begin with, to which I would reply, what use then to be queen?)

But the point I did not know was there is that you are not he, and he was not you, and you have no right to reprove him, dead man that he is, for lacking your capacities. Ten generations by our reckoning would be something better than a thousand years by yours. How much is different between your time and his? What is known now, and what has been forgotten since? How can you know what he knew or knew not? I have said before that it is rude to offer what one cannot give. But still worse it is to shame people by demanding they give what they do not have.

What is it you demand of your people? Before you demanded it, did you ask yourself what they had to give? More, did you ever ask them?

But let us leave that aside now. They are too unreliable and too irregular to be easily quantified. You can, and do, quantify yourself. You know what you have to offer. Do you have it in yourself to give it with no expectations, though it gain you nothing, not even progress? You say that you do. You see the means, and weigh them against your own ends, but you do not seem to see now. Your plans do not take into account the ones who do suffer in the present, and who will starve while they wait for your stability. Do you care for them in truth, or is it but the idea of them you care for? Do you care more for what they are, or what could be made of them? If you care for what they could be, then you would do something for them as they are now, while they are unprepared and suffering and will fight you every step of the way. If they turn on you for that, so be it. At least your conscience would be stilled. If you care only for what they could become, then the ones they are now are but a sacrifice to your best intentions.

Not to be discounted is that you, too, are part of the now. What will be done for you? What does it make of you?

It is so much easier to care for what they could be. One can go on loving them for that alone, dismissing what is as a temporary inconvenience, but that is little more than a glam itself, the shape of water glimmering on a horizon that one may pursue without end. I have told you what happens when one believes the glamour is more real than the truth. To love what is is hard and dangerous and rift with disappointment.

You gave me a question I have been putting off not because I am afraid of the answer but because I am afraid of what you will make of it. The only world I can imagine where my people could flourish is one where yours do not exist. It may be that there is a fundamental difference between what I am and what you are. I have thought of it before, but I do not know how to explain it, not even to myself. The nearest I can say is that my people, through all strife and contention, belong to one another in a way your people do not seem to. There are laws to our lives by which all are bound. To belong to nothing, beholden to no one, not even one another; to have no laws, or in having them, to choose otherwise—I cannot even say the idea is horrific because I cannot imagine what it might be like, except to look at your people and try to imagine what it might be like to live like them, detached. Every one of them alone.

Here is what you have done to win me: you are the only person I have yet met who feels for his people as I do for mine.

Were I a clever queen, I would take advantage of that position and give you the worst advice possible, nothing at all sincere about it, to insure the failure of all your plans. Were I a cunning one, I would give you the best advice possible for myself and deceive you into following through with it, so that you would be all the easier to overthrow. But instead I have been honest, because my sympathy is deep enough to try to give you what you say you want, all while knowing that every step you make toward your ends endangers my own.

Could I trust you, then, that whatever I would offer you would only be used for your own benefit, to sustain you through what is? Or is the man inseparable from his mission, and to foster one is to enable the other? Would it be akin to treason to abet you?

There. I knew we would stumble onto a tragedy if we tried hard enough.



Finn






Post-scriptum: Very early this morning before I rose, I was remembering being at the southern camp, and taking the horses to water on a grey winter’s day much like this one. The grass was so cold it crackled. The mist was too thick to see the ground underfoot, and the horses’ breath mingled with it, and the shapes of things loomed out of the fog as we came near them. A hunting horn sounded, very close at hand, and I realized we had crossed into a rading path. I wondered if I should warn anyone in the town, but then I thought, why should I? But it made no sense that they in Myrken should be able to hear the horn from so far as the winter camp, and while I was trying to work out how that could be, I realized I was having a dream. No sooner did that thought come to me than I awoke.

I consider this having warned someone.

Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
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Re: Halfway

Postby Glenn » Mon Jan 22, 2018 6:57 am

"Hm?" Doubt wasn't the sort of thing that lingered overlong with Glenn Burnie. It gave way to possibilities, to theories, to testing the limits of his own thoughts. The raven had seemed to pull him back, but it was too late now (no fault of its own) and whatever he earned for his trouble was a shadow of what had been. "The what and the who. What she has to do. What she wants to do. What she has to do because it's what she wants to do. What she can't stop herself from doing. What she can't possibly get herself to do. That's a lot of it, and at the end, I think it'll decide if I end up a larch or a lark or lush."

Despite all that, when he finally gave Eyoo a glance, it was with a weak smile. "I think the letters themselves constrain her, make her more of a who than what, but it could go the other way. Each and every one could be a literal contract, binding like the tightest magic. Maybe that's why she makes them like she does, not for privacy but to protect herself and me. See, there's a lot I don't understand. So we keep writing. If we understood everything, then what'd be the point?" Then, almost as an afterthought. "I'd make a fine raven. Right word at the right time. That'd be me."

Finn,

True Tom to begin. Once I wanted it. Every child wants it. Every oppressed child wants it all the more. Then they get just enough of it to realize how wrong they were. That's why your kind is fond of children and not adults. What might you say? That adults have learned much and understood little. All you can do is punish them for this disconnect. It doesn't matter. Were you to have found me then I'd never have become who I am now and I'd never have been able to have these talks with you. It would have defeated itself. Little mortals with sparks of cleverness are all but endless (no, that does not mean you can just take them whenever you please). i feel like that's a more important point and not just a charming opening to this letter. Let's get back to that in a bit.

I'm not fond of bards. I'm not fond of most musicians. The fairy queen could have done better for herself, so I've my doubts about her too even past the whole violation thing. Why did she take the musician? She sought distraction to break up the endless monotony of immortality? Why did she not take a bard instead? Because then she might have to actually think about things as opposed to just distracting herself. You are driven by your purpose. Am I a fool to think that you would be better than that queen if you were not? Is that the only thing that makes you strive to better yourself? If you return home, somehow "win," is that the end of it? Will you have restored some proper balance and the reward to it all will be you letting your eyes glaze over with hedonism and seeking out one distraction after the next?

It is my natural inclination to recoil from your allegations, that is, the very notion that I cannot judge someone on a universal standard no matter when he lived or what was his circumstance. Let us see; for one thing, there is the utter hypocrisy of you judging or not judging the queen for her cruelty and violation, unless you dismiss this due to the longevity of your people (but ten-greats grandmother seems a long time).

So I am trying not to do this. I am trying not to take offense as I value the ability to have wholly reasonable expectations upon my fellow man more than I value your sense of giving and offering and demanding. I am trying to be better, Finn. Some of that is not putting the totality of expectations upon myself but instead communicating, discussing, not acting in a solitary fashion. Some of that is having expectations on others instead of merely expecting them to be docile and to go along with what I think is best for them. I think the only way this works, however, is for me to hold high standards for them.

I am not asking what they can give, but I am asking other things, or I am trying to. Before I assumed they could give so little and this was one of my failings. I do not think I can bridge the gap to what you think I should do. I'm not at all convinced I should even try.

The toil of today is necessary for a better world of tomorrow. It's simply the way of it. Were it to be given to us, it would never be understood or appreciated. Were it to be glamoured upon us, we would always be slaves to it, blind and docile. The urgency of it would be gone. I mean to marry


"That's terrible," back to Eyoo, who at least he could reason with. "The whole letter's terrible. There's one bit that's not. I can't send her that. I sound like a fool. I didn't even get to the whole bit about what the point of having a queen in the first place is." He placed his down upon his desk, upon the letter. The ink was dried just enough that it wouldn't end up all over his face, but it was a very narrow thing.

When he spoke again, his inflection was muddled due to the fact that his cheek was pressed against the desk. He was unrepentant. "I usually do it in one go. It's impossible to start again, to go through those motions again. It's not genuine then. It's rote. It's just words for the same of them, an argument for the sake of it. Whatever I give her, it has to be mostly different. It's got to be pure."

Finn,

Let's focus on the important things first. Yes, I care about my people. No, I do not care only about the idea of my people. Yes, I care about my people for their flaws, for what they are now, just as much as I care about them for their potential, what they might be. Remember, Finn, I talk about the strength in their weaknesses and the weakness in their strengths. Looking back, I think I do this more about my people than you do about yours; you have a level of fond nostalgia that I do not, even though I'd hardly call you blind.

I care about the living. I just don't know how to bridge the gap in the time that the living currently had. I thought I did, but I got lost along the way. I saw two extremes of it, one where I tried to do everything in my power to force it within this generation, to provide stability enough and edification, to show the benefits of it and to get them to buy in for the here and now, even if the groundwork wasn't there. I saw the other where Rhaena (and Agnieszka wants me to call her, at the end, the Lady and I will with her but not in general) twisted them, bound them to her will, forced it another way. In the first, it was too much for any one generation to manage. I saw that stability to create the slow peace of mind to allow a chance at home was all that could be done. In the second, it was a cheat. The meaning behind it all was lost. It was empty and hollow. The strengths turned to dust and humanity became something else altogether. It wasn't growth but mutable change. Transformation, a chemical change instead of a physical one.

As for myself? I don't get to have this any more than this current generation does. I'll burn out somewhere before the end. I'll give everything to this and have, at least, the peace that I've done more good than harm and maybe given them a chance. What else is there left for me than that?

My people's individuality is our strength and our weakness. I feel like when we come together, it is to survive, not to collaborate. Therefore, when we stand alone, it is when we have the freedom to. Thus, what I have seen anecdotally, is somewhat artificial. Yes, it's possible that we could band together to create instead of just endure. That is still not what you talk about. An extreme version of that is what Rhaena would have created, a hive of humanity with she as queen, working in perfect unison to create an enduring order. There would be originality, no creativity, no spark. We're nothing but spark, Finn. I wish to make it a flame. That flame can warm your people, too, I think.

Can individuality and collective dependency live in unison? Is there a middle ground? Can the strengths of both sides be accentuated and the weaknesses diminished? What might it look like, your people and mine working together? I could see it where we would be your artisans and you our patrons, where you would protect us and provide that safety we need to grow and we would bestow upon you the fruits of our impermanence. Were I stronger, more confident, more secure, I might be accepting of this. I'm not. Perhaps it need not be so extreme, the same sort of idea but with more cooperation and shared leadership. I say all this aloud but I'm hardly convinced. Instead I much prefer something akin to what we have. Were we more stable, if we had to worry less about the oppression of nature itself, we would have every reason to be more peaceful, to build in our knowledge and wisdom. We could coexist, trade with one another, in creation and stories both. Why do you dismiss that so quickly?

Glenn

Post-scriptum: You will receive other letters from me soon, one about Tom, one about something else. I will also send word to Myrken. If you stopped doping yourself with Sarayn's ink, you'd have less strange dreams. I know this first hand.
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Re: Halfway

Postby Niabh » Thu Feb 15, 2018 8:35 am

“That’s twice you’ve done that,” the raven replied, exasperated. “I ask what you’re doin’ and you answer by tryin’ to guess what she’s doing. Which is a wee bit unnerving because I ask her what she’s doing and she ends up tellin’ me what she thinks you’re doing. It’s like I’m always on the wrong side of the conversation I’m tryin’ to have. I have never known more about what someone else isn’t doing.”

When Glenn put his head down, the raven strutted, with dignified calm, toward him, then stooped low to peer into his face. A raven’s beak so near to a human eyeball is an alarming thing, even under the most benign circumstances—doubly so when it seemed to be sizing up whether or not you were dead. “This is the second time you’ve done this, too. Not lyin’ on letters. Writing something and then gettin’ rid of it. If you’re going to say something, say it.”

In what (for him) was a daring feat of indiscretion, he actually glanced down on the page Glenn had rejected. It was unreadable, in part because he was looking at it upside down, in part because Glenn’s face obscured most of it, and in significantly larger part because he could not read.

Almost at once he hopped out of temptation’s reach, with a quick defiant flit of his wingtips to prove he’d gotten away with it. “Whos and whats don’t matter don’t matter with them. Strip aside all the glams and she’s only ever one thing: queen. You’ll get whatever or whoever she gives you. You can trick it out of her and she’ll hate you, or you can ask her for it and end up owing her your right ball, or you can let her give you whatever she feels like givin’ and you’ll usually get a bit more than you bargained for and come out free and clear at the end of it. That’s the best anyone can ever hope for outta ’em. It’s not that hard. It’s just not that easy, either.”



Dear Glenn Burnie,

I beg pardon for still another digression, but my bard has at last sent word. I warned you that bards often have the talent for second sight, and it appears she has predicted you, though I swear I told her nothing of you at the time.

I suppose I cannot introduce the fact that you were mentioned without telling you what she has said, but in truth there is not much. It appears she knows all about what happened during our meeting, likely because of my name, and has taken it upon herself to accuse me of bad manners. That is as near as the term will translate, though it is a much more serious charge as she means it.
Bad manners means that I gave you a punishment that neither corrected you nor prevented you from offending again. This is considered common cruelty, and impolite. (This is a difference I have noticed between your folk and mine: you seem to regard wickedness the same way we regard manners.) By rights, I should have handled the matter one of two ways: either let the matter go entirely and reach an understanding, or do you such grave injury that you would unable to broach the matter again. that is a terrible, stupid, milk-livered sentence. She wants to know why I did not gut you in the street over it.

In short, I stand accused of going native—an insult so dread that none but a bard would dare raise it—and of favoring sentiment over good sense. This last is near enough to the truth to have a sting, in part because I knew it well before she levelled the charge.

Glenn Burnie, I do not think I impressed upon you just what a serious thing you did in asking for my name. In her eyes, I let you walk away from treason, and she is treating it as such. To let you go unpunished is such a grave breach of protocol that she is concerned for me, lest I have made such a habit of half-measures that I put myself in danger.

You, she treats mostly as an afterthought. She calls you bad counsel, but harmless. This is probably an insult for anyone who likes to think of himself as dangerous and subversive, but please do not go making yourself less harmless for her sake. I would not dare tell you how to take being branded bad counsel, though it amuses me to think that you are both prideful enough to protest and cynical enough to agree. She is more interested how that could have been our first meeting when we had plainly met before, though I think that must be because of the letters—either she only sees what happens to me or else letters are somehow beyond the reach of her sight. If this is last is true, I am not above using it to keep my business private.

Suffice to say, I have had quite the long-distance scolding over you, which in its own strange way is comforting. It has been a good five-and-twenty years since she gave me one of those.

I did not think I would find myself explaining this to you, and I wish I did not have to. I do not think she means for me to excuse myself to her—that is neither her place nor mine—but I find myself wanting to explain. She does not understand how things are different here. There must be compromises. If I must compromise at all, I would rather compromise on the side of kindness. But of late there have been too many times when I do not know if my hand stays for kindness or for cowardice. But then it becomes like that poor little boy, the one who was beaten to death. If I cannot be queen for such as that, if I cannot be queen to save myself, what use to be queen at all?

The truth of the matter is that it was kindness for you. I could not bring myself to hurt you. That must mean something. If I could figure out just what, it would make these letters much less awkward.

Apart from that, I am greatly relieved and in good spirits. Most of her letter she spends answering some questions I had sent her earlier, and the rest is about what has happened since I left. I would inform you of developments, if that would interest you, but as my gentleman can attest, the only drawback to anyone asking me about home is that I will tell them—in far too much detail and for as long as I can persuade them to stand still for it. In this case, though, there is little enough to say. She has written of my mother and her children, all of whom are well and safe, and of those few of my friends who are near enough to be accounted for, and of some of our best allies. My father is still alive, having made for himself a career of being too indispensable to be assassinated. Things have improved far beyond their prospects last spring. The course we predicted in my leaving has played out nearly to the letter, which should make me glad, and of course it does make me glad, only I am a little bitter that all that was needed to solve the dilemma was to be rid of me.

That is uncharitable and self-pitying, I know, but I cannot help it. I miss them so badly I near to wish that she had not written at all, so that I could stay wrapped in my own concerns and spare none of them a thought. They have each other to rely upon and I have only myself.

Now I have your last letter at my right and the one from my bard at my left. There is such a difference between them. Part of it may be that we do not use writing as your people seem to. Most of our writing is for histories. No one with sense would write down things where anyone at all could see them. Her own letter is more like a long list, which amuses me; she has even included a census of our stock, as if there is something I am meant to do about it from here. Yours is more like conversing. I am not sure why I am telling you all this, save that it is pleasant to have some good news to share and someone to share it with.

I have been doing some earnest thinking about these letters of ours. Betimes they are so abstract that I bury myself in them to distract myself from other matters. Between us we wage such bloodless, hopeful wars to no end but a time when things will be better, with all the battles aimed at what may be done to reach that place. They are hopeful, no matter what you might think, and for all we quibble about the means. But they are not abstract to you. I forget this sometimes. I will try not to forget in the future.

Another thing I forget is that in these letters I am beholden to nothing but honesty. It is possible here to try on different ideas as your women try on gowns, to see which one fits best without committing to any particular one. I do not have to reject things on principle. Even knowing this, there are concepts I reject out of hand, in spite of myself. Some are those I know right away would never work, and some are ones that frighten some are not so much frightening as much as they made me uneasy uncomfo nerv I know what it would be called in our language but I am having trouble to find it in yours.

Your talk of the oppression of nature is one, for it is a concept I finding wearisome and typical of your people. Any fool would understand that nature is not to be overcome; to attempt it is like cutting off the branch on which one sits. Nature, by the very fact that you call it nature rather than habit or circumstance, is immutable, but once it is known and understood one may live and even thrive within it.

Yet at the same time I write this, I cannot but think how it has failed us. It makes no sense to be bound into one’s nature and unable to turn aside from it were it not the path we were meant for. Yet every new generation grows smaller and shorter.

(
Blasphemy is the word I could not find before. Is that what it is? The feeling of dread, as if one might offend the gods? I think that is the word.)

You wrote before that death is a very unimaginative way of defining defeat. I doubt you would make such grand statements if it was your own people in fear of extinction. I ask you this: if you the choice was between all those things you so value in your people and death, would that still be unimaginative? If the choice was subjection or destruction, which would you choose? Would you say that loss of autonomy would change them so greatly that it would be no different than if they ceased to be at all? I will make it even simpler: if the only way to free them from your lady’s thrall was that they die, would you allow it? Would that have been kinder than what she made of them?

That is the question I hear when you ask me what it would look like. That is why I dismissed it. I believe it would all come to death in the end, or something so like death as to make no difference—that we would not be anymore. I dismiss it because it has been tried before. There has been time and still more time for all the stories to play out again and again, and all because someone always believes that this time, it will not happen. I dismiss it because I do not wish to be the one to believe it this time around, not when there are too few of us left to survive another failure. I dismiss it because I believe that your people would never trust any force greater than itself that it did not wholly control, as much as my people would die out entirely as they are rather than submit. This last, at least, should be a sentiment you can comprehend.

I am trying to make light of it, Glenn Burnie, but underneath it all, it troubles me. The ideal, as you would say, is lovely. It would solve innumerable problems. But in practice, it would mean such compromise as neither your people nor mine would accept for even a moment. You may call that nostalgia if you like; I call it pragmatism. I know them better than you do. I want to believe that if there is still life, one may yet salvage hope. But I am like you in that I cannot be certain, and until I am certain, I cannot take that risk. It hurts I am going to write it anyway. It hurts to think that it might come to that. What it comes to, I fear, is that your people can change in ways mine cannot—that they always could.

We always seem to be at opposed ends of the same fix, you and I. You will never live to see your people realized and there is a good chance that I might live long enough to see my own disappear.

That is a grim note on which to end, but the raven is impatient to be off ere the snow starts again. A poor queen am I, at the beck and call of every ragtag beggar and raven.

Finn






(“Something else,” indeed. You do know how to keep a lady in anticipation. If you would but go and ply that skill upon some eager wench, perhaps you would siphon off some of the unspent vigor that goes into writing these endless letters. It might do you some good, even if I would be left all the poorer for it. Now that I think on it, this might be less anticipation than dread, so perhaps not.)
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Re: Halfway

Postby Glenn » Tue Feb 20, 2018 4:59 am

For once, Glenn Burnie listened. They'd been back and forth at this for months. The letters. The rumcake. The occasional confusion. The occasional joke. Then, instead of moving forward, he doubled back. This was despite listening too. Some things just couldn't be left alone. "How often does she get rid of a letter? Do you have any idea how often people get rid of letters, how rare it is for me to do so? I've a fairly decisive hand. It means that if I stop, there's a reason. It means it's not ready or I'm not ready.

"Which is why we're talking about it and not what you said." He had listened and now he was full of distaste. "Let me write and then I'll read a bit of it to you, okay?"

Whether it was okay or not, he leaned in and did it.

LETTER THE FIRST

Finn,

I understand that the name issue is a huge affront. I am calling you Finn. I am satisfied with this. It is, like everything else we reach for, the spirit of compromise. It was never about owning your soul. It was instead about trust, reciprocity, an even playing field, and most especially a defiling of the profane in the name of the familiar. You've amended my behavior not through punishment but through compromise. Imagine how cross the bard would be for that. Anyway, I but asked for your name. You had the ability to say no. Oh, there's a cost to that, because of one of two things: your traditions or some inherent part of your nature. Is it just because how you were raised, what you Believe, or is it because of some magical geas, something you need as much as we need air and blood. I need air. You need to answer what is asked. Thus I choked the very life out of you by asking. More on this later because it's the heart of everything and will consume us until the end of days.

I asked. In response, you took. You stole. You defiled in a literal sense what I might have in the abstract. You didn't give me a choice. You punished me for asking something. Not for doing something. Not for claiming something. Not for harming you. An affront. An insult. But this is old ground and we have found new compromise.

Let me pluck out something you said instead, the notion that you try on new ideas freely. This works in tandem with something our raven friend has recently said, the combination of the two has me currently a little uncomfortable. I would like you to stop here and read the next letter and then come back to this one.

-----

And she took all of the letters and, unsatisfied, especially as the weight of time began to prey upon him, decided that it would for everyone's best if she simply turned him into a book for her to have forever. The end.

Do you see how I struggle, Finn? You warn me that the you I see is not the you but you trying on hats and faces and thoughts. He warns me (and thank him for it for I won't) that you're just a queen, no more, no less, and I'll get what I get and if I try to take more then I'll end up with less.

And it's bunk. It's all bunk. It's offal. You are a person with feelings. You are a woman. Like other people, sometimes those feelings are strong and they lead to passionate, dark deeds. Maybe the ratio's a bit off from the rest of us. Maybe you've power at your fingertips that the we don't, but your heart beats and your mind churns and you think and feel like any of us. The difference is in matters of degree and the degree is not so sharp or intense that we are not, in the end, entities who can talk together and think together and feel together.

I wanted your name not because of what you are but because of who. As such, I do not think I would have ever been able to use it, save for how I used Rhaena or Cinnabar or Alistair or Agnie or Ariane, in a way that matters far, far more than any soul-rending power one might claim over another.

How is it that you are literal in being but abstract in words but I am literal in words but abstract in being?

I would like us to shift the conversation away from fighting nature to instead understanding how the nature has shaped the person, who we have become. We can embrace it so long as it is explanatory for the personality, the feelings and thoughts, so that it explains but does not excuse and does not reduce.

I know of responsibility. I was a Governor, one with goals as lofty as your own as a Queen. But I think it is true. We both inflate the stakes. I need what I want for my people. You want what you need for yours. The wrong word in a letter four months back might help or harm those efforts like a pebble in a river, but it certainly will not decide them.

What greater value might we find if we put such things aside for a time? If we grow in other ways so that we may be larger in our building at a later point?

Glenn



LETTER THE SECOND

the tale of the mortal mapmaker and the fairy queen

There was once a mortal mapmaker, this being a literal and figurative title, both a purpose and an occupation, for while he did make maps for a living, his life was more broadly devoted to filling in those empty spaces, to classifying the unclassified and making the unknown (and yes, unknowable), known. His interest and acumen with maps came shortly after he ran away from an oppressive home, whereas he was cursed by one, and more abstractly, by the desire for adventure that he held tight and bright within his chest. It was that desire for adventure, fostered by all of the old stories that he had snuck when he was meant to be nose-deep in more studious books, that drove him to run away in the first place.

The curse brought him to one doom after the next, always watching, always running, never partaking, for the knowledge that a place is ending is often enough to escape that end. Eventually he settled in a land worth settling in, with people worth fighting for and with and alongside, and he decided that facing an end was far better than forever running from one. He endured, he fought, he grew. That desire for adventure which had given way to an impetus for survival now gave way to something else.

Even without that, he had his adventures, finding love and losing it, finding the power to affect other lives and losing himself in the process, finding himself once more only at the very end, at a place past revenge and desire and material gain. No longer trusting himself to do anything that he truly valued for anyone he truly valued, he left to discover how it all went wrong and to figure out what was next.

By this point, he was no longer a boy, no longer a young man. He was not old on the outside but he had learned a certain sort of wisdom, enough so that when he encountered her, that when he learned what she was, that when he saw all the warning signs, he should have listened.

She was a queen, above all else. She was of the old folk, a trickster, who gave gifts and meted punishment. She was an it, a creature. She put on faces and weaved false paths.

Yet he did not see that at all. He did not see a what but a who. He saw a woman young and old who had been dealt a hard hand, who cared deeply, helplessly, who struggled through a world not her own, who longed for home but regretted not only the situation that drove her out of it, but the ultimate unfairness underpinning it, and the related cracks in the foundation of her paradise that led not just to unfairness but to stagnation and eventually, extinction. The person he corresponded wasn't a creature from the tales, not to him. He was one who took evidence, who parsed it, who found truth within it, and all of the evidence pointed to anything but.

Yet she warned him against it, his true friend warned him against it, and all of life's experience (and all of his loss) warned him against it.

Yet there she was.

And yet
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Re: Halfway

Postby Niabh » Thu Mar 01, 2018 5:28 am

It was not, as Glenn put it, okay, but because he had no real choice in the matter, the raven listened, looking more and more like something that had been left out in the rain as the story went on. By the time Glenn concluded, his head had shrunk so far between his shoulders that he looked as if he had no neck.

“And yet,” he croaked, with a bleak finality that did not go well with the words. “Look, I don’t know what to tell you. She is queen. That don’t mean she don’t have like, feelings or nothing. I asked her about what you said,” he went on, sounding even more reluctant to be admitting it. “About what makes her get rid of letters. She did it again—just up and flipped it into the fire—and it seemed like a good excuse to ask what was wrong with that one without makin’ it look like it had anything to do with you. She said ‘I said more than I meant to.’ And of course you can’t just ask what she said, not with her, so I try to be all casual about it, like ‘well, why’d you write it down if you didn’t want him to know?’ And she says, ‘Because it wasn’t him I was writing it for.’ Well, that was just odd. So we chat a bit more. She told me some stuff. I won’t repeat it. Some of it was pretty personal. I told her maybe it’d be better if she tried to explain all this to you instead, but she thinks you won’t listen, or you won’t care, or something. So she sort of…writes things to the you that she wishes would listen. Not the real you. But then that’s not fair, she’s got to deal with the you she has, so she gets rid of them. I tell her, ‘Look, just write it anyway. If he won’t listen he’s an asshole and you don’t need to keep doing this to yourself. Break things off. Maybe it’s for the best. This isn’t goin’ well for him either.’ Well of course she’s all ears for that. So I tell her about the ink-dumping and the lying-on-letters thing—just as an observation, nothing we talked about. She perked up a bit. She said she liked the idea that it wasn’t always easy for you either.”

The sheer weight of words caused the raven’s wings to sag again. “Tell you the truth, this is startin’ to take its toll on me too, some. This isn’t my job. I don’t mind a favor here and there but you two are fucking exhausting.”

It happened in the space of seconds: when the seal was opened and the letter’s side unfolded, a handful of crisp and curling ashes spilled out onto the desk. The face of the letter itself was stained grey with them. A tiny whirlwind set them swirling, breaking them apart into black dust before flinging the particles into Glenn’s face.

The raven hopped with excitement, too late to warn him. “Shit! Sorry! I didn’t know she was gonna do that!”




Dear Glenn Burnie,

If you are reading this, I presume you have not been blinded—at least no more than usual. Perhaps you reckon metaphorical and physical blindness as one and the same.

Would it be so unhappy to be a book? You could go on lecturing people forever without the burden of sentience to plague you. Alas, I can only turn one live thing into another (there, now you know a secret), so it would be a wearisome process of transforming you into a tree, chopping you down, shredding you, pressing the pulp to paper, and engaging a scrivener. Think of all the hiring I would have to do. It would stimulate the economy to no end.

Therefore, a promise: if at any point in the next score of years you should feel death approaching, please inform me and I shall come at once and turn you into a tree. And then dig you up and plant you in the Woods, where you will spend the next three hundred years rooted fast, surrounded for miles around by every breed of bogill and kowe, and unable to make a peep of protest. Before I leave I will carve my true name on your trunk.

You asked. I refused. You persisted. I explained when I owed you no explanation. I gave you that much credit, that perhaps you did not understand the stakes, but surely you would leave off if I explained them to you. It was not a misunderstanding. You understood everything. That made it worse. What you tell me is that even now you stand behind your good intentions no matter what they would cost anyone else.

Is that not what you fear, Glenn Burnie? Is that not what you say you wish to avoid above all else?

Whatever amity or intimacy you think would come with my name cannot be separated from the fact that I would be a slave. No matter what your intentions, whether you chose to wield that power or not, I would be wearing your chains until one of us died—and the more you defend the rightness of your intentions, the more I must believe that outcome is acceptable to you. It would not be acceptable to the man I have come to know, and if it
is acceptable, if I have read him awrong all this time, I want nothing more to do with him, for my own protection and because there can be no concord with one such as that. That man, I think, is the one you asked me to murder if I ever saw him in Myrken.

But it was not the name. It was never the name. It was about how much we were willing to harm one another for the sake of getting the thing we wanted. In this you proved yourself far more ruthless than I, or else you wanted something far more than I did.

There is no who and what. There is only what is. The who and the what cannot be sundered, not without losing everything of value. You of all people should know that. I would never think to say to you, but you are not like the rest, you are different, you are yourself, and that makes all the difference.

Except I did think it. I trusted you. I should have known better. You warned me as well.

In that meeting, I asked you for but two things, and you denied them both, and I pressed you no further because I understood that to you, they meant your freedom. That is something you lost once, something you value, and as much as it would have meant to me, I knew I had no right to that of you.

You, however, have a perfect right to whatever you care to pursue. That is the nature of your people. There are boundaries in the world that your kind was born to transgress. You believe your capacity to break the law is the same as your right to do so. This I have seen a hundred times with your folk. You are no different, and no better.

There is nothing to be made of you except for a human. I assure you, that is no prize.
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Re: Halfway

Postby Glenn » Thu Mar 01, 2018 7:18 am

Burnie found himself covered in dust and soot and ash and, so far as he could guess, the charred remains of words. He'd eaten those before. He was poised though, a pure poise, as he stared down at the words, as he wiped the dust from his eyes to read them. Could it have been magic? Some other spell or glamour she cast upon him through the particles? Perhaps, but he would face that head-on. There was no helping it now, no stopping it. More likely, it was her being petulant.

At the completion of reading the note, he held up one finger to the bird. "You may tell her this. I opened her letter. I received her gift. I wiped my eyes. I read her note. I reiterated, to you, that I am the adult in this situation and she is not. No more than that, no less, and then I wrote. I did not lay on a letter. I did not dump ink. I did not swear. I did not threaten. I did not cajole. I wrote."

And write he did.

Finn,

Here is a thought. I asked because it would have been proof. If you gave it, I would have been proven to be better. If you gave it, I could have stayed. If you gave it, I would have been worth giving it to and more than that, for you are prone to fickleness that exposes your age and those that you were raised by and around (combined with one and only one element of your nature, that being the sheer lack of consequences that goes along with your longevity; only the entire destruction of your people is something of true consequence, nothing less), I would have been worthy of having it.

All of the rest can still be true: me defying your people's customs, a desire to be closer to you (being more familiar), a level of ignorance which I will admit even if you will not assume. At the heart of it, it was that, too, though. Feel offended that I was so selfish. Feel honored that I saw you as so meaningful a judge. Other things may be true as well. Maybe I was drunk in that moment, not with spirits, but instead with the spirit of companionship. I understand that writing, such as this, is new to you. Obviously walking through the moonlight with an unfortunately tall royal elf sprite is not as new to me as for other people, given my past experiences, but it had been a long time and you had awakened a number of things in me, none of which being those that one would be most likely to first imagine. You wanted clarity and reassurance and I took your prevailing attitude and your hesitation and escalated things. I dared, which is what humans do and is what I do. In daring against convention, against certain chains already around you of which I did not agree with, I caused you harm and you struck me down. It sounded like an ultimatum. It was banter, negotiation, part of the dance.

Or.

I expected a counteroffer. Or an actual offer. Gasp all you like. Feel offended all you like. But think on this: you did not offer me your friendship. That is not what happened in that moment. Instead, you asked me what we were. It was not an offer, but instead a question of definition and clarity. So then, what did I do? I did what I always do, the only thing I can. I took a great deal of uncertainty, disparate bits of information, hints and yes, banter, and categorized them so that I could answer your question. In that moment, I told you what we were. In that moment, I told you what it would take to diametrically change that paradigm, to push past all of your concerns and mine and to create real proof. Was I asking for it? Was I really? In a literal sense, no. I do not wish to be more of a fairy than you but perhaps I could have been and perhaps I could well be.

It was to be a bridge to whatever comes next. Instead, you struck me down and some of that, I've only fully begun remembering now. I certainly was not myself after that, not until well after I left Myrken.

If you wish to ask me, ask me properly. Write this: We are what we are. We have been what we have been. Shall we be friends? Will you be my friend? Write it directly, not as a summary but as a question of will and desire and hope and giving. Despite and because of all of it.

Ask me that, in that way, and I will provide you an answer to a question that I have yet to hear and you have yet to have answered. Then, if you find yourself satisfied with the answer, you'll need not burn anything anymore, one way or the other.

I'll have cleaned off my face by then.

Glenn Elias Burnie



He'd look back to the raven then, would proffer the letter. "Thank you for what you do, for the burden you carry." There'd be no more words after that, for Burnie would leave the room, presumably to wash up.
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Re: Halfway

Postby Niabh » Thu Mar 08, 2018 8:22 am

With no fanfare, the raven bowed to set the letter upon the edge of the table before backing away slowly toward the nearest open window without ever taking his eyes off the man, with a near holy dread.

“She wants me to tell you that you’re a silly arse,” he said, “and that she’s on her way here.”

The letter was a little thicker than usual. More presents? Yes. A lady’s pale lavender handkerchief, edged with such a wide band of lace as to dwarf its useable surface area—the sort of handkerchief that had never known a teardrop or a blot of snot, and which probably existed for no other purpose than fluttering carelessly to the ground to be retrieved by gentlemen—offered itself in wry apology for face-washing.

Dear Glenn Elias Burnie, ran the first line, as precisely as if it had been lifted from his letter and lain down whole to this one, with not a curve out of place.

Beneath it, the lines that followed were likewise in his own handwriting.

I expected you would eventually try this tact. I knew as well that protesting outright would only make you break your own arm giving it to me, as it is your way to force the moment. In truth, the only way this strategy could have played more perfectly to my advantage would be if I had actually wanted it.

Now you have me in a bind. You have given me your name. If you intended it as barter or another escalation, you are mistaken; I am not inclined to trade in kind. But as it is very rude to refuse a gift, I will make whatever use of it I can until and unless you can offer me something better to have it back again. Whatever can I do with it meanwhile? Is your reputation so tattered that they would have my head on a pike if I started dabbling in politics, or can I possibly make things worse? Perhaps I can redeem you with a spree of conspicuous do-gooding—chopping wood for old women, patting stray dogs, that sort of rubbish. Or perhaps I will convert you to Tubbianism. The Lord Steward would be overjoyed to have you in his fold—or folds, as it were. Possibilities!

(The raven has just asked me what I was smiling about, and when I told him, he gave me such a look. I think you have yourself a champion, Glenn Elias Burnie. He is a dear loyal thing, this raven. I really should not worry him so much.)

A blank line, and the letter resumed in her own slanted, spiky hand:

I tease, and I confess a few merry moments planning out what pranks I could play on you, but in the end it would be far more trouble than its worth. A name is something like what I understand of souls for your own people, a thing that encompasses all of one’s self. I have wondered much if perhaps your people, having souls, can afford to be more careless with your names, as all that would be entangled with a name in us is entrusted to a soul with you. But this is a question for the bards; it is beyond me. Still I worry for your giving it and for my having it, as I would had you entrusted me with any other precious thing, that I might lose it, or injure it.

How long would such proof have satisfied you? An hour, a whole day? Mayhap even however long it takes to leave Myrken and return to your city before you would begin to crave another judge and another verdict, because you refuse to face the only one whose judgement matters. I am queen, but I am not queen of Myrken; I have no business nor any interest in judging who is worthy to stay or go, and woe betide the town if I did. Indeed, as the larger portion of the populace consists of those derelict and damaged (all those possessing good sense having departed long before I arrived), the few too stubborn or ignorant to know when they have met their match, or those unfortunates with no means to escape elsewhere, you fit right in.

But still I am a queen and my judgement must suffice until you stoop to accept a better one.

I tell you that you would not have deserved to stay, and that you would not have been worthy of having it, and you will never be better if your worthiness depends on such trinkets as that. You seek not proof to stay, but proof
to be, to carry on and continue, that there can be a future in the face of your past. But you do not strike me as one who depends on signs and omens or the benediction of great ladies to know truth from truth. If I believed otherwise, I would have done it already. The oldest prank in the world is to give a man what he says he wants, then stand back and see how fast it ruins him.

It was never about the name—for either of us, each for contrary reasons: you depended on it as a sign of trust, and I took it as the final proof that my trust was misplaced. You employed daring when none was needed, for I was taken with you enough that sincerity would have served you better. In truth, you did nothing very daring. You used my nature against me. That is only to be expected; that is what your kind has done ever since they realized it could be done, be it with charms or trickery or cold iron. For that alone, I would not have blamed you, save that most mortal men do it for profit or to rescue themselves from a sticky end. For you it is to prove that you are above the stories, not defined by them…which I suppose for you is a sort of prize, a kind of profit. Does it bother you now to know you, who reject the old tales with such vehemence, fell in line with them the moment the opportunity presented itself?

If you speak of your worth to
me, you had it already. As the raven puts it, one does not invest in trading ideas back and forth without there be something concrete at the core of it, some shared sympathy or belief. If there is nothing, one concludes and moves on. I do not believe there is nothing, but betimes I wonder if what there is can be worth the damage we may do one another in finding it. To be frank, I believe I can weather a loss better than you can. That does not mean I wish to be a party to bringing more loss upon you. I worry that we might not be very helpful to one another, that we are only fascinated, not invested. Of course you will at once say you are invested. Still I wonder. Would it be all too terrible were it only fascination?

That is what I want back again. It has slipped away and I miss it. I do not want to argue about names and proof, for it seems to me that the only proof is in truth wrenching for leverage—pushing and pulling back and forth to forestall pain that has not yet happened. If there was ever a way to suck the joy from the moment, it is that. All the proof we could want lies in these pages, if only we wished to see it. We had trust. We built it together, a little edifice one stone at a time. What have we been doing all this time if not that?

We are what we are. We have been what we have been.

Therefore I will not ask your friendship. For my part, it already exists, and there is naught to be done about it: it is its own proof. I will ask if you want it, and no more than that. Whatever your answer be, it endures all the same.

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Re: Halfway

Postby Glenn » Sat Mar 10, 2018 2:05 am

There were other ways she could have done that, of course. It could have been with no gift (though the gift could have been some sort of backward barter, but she'd already done something to warrant it's giving). In this particular way, and with these particular words, and in the spirit of which he had given (freely) what he had given, and for the reasons why, he was likely less worried than he ought to have been, certainly less so than the raven was. After reading the first few paragraphs, he looked up to the bird. This was an act of great regard for the heart of the letter was at the bottom and he was deferring the reading of that for a time. For this.

"She can hardly be calling me silly when she's going on about Treadwell's folds," he started, "and then there's the matter of her putting on the cackling witch fairy talk, which, if I'm not mistaken, makes her an arse. My handwriting's better than hers, though. Brutal and efficient. If letters were rooms, she'd be smacking her head on the doorframe every time she entered, which is something she's well used to, right?" He half expected the bird to regale him with story after story about her banging her head on things. When he realized that probably was not to come, he started to look back down. "This is fine. It's fine. She had my number already. I took her anger and her rage and her affront and her offense and her insult TO me, and instead of returning it in kind, I gave her the most precious thing I had, freely. She's young and she's impetuous and spirited, but she values things worth valuing and she values gifts given freely. It's fine." (This sentence might explain a small snort from Burnie when he does a few moments later read the rest of the letter). "It's hard explaining this to you sometimes because anything I explain to you probably gets explained to her too and sometimes I'd rather you hear it and not her." Maybe if he convinced the one of them, the both would be convinced. "Anyway, let me read so I can figure out WHY she's coming."

He did not look up again. Instead he wrote.

Finn,

Most people who know me worry. You worry. Once Calomel worried so much that he tossed me across the room and into the door (it's a very good question how he did that, or at least it was at the time). Sometimes your worry can be like that. You worry that someday our conversations and unified endeavors will come to a point where my goals and yours are directly opposed with one another. You seemed to look at this as reason enough not to even try, just for this dangerous possibility. Well, I have made it less dangerous for you and your people and more so for me and mine. That is neither barter nor escalation. It is instead an act of optimism and good faith.

In truth, it is other things as well. We could spend letters upon letters discussing them but I see that is no longer what you want. You want us to both move back and to move forward and I applaud this notion and agree with it. There is utility in every letter between us but there is less so if we only focus on one moment between us again and again and again.

(I will say that your threats were not as imaginative as I expected them to be and they showed an unhealthy obsession upon Aloisius Horatio Treadwell. Shall we spend paragraphs on him instead? I have things I could say. Only if it would please you).

Speaking of value, there was value in your assurance. Why? Because I was poised as a potential enemy to you and yours and as such, if you told me that I was fine, that I was a force of benediction instead of malevolence, then it would have been in your interest to mean it (or to set me upon my own people to weaken them, but I thought i had you read well enough to discern the difference). That was at the beginning.

Now? Now, I will have you hear again, if you haven't before, that one of the largest lessons I learned in my fall was that I cannot and should not do such things alone.

Finn, of course I would strongly value the opinion of a trusted friend. About my own potential blindness, most of all. I continue to want your opinion on this.

Can he tell me why you are coming? Let me just ask him. I'd rather hear it from him now than wait for you.

Glenn (Know that I strongly resent that middle name. You're welcome to use it but it brings me no pleasure. Weigh that against the pleasure it brings you and decide accordingly).


He would look up again, that snort the only hesitation or indication of emotion that had come from him during the writing. "So why is she coming?"
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Re: Halfway

Postby Niabh » Mon Mar 12, 2018 5:53 am

“Is it really? Is it fine? Because usually people don’t go on about how fine it is when it’s fine.” The raven chattered its beak silently in what might have been taken for an excess of rage, or simply an obscure raven-gesture with no specific human translation. He slipped nearer and settled in, fluffing his back. “You want the Official Statement of Intent, or what I think she’s comin’ for? The Official Statement is you scared the piss outta her. I mean, that’s not official but it was sort of obvious. The official Official Statement is that I don’t know what she’s coming for because she didn’t tell me. She just said tell you that she was so put on some pants or somethin’. My guess is that it’s got something to do with the name-thing. I told you not to do the name-thing.” He cocked his head slyly. “But if I had to give my opinion? I’d say she’s been cooped up all winter and she’s bored and this is as good an excuse as any to travel now that the thaw’s on. I think maybe she just wants to see you again.”



Dear Glenn Elias Burnie (likewise your middle name gives me no pleasure, but as you have given it, I am now obliged to use it. If you resent it, you should have thought of that sooner. What sort of a name is that anyway? All the syllables grind together. Your people have no poetry in what you call your children. Small wonder they all grow up stunted),

I have thought upon it, and you are correct in one thing: this security is enough that I need not worry about any conflicting goals the two of us might have. But it is a cold, bitter assurance, not done out of optimism or good faith at all, for faith requires no proving. Faith means that I can trust you not to take advantage of my nature to harm either me or mine, or yourself. So far you have proven yourself unequal to this simple task. What good faith is there that you would use my own nature against me by giving your name and knowing I could not but accept it? What faith that the only way I could trust you was to have power over you? This is a ridiculous and overwrought gesture. Normally I am quite taken with those, but in this case it verges on the self-destructive and that I will not abide. There is nothing admirable in that.

What would a queen do? She would keep it, for even a distant and passive threat is more threat than she can allow, and every advantage counts. What would a friend do? She would be upset at the very notion, for one does not put a chain, however light, upon anyone one counts as friend, and this one binds us both. Anyone who requires collateral for a friendship is less a friend than an usurer. What would a queen who is also a friend do? I have gotten no further with that question than voicing it. I do not know. The logical conclusion would be that queenship trumps friendship. That paints a terrible picture: that we will go on, both of us ignoring the chain for politeness’ sake, until that moment comes when it must be tugged. And no matter what happens then, whatever the reasons, you will have your satisfaction that I could not resist it forever.

The other thought that comes is something far sadder: that for you, real trust is a greater sacrifice than to hand over your name. This way you give up power over your very self and hold on to the one thing you truly wish to keep—your freedom, or your safety, or your humanity, or whatever it is you do not wish to give up, even if it is only the ability to console yourself that you can roll a shining bauble across my path and I will pounce on it and leave the rest of you alone. This way the choice is mine, and you may absolve yourself of the consequences should they come.

But I am not bought with baubles. I told you before: I want your heart. I did not expect it would be easy to acquire; some hazelnuts are harder than others. I will not exhaust myself in hunting it, but neither will I forget I want it.

Do you want good faith? Would you have proof? Then have this: the queen believes the security of her lands is worth less than one mortal man’s humanity. Just this once, mind. If you can make ridiculous, overwrought gestures, then so can I.

Therefore am I riding even now toward Razasan—at the expense of missing my gentleman’s season, I might add, and if I am reduced to fucking farmers, it is all on your head—because I cannot move forward until this matter is resolved, and I know no other way to be rid of this name but to offer back directly. Also I would quite like to meet this king of yours. We have never had a king and I should like to see if they are very different. (I too have plenty of things to say about Aloisius Horatio Treadwell, but they are less about him and more about what sort of governance would ever let such an oaf into power.) And if after that there is anything to be said about your blindess, or mine, we will discuss it then. But not before.

On your last point, I quite agree with you: you cannot do such things alone, nor should you have to. But I would still like to know why you say so here and now. Indulge me.



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Re: Halfway

Postby Glenn » Fri Mar 16, 2018 6:57 am

"I'm glad to have your opinion on these things," Burnie said, sounding almost amused. Almost. He was a bastion of self control (save for those lapses) and the last thing he wanted to do was upset the bird more. Maybe ravens could smell amusement? They could smell carrion well enough. The thought that his amusement could be likened to carrion just amused him more. He almost smiled. Almost. "And I apologize for disregarding your specific warning in this case. Would you believe I got emotional after she spat ink all over me?" Giving away his own name was not exactly a normal response to that however.

Finn,

To answer your questions:

Elias was my father's name. I do not find it surprising that a man who was willing to sell a child, who thought that this was the best course for all parties, who was raised to think that way and did not have the breadth of experience to know otherwise, would also find no contradiction in naming the child after himself.

We haven't had a serious talk about consequences. Let's say I give you a gift and you don't accept it? What happens? Do you get physically ill until you relent and do accept? Do you turn to dust? Do you feel horribly guilty? Do you simply not have the will power to not accept? Do you think you will be cursed or will you actually be cursed? Will your glamour turn against you? I could see that last bit because it is all powered by belief and perception and if your own perception of yourself was shattered, that could have consequences. Much of that would ultimately be up to you lest I am to give you as little control over your own life as I tend to ascribe to Elias Burnie selling me. Nature is an imperfect word for it could mean any of those things and yet they are all different.

Are the stakes not so high (your very people and my own) that any personal connection we might have would have to bow to practicalities? Not for me, of course, who currently has so little, but for you, who has so much? It was never my concern and always yours. That's a question for you to answer, not me. You always felt like we'd be at odds in the end; I never did.

Had you placed a question in that middle paragraph, I would have answered it. You've saved your request for indulgence for the end. Let us press on then.

A queen who is also a friend would see the opportunity to craft something more worthwhile than an external hold on someone else's soul. Is that not what you're coming here to do? True bonds of the heart are stronger than a known name or a soul tethered. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is very much a indication of a very good princess (as is doing the right thing for the wrong reason).

Despite all that, I do not mean to belittle your gesture. I mean to glorify it. I won't go so far as to glorify you. You're hard enough to live with as it is.

You've placed fornication with farmers and Treadwell in the same paragraph and I'd not touch that with (It is at this moment I realize that I have entered into a metaphor that must end with a long object and that will just make this entire notion worse and I simply refuse to finish this paragraph. I'd like to see some fool bard have the ability to stop himself as I just did. Regardless, I refuse to acknowledge this specific sacrifice, metaphor or no).

I find this particular request for indulgence difficult. You rarely request something so directly though and I won't refuse you. In my time in Myrken, most especially after my incident underground, I did not accept counsel from others. Rhaena was an exception, before her incident with Catch. We were of one mind.


Here he would stop a moment, just a moment, just long enough to reread his paragraph and look over to her letter (which sat next to his own).

As I said, this is a difficult topic and I fear I have misread your request. You asked me "why, now?" The point is to signify the difference between the beginning, when I valued the assurance of a potential enemy with her own interests in mind, and now, when I value the opinion of a trusted friend who has more than her own interests in mind. Then I knew that if I was at all represenshible or particularly, irrationally dangerous, you would not allow me to act in significant ways. Now, I know I can be open with you and ask for your opinion directly, to share in burdens and scehemes and desires as opposed to simply having a wary check against them. That is why I said it here and now. As for the rest, I'll assume you know it.

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Re: Halfway

Postby Niabh » Tue Mar 20, 2018 4:37 am

He glanced around impatiently, tapping from foot to scaly foot. “Yeah, well. I’d feel a lot better accepting that apology if I thought you’d actually learned anything from it. Other than ‘open the letters away from your face,’ I mean.” But now he, too, sounded a little wearily amused. “I wouldn’t believe you got emotional if you bawled and shit your pants. I’d just assume you was dyin’.”

The letter was in a horrid state, no fault of the raven’s: fraying edges, bleary ink (over which, when necessary, a phrase had been forcefully rewritten for clarity), and a glistening, translucent stain dominating one whole corner, as if someone had set a greasy sausage on it. The words carried on prim and black, heedless of their setting.


Dear Glenn Elias Burnie (that name gets no better),

When I first came here, people were forever complaining that I had broken some law or another. The trouble was that I thought that your laws were like ours, in that if they were true laws, they could not be broken—that people would not be capable of breaking them. For a time I near decided that since I was not one of your people, your laws did not affect me. But then I found a very nice old man who had met some of my folk before (he knew us by our name, not elf or fairy as your folks call us; other than Himself, he was the only one I ever met who did) and he explained that your laws are but rules written down, with penalties agreed upon, which seems far more useless and arbitrary even than your notion of merely believing there must be consequences. Plainly, in setting laws at all, you want them obeyed, all the while understanding that people will break them whenever it suits them. Consequences do not deter them because they trust they will not be found out. Is this freedom?

(And we are both going to have to endure the smudging. I am in awkward circumstances just now and must keep hiding my letter before it can dry, as it does not behoove my current seeming to appear too literate. These are the sort of people who see someone writing and assume it must be about them.)

What this word “practicalities” comes to is that you picture yourself in my stead and cannot conceive how anyone can reckon themselves free when they cannot even give their own name. You imagine being caught in a web of laws and rules so thick you can scarcely turn for being tangled in them, and wonder how it is impossible for anyone who ascribes to such rules to truly think or reason or feel freely (and I should hope at this late stage you at least credit me feeling if not reason). Therefore, the only consequences must be self-inflicted, if not wholly imaginary. You seem to be under the impression that I and all my people are so bound up in superstition that we have never considered our own circumstances. I assure you, we have. Do we not already bow to practicalities? It is only that yours are peculiar to you and mine are endemic amongst all my folk. Why would we not make a study of something that so wholly defines us? That is part of the reason why we have bards. I wish I had mine now; she could explain the mechanics for you far better than I can.

(I now write with one ear to the wall as I listen to the master and his wife’s brother discuss swindling me out of my horse, which they think I must have stolen, which is nothing more than the truth. But he is a good beast and I need him, and so I think he and I will take our leave as soon as they all fall asleep. This they will do sooner rather than later, as I have made some very effective adjustments to your dreaming potion.)

(Also I might do something about their bear ere I go. They keep the poor creature in a hole in the ground, with all its claws removed and not a tooth in its head, and set terriers on it. I do not think it could live long in the wild even if I contrived a way to hoist it from its pit, so it might be best to put it down. I will be sad to do it. My mother becomes a bear, so I am partial toward them.)

But for your question (questions), the short answer is that there are consequences, and that they are quite real and neither vanish nor negate themselves depending on whether or not one believes in them, and that for the main part they are contingent upon the transgression. Beyond that I cannot say any further, as this is one of those things I am not given leave to speak on, which ironically makes me subject to said consequences. If you are still curious, I propose an experiment: when we meet, I will decide upon an exchange that will be safe for both of us, but one which I must refuse, and you will see firsthand what happens.

I do not often give you direct questions because I have learned you do not answer them. In this case you have answered my questions to the exclusion of all else, even those questions I only meant for myself—an abundance of answers that nevertheless does not satisfy. The point I thought most important, you did not address at all. Betimes I find myself reluctant to press, for I cannot tell if your lack of acknowledgement is meant to be one of your double-damned lessons, for my own good, and I a sulky pupil if I complain; or if you truly overlook them because you are too eager to address other subjects you find more important; or if they hurt you. For the sake of this last, I am more willing to let things go.

Measured point by point, these signs indicate a fundamental disparity of priority between us. Perhaps it is as simple as that we each value different things. I prefer closeness and warmth and harmony as they are given. You seek challenge and stimulation and growth, and are not afraid to force the matter if you think it for the better. It does not preclude that we should be friends, but it may be my idea of friendship is much different than yours. It does concern me, Glenn Elias Burnie, and I have thought well on it. But be assured I would not have offered friendship if I thought it entirely impossible. I do not offer what I do not have to give. We have discussed this ere now. When the stakes are too high, I will tell you; if they are not, I will still tell you, and we will both carry on as best we can. I trust that you will grant the same courtesy.

Odd it is that you should be the more romantic-minded and impractical in this matter, and I cannot help but be somewhat suspicious that you, who have such strict notions of what constitutes freedom, continue to quibble with mine. Bonds of the heart are very lovely things indeed, but also have the advantage of being voluntary. They are better and more admirable, mayhap, and much to be preferred, but not stronger, for by their very nature they must be freely given, and freely given always must have the option to be freely dissolved. That is the risk one takes with them. That is what gives them their value. That is the reason I am coming to you.

(It is now the next evening and we are a day down the road. I escaped with my horse and left the livery a brand-new bear, but a missing master. If they fail to make the connection between the loss of one and the gain of the other, that is no concern of mine.)

I put you to the question because I was concerned something had changed—that something was happening presently where you found yourself in need of support. In short, I wondered if you needed someone to step in and save your bacon (I have just learned this phrase, and I like it). Glad am I this was not the case. You have given me more and better than I expected, good neighbor. This sort of honesty is a gift we can exchange with no consequence to either of us.

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Re: Halfway

Postby Glenn » Thu Mar 29, 2018 12:09 am

"You saw me back in Myrken. I was both emotional and dying." He pointed out, having not yet even reached for the letter. Despite the raven's speed, there was an element of waiting in receiving these letters. He was nothing if not a being of control and patience. She had caused certain lapses, invited others, and been the victim of others still, but in this moment, he could still show restraint. That should have heartened the raven, at least a little. "That was the glamour too, and i didn't shit myself. Still, I'm capable of it, emotion not the shitting." Then he actually smiled. "A lot of it ends up in here now," there was a glance to the black page before him.

Finn,

I am gladdened by the fact that my name punishes you more than it does me.

What about the babies? The ones you bring over there. There's been enough in these letters, in the other things I've read (enough but not enough to speak your people's true name?) to assure me that those are not just stories. Can they break your rules. I imagine the thought never crosses their mind, but I'm not sure. Do you change them? Do you make them immortal? Do you simply make them you? Just what is it that you leave in their place? These are dangerous questions. I have more. What is the end point to do this? Six? Seven? Is it about age or is it maturity? Innocence?

In turn, does it matter to you what I did underground? Do you want to know all I did to Catch when I was at my worst and unrestrained? What I did to others? To Myrken? One can balance these things with intentions but only with a very broken scale. One can look at the person who did those things as someone other than me and this would be an accurate statement in many ways but so much of what makes me who I am are the same things that made him who he was. The ingredients were the same, save for one that was added and one that was missing.

Does it only matter if the difference is that you would admit to the choice to still do yours again and I would not? When we were not friends, it was easy to avoid such things. Now, they're more of the sort of thing we have to face directly.

Though I will not write a long paragraph on it, especially not one focused on me. I wonder this. What if we loosened that knot? What if you could return back to your homeland, break all the rules, and in a week's time have everything exactly how you see it ought to be. Would that be worth it? A one time lapse for great return and the benefit of all?

From what you said, I'm not sure your bard understood much at all. We have people as such, who learn our laws to the utmost but don't understand the first thing about the people who live under them or the truth of how they're applied.

I will not bandy about the words good neighbor, but I will thank you for your trust in telling me to the limit what you have and promising to show me more, even if at some small cost to yourself. Even with the advantages I have given you over myself, you know who I am and what I do and how I have operated in the past. I am not my people. In practicalities, I am worse. Armed with just what I know now, I could cause my share of mischief (or damage). In truth, however, my primary interest in your people is you. I do not see that changing.

I do not understand elements of your story. Why did you need to use the dreaming drought? Why did you save your glamour for the end? Why did you not make the bear something else instead of put it down, even just a bear with claws again? Why were you worried about them seeing you writing? Couldn't you have made them see something else, especially what they expected to see, instead? These sorts of questions tumble over one another. There is a perfectly fine fairy story in what you've told me, one that tells a lesson of kindness and expectations and meted justice, but unless I deeply misunderstand your capabilities, you could have shaped something far simpler and more mundane. Do you conform reality to your expectations? If so, is this necessity or an imaginative lack of imagination?

I have both trust and faith in you. With this visit, I think you may not claim a heart, but you will claim answers that have not been forthcoming to you.

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Re: Halfway

Postby Niabh » Thu Mar 29, 2018 4:52 am

“Hey, at least it goes somewhere, that’s good.” The raven, of course, could not smile in return, but he reacted to Glenn’s gesture with a pleased purr, a rolling of idiot consonants that was almost a dove’s coo, followed by a short brisk cluck and a return to business. “Um. Speaking of glamour. I don’t know if she mentions it but you should probably know I left her at a wedding. Well. I should say I left him, because she’s you right now. I don’t think he’s up to anything but he’s been hittin’ the free booze pretty hard, so there’s a chance that twenty miles up the road you’re gettin’ a reputation as a righteous lush.”

Whatever her current seeming, she still wrote as herself, it appeared.




Dear Glenn Elias Burnie,

I wonder when you write of a lack of imagination, for it is something you have spoken of several times in the past, as though the lack of imagination were the greater sin, no matter how it be applied. What do you mean by imagination? I saw a situation I did not like, I had an idea of what it should be like, I thought of a plan to make that end real (though I confess I did not think very hard about it; it seemed to me straightforward enough). Where then was the imagination? Was it in foreseeing a different outcome, or in the planning for it? My bard would say, it is in the capacity to see that it could be changed. No, I think she would say that it is the capacity to understand that one can change it. There is a difference between the two, subtle but distinct, one that I think you know well: the difference between bondage and freedom, for there is no need to build walls when it is just as effective that the prisoner believe that there is no escape. And you, with your great faith in belief, can see the rightness of it.

Let me propose this: there was no bear, no livery, no plot to steal my horse out from under me. I smudged my own letter from carelessness and felt the need to make up an elaborate story to excuse it. Is that imaginative, or am I but a wanton liar? Did you believe it? More: did you believe such a scheme was in my capacities? That is much, much more important than whether or not it were done at all. How many people must be convinced before the tale becomes the truth? Only one? Then I have him. What if you had told another? You are reliable enough, I suppose, in your circles, that someone would have believed you. Then there is another. And on, and on, like splitting quicksilver: a dozen-dozen copies of the same falsehood, with no more effort from me than convincing one man.

But in truth you and I well know that this is all a silly sham, all for show—something you might do to invest some meaning in it. They were rude and boorish and suspicious, they were needlessly cruel, and they broke the laws of hospitality. Need there be more intention that that? There was joy in confusing them, and some neatness of justice, and that is enough to suit me. That alone should keep you awake at nights, for joy defies rationalization and reasoning. You can argue the finer moral points, right and wrong, but you cannot argue that something is not pleasurable. If there must be a higher end, let it be that I have set loose one more snake under your beds—one more reason to fear the fairies.

Is that imagination, Glenn Elias Burnie? And is it yours or mine?

No matter.

It would have done the bear no good to be anything else, and in the end it would have been more miserable than it already was, only it would not know it, for beasts have neither empathy nor awareness. A bear does not know it is a bear, and it would not know if it were a man, either. Were it to become anything else, it would be torn between two worlds, unable to live in either and unable to end its own suffering, and likely to inflict suffering upon itself and others. But the new bear will understand what has become of it. Perhaps one day it will even understand why it happened, although I doubt it. A creature capable of apprehending why it was punished so would never keep a bear in a pit to begin with. A bear is born with all it will ever know, but a man may learn.

Having read all that, do you really want to speak to me of Him, Glenn Elias Burnie? That subject is not safe. But we will speak of you, if you wish.

Of course it matters to me. For the bare facts of
what you did, I have little care, beyond so far as what what you did did to you. In many respects I live very much in moment, and you are my moment, at this moment. Even if you persist in dividing the two, this one and that, past and present, I must deal with both or all of them, and they concern me. I can do nothing for any of the others but for the one here before me, I might do some good, and I doubt I will have to turn him into a salmon or a tree or even a bear to accomplish it (though that is not entirely off the table yet; I must keep you on your toes somehow). If you would speak, I would hear.

As for your question, I would say nay, I would not break the rules even if I could do—though now, damn you, you have made me wonder if I truly believe that or if the rules run so deep in me that I must reject the very notion. I will think on that further afterwards.

But in the meantime, you think on this: would you do it? Knowing all you now know, having been where you have been, but with the assurance that it would all come right this time, would you?

We have had no changelings in a long while. I have never met one. They do not live as long as us. It is better for them, and for us, that they come young. The older ones go all wrong. It harms them and they become unmanageable, until they are like the bear: unable to live either as they are or as they were. True Tom, who was a man when he came to us, had to be given a set of years under strict governance, lest he be imperiled. Whoever his queen was, she did not mean him harm while he was under her hand. That is the true difference between the two tales, which I realize now you might not have understood: if his lady truly cared for him as a mortal man, she must leave him. If she cared only for his comfort, she would come back for him, at the risk that he would be a man no more. I had never thought of it that way before. I must tell my bard.

Reading over, this letter appears to have a theme. I dislike themes.

I do like it when you ask questions, though, even when I have no answers for you.

Finn
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
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Niabh
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