I don't believe I'd ever seen an Ilmateri panic before my thirteenth year. What do you do when your entire purpose in life evaporates before your eyes? The Gods; Mighty, regal, watchful, and yet gone. At least it was quick for them. A breaking of news followed by a few days of denial before you can figure out where you stand on the matter. My father was the one God that I gave my faith to aside from lip services and curses, and his slide into death was not so quick. At least by Eldath's grace he was at peace for the entirety of it. We could not find the same, my mother and I. Our house was a bottle, pressure growing from the rotting things within. Fit to burst. My father died during that winter - terrible as it was. I could not blame any gods, nor would I know who to blame if I could. Talona, Ilmater, Helm, Shar, Lliira, it didn't matter. I didn't even know if I could commit him to Myrkul or Jergal, or whoever the priests claimed was correct with each passing day. The bottle started showing cracks.
My mother was made of sterner stuff, thankfully. An ore woman with a mithral resolve. For all that I said to, around, by - place your favored preposition here - her, often raging in my own horror and hatred, she remained quiet. She simply absorbed it all. I fear she drank every ounce poison I spat, that I might not die from it. I believe I must have felt some unrecognized shame at the course of my actions, as I found myself fleeing more often to work. I started loitering at the Low Dog and the Berth. I would sing for ale and copper and glory. I would taunt and scrap. And then, sometimes, I would return home. My shame would have me do so in silence, but my confusion would demand volume.
The household began falling to pieces. Mother took my independence as an opportunity to take another job and secure some material comfort. She let me be as best a mother could, and I think she was wise for that. I would have destroyed us.
Loneliness results in terrible ironies. Chief of which is the feeling that you have come to deserve your loneliness, or that it is inescapable. It creates a wall of excuses that whispers of how it protects you from pain, but it instead separates you from others. I am now comfortable in assuming that most know this, though only with the benefit of hindsight. Luckily, I, a damned fool, found hope in joy. The sort of joy that my father, forever Lliiran, would sing to me of. I found companionship in a time where loneliness would have seen me never return to my hearth. At an age where I saw nothing around me for the wall my loneliness had built. Joy in Lernos and his friends.
They had colored themselves as a gang, but they didn't take themselves any more seriously than the actual gangs did. With them, I found myself channeled. Lernos guided me. At times, I felt that I was being socialized like some stray mutt. It was not wrong - either by fact or by ethics. He cared for me and saved me. There were suddenly people that I was not allowed to unleash myself upon. People who would hear me sing my own songs without scoffing. People who were excited to see me and would not simply suffer me. And so, I stopped starting fights, and began ending them. I found joy. Lernos brough me joy.
Lernos is not his name. I will not put his true name here. I owe him too much to risk his well-being.
Singing at the Dog became a steady job bouncing, as I learned to recognize victims. No longer targets, but as... truthfully, I don't know what word to use, reader. Something to be protected. Something to be fostered. I saw my own rage in their despair, and my ire turned to their aid.
Thank you, Lernos. You allowed me some joy. You allowed me to go home, and to break bread with my mother. We wept when the bottle was uncorked at last. We found the ale within bitter, sweet, and refreshing.
I will miss you, wherever you are. If you read this, I am sure you recognize your fingerprints. Do not embroil yourself in my affairs. I am viewed as a traitor by half of the city, and as an insect by the rest. I would never wish that upon you.
Putting my asides aside, the next decade was - as one may guess - long.