Pylemoor - The Fault Lies with Me

[Yavamaya]

PREFACE​

I spend so much time being ashamed of myself. Worried that they might see in me only the things that I fear exist. I don't fear their false judgements, only their true ones. I fear that they may echo my own. Verifying without validating. They, in this instance, are all thinking souls in the world - including my own. And so, with an example set by my wordsmith friends, I find myself attempting to find myself. To put forth theses of my own about myself, allowing my self-examination to live and breathe in immutable iron ink instead of the flight of each moment's fancy in my own mind. I do not yet know which is more terrifying, but we will learn together - my unknown and perhaps never-to-be reader and myself.​

I promise you I will change no words for your sake or mine. The words I choose are in service to the best world, of fairness and goodness, and none other purpose. I wish the rest of the world to offer me the same courtesy with their thoughts upon reading.

I do not blame you if our mutual journey of discovery does not bring us there, though.

The fault lies with me.

 

[Yavamaya]

IT TAKES A VILLAGE​

My father was apparently an artist in earlier years; wooing many but only ever being wooed in return by my mother. The year that I was born, the Coast Plague had taken a toll on my father despite tithes to the Ilmateri and Talontar alike. For as long as I knew him he was without the use of a leg and prone to lethargy. The man that I admired could - and would - rise to greet my mother every time she returned from work. He could - and would - empty the hearth and sweep the floors. What would be minor efforts for any other would rebound upon him within hours, though. He would be left bedridden with exhaustion as payment for his attempts, often spending a day recovering from even an hour of such labor. He fought it with each waking breath. He railed against drowning in his prison of imposed indolence. I remember it clearly. I adore his fight. I resent his need to fight.

He could always whistle and sing. Quietly, and only songs that had become rote to him. Creating and writing anew would sap his strength as surely as any other task. I recall always waiting until I could hear his voice before bothering him on any particular day. I do not think he would have minded being awoken, in retrospect, but I had always feared that each hour of sleep I stole from him would be another hour I'd be without him later.

I may have been right, but it is not worth dwelling upon. He has gone to whichever God - if any - would manage him in the terrible times around his passing. My rightness has no bearing on the matter.

If the Coast Plague was hard on my Father, then it must have been so on my Mother. Her hands were cracked by lye from extra hours as a laundress, and her neck was often burnt from hours laboring in the open. In contrast to my father, she always presented herself as every other woman in the Row. I'm not sure if I realized that this was a lie until I was a young man, and may have resented her absence until such a time. I have come to know ingratitude in my few years, but I cannot imagine it at such a scale from those that I love without threatening tears. If ignorance can make a boy terrible, then I was a terrible boy. Perhaps I am a terrible man as a result. How can I know if my ignorance wounds? She could have saved herself so much pain by simply not forcing herself to appear so brave. I am even uncertain if presenting a brave face is the bravery of standing tall or the cowardice of wearing a mask. Perhaps it depends on the audience? I am slow to label her as either. Perhaps she thought she was protecting me, or inspiring me. I only thought she was hiding from me. Perhaps we were both ignorant.

We still talk. We are fond of each other. We resent those times.

In short, until I was perhaps fourteen years old I was largely unsupervised. I had only passing instruction from a father often too tired to speak, and from a mother too busy earning our lease. As many such children, I found trouble. Luckily, each rare word that my mother and father could spare for me was precious gospel.

At a young age, I took up cleaning fish in Arbas so that I could have my own fandars for spending. I was not a good employee at ten years old, I fear. Those specific hours of my life bear no significance to the rest of this tale save to mention that I had coin of my own and that I recognize now how much of an open sore I was on any unwise enough to employ me. I took to the streets and taverns with my coin in all hours where my father was resting - many as they were. It was there that I found myself, unaware at the time of how the gospel I'd received had shaped me.

I loved the joy of the Row. I hated the rest. If I had known how to handle pity, perhaps I would have pitied it instead.

It was around this time that the Row saw a rare era of bolstering. We thought it was a time of Plenty, but we wouldn't have recognized Plenty if we had seen it. Nor could I have known that it was because Baldur's Gate and Waterdeep had gone to war.