Pylemoor - The Fault Lies with Me
- Thread starter Yavamaya
- Start date
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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.
JOY
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.
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MITHRAL
Dearest and most hypothetical future reader, I regret to inform you that I must break the chronology of my own writings. Lacewhisper has bestowed upon me a fear that any writings I may put forward regarding myself and Lernos would be met with ridicule. While our times together were ridiculous in many regards, they were not worthy of ridicule. Let it be sufficient to say that from joy springs love, and that those nearly ten years of our lives - for they were ours and not mine - must be written of when I am more brave. He deserves that much.
Instead, we will move well past the Time of Troubles, and into the war proper. I had no desire for, nor need of news from the outside world at this point - ruined as I was with Lernos' departure from my life - and so I found myself shocked by what would come to be known as the Mithral Crash. We, the Row, had little to no concept of the crash itself though we certainly felt the effects of the rise before the fall. Everyday goods became cheaper than ore. Fandars were as Danter, and every merchant sought to offload their goods as quickly as possible. Some, to avoid spoilage. Some, to move on as quickly as possible before the borders closed entirely.
We reveled. Beer and soft bread, white as seafoam. Cheeses and game. Wheat, rye, barley, and corn pudding. Butter and cream. I remember it well.
As one of the few not wanting for coin among the destitute, I bought all that I could. I paid my alms to the Ilmateri with ease with the abundance of victuals that I could afford. The money would not last, but I was ready to run myself into the streets. I told myself it was to help the poor, but with the benefit of hindsight I can see that I merely thought I deserved to be on the streets more than the other mangled souls around me. I am glad that the wretch that I was self-destructed in that way, lifting people up before collapsing, if it had to be done.
Then, all at once, the crash. The goods ran dry or spoiled. Merchants stranded among refugees, with the count of each surging with every day. Feast became famine within three days. Within a tenday, desperation set in. Desperation like I had never seen. It drove the people of the row - good and bad - into the gutters, and all started looking for ways out. Opportunists rose like the tide, offering chances and deals and security for a price. That price was the abandonment of morality, sense, loyalty, and family.
It is among my greatest shames to admit that I took such a chance.