📖 Stories

Something happened at dinner last week that I have been thinking about ever since.

Lord Varenthis — Father's cousin, the one who visits twice a year and stays too long and has opinions about everything — looked at Lothwyn and then at me across the table and said to Father, quite casually, as though we were not sitting right there: "Well. One of them will make a fine head of house someday."

Just one.

Father said something smooth and redirecting, the way he does, and the conversation moved on. I ate my soup. I looked at my soup, actually. I was very focused on my soup.

Afterward, Lothwyn found me in the garden and sat down next to me in the way she has, which is to say: without warning and immediately too close. She said: "He means you, you know."

I said I didn't know what she was talking about.

She said: "Yes you do."

Which was fair.

I told her I didn't want it to be like that. I told her it didn't have to be like that between us. She looked at me for a moment the way she sometimes does — serious, underneath all the noise — and then she said: "Aereth. I am going to be a great warrior. I am going to be the best blade in Quel'Thalas. And you are going to run the house and know everything about everyone and be terrifying and correct about all of it. This is fine. This is, actually, the perfect arrangement."

Then she stole a flower from the garden, put it in my hair without asking, and went to bother the groundskeeper about something.

I have been thinking about this ever since.

I don't know if she meant it, or if she said it to make me feel better. I suspect, with Lothwyn, these are often the same thing.

The flower was a good choice.

— Aevynareth

I have been given a journal.

It is the most beautiful object I have ever been allowed to own. Dark green leather with the Dawnscorn sigil pressed into the cover, and the paper inside is thick and smells like the library. Mother gave it to me last week and said only that I should write in it, which I have been trying to do ever since.

I have been sitting with it for three days trying to think of something worthy to write first.

Lothwyn filled the first six pages of hers with drawings of cats. I do not think she understood the assignment. I am choosing not to tell her this because she seemed very pleased with the cats.

I know, roughly, what I am supposed to want. I am a Dawnscorn, and Dawnscorns have always been present — at the right events, in the right rooms, knowing the right people, remembering everything. Father is like that. He knows everyone. He notices things. When we go to functions and I am bored or confused he always seems to know exactly what is happening and why, and somehow also exactly what will happen next. I find this remarkable and slightly alarming. I want to be like that. I want to understand things the way he does — not just the surface of them, but all the way down.

I also want to learn to do the embroidery properly. Mother says my stitching is inconsistent. I am... working on it.

The magnolias are blooming in the courtyard. Lothwyn has already climbed two of them.

I am going to write in this journal every season, or more if things happen. I am going to pay attention.

I think that is a worthy enough first page.

— Aevynareth