At length, Treacle-Eyes and I were hiding in a smallish parlor, situated a quarter-mile away from anyplace of note. She sprawled in a blue leather armchair. I perched on the back of a wickery thing. We stared at each other.
Treacle-Eyes:“What’s Lithia to you?”
Me:“She’s my not-quite-adopted daughter, I should say. I have been her guardian in practice for most of her life. Her actual parents were friends of mine — by some definition — but proved unable to take care of her very well. So I have been doing.”
Treacle-Eyes:“That’s ridiculous… that’s impossible!”
Me:“Most of my life is ridiculous and impossible. Why is Lithia more so than anything else?”
Treacle-Eyes:“She’s got cramps!”
Me:“She does, indeed, have cramps.” They are a side effect of her being a shifter hybrid.
Treacle-Eyes:“You are a wizard and enchanter and healer, with a pet nendrai.”
Me:“The other way around, actually, but close enough. And so…?”
Treacle-Eyes:“How come she still has cramps?”
Me:“Because they can’t be cured.”
Treacle-Eyes:“I find that hard to believe. Speaking as a temple brat, used to hearing wizards and priests talk about what they can and can’t do.”
Me:“Believe whatever you wish, but I have exhausted my craft on the problem, and she still has cramps.”
Treacle-Eyes:“I suppose you don’t think it’s a serious problem. Do you know how she suffers, though? Have you watched her, listened to her, held her when the cramps come?”
Me:“Actually, I have been doing that since the week she was born.” And having the most terrible fight with her mother that ever was, while I was holding her that week, in fact.
Treacle-Eyes:“And there’s nothing you can do?”
Me:“There’s nothing more I can do.” Which is not exactly true. I could swear seven years service to Kvarse. Except that leaves Vae unmanaged for seven years, which would be a Bad Thing indeed. I could also kill Lithia, on the grounds that she’ll surely have better luck in her next life. I may yet do that, if she asks me to, when her condition grows considerably worse.
Treacle-Eyes:“I suppose you think you’ve done enough for her?”
Me:“I continue to take care of her as well as I can manage to. Why does it somehow become the stowaway’s job to interrogate me about my treatment of Lithia?”
Treacle-Eyes:“She’s asked me to marry her.”
Me:“Well, congratulations!”
Really. Congratulations, Lithia, on the off chance you ever get to read this. I rather wish you had done better for yourself than a stowaway and fugitive, especially one who (a) doesn’t know about Lithia’s dark little secret, and (b) thus thinks Lithia is Orren, and (c) is traff, and (d) is sure to abandon Lithia more quickly than even the usual Orren marriage. A pity that (a-b) and (c-d) would sort of cancel each other out — if Lithia were willing to explain them to Treacle-Eyes. Of course, if Lithia explained her secret to Treacle-Eyes, Treacle-Eyes would likely find it as disgusting as it really is, and leave her even faster. But that is Lithia’s choice, not mine; she has chosen to hide behind illusions and stories of cramps, and I will not be the one to tell Treacle-Eyes.
One wonders, though, how well a shipful of people is going to keep Lithia’s secret from Treacle-Eyes.
One wonders how well Lithia is going to keep Lithia’s secret from Treacle-Eyes.
Treacle-Eyes:“Congratulations?”
Me:“Yes, actually. That’s what one traditionally says when ones not-quite-adopted daughter gets engaged. … Wait, you did say yes, didn’t you?”
Treacle-Eyes:“It’s more complicated than that. You’re not going to object to the marriage?”
Me:“Why would I do that? Well, aside from the fact that you’re a stowaway without any particularly good prospects, and also as good as engaged to a Cani boy too. You are still with Dorze, are you not? How does Dorze feel about this situation?”
Treacle-Eyes:“I am still with Dorze, now and always. And Lithia as well.”
Me:“Well, Orren commonly marry in twos or threes or fours, and Cani of course marry in packs of a dozen or so. However — speaking as one who has observed and pondered upon the subject of transaffection for several times as long as you have been alive — I know this for a fact: that a prime is either transaffectionate or cisaffectionate. Never both. In the end, you will either love Dorze and other Cani — and probably a Khtsoyis and a Gormoror in there for completeness — or else you will despise your hours and your escapades with Dorze, and love only Orren.”
Which is undeniably true: I had her there.
Or maybe it’s not undeniably true, since she denied it straightaway. It’s still true, I say.
[World note: Sythyry's opinion of the strictness of the transaffection / cisaffection division is held by a (noisy) minority of people in Vheshrame, and a (smaller and quieter) minority of people elsewhere in the World Tree. Most primes -- even most primes who care about the topic -- would not agree with zir. -bb]
Treacle-Eyes:“Well, I may be a novice at this, but that’s not what I’ve seen. The only person I know who actually likes all seven other species is Inconnu. And he pretends not to like Orren, but if he doesn’t have a secret crush on me, I shouldn’t be calling myself anything-Eyes.”
Me:“You have not been paying attention. Kantele has, in fact, collected the full set.” I leave aside certain ancient hints that Kantele has courted other Rassimel. The matter was settled in favor of transaffection decades ago, when she all-but-married Hithiat.
Treacle-Eyes:“Kantele doesn’t like me very much. She hasn’t discussed her personal life with me.”
Me:“Kantele is quite protective of me and of my crew. I find this an admirable quality, and seek to emulate it myself. In particular — despite your allegations of negligence! — I am quite protective of Lithia.“
Treacle-Eyes:“She is an adult in law and custom, and has been since her thirtieth birthday. Even if you had been her adoptive mother, you couldn’t forbid her to marry me now. Even if she is defying you and choosing a Member Of The Same Species.”
Me:“Rather the opposite. I’m glad to see her marry, even if she is marrying an Orren stowaway who hasn’t figured out her sexuality yet. I want a promise from you, and I want it quite badly. Indeed, you will have worse than Nangbang and La Hish on your tail if you break it.”
Treacle-Eyes:“Oh, do tell.”
Me:“Promise that you won’t leave Lithia for, let us say, twelve years.” I don’t expect Lithia to live past ten years, and the last three of those will be rather ugly, so twelve years gives some margin for error and/or for my medicine being more effective than is theoretically possible. “If she leaves you, I shan’t complain; I might even quietly applaud. But if you leave her, I shall be downright vengeful. Oh, and it counts as you leaving her if you make her miserable and drive her off.” I fixed her with my burningest stare, which I hope is quite burning indeed. (I don’t know actually. I simply can’t do it in a mirror, and nobody that I have tried to use it on has either caught fire or noted to me afterwards how very burning my stare was. But I shall give myself the benefit of the doubt, and say that it was indeed a most burning and incendiary of a stare.) “No matter what good or ill fortune befalls you.” In particular, the most ill fortune of a slow and horrible degenerative condition.
Treacle-Eyes:“Oh, is that all? I was expecting you to ask for something hard. Like, say, I’d go swimming with her once a month.”
Me:“Do you promise that?”
Treacle-Eyes:“Don’t be ridiculous! I promise seven times twelve years!” Sometimes — often — I admire Orren on the edge of wild rush. Sometimes — now — their extravagance is tiresome, and their impossible vows trebly tiresome.
I nodded morosely. Twelve years, or seven times twelve years, amounts to the same thing for Lithia.
Me:“Then I will help with the wedding as best I can. Oh, and come by Grinwipey tomorrow. You’ll be needing Strayway livery.”
Treacle-Eyes:“What? … Oh! Thank you!”
Me:“Whatever I feel about your crimes, and whatever troubles I am buying from La Hish and Nangbang for this — and whatever crumbs of truth there are to your nasty little allegations that started this conversation — I am going to take care of Lithia. And, if you’re her family now, that means taking care of you as well.”
We babbled unimportantly for a few minutes, and then Treacle-Eyes left, presumably to tell Lithia and Dorze. I slunk off to a different parlor a half a mile away, and built a big fire in the fireplace, and curled up in it. I was going to have to find a much better mood before I was ready to come out and cheerfully congratulate Lithia.
Category: 
| 
Subscribe to Sythyry
That went better than I expected! I could wish for a more clueful fiancée for Lithia, too. But she’ll get to be very happy for a little while, and that’s worth something.
Of course Doomed-Eyes’ oath isn’t really worth the paper it’s written on…
That doesn’t seem nearly as doomful as expected… although I fear the talk with Lithia is not going to go over as well as that talk did.
You should probably warn Lithia that she should tell *-eyes about her condition. *-eyes is annoying, but does deserve the chance for informed consent about what she’s getting into.
Well, you cleverly trapped Treacle-Eyes. Did you pause to give any thought at all as to how Lithia might feel about being in a marriage that endures only because her partner has promised to stay? When you’ve calmed down, the wise thing to do would be to release Treacle-Eyes from her promise, make sure she understands the facts of the matter, and then let the two of them decide how to proceed.
You know Sythyry. Sometimes you really are a complete asshole.
I want Treacle-Eyes to be less casual about this marriage than Orren are sometimes wont to be. Shall we say, less casual about it than Lithia’s father was, who decamped a month or two after the considerable effort required to produce Lithia, but well before she was actually born. Now, plenty of Orren do stay married for a whole decade at a time, or more than one, but there is a distinct tendency to give up at the first boring week or unsuccessful act of coitus, and I don’t want her to do that. If it’s obviously not working, presumably Lithia will be aware of the fact and have the sense to end it.
I certainly plan to tell her. I don’t expect any better luck than the last time I did.
And how, precisely, do you respond when your protection-needy daughter’s lover starts by unjustly upbraiding you about your treatment of her, and then discusses the upcoming nuptials?
And about the first: Lithia is a blot of chaos in a generally orderly world, a chimera alive in defiance of the laws of gods and mortals. It would have been better if she had never been born, or rather, if she had been conceived and born in the ordinary way (like Feralan was, say). I love her as if she was my own daughter, and I do my best to see that no harm and every available good comes to her, but I will not pretend that she is well-made.
Which is not very different from many of my other friends: Dustweed and Hops most obviously, Vae upon whom a goddess’s favor is more troublesome than her wrath would be. And, in lesser degree, all the wrongfolk. I do not exclude myself.
Hmm. Could you have *Vae* swear seven years’ service to Kvarse too? Then you wouldn’t be leaving her unattended.
For one, I’d respond by thinking about what’s best for her, rather than using her to punish someone who wounded my ego.
And I question how much you can really love something you find disgusting. Perhaps the reason Treacle-eye’s accusations got you so upset that you haven’t been taking very good care of her lately.
I find her theologically disgusting. As I am not a god, nor even a particularly devout prime, that doesn’t have much to do with me.
And please explain how encouraging her chosen spouse to stay with her for the rest of her life is not best for her.
You feel the spouse is a bad match, particularly since he doesn’t know what he’s getting into. Yet you’re doing nothing about either of those issues, and in fact adding the whole ‘you better stay with her or else’ thing ontop in case there’s not sources of trouble in the relationship.
Vae, swearing to be helpful for seven solid years?
Isn’t there enough doom around already?
Oh, dear. It still seems that Lithia hasn’t had that conversation, doesn’t it…
If it were only to be a quick liaison, I wouldn’t begrudge her her happiness. But a decade or more(if, woefully, not much more) is a long time to be living a lie… and that’s assuming the truth doesn’t come out at some point.
And if the truth does come out… *-eyes will have made a pledge under false pretenses on someone else’s part. That seems like a recipe for misery however it turns out.
Gender check; Treacle-Eyes is just as female as Lithia herself.
That said… extracting a pledge from her when she’s not aware of the situation in full is not exactly an honorable deed.
And how is Lithia going to feel when she finds out about this? Because inevitably she will. It won’t matter then whether Treacle-Eyes stays with her from love or not. She’ll never be sure she’s really loved, with a threat like that hanging over Treacle-Eyes.
And while Treacle-Eyes is admittedly impertinent, and perhaps irresponsible, she *did* come and upbraid a major sorcerer for Lithia’s sake. Her upbringing is such that she’s better able than most to appreciate the risks in that. Whether or not she ever does anything else for Lithia, she did that for her. She loves her right now.
Is it really that much of a loss if they have a good time together for a year or two, then break up? There’ll be no children, and that’s one or two happy years that they’d not have had otherwise.
Take Treacle-Eyes to task for her rudeness if you like, and make it plain that if she’s to be your daughter in law you expect better conduct of her, but don’t have her enter into a marriage with threats hanging over her. And above all make sure she knows about Lithia before she decides to marry her.
She’s Orren, not Gormoror. She’s not going to be taking her vows all that seriously anyhow.
Well, no, but I’m not talking about honor in the Gormoror ‘word of honor’ sense either; it’s honesty, not glory, that’s at issue. No, you have no particular obligation to be nice to someone who stowed away on your skyboat and may have earned you long-lasting enmity of an influential priest in doing so; but if your almost-daughter has taken a shine to her(not that she’s handling it in the best way herself), underhanded dealings still strike me as a bad idea all around.
In your case, but first and foremost in Lithia’s. As I said elsewhere… if all she wanted was a quick liaison, that’d be one thing. But marriage, with that sort of secret?
One doesn’t need personal experience in the matter to sense the doom approaching.
That said, devaluing the vow before giving her a chance to prove it is unbecoming. Orren may enter marriages lightly, and in general drift from one interest to another – but have you never, ever known an Orren with a sense of dedication for what they truly thought important?
You need to say something along the lines of “*-eyes has to right to know the truth. If you’re not comfortable enough with her to tell her the truth, then you’re not ready to be getting married to her. And in any case, if you don’t tell her before the marriage then I will.”
And she’ll probably hate you for it for a while, but you’re supposed to be her guardian, not her friend, and sometimes that’s the breaks.
So you’re threatening to do horrible things if she breaks an oath you don’t think she’s capable of keeping?
That’s why you’re being a complete asshole. If you want to do horrible things to *-eyes, then do it. But stop trying to rationalize it.
This is very true. Honestly, Lithia has more blame in this than Treacle-Eyes.
Xolo is right – Treacle-Eyes is being impertinent, but she’s also being bold, and doing what she sees as standing up for a loved one. It rather seems that your good disposition toward Lithia, and ill toward Treacle-Eyes, is blinding you to the fact that Treacle-Eyes is behaving in an upstanding manner and Lithia is not. And as a reward, you’ve slapped an ultimatum on her.
One which, if she so much as casually mentions it to Lithia, is going to taint the whole relationship with doubt. It may be that Lithia is desperate enough for a period of happiness that she doesn’t care – but that ought to be her decision all around.
Treacle-Eyes is not Lithia’s father, nor has any relationship to him been revealed aside from them both being Orren. Taking her to task for his sins makes even less sense than doing so to Lithia would. (Not that plenty of people don’t do that already – that’s beside the point.)
Oaths made under misinformation rarely are.
She may be clueless, but Treacle-Eyes is showing loyalty to Lithia that, in this instance, Lithia has in no way earned. Lithia has, after all, gone to considerable lengths to *keep* Treacle-Eyes clueless.
Eh, if *-Eyes had actually taken your threats or her oath seriously, I’d think all of this upbraiding were justified, but since she didn’t that aspect doesn’t seem to be much to worry about.
Lots of other aspects, sure. Stormy Dragon might even be right, that it would be better for you to threaten Lithia that you’d tell *-Eyes yourself if Lithia doesn’t. And carry through.
Nonsense. The whole point of extracting an oath is so that someone will stick to an agreement in the face of new information.
And Sythyry went about as far as zie could to warn her that there was something she didn’t know without actually going out and telling her. “No matter what good or ill fortune befalls you” is a pretty huge glaring hint.
We see it as a hint because we know what’s going on.
Consider that a common marriage vow here includes the phrases “in sickness and in health” … “til death do you part”. It’s supposed to indicate the severity of the vow. People would not, for instance, read it as the one they’re making the promise to having a hidden cancer or other terminal disease that they’ve neglected to mention.
Such an oath is supposed to ensure that the vow is not entered into lightly, not to be used as a trap so the other party can subsequently spring all the details they knew full well about at the time the vow was made, but deliberately concealed.
Misinformation is a valid reason for voiding contracts, and that includes lack of disclosure. If Lithia had subsequently developed a debilitating and lethal condition(or a hidden one had come to light), that would be one thing – but this is something she knows full well is there and knows will kill her young, and is passing off as mere ‘cramps’. Extracting a vow from Treacle-Eyes under these circumstances is complicity in that – and has been elsewhere stated, Treacle-Eyes isn’t Gormoror, that her word of honor should be binding no matter how badly she was tricked.
‘In sickness and in health’ is meant to cover terminal illness and hidden cancer and everything like that. Anyone who’d abandon their marriage because their spouse got sick is a jerk. I know friends who’ve had personal experience along those lines!
And Doomed-Eyes knows something’s wrong with Lithia — she asked Sythyry about it. Sythyry told her that it’s so bad that there’s nothing more that zie can do about it. A health related issue popping up should *not* be a surprise to her.
Not to mention that contracts aren’t oaths, or vice versa. ‘Sign this contract’ means ‘I don’t trust your current intentions and want legal recourse if you screw me’. ‘Swear this oath’ means ‘I want you bound to this no matter what happens’.
If she was honorable at all, her oath would bind her. She’s not, though — she’s a stowaway and helped Dorze break his contract.
As you seem determined to make *-Eyes the sole guilty party, there is nothing more to be said.
She’s not guilty of anything yet, with respect to Lithia at least.
Except this particular oath is an insurance contract, which are generally considered uberrima fides. By withholding material information, Sythyry has voided the oath.
You’re wrong. The oath is actually a wombat, and everyone knows wombats automatically fall under the jurisdiction of Caveat Reptile. Since she failed to choke Sythyry to death, she’s actually already forfeited her immortal soul.
[Bard raises its head, since it's the translator here. --bb]
I think what Terrycloth is saying is, terrestrial contract law is not necessarily applicable in Eigrach.
Well, since neither of you are actually from Eigrach, I don’t thing they’re going to enforce the oath either.
I don’t expect anyone will enforce the oath! Have you ever seen me pursue someone who has wronged me and take a proper wizardly revenge?
Yes, but just because you’re capable of taking revenge doesn’t mean it’s right of you to do so. And as I said earlier, if all this is about is your desire to get *-eyes, just do it and stop with all the pretense about oaths and doing this for Lithia’s sake. This is entirely about you.
I had a belated thought on this matter. Not that I expect it will be taken to heart, and I may have even brought it up elsewhere(though I can’t recall doing so in quite this manner), but…
On our world, a few thousand years ago, there were philosophers who felt that pure thought could arrive at all truths. They were certain that with their minds alone they could deduce everything there was to know about the universe around them. They were, some of them, quite persuasive; people heeded their words and accepted them as fact, since learned men had said so.
I’m not going to go into the details of the physics, for worry that things don’t behave the same way between our universe and the World Tree; such details would only confuse the issue.
But when, much later, people actually sought to test this ancient wisdom – to get past the blockade of “someone hundreds of years ago said so” and learn if they had said right – they were wrong.
Even observational science can go awry. Biologists here spent a while studying the behaviours of animals in the wild. Whenever a pair would mate, even if they were thought to be both male, the assumption would be made that the observation of their gender had been in error; that one was male and the other female, and maybe the female had erroneously developed male coloration or what-have-you. But on closer examination, with more reliable methods of telling the animals apart, even that was overturned.
Sythyry, no amount of pondering can ever be sure to arrive at the facts of the world – and that assumes you are thinking with an open mind to begin with. Your first exposure to the matter, way back when – a conversation you wrote in your own journal, with Dustweed, 27 Thory 4261 – suggested that you might actually be into other Zi Ri as well, if you met one who would be suitable as a paramour. But since you started meeting with other traff deliberately, you haven’t been giving the matter thought, not in anything you’ve noted down – you’ve been telling yourself it’s all one or all the other.
Kantele is closer to the mark too – she referred to the “popular” (read:loudly-proclaimed) notion of traff as being attracted to all and only the other prime species as mythical. Could it happen? Possibly – but that doesn’t make it the norm.
You are faced, here, with a counter-example, and are telling yourself that it can’t possibly be that.
There’s a word for that here, and it’s not a very nice word. There are a few. About the kindest is “denial”. But “denial” is really a specific form of “delusion”.
*-eyes and Lithia are not thinking clearly on this matter. You do neither of them favours with your own opacity of thought.
Consider, at least for a time, the notion that the popular truth is wrong. It has happened before, and it will doubtless happen again.
After all, the popular notion in Eigrach is that you were exiled from Vheshrame and from Ketheria, at best semi-voluntarily, at worst in utter disgrace.
Examine your thoughts. You’re declaring something as invariable truth because it’s been said so. You’re applying it to yourself, not because of experience, but, again, because it’s been said so. If ever another Zi Ri *does* make a pass at you, it’d be a shame to push zir away by habit of thought – and a habit that’s been a century and more in establishing itself can do strange things to the mind and body, and override more natural inclinations.
For another one: Everyone knows Sleeth are fickle, self-serving, cruel half-monsters. But even our treatise includes mention of Sleeth who have stuck to their few, precious friends to the bitter end, when even Cani would scatter(if only to try to regroup and try another way).
You cannot prove, by thought alone, that a thing does not happen. The only way you can “prove” it is by deeming counterexamples irrelevant – just as you are doing here. And that is not proof.