Яikyn

I don’t miss the derisive change that takes my father as I mention my lessons – though I’m not entirely sure why it is he finds the idea of momma ushering me from one task to another so worthy of mockery. If I didn’t have an adequately sized ego already and a fine bit of intelligence for a boy so young, I might have worried that he was making fun of me rather than my crazy dam – but clever as I was, I had not missed similar grimaces or gestures from the other adults when mother was brought up in her absence. While she was feared and perhaps even respected by most of those she lived with, they openly mocked her behind her back, which is something I think she can only blame herself for. It’s hard to like a woman with two faces and a bladed tongue, even if she is good at her job.

I watch the face of my sire as he thinks thoughts I cannot touch, left only to the comfort that it is none of my business, anyway. His smile and laughter are something I soak up as his reticence fades and returns him to reality, my words on my newly discovered Uncle amusing in ways that bypass my young man. What dad says in reply to my story is so typically adult talk that I almost frown but manage to maintain my smile, youthful face bobbing in understanding along with the swishing of my tail behind me, still enthralled with the conversation despite the fact that I was, yet again, being talked to like a child.

I am a child.

It doesn’t make it any less annoying.

"Yes sir," I say, my features bright despite the horrid way such trained submission makes me feel, as if a rancorous wound festers somewhere in my chest and drives me to start biting the nearest body in my path, learning well the masks that all great and wise rulers wore (no matter that I wouldn’t touch momma’s job with a nine hundred foot stick for all the magic in the world), "he didn’t seem to care for momma much." I admit this with curious wonder writ on my expression as I guide the conversation away from my bitterness at being young, not distrust or dislike of the man called Torleik for feeling as he did. I don’t really like her and she’s my mother – still, I can’t help but bring it up, wondering if dad could provide more insight into why it is everyone followed a woman they couldn’t stand, as he had the day with the dark girl momma told me was my other adopted sister from before I had been born. I hadn’t seen her since the first hours of my life, her figure a black one with white eyes that burned and glowed with anger – and I admit silently to myself now that I am glad we haven’t crossed each other’s paths again if that is what I’ll have to look forward to.

Glancing down at my hooves momentarily before returning my golden gaze to my sire, I smile fleetingly, almost in apology for broaching such a subject that would surely make mother’s voice rise to a shriek and her teeth gnash viciously in my direction for discussing such improper and treacherous things. "Actually… most of them seem to dislike her. The tall old man with the red coat openly mocks her though they pretend it is a game and Uncle seemed to think she was…oh, not so great as she acts she is," I’m not sure why it scalds me so to think that others don’t appreciate my mother in the same ways that I don’t, but it does, maybe because it’s a reflection on me somehow or because I feel within my young heart of hearts that I am the only one allowed to condemn her for the wretched monster of a woman she could be, "why do they follow her still, if they do not trust her or admire her?" The core of my inquiries is revealed last, the rambling thoughts of my smart mind unable to pinpoint the question I truly wanted to ask until I’d spewed out all the facts that would lead to it.

What father says next makes me nearly die of smiles, my face bright and enthusiastic at the mention of having a rule free day in the afternoon sun with the tall and strong stallion. The trouble we could cause together! My grin is vivacious and lively and dances on my face as my cloven hooves tramp beneath me in giddy exuberance, my mind clinking away at the possibilities of what we could do that involved breaking all of momma’s stupid rules.

Somehow, I don’t think dad will agree to charging into the Edge and setting fire to the trees as we went without the support of an army to catch the sure backlash from such actions. And so I am left with smaller plots, ones that draw my gleeful smile into a ponderous frown as I realize that there is nothing really to do on this stupid mountain. The sun flashes a bright light across the standing Sentinel as the clouds shift overhead and fill my mind with an idea.

"Can you show me how you make the metal live?" I ask, my voice boyish in its wonder at the magic that the adults around me seemed to bend and utilize with the grace and skill of Gods, even more leant to my tones by my hour playing with Kahlua’s metal scorpion and a life begun beneath the shadow of the massive war constructs on the border, "I can help carry some supplies from the storage cavern." Bolstering my chest outward in a show of my strength, my minuscule sinew bulges in an almost laughable way that is lost on my young, male bravado. In truth, I will be most useless in lugging the heavy stuff such a distance, but I can pretend for the time that I am very much capable of a man’s work and am further driven by the presence of my father to impress him with my prowess.

I felt no such urge to appease my mother, to fill her heart with pride; I did what I did to keep her happy with me and not flinging lightning bolts at my hide as she did with the hornless slaves she kept me as far away from as she could.

Another idea of something to do – but I brush it aside for the most exciting thought of learning how father utilized his great gift from the God of Time, not to mention the splendid story it will make for Aithniel when we next get a chance to play.

in every heart a hole