ALL THE DAYS TO COME
The vessel returned to port and off stepped Zael and Yuna Castomir, newly-wed.
And to Zael at that very moment came a pleasant clarity—incomplete, as he would later come to know, but nevertheless the first light of the new days of his life. He knew quietly, blissfully, and with great joy that this truly,
truly, was what he wanted. Hardly had he given much sound thought to it, what his life ought to be, in those early years of the Academy. And how could he? How could any of his fellows—
Edric or Sable or Gaage or Sieg or Dorian or Vance or Alistair or
Everleigh or
Henk or Chasmine or
Ralene or Noel? They were all of them just trying to survive. No sense in worrying about a future that damn well might not come. Ain't nobody had any guarantee of getting through Graduation.
But then came the Revolution, and, hell, it did bring some change alright. Change on a
personal level if nothing else. Zael didn't take it much seriously at first—neither did anybody. He didn't know exactly when it happened, but he did, at some point, start entertaining ideas of the future, notions of what he wanted out of life. Still they seemed like a dream, some kind of fantasy, fun in that abstract way and then gone. What was more real, undeniably real, was what lay right in front of him: the brothel trips; the disaster at Vel Janix; getting drunk in Vel Yuna. Still he lived for the moment. Even what he had with Sieglilly was just something in the moment, casual, there one minute and gone the next; still they had their friendship then, yeah, and still to this day her death at his own hands hurt, and hurt badly, but their fling by the stream on that one mission? There one minute and gone the next.
Everleigh marked the beginning of something different. What started as a new friendship in the wake of the Revolution, with a shared love of humor and playfulness and grinning disdain of their circumstances, gradually became more than just that, distinct from just that. Things got deep in Arnim, with what they endured together, and how they overcame together, and Zael thought that neither of them left that place as quite the same man or woman, and certainly, he knew, they left closer to one another than they had come. Then came a quiet morning, a beautiful sunrise, and they got to talking: some of it about the future, and some of it about
maybe missin somethin, somethin out there, somethin really good, just waitin for him to find it. He didn't know what he was talking about at the time, even if he could feel it in his chest. The Bloody Graduation came, and Zael landed himself in the infirmary (better than the grave), and Ever came to visit him, and after some close talk he told her,
"Let's do somethin we're not supposed to do." And he kissed her, and she him, and Zael thought to himself, could this be something
special? He'd up to that point in his life never known of nor conceived of such a thing; his father and mother were certainly no bellwethers of it.
But they would part, he and Everleigh, as it would come to be that both of them walked paths splitting away from each other, Zael from
Vel Anir and Ever staying in it. For all that was said, for all that was shared, they parted. Maybe they each believed that their roads would circle around, and again they would meet, but Vel Anir hated such humanity, and from that moment on from the Blackwood, when and where they last met, Zael and Everleigh would be without each other—and never again would Zael call another woman "darlin", not even Yuna.
He wished Ever well from afar, as that was all he could do. Maybe news reached her of his "death" at Vel Kastula, or his other "death" at Stenn's Last Battle, and maybe she believed those stories and maybe she did not. Nothing more could be done for it, save but what Zael had done, keeping Ever now in his heart as he did also with Sieg.
What came after Ever and after his departure from loyalty to Vel Anir was, Zael recognized fully now to his chagrin, a great misguided tragedy, orchestrated by the cunning wiles of Armeus Kimble. Yeah, Zael knew he played fully into Kimble's design, because Kimble's design gave him all the rope he would need to do so. Zael turned Rogue and joined with Gilram's lot because he thought he
could do something about the slavery of the
Dreadlords; and, more so, he did it because he thought he wanted it. He thought it was to be the fight of his life, and, charmingly, he thought that certainly there would come an end, a victory, of course, and no less, and that all the Dreadlords would be free of the state's chains, free to choose what they wanted too, to be good soldiers or whatever else they desired.
Heh. A dream like those dreams he'd have before the Revolution. Fantasy.
Would he like to see it? Sure. Was it
what he wanted in life, enough to dedicate his life to it? No, and thank Kress for his trip to
Elbion, for meeting up with Yuna again, to help him finally see that. Plenty happened when they reconnected in Elbion, plenty all up until this very moment now, stepping off that Fairweather vessel, newly-wed, and Zael had it all in mind, and elsewhere is that story told. But in growing close to Yuna, and coming to love Yuna, and allowing that love to blossom and to hold it and to let no path nor perceived path allow neglect of it, finally Zael would come to know what he wanted, what he always wanted, even if he never quite knew it openly but just tacitly like a faint but firm melody just behind his everpresent heartbeat.
He wanted a family.
* * * * *
That clarity, incomplete upon the return to port, would be fulfilled in the months to come, and fulfilled to sudden and powerful revelation.
Zael attended to his new and burgeoning life in Elbion, his vocations already fostered in those days before his marriage; the laws of Elbion held certain requirements for home ownership (though the
price was certainly more of a hurdle), yet Zael endeavored with the secret intention of buying a home for Yuna and him. They had plenty of room in the Fairweather estate, and even were they encouraged by Yuna's family and extended family to stay in the household, but Zael wished for home ownership nonetheless. Yuna would keep to her studies at the College, even if she wasn't so keen on scholarly (
yuck!) pursuits, or adventuring, or anything, really, that a more typical magic-gifted man or woman might pursue. She schemed, rather, of potentially owning the
One-Legged Flamingo, and how she might change or add to it, and, furthermore, how she might
aggressively push to own other taverns in Elbion and establish a little empire all her own. And to aid in both of their pursuits, she and Zael (particularly Yuna) agreed that they ought to be careful with their lovemaking, so as not to have children just quite yet—at least until Yuna finished her training at the College. That would give them a few years to get settled! And then they could entertain the idea.
But, though they were careful, such plans are never perfect.
Yuna in a pale fright came to Zael one day, this in the privacy of their room at the Fairweather estate, and she said in barely a whisper,
"Zael...I know for certain. I'm pregnant."
Immediately came that sudden and powerful clarity, that completeness, that revelation, and immediately Zael knew what he had to do. He smiled and he took Yuna into his arm and he said to her calmly, lovingly,
"That's alright...we're gonna raise him together. You and me."
Then and there did Zael in one stroke undo the evil his own father had done to him. Conceived in accident, his father never accepted him, never loved him, and looked to his abduction and enrollment into the Academy as the best thing which could have happened, the remedy to his affair-born mistake. Zael recognized at once that the evil of his father, however small, lay hidden in his heart, as all evils so perpetrated hid, and that he could have done to his own child what his father had done to him, cast the child off, scorn the child, call the child an accident, unloved and unwanted, and begrudgingly await the day when he at last could be rid of it.
But Zael smote that evil. He became the man his father never was, nor ever could be.
And indeed his premonition was true, this feeling he had confidently told
Kristen Pirian once and again said to Yuna upon her announcement. Yuna bore Zael a son, and they named him Rykin, after a boisterous and bold patriarch of the Fairweather family who lived nigh on two centuries ago.
Zael upon coming into the room after the midwife left—Yuna watching him there, exhausted but joyful, on the bed—would lift the swaddled baby boy up in his arm and he would take in the first look of the face of his son, newcome into the world, carrying his name of Castomir, the blood of his blood.
And he smiled the brightest of all his smiles.
