Private Tales End This Way

[Raea Stormcrow]

"Didn't plan to," she replied. There was only the barest trace of forced joviality to it. She had, well and truly, long ago come to grips with her situation. Some days the sting was more noticeable than others, but there was no doubt in her mind of the final destination and its proximity.

"Don't hope for the strength to do it, to repay this debt," she said after a moment. She closed her eyes, and reveled in the blissful warmth of the sun. She could enjoy this moment forever, excepting that this was not how to world worked. "Just do it. Leave no option for failure."

Simple enough. It was how she had lived her life for several years. Stubborn willpower was enough to achieve many goals, as she'd discovered, and whatever disadvantages there were could scarcely compete with the burning desire to achieve a goal. Given her circumstance, her desire to leave something behind...it made it only that much more important.

"You keep saying you owe a debt...," she led, eyes still closed.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Don't hope for the strength to do it, to repay this debt. Just do it. Leave no option for failure.

"Well said." For a good many years he needed advice such as this. For a good many years he had simply shirked his responsibility to Dornoch and indulged in a life of true freedom: living off of the land, roaming, a solitary figure upon the paths less (or never) traveled on Arethil.

And then, finally, he had changed his ways.

You keep saying you owe a debt...

She wasn't looking, but Elliot regarded her with a long and scrutinizing gaze. He had been purposefully opaque about it, as he often was. Even unnecessarily so at times. Some of the companies in which he worked had their fair share of criminals—thieves and heretics and killers-on-the-run. A few of the men in those companies, ones who had actually spent some time in or around the lands of the Erdeniin, even figured out who he was after putting everything together. Not that it was overly difficult. He didn't use a false name in his mercenary work, and how many elves were there on Arethil with a distinctly human name?

He decided to lean into it. Slowly. The caliber of Raea's character had earned her that much, at least.

"I do."

And then:

"Have you ever been to Dornoch, Raea?"

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

She shook her head slowly. "Until some few weeks ago, never have I been outside of Alliria," she said. "I've heard of it. A strange place with strange ideas," she added.

A nation where women reigned supreme, and men were treated as lesser citizens at the best, and as second class citizens at the worst. She could not understand what would drive a nation to such a thing. Where was the motive for it? Were not men and women equally capable of earning a profit? Or was it the bias of the daughter of a merchant in a city run by merchants that made her feel such? There were too many questions to consider in regards that that not-quite so distant place.

"Our family had little trade with them. Fal'addas and Elbion were far more profitable for our ventures," she said. Until now, her merchantile past had not really reared itself. She was a coin-counter, whether she liked it or not. The fact that she took up a blade and a life of adventure had more to do with a life in its waning days than it did with anything else.

"Are you from there?" She was almost certain that he was even before she asked. There was something in the way he had said the name of that city, some bitter twist of the word that hinted at pain, loss, and worse.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Until some few weeks ago, never have I been outside of Alliria.

Elliot himself had been much the same way. His childhood, his adolescence, some of his young adult life, all of it was spent within the confines of Dornoch. He did not leave until after Athena had died. Until the Accusation was leveled upon him.

Are you from there?

"Yes. I am." He smiled thinly. "Strange is not the precise word I would use to describe it."

He leaned his head up and back and rested it against the trunk of the tree.

"Suffocating," he said, borrowing the very word Raea herself had used to describe her own condition, how everyone around her treated her differently. And then he settled with satisfaction upon the word, saying, "Yes. That's an apt way to put it."

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

She nodded, not needing more than that to understand. There was an understanding of the difference in class, but some things could be found no matter the class involved. Her suffering was not equal, simply different.

"Any place that sets store by being man or woman is a strange place," Raea replied, an odd tone to her voice. "I am not...placed well to understand what it would be like. I certainly have not lived in a place like that and, well..." I am not poor, either. It would have been rude to say it.

She shook her head, enjoying the sun on her skin. "What was it really like? What kind of place is it really, in the underbelly where the powers that be hold little sway, and do not wish to world outside to look in?"

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Elliot caught her meaning well enough. He couldn't say what it was like precisely for the men of Dornoch who legitimately had higher stations on account of their wives or their mothers. Thanks to Karaliene, he knew only what it was like to be used by such women of high station. In that way he had only a fleeting glimpse of life in high towers, shuttled in secret as he had been.

"You aren't a person," Elliot said, after arranging his thoughts. "Your agency is taken from you, and you are left a demeaned and diminished creature in the eyes of the very people who have made you so. To ask for dignity is a crime, and to demand it is to be labelled a villain."

He drew in a breath through his nose. Smiled.

"What greater honor is there than to be labelled as such by men and women who are abhorrent? Few. Very few."

Raea Stormcrow

 

[Raea Stormcrow]

"There are some that would say the same of me," she said in a quiet voice. "The evil you speak of is not Dornoch's sin alone. There are those who would point to the wealthy elites of Alliria and cry out against us for the very same crime..."

She straightened, and started walking again. Slow, measured, careful of her weakened body in a way that bespoke the familiarity with the state. "They would not be wrong," she said after a moment. She could see the poor and the downtrodden, their fingers stabbing at her family and those like her, accusation of wrongdoing on their spittle-flecked lips.

An issue of extremes. A country run by women was not a thing to be loathed or hated, but taken to the extreme of dehumanizing men was. Earning vast sums of coin was not a crime, either, but ignoring the plight of those without could be. Treating them like they were somehow less for it, though, was.

"Not all wealth is evil. Not all who rule that country are, either, nor are all its citizens. Still...there is much and more that need be done. To right the wrong, to steer the great ship of the nation away from shoal and shore..."

She shook her head. "And that is your goal?"

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Raea spoke the truth. There were tyrannies of all kinds scattered throughout Arethil, some hidden behind pretentious veils, some outright. Freedom was the rare exception, often purchased solely by the individual and its possession fragile like glass. Otherwise, yes, tyranny abounded.

What made Dornoch (and by extension its mirror across Strait, Oban) different was that it was his fight.

Terms like "good" and "evil" were generally meaningless to Elliot, useful mostly as quick shorthand words to describe simple things in an otherwise complex world. To frame his thoughts in this light, what "good" the rulers of Dornoch and Oban did in their lives was outweighed by the "evil" they perpetrated or allowed to perpetuate. And so it fell to men like Elliot to redress the balance.

And that is your goal?

He nodded. "Yes. That is the debt I owe." He downplayed the scope of his progress thus far. "I am just one man, and the scope of the task is enormous. But it is all that I strive for to give the sons of Dornoch, maybe even the daughters of Oban if I am lucky, something I believe they deserve."

Elliot looked to her. Serious and steadfast.

"A chance."

Raea Stormcrow