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Every small, unselfish action nudges the world into a better path. An accumulation of small acts can change the world.
You’ve no right to leave people who love you in suspense about your fate.
Oh really, Fitzy Fitz?
The men who overheard my orders chivied me for being nursemaid to a half-wit. I grinned and replied that being abovedecks watching over one simpleton was far better than being trapped belowdecks with a troop of them.
Wity Fitzy! Ate em up
“You’re alive and safe, and I will not let any evil befall you. And you know that you can trust me. Because I love you.” At her words, my throat closed up and choked me. I wondered how she knew them to say. All my life, without knowing it, I had wanted someone to say those words to me, and have them be true and believable. It was like watching someone give to another the gift you had always longed for.
Oh my heart
“All my secrets seem to have spilled out on this island anyway. If I must live with those consequences, then I’d like to have something to show for it. For all I’ve lost here. I’d like to send Swift home to Molly with his father.”
Finally making good decisions!
He set his hand to my head as if he were a father blessing a child and said, “If I think of all that befell me as a linked chain that brings me finally to this place, with you kneeling by the water, alive and whole, then…then the price was not too high. To see you whole again heals me.” He was right. I was whole again.
I was going home.
Wooooohoooo finally!!!
“I think I could do with some brandy,” I said quietly. I reached for the decanter, but Patience slapped my hand away. “I’ll do it!” she exclaimed crossly. “Do you think you can pretend to be dead and vanish from my life for sixteen years and then walk in and pour yourself some of my good brandy? Insolence!”
Lady with much imPatience
“Nighteyes chose. He chose between the pack of wolves that would have accepted him and his bond with you.
I miss Nighteyes :(
“I promised Burrich I’d look after you and the young ones. I promised him.” The door opened a crack. I could see one of her eyes as she said, “Funny. That was what he told me when he first began to bring things to my door. That he had promised you, before you died, that he’d look after me.”
Molly - 1, Fitz - 0
Nor did he bother with the two steps, but leaped straight to the floor. At sight of him, Elliania threw back her hood, and then ran to meet him. They met in the center of the Great Hall. As they clasped hands, her clear and joyous voice carried. “I could not wait. I could not wait for winter and I could not wait for spring. I am here to marry you and I will do my best to live according to your ways, strange though they are.”
Rooting for them!!!
“I don’t think that’s wise. Go away,” she said, and began to shut the door, but Chivalry caught the edge of it, asking her, “Who is it?” and then, in an aside to me, “Don’t mind her, sir. Dress of a lady and manners of a fishwife.”
Chivalry - 1, Nettle - 0
and I promised I would come to visit before the year was out. “If we’re still alive,” Patience conceded cheerfully.
I gather the scribe at their town is quite a portly man. So I said, no, quite the opposite, that I thought you’d lost flesh and grown quieter of late. And that you spent more time alone than was healthy for any man.” I tilted my head at him. “Could you have made me sound any more pathetic?” He mimicked the tip of my head. “Is there any of it not true?”
At first glance, it looked like a drawing. Then I realized it was a hastily sketched map. There were only a few words on the bottom of the page. “Nettle said you were having a hard time finding your way back to me. Perhaps this will help.”
Why did this make me sobbbb
“I have never wanted anything so much in my life as I’ve always wanted you.” “Fitz!” she exclaimed, glancing up at the loft, and I suddenly realized I had spoken the words aloud. Her cheeks glowed and she lifted both hands to cover her mouth with her fingertips.
Fitz - 1, Molly - 1
“She said to me, ‘Time goes faster when you’re older, Nettle.’ Isn’t that an odd thought?” “I’ve known it for some time.” “Do you? I think women know it better perhaps.”
I laid my love down in the deep wild grasses and sweetly took her to me. It was homecoming, and completion, and a marvel worth repeating.
We wed quietly, making our promises before my king in the presence of Molly’s children, Kettricken, Elliania, Chade, Hap, and Riddle. Chade wept, then hugged me fiercely and told me to be happy.
My days with the Fool ended like a half-played game of Stones, the outcome poised and uncertain, possibilities hovering. Sometimes it seemed to me a cruelty that so much was unresolved between us; at other times, a blessing that a hope of reunion lingered. It is like the anticipation that a clever minstrel evokes when he pauses, letting silence pool before sweeping into the final refrain of his song. Sometimes a gap can seem like a promise yet to be fulfilled.
I have Molly and she is enough for me, and more. I am content.
