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If the divine is also female, and the female also divine, then she understands that woman is more than mother, more than daughter, more than wife. Those are the facets of a full life, but no single facet defines the jewel.”
“Life is not a race to restore a past situation. Nor does one have to hurry to meet the future. Seeing how things change is what makes life interesting.”
To take what has happened to you and learn from it, instead of being trapped by it. Nothing is quite so destructive as pity, especially self-pity. No event in life is so terrible that one cannot rise above it.”
Trader. If you had ever endured what I have faced, you would know that there are events that are insurmountable. Some experiences change you forever, past any cheery little wish to ignore them.”
This terrible event—whatever it was—is over and done. Cling to it and let it shape you and you are doomed to live it forever. You are granting it power over you. Set it aside, and shape your future as you wish it to be, in spite of what happened to you. Then you have seized control of it.”
“At last. I should have known that the first sensible person I spoke to would be one of my own erstwhile sex.
decide. Males are not made for such decisions. I have seen it time and time again. They would have you wait for days of sunshine and wealth and plenty. Yet to a male, enough is never sufficient, and plenty never reached. A queen knows that when times are hardest and game most scarce, that is when one must care most about the continuance of the race.
“I’ve thought ahead to you captaining Vivacia and me still running Paragon. That’s the happiest ending we could expect from this quest. But then I ask myself, where does that leave us? When and where do we make a home for ourselves?”
Sa forgive me, Brashen, but I wish I could kick over every responsibility to my name and just be a pirate.” He looked at her in astonished silence. Then he grinned. “Be careful what you wish for,” he cautioned her.
If Vivacia was happy with Wintrow aboard her, if she was content with Kennit and her life of piracy, did Althea have the right to “rescue” her from it?
head. “No, Etta. I have no beliefs, either way. I am simply saying that you should not lock your dreams onto a child or a man. Who loves you or who you love is not as significant as who you are. Too many folk, women and men, love the person they wish to be, as if by loving that person, or being loved by that person, they could attain the importance they long for.
Better to die in battle than live as slaves after our men have died trying to protect us.”
“It would take nothing at all for me to bring your city crashing down!” she roared at them. “Remember it, puny two-legs. You have not seen nor heard the last of me. When I return, I shall teach you respect, and school you how to serve a Lord of the Three Realms.”
And as Kennit had looked deep into his dark eyes one final time and then ruined them with the rising and falling of his hatchet, he had known that no one should love anyone or anything that deeply. No one should have a heart that true. He had known then that never, never, never would he love anyone or anything as Paragon loved him. He had promised it to himself, and then he had lifted the shining hatchet and chopped into the dark eyes so full of love for him.
A man could face hard truths, and know that life was seldom even or fair. And another hard truth: the shortest distance between a man and his goal was often a lie.
“Such a storm of emotions as humans can evoke, all on the basis of imagination,” the dragon observed condescendingly. In a more reflective voice she asked, “Do you do this because you live such short lives? Tell yourselves wild tales of what might happen tomorrow, and feel all the feelings of events that will never happen? Perhaps to make up for the pasts you cannot recall, you invent futures that will not exist.”
“Manhood is not something that someone allows you,” Etta lectured him. “Manhood is something a man takes for himself. Then it is recognized by others.”
It was not courage to surrender to that oblivion, conceding the world to those who had wronged them. Sudden shame swept her at her cowardly flight from life. Death could make things stop, but it could not make things right.
Tomorrow, we resume our search for a woman worthy to be mother to Elderlings.
It’s just my life, and now that I have finally discovered what I must have to be happy, I’m willing to lay down my life for it. That’s all.” She smiled. “That is all. You are right. And that is all that All ever is.”
“She thinks you will succeed. But whether you will know you have succeeded, or if the success will be the one you would have chosen for yourself, well, those are things no one can say now. But she knows you will succeed at whatever you are meant to do.”
The girlchild’s elaborate dreams of a romantic future had been replaced with a woman’s determination to survive tomorrow. It felt like a loss to Althea.
But pity would not stay destiny. Nothing could save him, or the child. Events had to follow their pattern. Nothing could disrupt the cycling of time. Things would happen again just as they always had. Just as they always would.
When you fear to fail, you fear something that has not happened yet. You predict your own failure, and by inaction, lock yourself into it.
Perhaps her older sister was finally realizing that life was to be lived, rather than hoarded against an unseen tomorrow.
“Be content with your own life, my friend, and live it well. Let others decide for themselves what path they will follow.” She frowned up at him. “Even when you see, with absolute clarity, that it is wrong for them? That they hurt themselves?” “Perhaps people have a right to their pain,” he hazarded. Reluctantly he added, “Perhaps they even need it.”
Something clamped tight inside her suddenly eased. He had been right. She did not have to grip her pain. She could let it go. The memory was still there. It had not vanished, but it had changed. It was a memory, a thing from her past. This wound could close and heal. The injury done to her was over. She did not have to keep it as a part of herself. She could allow herself to heal. Her tears were diluted in the rain that ran down her face.
