Tress of the Emerald Sea

by Brandon Sanderson

“Everything is extraordinary about you, Tress,” her mother said. “That’s why nothing in particular stands out.”

Well, parents have to say things like that. They’re required to see the best in their children, otherwise living with the little sociopaths would drive a person mad.

One of the great tragedies of life is knowing how many people in the world are made to soar, paint, sing, or steer—except they never get the chance to find out.

Whenever one does discover a moment of joy, beauty enters the world. Human beings, we can’t create energy; we can only harness it. We can’t create matter; we can only shape it. We can’t even create life; we can only nurture it. But we can create light. This is one of the ways. The effervescence of purpose discovered.

As always, she spent the time thinking. I would call the gift of thoughtfulness a double-edged sword, but I’ve always found that metaphor lacking. The vast majority of swords have two edges, and I’ve not found them to be any more likely to cut their owner than the single-edged variety. It is the sharpness of the wielder, and not the sharpness of the sword, that foreshadows mishap.

But plans…plans were things for people who didn’t exist yet. And Tress existed now.

Even small actions have consequences. And while we can often choose our actions, we rarely get to choose our consequences.

Questions like these burdened her. Worry has weight, and is an infinitely renewable resource. One might say worries are the only things you can make heavier simply by thinking about them.

Charlie wasn’t really a “do things” kind of person. He was a “be things” kind of person. Making decisions was easier around him—as if he were an emotional lubricant easing the machinery of the heart as it labored through difficult tasks.

Lately, she’d been having trouble picturing him. She could perfectly remember a picture of him, hanging above the mansion’s hearth. But him? That wasn’t so easy, though she loved him. That is not so odd an occurrence. A picture is an object, easy to define and contain, while a person is a soul—and is therefore neither of those things.

“Most people never live, Tress, because they’re afraid of losing the years they have left…years that also will be spent not living. The irony of a cautious existence.” She took another sip and eyed Tress. “Do you feel more alive now?

It’s beautiful in a way only something so terrifying can inspire, and terrifying in a way that only something so beautiful can demand.

Beyond that, memories have a way of changing on us. Souring or sweetening over time—like a brew we drink, then recreate later by taste, only getting the ingredients mostly right. You can’t taste a memory without tainting it with who you have become.

The past is boring anyway. We always pretend the ideals and culture of the past have aged like wine, but in truth, the ideas of the past tend to age more like biscuits. They simply get stale.

Tress didn’t just pour her whole heart into the activity, she gave it her entire body, for a heart can’t accomplish much without a nice set of fingers.

Tress didn’t understand that it is quite possible to be so bad at something it seems implausible. In these cases, it stands to reason that such a person is in fact quite competent—because it takes true competence to feign such spectacular incompetence. It’s called the transitive property of ineptitude, and is the explanation for anything you’ve seen me do wrong ever.

If religion couldn’t get it together, then she could be forgiven for being a mess herself.

I love memories. They are our ballads, our personal foundation myths. But I must acknowledge that memory can be cruel if left unchallenged.

Painful or passionate, surreal or sublime, we cherish those little rocks of peak experience, polishing them with the ever-smoothing touch of recycled proxy living. In so doing—like pagans praying to a sculpted mud figure—we make of our memories the gods which judge our current lives.

Enjoy memories, yes, but don’t be a slave to who you wish you once had been. Those memories aren’t alive. You are.

Yes, intellectuals and scholars are paid to think deep thoughts—but those thoughts are often owned by others. It is a great irony that society tends to look down on those who sell their bodies, but not on those who lease out their minds.

to be.” (Fun tip: Being told “I kept you in the dark to protect you” is not only frustrating, but condescending as well. It’s a truly economical way to demean someone; if you’re looking to fit more denigration into an already busy schedule, give it a try.)

“Somehow I seem to be best at lying when I tell the truth.”

But if you ask these heroes why they risked their lives, don’t do it on a stand in front of a crowd while you give them their medal. Because the truth is, they likely didn’t do it for their country. Or even for their ideals. Consistently, across cultures, eras, and ideologies, war heroes report the same simple motivation. They did it for their friends. In the frenzied anarchy of destruction, loyalty to causes and kingdoms alike tends to fall to the chaos. But the bond between people, well, that’s stronger than steel. If you want to create heroes, don’t give them something to fight for. Give them someone to fight for.

A boring truth will always have difficulty competing with an exciting lie.

I’m not one of those people who care if you use words wrong. I prefer it when words change meaning. The imprecision of our language is a feature; it best represents the superlative fact of human existence: that our own emotions—even our souls—are themselves imprecise. Our words, like our hearts, are weapons still hot from the forging, beating themselves into new shapes each time we swing them.

There it is! Irony. The very journey she’d taken to find what she wanted had transformed her into a person who could no longer enjoy that victory. She looked into Charlie’s eyes, and her emotions parted asunder, bowing before her building sense of melancholy. Crowning it queen.

A woman who would not back down when the lives of her friends were at stake. Pray you meet such a woman at least once in your life. Then pray you get out of her way quickly enough.

And she should have known better. She might not have been asking a stupid question, but asking a question of stupid is nearly as futile.

The king had of course insisted that he’d always intended for this to happen—that he’d believed in Charlie, and his chosen bride, from the beginning. If that sounds like hypocrisy to you, well, we prefer to call it politics.

With a few tips, he wasn’t so boring after all. Secretly, I’ll tell you that you aren’t either. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to lower your value. Don’t trust them. They know they can’t afford you otherwise.