LongestRoad Sil Backstory4
We got in to Greenmarsh after a few more days of traveling. The river runs right up to the city, which is in the middle of a thick forest. Conveniently enough, the forest is also named Greenmarsh. They're not very creative with names around there. As its name implies, it is very marshy. The buildings are on stilts in the marsh and there are a lot of wooden walkways. Boats are used to move supplies around. The elven section of the city is built up in the trees, so the city is multi-leveled.
Once we were back in a city, I felt a little smothered by all the people. We arrived in the late afternoon and the city was bustling. Zahn seemed to notice that I was uncomfortable. He slipped his arm around my elbow and led the way. I don't think I noticed that you were ill at ease. I think I was trying to claim you. He picked an inn right underneath the main stairway up to the elven quarter, saying that he'd heard it was a nice place to stay. It was lively but clean. I got a quiet room on the top floor, on the innkeeper's recommendation. Zahn tried to talk me into sharing a room with him just off the balcony over common room, but I told him that I preferred my privacy. Attempt number three: failed. I still think it would have been more cost-effective. As I started up the stairs, he asked if I would join him for dinner. I agreed to that.
My room was quieter than the rest of the inn, though the street noise was still audible. I changed into my extra robe and meditated in my room for a while. I went downstairs when the sun started to set.
Zahn was already in the common room. He'd bathed and changed, and his shaggy auburn hair was still damn. He was sitting at a table with a group, laughing with them, and waved me over. He got up to introduce me to his new friends.
"Istyn told me about a good restaurant a couple of trees over," he said, gesturing at an elven man across the table. "Want to try it?" Zahn had a warm smile and was infectiously happy. I couldn't help but nod and go along with it. He dropped some coins on the table for his half-finished drink and linked arms with me on the way out. His friends waved us off.
We took a stroll up to the elven quarter and along the edge of the upper part of the city. I felt a little awkward walking with him, but Zahn was distracted by the city activity. He asked me about my hometown, and if it was set up like this one. I assured him that it was not, as my home village was in the mountains and not particularly forested. He talked a little about how he'd been traveling, and liked visiting new cities. He babbled on like this until we got to the restaurant.
It was an open air restaurant with a very nice view of the rest of the city. We sat at a table near the edge of the platform. I was a little nervous, as I hadn't had company for a nice meal in a long time and I wasn't sure how to act.
Zahn kept trying to get me to chat through dinner. I wasn't very good at keeping up my end of the conversation. I hadn't been in an area with a large settlement of elves since leaving home, and I felt self-conscious. Zahn didn't seem to pick up on it. I was just so happy to be out of the woods, both figuratively and literally. I had been worried that Rudhale was going to send more thugs after me.
Over dessert, he asked me about being a half-dragon. I was surprised by this, as everything up to that point had been light conversation about traveling, food, and my lack of drinking habit. I mumbled something about just being what I was.
"Which one of your parents is a dragon?" He sipped his wine.
"My mother."
"Really? Your mother?" he asked. I nodded. "How did that happen?"
I had to think for a minute on what to tell him. I knew he was asking about how they got together, but I wasn't really prepared for the long explanation that would involve. "They had sex."
He started laughing and choked on his wine. It took him a minute to compose himself, and I started feeling hot from stares of the rest of the restaurant patrons. You were being paranoid. No one was watching us. He quieted down but didn't really stop laughing. He'd taken that as a cue to joke about the subject, and asked me if I'd been born or hatched. When I confirmed that I'd been hatched, he had to cover his mouth to hide the giggles.
He tried to force himself to stop laughing, but all his amusement reflected in his eyes. "So, was she really strict?" He asked with a smile. "Did you get good birthday presents from the hoard?"
I didn't answer, wishing that my monk training had included dealing with uncomfortable social situations. I wasn't prepared to explain, so I just shut up and looked away. Zahn's smile went away and he quieted down. We finished our meal in an awkward silence.
We left out of the restaurant shortly after. Zahn started chatting again, acting as if the dragon conversation had not happened. He tried to talk about the dinner and the scenery. I gave non-verbal answers. He shut up eventually. We took a long walk, exploring the upper levels of Greenmarsh. I'm not sure why we didn't go straight back to the inn. I think Zahn was lost.
One set of stairs went all the way up a very tall oak tree and expanded to a big platform. It was very nice up there, far above Greenmarsh. There was a strong breeze and the treetops swayed a little. The lights of the city below us made it hard to see the stars, but it was very quiet and peaceful. Zahn decided to interrupt the quiet with more chatter. He started with an apology for the way our dinner conversation ended. He's very good at apologies. I stared down at the lights of the city below us and mumbled something dismissive.
Zahn leaned over the railing so he was looking up at me. "So, what exactly did I say wrong?" he asked with a little pout. He looked very comical, hanging upside down like a skinny, tousled monkey. It made me feel silly for having been so dramatic about everything. It has always been easier to talk to him when we're alone.
I sighed lightly and pulled him upright by the back of his shirt. "I'm a little sensitive about my mother. I've never actually met her." We started walking back down to the city.
"Did she leave right after you were born?" Zahn asked as he walked behind me down the narrow staircase.
"She left before. I was hatched in my father's fireplace."
"You were really hatched from an egg?" He sounded astonished.
I confirmed that it was not a joke. I had never told anyone how that had happened before. Growing up, everyone had already known all the details. Even Song had heard about my parents from someone else. I told him about my quest to find her.
Zahn hung back a little ways when we got to the main walkway. I stopped to wait for him. "So, you feel abandoned?" His voice sounded pained. I nodded. "I know what that's like," he said as he caught up to me. "I didn't have any family until Magus Obelyn adopted me. Even that didn't feel like a home for a few years."
"You were an orphan?"
"I was a street urchin in Wallhaven. I was left with this woman who had too many kids already ... you know how it goes," he mumbled. When he turned to look at me, he must have seen the bewildered look on my face. "Or maybe you don't."
"'Too many kids' doesn't really happen in an elven village."
He chuckled. "Too bad I wasn't raised by elves, then. I was a worthless little punk with too many bad ideas until Theron took me in. He even started teaching me magic, after a while."
I ignored the self-deprecating tone in his voice. "So you're a wizard, then? Not a sorcerer?"
Zahn scoffed. "I'll pretend that's a compliment on my good looks. No, I actually studied and learned how to cast. Only my charm comes naturally." He took my arm again as we walked. I rolled my eyes. "What about you? You're a monk, right? Did your father teach you?"
I explained that my father was a cleric of Nirsi, and told him about my years in the monastery. We walked back to the inn as I told my story. He listened without interrupting. "When I left, I took up a monk's vow and my quest to find my mother," I said. "And now you know pretty much all there is to know about me."
"Well, that's no fun. What other excuse will I use to chat with you?" He held the door open for me. It had gotten late while we were out walking. There were a few people still at the bar of the common room, but none of the people Zahn had been sitting with earlier. Most of the tables had been cleaned off and the fire was low in the hearth.
It had been a very long day. Zahn walked me up to my room. I was tired, but I felt a lot happier than I had since leaving the monastery. We stopped to talk outside my door. I intended to say goodnight to him and get some rest. Zahn made it obvious he didn't intend the night to end. I was disappointed in this realization, as I had genuinely enjoyed talking to him with no pretenses. I gently pushed him away without really thinking about it, said goodnight and locked the door behind me.
As I leaned against the door, I listened to him on the other side. He stood there for a minute, probably listening as well. Eventually he walked off. I tried to settle myself down to meditate, but couldn't. My emotions were running the gamut from angry to flattered to bewildered. I had mistakenly thought he'd understood my rebuff at the lake, and I felt deceived by the events of the evening, but it was also the first time someone had taken that level of interest in me and it was a little tempting. I couldn't understand what was motivating him to continue pursuing me, but I felt I owed him an explanation of my actions. I resolved to explain it the next morning. It took me a while to settle down before I could rest.
I love your euphemisms.
I don't know what you're talking about.
You could have summed up that night with "Zahn wanted sex, and I turned him down."
You could sum up most of our relationship like that, if you wanted to. It would make for a very short story.
Yes, that would be boring. But I don't remember myself being quite that awkward.
Of course not. You were younger then, and you acted it.
It was only a couple of years ago. But I really was a bit of a cad, wasn't I?
You have a gift for understatement.
The next morning, Zahn met me in the common room for breakfast. He was quiet, giving me significant glances over his coffee. I had rehearsed what I was going to say to him, but I hadn't planned an opening for the conversation. I was trying to figure that out when he started apologizing again. I tried to stop him, and he started apologizing for apologizing. I did not! You're making this up.
I groaned in frustration and launched into my speech. "If you inferred something that I did not mean to imply, then I apologize." He gave me a little shy smile. "I should have let you know that it would be impossible for me to reciprocate any romantic intentions you had towards me."
I said it very quickly and it took a moment for him to process. "Completely impossible?" he asked.
"Yes. I have taken a vow of chastity."
He stared at me with a look of disbelief. "A what?"
"I have vowed to abstain from romantic physical relationships." I may have said that a little smugly. This had been the first time since leaving the monastery that it had been an issue, and I was feeling very self-satisfied about the whole thing.
Zahn frowned and watched me pick at my bowl of fruit. He caught me off guard when he started postulating theories as to the cause of my vow. He asked if I'd had my heart broken, or if I was waiting for marriage, or if I'd just had a bad experience. I wasn't sure what he was trying to get at, so I explained that it was just a monk's vow. I compared it to poverty or pacifism.
"Well, that's annoying. I would've preferred you take pacifism," he said with a chuckle.
I glared at him. "When you take a monk vow, you can take pacifism. I chose chastity."
He laughed louder. "Do you even know what you're missing?"
"That's certainly none of your business." I got up and started walking away from him.
He followed me out of the common room, enumerating on his fingers my perceived failings. "You don't sleep in a bed, you don't socialize, you don't drink, you hardly ever laugh, and now you're telling me that you don't--"
"Exactly," I snapped at him. We were on the landing above the common room and I was loud enough that the people below us were staring. I walked off in a huff, heading up for my room.
Zahn followed at my heels."So if you don't do anything fun, what do you do?"
I got to the top of the steps and turned to face him. For a moment I thought about giving him a good shove and watching him tumble back down them. It reminded me scarily of how I used to react to being teased as a child. I calmed myself down. "I'm researching dragons and trying to find my mother."
He asked me what else I did. I assured him that I was very focused in my goal. He scoffed at the notion that I could spend all my time doing nothing by gathering rumors and stories about gold dragons. I pointed out that I occasionally rescued drowning young men., but I was thinking of breaking that habit. The argument came to a crescendo outside my door. I was much more passionate about this discussion than I had been about the previous night's.
"So what are you going to say when you find her? 'Hi mom. Golly, you're big and gold.'" The mocking tone to his voice grated on my last nerve, and I had the urge to smack the smug look off of his face.
"You do what you want with your life. I'm doing what I want with mine." I violently pushed my door open, stepped into the room, and slammed it shut behind me. For good measure, I shoved the oak dresser in front of the door. Then I started pacing. It took about an hour and a bit of exercise on floor of my room before I'd calmed down. About then I realized that I'd broken the lock on the door on my way in.
I packed up my stuff and headed down to the innkeeper to pay for the door and switch rooms. It was very embarrassing, but at least Zahn was nowhere to be seen.
Afterwards, I found the city's main library, right next to the mage's guild as they usually are. While walking past it, I was afraid that I would run into him there, but I didn't. I tried to do more research on dragons, but argument was still bothering me. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that Zahn had a point. What was I going to say to my mother when I found her? Wouldn't she want me to do more with my life? I missed my friends from the monastery, and from home. My life had been much more fulfilling before starting my quest. I had traveling for a year with only a single goal in mind, and though I'd realized that I was lonely, I thought that my loneliness was part of being a monk. I didn't have Song there to guide me and tell me if that was right or wrong, but it no longer felt right. After a couple of hours of distracted study I left the library to find a quiet spot to meditate on this. I came to the conclusion that I probably owed Zahn an apology.
I didn't see Zahn in the inn at dinner. I wanted to try talking to him again, though I wasn't sure what I was going to say. I spent most of the night thinking about it, but couldn’t come up with anything good, as my last planned-out conversation had gone over so horribly. I resolved to just start with an apology and see where it got me.
The next morning, I went to his room and knocked on the door. I thought I had given him enough time to wake up, but he when he cracked the door open in answer to my knock he looked like he'd rolled out of bed. His hair was tousled and he was rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. "Hey," he said with a smile, opening the door a little wider. He wore a gold charm on a chain around his neck, a bed sheet wrapped around his waist, and little else.
I stammered at him for a moment, distracted. "Ah, good morning?" I ventured. "I, er… I didn't mean to wake you."
He shrugged and grinned. "It's fine. You still mad at me?" He leaned against the doorframe.
"No." My instinct was to look down when apologizing, but that direction seemed inappropriate given his lack of real clothes, and the smile on his face was unnerving. I stared at the corner of the door instead. "I actually came here to apologize."
There was some noise from inside the room, and a woman called out his name sleepily. Zahn's grin faded and he rolled his eyes. I must have looked confused. He straightened up, and sighed. "Can you wait here a minute?" he asked. I nodded and he gently shut the door. I stepped back and tried to figure out what was happening. There was a quiet argument going on behind the closed door and I wasn't sure if I wanted to listen in or not.
A couple of minutes later, the door opened and an angry young woman stormed out. She looked me over, scoffed, and flounced down the stairs. Zahn looked frustrated, but he had at least put on a pair of cotton breeches. He held the door open for me.
"What was that?" I asked as he shut the door. He shrugged and went over to the mirror to brush his hair. The room was a bit of a mess. Looking around, I finally figured it out. "Oh. Um … shouldn't you go after her?"
Zahn gave me a quizzical look as he poured water into a basin. "That would be weird, since I asked her to leave." He started to wash his face. "Besides, didn't you want to talk?"
I was a little stunned by that. "You were … intimate with her, weren't you?"
Zahn smirked as he dried his face on a towel. "You could say that." He slung the towel over his shoulder and started going through the next steps of his morning grooming ritual.
"But you just asked her to leave?"
"You wanted to talk. She wasn't involved…" He noticed my disapproving look and shrugged it off. "It was just a one-night thing. It wasn't a big deal."
I frowned. "So that was your intention the other night, with me?" I couldn't keep my voice from wavering a little.
He turned around to look at me. "I kind of thought that was your intention, too," he said. I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. "I mean, I know now that …"
"How can you be so casual about …" I gestured at the bed, "… this?"
He gaped for a moment. "She was too," he countered meekly. He pulled a shirt out of his traveling bag and put it on haphazardly while I fumed. When it was on, he seemed to gain a bit more backbone. "Look, it's just a need that we both had. We did it, we're done. That's just how it works."
We got into another argument over this while he hunted for a decent pair of pants. I don't know why I stayed, except to prove him wrong. I had spent the last year traveling and observing people, and even if I hadn't really interacted with them, I could still see that this was not 'how it works.' Zahn eventually conceded the point that he didn't pay as much attention to people when they weren't in his sights. Despite this, he was convinced that he was great at reading people and relating to them. I scoffed at this, too. He was a lot less intimidating when he was dressed.
"Did you come here to berate me about my sex life or did you have something else to talk about?" he asked snidely.
I sighed. "I wanted to apologize for yelling at you yesterday. I thought you had a valid point, but you're really just a hypocrite, aren't you? All you do is carouse! What do you do that's worthwhile?" Another argument started up again. He didn't have any real goals, he didn't make any real friends, and he was only out in the world because his teacher had told him it was a good for a young mage to get started.
"I'll bet he just wanted to get rid of you." I said derisively.
His expression quickly changed from annoyed to hurt. He folded his arms and looked away from me. "Are you done?"
I knew I'd hit a weak spot of his and I felt bad. "I didn't mean that," I said. He shrugged it off and went back to searching for his boots. He didn't look at me. "It's just … are you happy like this?"
"I'm fine," he grumbled, still not looking at me.
I nodded and got up. "Ok, then forget I said anything. I won't bother you again." I headed towards the door.
"Wait," he said, getting up. He looked sheepish, and he still hadn't found his boots. "I kind of like it when you bother me." I raised my eyebrows in response. "I mean … well, it's different." He fumbled for words and glanced up at me, hair falling into his eyes.
I spotted his boots between the end table and the bed. I picked them up and handed them to him, giving him a half smile. He took them and mumbled a thank you. I nodded and headed for the door again. I was going through an internal debate, and I wasn't very good at rethinking my decisions on the fly.
"Hey, about that research you're doing," he said. I stopped again and looked back at him. "Do you need any help?" I hesitated, trying to ponder all my options at once. Zahn jumped into a convincing argument. "I mean, I'm actually pretty good at that sort of thing and I could get you into the mage's guild to look at their library, too."
I relented and agreed. We spent the rest of the day, and then the rest of the week, doing research in both the regular library and the mage's guild. Zahn was able to find information on a number of dragon spottings around the continent and plan out a map, in addition to pulling up information on the habits of gold dragons specifically. I learned a lot more with him helping me than I had up until that point. He suggested we go through Linlea next, which was about 2 days travel east of Greenmarsh. By that point, we had come to an unspoken agreement, wherein neither of us criticized the way the other lived their life. I was trying to show him how fulfilling it was to have a purpose, and he was trying to show me how to just have fun, but we didn't push the points. He decided to come with me to Linlea. He admitted that he had been a lonely traveler, and he liked my company despite my 'failings.' I think I hit him for that.
