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Drakonis, 8:99 Blessed
‘Tell it again!’
Alain laughed. ‘I’ve told it three times already, dear boy. The Fade calls to you now.’
Thomas grumbled, but he could feel his eyelids growing heavy. ‘I’m not sleepy, Father,’ he protested, stifling a yawn.
Alain chuckled and ruffled his son’s thick brown hair with a contented sigh. ‘You’re fooling no one, Thomas.’ He stood up and walked over to the door. Thomas turned away then, knowing his father was about to look over at Liddy’s empty bed, for just a bit too long, and tears would well in his eyes. He wouldn’t let them fall until the bedroom door was firmly closed behind him, and he kidded himself his son couldn’t see. But Thomas was perceptive, even for a six year old.
‘Goodnight, my boy.’ Alain closed the door.
Thomas tossed and turned, despite his tiredness. He didn’t want to think about Liddy. He didn’t want to think about Mother and Father crying.
He thought instead about his father’s stories of Orlais. He wondered how and why his father would ever leave all that.
He thought of Liddy, curled up by the fire on a hot summer’s day, her tiny brow slick with sweat. No, Liddy, it’s summer. You’re cold, not hot.
He closed his eyes. If he closed them hard enough, he could imagine his father’s stories instead of his baby sister. All the images of her in pain would be replaced by those of gilded lions, glittering gold armour, palaces, the Val Royeaux marketplace.
Kingsway, 9:07 Dragon
Thom tried to stifle a cough as he passed the pipe back to Samuel, smoke billowing through the cool autumn breeze. His friend had ‘borrowed’ his father’s tobacco and managed to sneak a small bottle of liquor. ‘Father’s always falling down drunk anyway, he won’t notice it’s gone.’
Thom chuckled and took as big a swig of the whiskey as he could manage. It burned when it went down. He couldn’t understand why anyone liked this stuff, but the grownups must like it for a reason, surely? Those reasons became clearer to him after a few minutes, when a tingling warmth spread through his chest and belly. He leaned back against the tree.
‘Good for him. I wish I was always drunk,’ Thom said, bitterly.
‘Why?’ asked Samuel.
‘What else is there to do? Markham’s a boring shithole, everyone knows it,’ Thom grumbled.
‘True,’ Samuel replied, taking another drag on the pipe. ‘I don’t get why your old man ever left Orlais, Tommy. Father says he never got why old Alain Rainier gave up glory, girls and riches to come to shitty old Markham.’
‘Don’t call me that,’ Thom glowered.
‘Alright, keep your britches on.’
Thom bristled. ‘He left because he met Mother, and she was from here.’
Thom had long since stopped being the inquisitive little boy, forever asking his father to regale him with tales of the exhilarating splendour of the Val Royeaux marketplace, and the interesting people he got to mix with during his time in the Imperial Army. The stories just annoyed him now, because Samuel was right. Why the fuck would anyone leave that?
Father had enlisted in the Imperial Army at sixteen and excelled in his training. But he’d given up his opportunity to become a chevalier because he’d met Mother, and after that he decided he wanted a quiet life with a wife and children in dreary old Markham. When Thom asked him why, he said ‘Well, I fell in love, son.’ Thom rolled his eyes, and made a mental note never to do that.
‘Why couldn’t Mother come and live with you? Why’d you have to move to shi- boring old Markham?’
Alain would smile and ask, ‘Well, what’s so bad about Markham? We’ve got a nice house, good jobs, kind friends and neighbours. No war has ever made its way here, nor blight. It’s alright really, isn’t it?’
‘Well, yeah, it’s alright,’ Thom would say. ‘But why would you want just an alright life, when you could have had an amazing one?’
‘Thomas, there’s nothing wrong with just alright.’
As the years went by, Thom grew resentful of his father. He’d be a man soon, and he knew full well he was going to make his life more than just alright. He was going to live the good life that his father hadn't the stones to live himself. And all of Thedas would know the name Thom Rainier.