To Xenophon

[TennyoCeres84]

What do you miss the most about Meris?

[IamLEAM1983]

"The surety and honesty of her power, I suppose, and the way that strength of hers didn't preclude gentle behavior. My people have always associated tenderness with the blackest forms of eroticism imaginable, and strength with religiously mandated physical abuse. The way she managed to marry these seemingly disparate qualities into something cohesive was fascinating to me. Fascinating, and initially frightening.

For a long while, I assumed she was also scheming behind my back. Call it a force of habit, I suppose, but I always knew that this would all end in tears - either with the both of us dead or with us being forced to part ways. I suppose, in some ways, that I came to resent her for giving me hope; but I was eventually able to stop looking over my shoulder. I realized that if my old injuries exhausted me and had me nod off in front of her, she wouldn't use this opportunity to try and end my life. It's thanks to her that I came to realize that it was possible to let others close to you.

There's also the sense of genuinely meaning something to someone. I've always been my Chamberlain's meal ticket, and the Prelacy couldn't be entirely persuaded to trust me. Fear has to enter the proceedings at some point. She was young and in her prime, I was fatter than I am now and advanced in years. We had no reason to grow to trust one another, to find something interesting in each other. She started as a tool to me, I suppose - an interesting guinea pig and a reprieve from my duties - but once I realized what she really meant to me?

There isn't a word in the Black Speech that adequately describes the painful and exhilarating mix of sensations that coursed through me, at that time. I was terrified and overjoyed. Ecstatic and mortified. I wanted to hide in shame and also shout my love for her from the top of my tower. She meant so much to me, and I realized I might lose it all. That I might have to lose it all, if only so I'd be able to set her free.

Then... I also miss her wisdom. I wish I could explain to her why I called the guards, in the end. I hope she's thought it through long enough to understand why I had to. I tricked her into forgetting her place at my side so she could run, undo the damage I'd been forced to do to our son, uncover the lies I'd been forced to tell her and understand that I did it all so we'd have a chance of being reunited as a family, in the distant future...

I miss being honest to her. Once I realized that even our privacy wouldn't allow me to be entirely forward, I had to retire myself for a few hours. I remember muttering some excuse about preparations for the day's sacrament - but I spent them weeping. I remember desperately wishing I could find some sort of Other of righteous anger, uncover its secrets and ask for the power to destroy this city of liars and murderers. I wanted to lift us all to the surface in one fell swoop, in the hopes that all those tales about the world's nations and their armies would give my horrible, despicable subjects pause...

Once she was gone, I turned to Harrogath to forget. The pain was too much for me to bear, so I ate and drank it away. I pretended she'd been the one who'd betrayed me, so I'd be able to wrap my sorrow in false airs of xenophobic contempt. The Prelacy loved every moment of it. It staved my Chamberlain's knife-hand for centuries. When you've reached the point where killing your own species to its last man seems like a good idea, however, it's time for a change of pace.

I could only channel Meris' goodness as part of my act in Renewal - but I so desperately wanted to have it in me, to be as good as she'd been... I couldn't. Not with that sneering popinjay and those grotesque gods looking over my shoulder.

I miss everything about her. This is the simple truth."