Scholarly Wanderings

    
I left Harmonia when I was twelve. I came from a respectable second class family, but as the third child of four and a girl, I hadn’t many options open to me aside from finding an advantageous marriage. It wasn’t that I did not love my family. Truly, the only thing that stands out to me of those first 12 years was the fact that they loved me—they had no idea what to do with me, but they loved me.

I was a fighter by nature and the rest of my siblings were of more peaceful temperament and took themselves off into scholarship, religion, or, in the case of my sister, marriage and mercantile endeavours. They had tried to hand me over to the Temple Guards to train so that I might begin a successful, secure career when I was eleven, but it had not worked out. I had taken one look at the regimented, regulated kow-towing bunch I would be saddled with for the rest of my life and indignantly returned home to tell my parents exactly what I thought of it all. So instead of building the foundation upon which to make a name for myself in the rigidly structured Harmonian society, I left home by my own choice the next year. My parents did not approve—so I left them a note apologizing for it instead of asking permission.

Sometimes it’s easier that way, you know.

I needed to find whatever I might in terms of what the world might have to offer me. I considered joining the mercenary forces that patrolled the Harmonian border, but I was denied—first because of my age, and second because of my gender. So I walked onwards. There was nothing back home for me.

I headed to the nearest sea port. This journey took me over the mountains and through a tiny corner of the country I would later know simply as the Grasslands. It was there that the true nature of the vagus in my heart began to stir. The sky there was very big, and very very blue. For me, that sky was the true start of my life. The years of my childhood have grown faded and grey since then, like an old painting or map-- as if I truly had been born of the grass and the wind and the singing of the spirits.

Determined as I was to see everything possible, however, I left that rolling sea of grass behind me and considered where to start my journey. The Island Nations seemed a good a place to start as anywhere. I had to work my may, considering what little money I had taken away with me from home was quickly spent on the first months of my journey. So I scrubbed decks for a year and served as galley mate for another as the trading vessel I was engaged upon sailed from place to place.

Being raised in Harmonia as I was, I had come away from that training with some odd notions concerning racial and cultural superiority but I found these teachings quickly and thoroughly dashed. The only thing that could raise one individual up over another was simple personal worth, measured in character and skill and a thousand other things. My own self, which had been formerly the apex of human development in my myopic view, suddenly became very small and very insignificant in view of the myriad of different and marvelous people there I encountered in those first two years. Not that I never ran into trouble—there were plenty of people willing to take advantage of me, had I let them, and I learned quickly to guard my tongue, my purse and my skin—not necessarily in that order.

It was not until we reached Obel that I finally started to understand what it was that I was really looking for. On that island there are ruins—extensive, ancient ruins that belong to a culture long dead and almost forgotten, yet the evidence of their power and dreams lies in the stones that still stand, one on top of the other, in mute testimony of the lasting impression we really do leave on the world around us, though we may long since be dust.

They told me that when they finally found me after two entire days of searching and dragged me out, I was gibbering something about “almost having it figured out!!” and pointing wildly at the esoteric symbols on the walls. My ship departed without me while I was recovering from my foolish excursion into the ruins. Luckily for me, the people of Obel are a kind-hearted and generous bunch and understand about being trapped by the spell of the ruins. Plenty of them had fallen pray to it themselves, and I was placidly assured that I would get over it soon enough. I wasn’t so sure, myself. Never, in all fourteen years of my life had I felt such a feverish desire to know something, to understand the world I had only seen dimly before then.

Needless to say, I spent a lot of time wandering those ruins (properly equipped and forewarned) and by the time my ship came back into port a year later I was afire to see what else the other islands might have to offer. I spent two more years port-hopping and then decided that it was time that I shift my attention to the continental civilizations. By this point I had amassed an alarming amount of information, all scrawled in my distracted handwriting over every square inch of paper I could get my hands on, and I was anxious to compare my observations with what I might find on the mainlands.

I finally left my ship for good at Vinay del Zexay. I flatter myself that the captain was sorry to see me go—I had become quite a good cook over the past three years, but, truth be told, I was getting restless. No more did I wish to have my steps confined by the meager width of the foredeck, or to have my vision constantly curtailed by sail and rope.

Vinay del Zexay has been named the most beautiful city in the world by its rapturous citizens, and it certainly was an impressive sight after spending years on the ocean. It was, however, also filthy and dirty and not so old as I would have liked. There was a museum of sorts, however, and a few monuments worth noting. It was there that I also truly began to watch people. People are very interesting, especially people living in cities where they’re packed in together like so many sardines in a tin. It was also here that I ran into my eldest brother—literally.

I wasn’t watching where I was going (I was distracted by a very interesting discussion two people were having at a table in front of the pub across the way) and I smacked square into someone, and proceeded to bounce off of said person and land square on my rear in the dust. He turned around and I saw the anger darkening his face suddenly turn into surprise and I felt a shock of my own as I studied the familiar features.

“You!” He gasped. All I could do was nod.

“Me.” I replied at last, weakly.

“Thanks heavens you’re alive!” He seized me and raised me energetically to my feet. “Come with me!”

I didn’t really have a choice in the matter. There was no chance for protest as I was prodded breathlessly to the city center where the grand council and embassy buildings faced on a wide cobbled square, crowned by a graceful fountain. I did have time to observe, however, that my brother, now somewhere in his twenties, was wearing clothing a great deal fancier and well-made than he had been the last time we had seen each other. I wasn’t really surprised—but rather distressed—when he dragged me into one of the finest buildings and up some stairs to an office that was positively palacial.

He placed me in a chair and then dropped with a thump into his own, folded his hands on his desk, and regarded me with intense scrutiny.

I squirmed.

“Stop it,” I said irritably. He only grinned at me, and suddenly it was if we had never been apart.

“You’ve changed,” he said, wrinkling his nose. He was right, I had changed. I was still small and light, but I had been tanned to leather out on the ocean and my hands were rough with calluses. My clothing probably would have gotten me thrown out of my parents’ house, weather and travel stained as they were.

“I know,” I said softly, “but so have you.”

He shrugged and leaned back in his chair.

“It’s been a long while.”

“How are things at home?” I asked eagerly, and he gave me a long look out of his clear blue eyes.

“You might come see for yourself,” he said mildly, and I shook my head.

“No. I’m not coming back home. I can’t, not yet. I still...” I trailed off, suddenly having run out of the words that I needed.

“So,” he replied resignedly. “You still haven’t found whatever it was that you’re looking for?”

I brightened.

“No, the problem is that I HAVE found it. I’ve found more than I ever dreamed of finding!”

He raised a sandy blond eyebrow, and I hastily explained. I don’t think it really got through to him until I opened my bag and dragged out sheaf after sheaf of my writing, piling it all on his desk. His eyebrows climbed higher and higher the more I pulled out (my bag was bigger than it appeared, I guess) until they entire disappeared into his fair fringe. Slowly, he picked up one loosely bound text and began to leaf through it.

“You were always a funny one, little sister.” he said in an odd voice. “Who knew you’d end up a scholar in the end?” I flushed a little.

“But it’s not really scholarship,” I protested. “Those pompous old fools back home who call themselves scholars never did a day of honest learning in their lives. Armchair knowledge, that’s all it was.” The very thought made me indignant. “What I’m doing is more like—like--” I couldn’t think of an appropriate simile. Putting down the text, my brother gave me a crooked smile.

“You’re enjoying yourself, and therefore it’s not a worthy occupation?”

I opened my mouth, then shut it again.

“You really have changed,” I said at last, sheepishly. “You’ve finally grown some sense.”

“And you, my dear sister, are still cheeky as ever.” He looked at my massed writing, covering a good half of his desk. “You can’t carry these around with you everywhere, you know.” He was right. Aside from being almost unbearably heavy, the edges were becoming increasingly ragged and the ink had run on several outer sets of leaves.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said, “I will hold all of these here for you. Not only that, I’ll have them properly transcribed and bound.” I sat for a moment, too astonished to say anything.

“Why bother yourself?” I said at last. “They’re little more than just my ramblings.”

“I think they’re far more than that. In fact, I think I may have a great deal to read in the next few days.”

I flushed with pleasure. Getting to my feet, I walked around the desk and planted a kiss on the top of my brother’s sandy head, as I had done so often when I was just child.

“All right then,” he said gruffly. “I’ve arranged for you to stay at the consul until you’re ready to go again. Let my aide know if there’s anything you need.”

And so it began.