This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

“Parents think that they know the inner lives of their children,” the cleric had said on one of those days. “When they are young, this might be true, because their inner lives are simple, if no less rich. But when they grow older, parents have a tendency to think they know everything their child is going through. They think they know the thoughts that go through the heads of their children. And sometimes, I’m afraid to say, our understanding of our children turns out to be wrong. The assumptions we’ve made about what they’ve been thinking about, and what they’ve been up to, and how they feel, are not what we’d wished or hoped, and sometimes our thoughts do not align, whether we feel anything about that misalignment or not. It can hurt, to have this idea of someone close to you and to find out it was an illusion you’d built up in your mind. We must, nevertheless, soldier on. If you find yourself faced with someone who is not as you’d expected them to be, you must readjust your perception of them, reorient, and not allow it to affect you overmuch.”

Verity’s mother had been there, at that sermon, and seemed to take the lesson as it applied to the fellowship of Garos.

“We have the Brumal Ball coming up, and I’d like for you to look your best,” said Verity’s mother as she fussed over a dress-in-the-making. The tailor was one of those obsequious cowards who showed deference to every little request, and it felt like the little bows had been moved three times. “There are a number of eligible bachelors there, and it’s none too early to be thinking about courting.”

“I’m not interested in the bachelors,” said Verity.

“Well, I know you’re only fifteen, but you’re a woman now, and it can take some time for a match to be found, so better to start early. You’ll not get married until perhaps twenty, that gives you five years to find someone, and if you comport yourself well, we can ensure it’s a good match.” She was playing with the fabric, trying to figure out where the darts would go to best emphasize the bust. Verity was, through this process, little more than a mannequin.

“I’m not interested in being with a man at all,” said Verity. Her heart was in her throat. What was she worried about? A bad reaction, perhaps. Her mother had plans for her, and in the past, anything that interfered with those plans was cause for both alarm and recriminations.

“Oh,” her mother had said. “Well, bachelorette, then.” There was a brief pause. “A smaller pool to draw from, but let me see, the Elthfield girl would be a good match, or the Kyllip girl. Verity, you should have told me sooner. I’ll have to put out feelers and make some new lists.”

And while Verity was occasionally chided for not having told her mother sooner, that was as much as was ever said about it. The plan required some reorientation, but nothing had substantially changed. Her father hadn’t even spoken to her about it, not that she’d necessarily wanted him to.

It was just everything else her parents had a problem with. The idea that Verity could say ‘Oh, I’m not that interested in playing so much music’, was inconceivable and reckoned to be a mistake or an act of rebelliousness. Doing something else with her life, like seeing the world, or playing in a tavern, or even something acceptably traditional like being a gardener, was simply dismissed out of hand. She had tried, at one point, arguing doctrine with them, letting the cleric’s words come out of her mouth, but her parents had not listened, and there seemed to be no way to make them listen.

She was going to have to have Alfric send them a letter soon. They’d sat down to do it, but there were relatively few places in the house that were private, and none of them had a desk to write at. The bigger issue was that Verity didn’t know quite what to say and didn’t feel fully comfortable sharing as much as she probably needed to share with Alfric. That, writing the letter, was something she should have been doing on a rainy day when there was nothing pressing, but it was also something she wanted to put off for as long as possible. If she sent a letter to her parents or had Alfric send one with information about her, there was a decent chance that they would try to follow up or, worse, come to Pucklechurch. She wasn’t about to put that past her mother, and the thought made her nauseous.

She took a moment to clear her mind as she went about her aimless walk through Pucklechurch. The rain had let up a bit, becoming just a gentle drizzle, and looked like it would move more toward being a mist.