Maker of Fire

Ud and Usruldes, the Fenlands, Cold Season, 6th rot., 1st day

Usruldes Udkin wandered the paths of the main cavern, which he could walk without light. He had done so as a 15-year-old boy, lost in the wilderness and taken in by Ud. He knew every path and every pebble. He found the grotto overflowing with nostalgia and sat on a bench. He watched the little waterfall that Ud had used to teach him levitation and mind's hand manipulation. He had many happy memories of this place, as Ud soothed his teenaged anger at his parents and his sense of hurt when they denied how they had made him unhappy.

*You are no longer that boy,* Ud said in the back of his head. Inside her home, chatting with her was only a thought away. *You are a man with a family and loyal subordinates. You have grave responsibilities. Your mother is proud of you. Do you know that, silly boy?"

"She is?" Usruldes did not know. He found it hard to talk about things like that with his mother. He thought she still disapproved of what he had done. As a parent, she was such a stickler for duty, and he had run away from his. The awkwardness never seemed to go away between them, no matter how hard he tried.

*Be honest about this, Usruldes,* Ud chided, *sometimes you don't care to try. You are still angry.*

"I am?" He thought he had left all that anger behind him in the past.

*You have this deep knot of anger, and your father is dead, so you can never tell him about it. You cannot discharge or resolve how you feel about his insistence that you be the next lord holder. Some of that anger you have transferred onto your mother for taking your father's part instead of yours. Is that fair to her? She believed she was doing the correct thing for you.*

"Ud, she did nothing. She took his part. What I thought, what I wanted, didn't matter at all. Why shouldn't I be angry." He was surprised at his own outburst. Where had that come from?

*Your mother already told you why,* Ud sounded disappointed, which hurt Usruldes, who never wanted to disappoint Ud. *You listened to her words that morning in Is'syal, on the day after the flood, but you heard nothing.*

"She said something about it?" he didn't remember.

Lisaykos' voice started speaking in the grotto, "Until you left, I never imagined that you would see running away as the solution to whatever was going on in your head. I didn't understand it then, which is obvious in the damning clarity of hindsight. I do not understand it now. I thought you would bend to what we wanted for you because we thought it was the best thing for you, and we wanted you to have that best thing. What you wanted and what you needed was something different. It was my failure not to know that. I honestly do not know what I could have done back then that would have kept us together as a family."

*Usruldes, child, you are now also a parent. Surely, you have had days where you were at the end of your wits and out of patience with your children, not knowing what else to do to handle a child's behavior or choices. Parents are not gods. They are not omniscient. No parent is perfect, not even you. You now know how difficult it can be to raise talented and intelligent children. You were no different, and you were more difficult to raise because of your sensitive nature. You can start the process of forgiving your mother by recognizing that she knows she failed you.*

"Why are you bringing this up, Ud?" Usruldes was confounded. Ud rarely chastised him.

*Only because you were thinking about it. You wounded her badly when she realized you would never have contacted her again if not for your daughter wanting to train at the Healing Shrine. She is still bleeding from that. You could have acted better, child. I want you to think about this.*

"Dammit, Ud," Usruldes snapped. "It's my business, not yours."

*It is my business because you are my student and my kin, and I take care of my kin. Your wounding your mother has also wounded you. This is a trail of unhappiness that has wrapped itself around your soul, and it makes you unhappy. You are better than this, child. I want you to think about this. We can talk about it later when you and Jane return from Gangkego. This was not what I wanted to talk to you about. I got distracted by your unhappiness.*

"What did you want to talk about, Ud?" She could be so unpredictable sometimes.

"Do you think Emily could do some fireworks for me before you leave? I would love to see some with my own eyes. Jane's creation magic should make it possible."