"So what does loneliness mean to you?" she asked.
"It means pain," he replied. "The occasional pang, yes... but more than that, this brimming feeling of a sort of soft, dull unease; like what people might describe as the withering of aging, but so early and for so long. I think, in my isolation, I could pay so much more attention to the tortures of everyday life. Every ache of my tooth, every solemn day... they filled me so wholly, and with such... resonating empty. Life just seemed so fruitless back then, you know? I didn't know that anything could ever be good -- so, I sort of... fought my way towards that end: that paradise in Muid."
"The one you didn't believe in?" Hilden muttered out, bringing both hands together before her, and settling them onto her lap.
"The one I didn't believe in -- except for when I longed for it," Taelian whispered, a deep frown settling on him. "And then... I don't know -- I left. I left Sil-Elaine because I couldn't handle it anymore, and wanted to know what the world outside was like. And then: I got a taste, and it was beautiful, and more wonderful than anything I ever could've dreamed. It was brimming with warmth, and vibrancy, and even though the brutal land of Daravin was my first stop, the flagellants and the dead infants could not dissuade me. This world, outside of my emaciated swamp, was intoxicating. It was where I belonged."
She curled her lips. "So you didn't go back?"
"I didn't," Taelian replied, shaking his head guiltily. "Maybe I should've, so they'd all get the chance to live in this world I've found... but this gnashing part of me told me: you've given them enough. You've sacrificed enough. It's your turn to live for you -- don't end up like Eleanor, or Veliden, or Meron or Kyrael. You have a chance, now, and you've learned that the world isn't all squalor and loneliness. Renfier taught me that, and then Lethiril, and Riven, and then so many more. I don't know much about your story, Hilden, but you have it well. Even if you came from a rough place in this world, nothing compares to the depriving emptiness I came from in Sil-Elaine. I am thankful every moment for this life."
Taelian settled into his seat, and the woman cleared her throat, bringing a handkerchief to her lips to cough. "I am from Vestria," she said. "West of here, as you know. I was born on a farm to a father and a herd of cattle. My life... it was not incredibly eventful before I became a mage, but it was satisfying in a simple way. I miss it, sometimes: those endless farms that would go on for hours, days. I can't say my life was particularly hard other than the physical rigors, but I grew into them. And then... I found magic, and Gods did those rigors feel so unnecessary then. Why toil in the fields every moment of your life when you could just... create wings of night, and fly, and be free? Or walk through shadows, or immerse yourself within the currents of the wind? I came to love it, and before I knew it I could not return. My father would not have me -- for as much as he loved me, he could not father a mage."
"And why is that?" Taelian inquired, staring quietly towards the solemn woman, whose eyes no longer left her lap.
"It wasn't about me," she said. "And it wasn't about him. It was about this—" Hilden gestured to the walls, or the areas that surrounded them, and shook her head, "it was about this world, this nation. The stigmas people have. He would have loved me were I a mage or a simple rube, but then others wouldn't have loved him. They would've scorned him. His friends at the pub? They wouldn't be his friends any longer." The woman narrowed her eyes, and slowly she lowered her hands.
"So that's why you believe in this mission, isn't it?" Taelian asked, and the woman somberly sighed out.
"Maybe," she answered. "It would be wise of me to simply say yes, but... truth is, I just don't know. I'm still looking for where I belong, and I'm not fully certain it's here."
"You'll never be certain," Taelian tipped his head. "For as long as you live, you will never know. That is what we contend with, and it's part of what gives us that... zeal, to do more, to be the most final and most climactic version of ourselves. We hone ourselves into tools for bartering, hoping to one day be able to trade our complete selves for the exchange of a happy life. I regret to say... I do not believe that vision of what we imagine to be happiness ever quite comes."
Quietly, the woman leaned forward, drawing herself towards the edge of the table to clutch the grip of her teacup. Slowly, she returned it to her lips, and drew the slightest sip.
"Are you not happy, then? With Ford? With the rest of them?"
"I am happy," he replied, looking down towards her with his arms spread out over the edges of his seat. "I won't be complete until it's done, though, or I can't do anything more. I think age will clarify this life for me — what I really wanted, what was really worth it in the end. Until then, I am the same feather I was when I was clipped from Aldrin's wings. These next steps are an uncertainty."
"To uncertainty, I suppose," Hilden whispered, lifting forward her petite glass of tea, which received an opposing knuckle in return; the man had no drink of his own to match it with.
"To uncertainty," Taelian muttered back. "The force that drives fate."
