Chapter 591: Chapter 591 - I See Your Past... But I Will Still Raise You A Future

"Strongest. You’re so confident in that?"

"Triple-Enchanters, both of them. And not just at First Echelon. Achieved well before they are old enough for Guild training."

"That is quite a feat for two children that have not been being given our best attention throughout these years, since Anper’s house arrest."

What Lirades meant was that the man had taken the minimum in resources sent for them and - though he simmered in prideful disdain for the lack, just like he stewed over the ’too much’ for Qat - did not beg or complain in any way that moved the needle appreciably for his sons. He just kept expecting them to excel on his lessons alone. In that regard, he actually wasn’t all that different with them and with Qatrand. He always expected too much result no matter what was being given.

"I will say plainly that I am sure they will outpace nearly everyone their age in the family, because they’ve done the groundwork of real spiritual training that our traditions lacked."

"Wonderful. That sounds exactly like what I hoped for."

"Lirades. You’re asking them to be symbols of hope and objects of hate to the Yecine all at once. I have faith you will be on their side, but also be honest and let them know that you are using them. Because whether you tell them your intent or not - I will."

Qatrand had expected some version of vindictive triumph out of the woman - or so she realized, only as it failed to actually appear. Lirades had spent countless ignored moments telling the family’s men that their ways were stunting their own children, let alone the wives that married in, even before the blonde woman was alive. She had said it to Anper directly, even, after he sent his young boys back early during that final remaining section of the competition.

"You may not have had the privilege of understanding me well enough, with your upbringing. But I never involve people without explaining myself and protecting them. I will tell them. Don’t worry."

The boys’ return now - as living proof of their being deprived of opportunity - should have been spoken with vindication when she claimed she hoped for them to turn out this way. However, for a while now she had seemed just tired... her words were firm but with a quieter seriousness to them than usual. All in all, she was also someone who got what she wanted, yet was finding it hard to be completely happy about the waste of it all.

"You know, it upsets me. That their father is not here to see it. Somewhere hunting cultists no one asked him to hunt, stirring the very trouble that made his sons’ removal from our protection seem wise to his wife in the first place. Can I tell you a secret, dear?"

"...What?"

"I got her to admit that sending them to you was his idea."

"...What."

"At least, that he kept saying things that made her think to do it."

"Sounds like his sort of manipulation. Not often telling people to do something directly, just providing them enough information that he thinks they will do it themselves."

"Yes. Knowing him, he was hoping to get information about what you have been up to when they returned. Or maybe where your little wife had gone."

She drew a slow breath and let it out... and in that deep exhale was heard the pain of two centuries of struggles. The kind which some days made her wish she had remarried, just for someone to talk to about it - someone who would listen. Because it wasn’t like she was quiet about what she felt and thought, or at least that quality erupted every few years or so, but she had not felt much comfort since her husband’s death.

"I have been right about this family for a very long time, Qatrand."

"I know."

"It is not a satisfying thing to be right about."

"...I know that much too."

"The men of ours will train their forms in the morning and tell themselves in the evening that the fault in their growth rate was in their footwork. They don’t think outside the box - or worse, they believe the box is a sacred thing."

"That sounds like many of them. I agree."

Smiling awkwardly at the last part, she didn’t really want to say for a third time that she ’knew’ herself that they were that way. Even though she remembered her younger years easily. When she, as one of those very ’males’ thought that the Yecine was just as good as Everything. Before she came to the self-realization that they were not at all as good as her cute wife.

Which to her, had become the real target of the Yecine doctrine of Family Before All Else. Elua had to be cherished above all others...

’Or she will pout.’

"Anper... your father was almost a caricature at times, I found. But not always. None of the kids were. None of this had to be the way it was. But it has been so. And being the one who saw it coming did not make the watching or the railing any easier."

Having spent a long-held amount of resolve on the latest bet of a coup, she found that while there was still much work to be done, the other side of success could be less thrilling than expected. It was also weighed down with the same amount of nostalgia... but now it didn’t fuel anything good.

Qat did not try to immediately lift the pressure on the older woman - she could feel with her tendrils of spirit checking on Lirades that it was not what she wanted in the first place. She just wanted the situation to be seen the one young member of this family she had decided to trust with this honesty. The most respectful thing Qat could do was let herself witness it.

"My wife really is waiting."

At least for a minute of silence.

"How is she, by the way? In your words."

Navuill’s descriptions were more than useless. She’d sent him off on his hunt with a primer on poetry, telling him to study it when he could... and it had improved his talking greatly. But even as an Empath, he was still a man prone to miss certain things that the eldest woman of the Yecine was sure Qatrand would not. Even if this young woman also was rarely the best at telling a good story.

"So happy that she doesn’t know what to do with herself."

"I understand. Which is why she is breaking our swords."

"...Yes. In part."

Genuine warmth was returning to the older woman now, the banked heat in the lonely old mountain finding a small, cleaner thing to talk about. Progress that was coming after mistakes, but also regarding a deficit that had less personal feelings involved for her. She pointed at the blade that the younger woman had in its scabbard at her back.

"I heard we will get new ones. I am looking forward to that greatly."

"Don’t expect them to be like mine."

’Or even those of my brothers’. Really, when she creates things like this it makes me want to lock her away so she isn’t stolen herself.’

Qatrand smiled in exasperation, a look that was far softer than any husband a Yecine wife ever knew. With a reality to it far more grim than most people would be smiling about.

’Since I’d feel bad for whoever she eradicates to get back to me. Even if they were criminals.’

"As always, I like the look on your face when you think about her."

"Really?"

"Yes. It and the fact that your cousin smiles a fraction as bright at his wife now... is probably the best thing to come out of everything that has happened. I know you’re not actually the son you were made to claim to be, but I do want the sons of this family to grow up to be happy with who they spend their life with."

Pigeon blues lost focus for a second, but didn’t really have to think it through. Just think through how much to say.

"I am happy. I will be. And I will make our family happy."

"Oh, dear... there was something to the way you said that, wasn’t there?"

Brushing fingers along her single large streak of elderly hair, the woman shook her head. She would be lying if she claimed she had no hope at all, that the best cultivator to come out of their family in many generations could return to their fold in time. As unlikely as she expected it would be, it still existed in some indeterminate goal sort of way inside her heart. She was even hoping that retrieving the siblings would be some kind of impetus for the Eldest ’Son’ to come back, she would admit if asked.

"There was. I haven’t talked with her about it yet, exactly. But it has been on my mind. For years."

And here Qat hesitated to continue. Not because she did not trust the woman. It simply belonged to a conversation she had not found the moment to have, in these short days so far, even while holding her wife to sleep. In a talk meant for after her return to the continent and not just penned as an idea through infrequent letters to the Exclave. A transmission of the idea with the ability to directly see and feel her reaction.

But of all the people in the Yecine, outside of perhaps Navuill who was now suddenly standing where she once aspired to, Lirades was the one person whom Qat felt she owed the truth of this decision. Especially after her help during the emancipation in the first place. So she told her plainly - that she would not be coming back. And then, more quietly despite the privacy of the room, she explained and voiced it.

A name. A founding. The parts of it and the history that made it theirs, or as much as she could that went into it without revealing the reincarnator fully.

When the swordswoman finished speaking, was still tasting the flavor of the Old Tongue name out loud, the older relative reached out and set a hand against the side of her face. The way a mother might - certainly the way Yatrel had done before to the blonde. But also the way people made contact with the things they were about to let go of with grace.

"It sounds like you put some thought into it. You will build the better thing we could have been, in your own way."

"I’m sorry."

"I’m not. I would have rather seen you flourish somewhere else than wither here with the rest of us. I always would have. But I do not think you would have ever let us come to that, nor do I think that is our fate any longer."

Her thumb moved firmly once against Qat’s cheekbone and then her hand withdrew. Twenty-one may not be all that old to her, but it was much too late to start leaning into the kind of affectionate displays she would have shown any other daughter of the Yecine... she felt. It would just make it harder to give her up!

"The name is a good one, Qatrand gil Yecine. I pray the next time I need to talk to you it will be when you’ve signed everything to replace that attached past with your chosen future."

"Thank you, Elder Lirades. For everything you did for me and the family. And for everything you tried to do. I’ll talk to my brothers. Treat them well."

Finding that her own low voice had thickened with more emotion after the first syllable, she let it continue that way. Because there was no one here she needed to be still-faced for. Inclining her head deeply, she turned before she could be stopped again. And left to see why her mintdrop was feeling almost as emotional as she was right now...