Our only disagreements stemmed from learning to put up with the others’ shortcomings. But our parents were wise in raising us together. For example, I had never much liked humans. They talk too loudly and too fast, are too aggressive, and keep bouncing from one subject to another, one place to another. They never seem to sit still or take time to think.
Being around humans over a long period of time taught me to understand that their impatience and ambition and their constant need for hurry, hurry, hurry is just their way of attempting to outrace their own mortality.
By contrast, I learned that the long-lived elves are not lazy dreamers, as most dwarves consider them, but people who simply take life at their leisure, without a worry or care for tomorrow, since they are certain to have almost innumerable tomorrows left to deal with it.
And Alake and Sabia were good enough to put up with my blunt honesty, a trait of my people. (I would like to think it is a good one, but it can be carried to extremes!) A dwarf will always tell the truth, no matter how little anyone else is prepared to hear it. We can also be very stubborn, and once we dig in our heels we stay put and rarely budge. An unusually stubborn human is said to have “feet like a dwarf.”
In addition, I learned how to speak and write fluent human and elven (though our poor governess was always offended by the awkward way I held my pen). I studied the histories of their seamoons and their differing versions of the history of our world, Chelestra. But what I truly learned was affection for my dear sister-friends and, through them, their races.
We used to plan what we would do to bring our people even closer together when we at last came to rule, each of us on our own seamoon.
Never to be. We none of us will live that long.
I suppose I had better tell what happened.
It all began the day I was to bless the sun-chaser. My day. My wonderful day.
I could not sleep for excitement. Hurriedly I dressed myself in my best clothes—a long-sleeved blouse of plain and serviceable fabric (we have no use for frills), an overdress laced behind, and stout, thick boots. Standing before the looking glass in my bedroom in my father’s house, I began the day’s most important task: brushing and curling my hair and side whiskers.
The time seemed all too short before I heard my father calling for me. I made believe I hadn’t heard him, stood looking at myself with a critical eye, wondering if I was fit to be seen in public. You mustn’t think that such attention to my appearance was all for vanity’s sake. As heir to the Gargan throne, I’m expected to both look and act the part.
I had to admit—I was pretty.
I cleared away the pots of oil, imported from the elves of Elmas, and replaced the curling tongs carefully in their stand by the grate. Sabia, who has servants falling all over her (and who has never once brushed her own long blonde hair), can’t get over the fact that I not only dress myself, but clean up afterward. We Gargan are a proud and self-sufficient people and would never dream of waiting on each other in a menial capacity. Our Vater chops his own fire wood; our Muter does her own laundry and sweeps her own floor. I curl my own hair. The only mark of distinction the royal family receives above all other Gargan is that we are expected to work twice as hard as anyone else.
Today, however, our family was to have one of the rewards for services rendered to the people. The fleet of sun-chasers had been completed. My father would ask the blessing of the One upon them, and I would have the honor of nailing a lock of my hair to the bow of the flagship.
My father yelled again. Swiftly, I left my room, hurried out into the hall.
“Where is the lass?” I heard my father demand of my mother. “The seasun will have passed us by. We’ll be frozen solid by the time she’s ready.”