Gwynek (prime)/Upon Reflection

Clear enough a night with a lingering chill - the kind that sets the breath to the suggestion of mist. Warmer than it ought to be, but too cold to be called spring. The court was alive with a stilted conviviality born from anticipation - no one could quite commit to anything it seemed to Gwynek. Not that he found himself contributing. Crowds of people tended to set him on edge as it was too easy to lose the plot - so he tended to sit in fits of quietness between awkward attempts of conversation when the numbers swelled so and the court took on its somewhat carnival atmosphere.

Flitting sociability ought to have come naturally to him according to the recriminations of his tutors and instructors - for he was a creature of shallow pursuits and vanity by their reckoning. Chewing on his lip as he glanced around the court, he felt they were not far off in such assessments. Gwynek felt like he didn’t wizard right, or dress right, or fight right, and by his estimation, had all the elegance of a bundle of elbows or a goblet of small toes. None of which would be bothersome if he led something of a normal life, yet the intensity of an adventurer’s life exaggerated errors of character and judgement to perilous degrees. The indictment of one of his instructors felt especially true of late, “You are the worst parts of Illistim and Vaalor stitched together - Pugnacious without Vaalorian discipline, curious without Illistim wisdom, and with insufficient virtue of blood from either to make up for the deficits of both”.

Of course, it was easy to get down on himself when he’d been defeated no fewer than three times in the span of a day. Watching his body get devoured as he gazed on as a helpless spirit, certainly provides clarity when considering the life choices that led to such a predicament, and how he kept making the same mistakes, just in different ways. Contrasted to the company that gathered in the court, it was all he could do but feel like a kitten among lions—small, stupid, and ineffectually fierce charms that he hoped endeared rather than annoyed.

Still he never felt more alive than he did when facing death - and every warcamp, every hunt, was a gamble on the largess of Lormnista. One day, her grace would end - and to die a final death would be an awfully grand adventure indeed. Fidgeting, he wondered if that was the best he could hope for given the disposition of his blood and spirit; to fling himself into the jaws of peril until one day they devoured him - a valorous soul, some few deeds shy of a legend, forgotten as so many others among the weeds and wreckage of history.

He looked up again, and breathed deeply, exhaling his ghost of breath. Might be some day, even if centuries off, he might be enough. Yet it wasn't that day; so for the nonce the stars, cold, and the distant chatter of the half known would have to do.

And reflecting he considered, what more could suffice?