How I Leave You

Rest and Responsibilities

"I am ready."

Soldís looks at me with fire in her eyes. The embers have been glowing for years now, and I have been a fool to ignore them instead of putting them out.

"That we are even having this argument proves that you are not ready." I hold my stance. "Far from it."

She paces the room in front of me, her rage glistening on her skin like droplets of water about to turn into steam.

"No," she insists. "We are having this argument because you won't let me do what I have trained a quarter of a century to do."

"A quarter of a century is nothing, Sol. And you are hardly even half a century old. I was five times your age when I became queen."

"And yet, next to Gandalf, you are no more than a child in years."

This makes me smile, just a little. Tenderly, I reach my hand out to cup her chin, but she turns away, clearly still upset with me.

"My wonderful, wise daughter." For a moment, I only admire her as she stands there, fists curled and chest heaving, cheeks flushed and hair wild. Exactly like how she used to look when she was a child. But it has been a long time since she has been that. She may be young, but she is grown. "I do not understand why you are so eager to commit your life away, when you should be busy living it."

"But it is not committing my life away. Being their queen is not a burden, Ama. It is my destiny."

"The issue, my sun, is that you do not see that those two are one and the same. Your destiny is a burden. It is a duty, and it will always be that before it is anything else."

She crosses her arms across her chest, slightly pouting. More and more, I see her father in her for every day that goes by. I left her with him for one year a quarter of a century ago, and this is what he has made of her: an image of himself.

"I've waited long enough," she says stubbornly.

"Anyone who hungers for power will be consumed by it."

"It's not power I hunger for." She starts pacing again, the frustration streaming out of her animated arm movements. "It's my people. Our people. People that are like me in body and soul. People who aren't as stubborn as stone and as unyielding as metal."

Just as I am about to tell her that she is both of those things, someone else joins us in the chambers.

"You offend me, sister." Thrór holds a hand to his chest, feigning agony, as he staggers into the room. "I must be the exception to your rule, for I am certainly not stubborn."

"You are the rule, idiot. Next to Adad, you are the most stubborn person I know."

He leans against the stone wall, grabbing something out of his pockets. An apple. Arrogantly, he takes a bite out of it.

"Well," he says, mouth full and manners missing, "if it were up to me, I'd vote that you should leave."

I roll my eyes. These children of mine will be the death of me. How long was he listening in on our conversation?

"You only say that because you're upset I keep beating you at training."

At this, Thrór halts his movements, the half-eaten apple stopping halfway to his mouth.

"I slipped in the mud one time—"

But before he can finish his sentence, Soldís' laughter interrupts him. She giggles gleefully at the memory, or perhaps at the decisively unhappy look currently on his face. He blows a stray lock of black hair away, finishing the rest of the apple in a single bite.