Meta-Conversations: Your Questions 3 (Flowers) (Patreon)

(Yes, we are getting a lot of this! But I think once it's finished off, we will be done with the material to fill a second volume of the Conversations, so I figure I should do that.)

***

I smile at this one. “Do you have a favorite flower? I guess that’s like asking an Ai-Naidari if they have a favorite color. Everyone has one.”

“Truly,” the Regal says. “Mine is the faethum or.”

I squint. “The dusk with blush?”

“Evening’s blush, yes. It’s a flowering tree that puts out dark purple flowers that lighten to a pinkish white as they age. When they are blanched completely, they fall from the tree. But I like them for the smell…” He pauses, eyes focusing now on some memory. “And because there were several outside my window when I was a stripling, and I used to watch passersby when my duties were done and I was between them and the hours of the darelen. I spent that time restoring myself and considering my day, and I associate the scent of the trees with that calm.”

Storyteller’s magic gives me the smell of the flower with the words, and the best I can come up with is… like magnolias? But less heavy. A daintier version of a gardenia? Something like that.

I also likes the word he uses for what he did, qav, which we might translate as ‘processing’ but that feels too computery and modern-psychologyish for me. It’s a much older word in their lexicon, a process of sorting through and examining one’s ideas and thoughts until one achieves some equilibrium. It’s acquired a modern jargon usage: Observers use it to mean ‘to precipitate’ (as in a solution… they don’t use it for rain).

I think to say, “You had a window when you were a youth. So you had a private room?”

He inclines his head. “And you have observed that we do not always or frequently have such things in our dwellings? It is a more common feature of our older architecture, that there might be rooms assigned to specific people for their sole occupancy. You’ll have noted it in the First Servant of Shame’s dwelling.”

“I have.”

“The buildings that the Regals occupy,” he continues, “were built when the capital was, and so they are very old, and so they have more single-person rooms than modern homes. But we still build new homes above the Wall of Birth in this fashion because of their use. The ‘palaces’ you perceive us to inhabit are in fact public buildings, and most of them is given over to public use. We have to distinguish between the parts of the building where family activities are engaged in, and the parts of the building where they aren’t. And since our families tend to be even larger and more extended than the average family beneath the Wall, we are often given a small space to ourselves, so we can settle our thoughts, or attend tasks that require concentration or privacy.”

I try to imagine living in a town hall and can see how I, as a human, would want a second floor where I could run and hide from the people using the building for its official function. But: “A lot less of your palace seems set aside for that than I would have assumed, given how large your families are.”

“Many of our family activities are done in public,” the Regal agrees. “It does not disturb us to have our darelen where our people might see and join us. To some extent, we are to feel all Ai-Naidar are our relations.”

“Does that happen often?” I ask, trying not to sound as aghast as I am. I can’t imagine the family-bond-nurturing Ai-Naidar must like party-crashers at their private family time.

“More than you would expect, and less often than you fear,” he replies, reading my dismay with, I think, amusement. “But we cannot do our work if we are regarded as gods, datyani. People should respect our time and not waste it, because we have a great deal to do on their behalf. But they should not fear us, nor think of us as something other than Ai-Naidar. Only Thirukedi is due true reverence. The rest of us ask for respect.”

“And obedience,” I murmur.

“Our society cannot function without the obedience of consenting members,” he says. “Our ways are not yours. People must trust us. You know.”

“Emas,” I say, which is the word for trusting that people with responsibility for you will not abuse their authority.

“And shiln,” he says, which is the reciprocation, the trust that people with authority have that those they have responsibility for will check them when they err, and follow them when they are good.

This is old ground, and not related to the question, so I let it go. There will be other days to once again dig into the parts of Kherishdar that make most of us uncomfortable—me included. I return to the question. “If I may ask, is it your favorite because of the flower, or because of the memories?”

“Yes,” he says, simply. And laughs at my expression. “How would you answer such a question, datyani? Really? Can you separate the things you love from the memories associated with them?”

“Not often,” I admit, chuckling. “All right. We move on. Unless you have a question for this witness as well?”

“The evrauthendari? Of course. Please ask what her favorite flower is: particularly, if there is one she likes to paint. I would like to know more about aunerai flowers, and aunerai artists.”