▸ Column · The Dragonflights at Wyrmrest — keepers of the hatchery-watch under the law of the Accord
ALEXSTRASZA replies.
Replied to by Alexstrasza, with a rebuttal from Deathwing.
The letter
I share the night-watch over the hatchery with another keeper — I'll call him William — and somewhere between counting eggs and passing a flask of spiced cider in the warming-room, the easy talk became something that catches in my chest each time his sending-stone glows. Here is the trouble: the Accord forbids any binding of the heart between two who keep the same watch, and our broodwarden Loramae recited that very clause at the last gathering with her gaze fixed, I swear it, on the pair of us. We have done nothing the law names — no courting, no confession — yet the lingering looks and the "accidental" late sendings are a bond in all but name. I love this work, and come the turning of the season I am to be weighed for warden of my own watch. I cannot afford to become the warning murmured to next year's novices. Do I keep pretending there is no fire until one of us is reassigned, or is the honest thing to smother it before the wardens must?
Alexstrasza replies
Come, dear one, and set down the flask. I will not pretend the question you asked is the question underneath it. You did not write to me to learn the law of the Accord — you know that already. You wrote because you are weighing whether to strangle something living to keep something titled. And that I cannot counsel.
I loved Korialstrasz across more ages than you have years, and I will tell you plainly: a bond made to live in shadow, in furtive glances and sendings disguised as accidents, is a bond you are quietly teaching to be ashamed of itself. That is not tending a fire. That is keeping it small so no one smells the smoke. The Gift was never meant to be hidden like a fault.
So no — I do not say smother it, and I do not say lie until reassignment rescues you. I say bring it into the light yourself. Ask for the transfer. Let the watch be parted by your honest choice, so the fire may be tended openly, and the wardenship come, if it comes, to someone who did not have to deceive to earn it. Loramae enforces a rule; she is not your enemy. Fear of a whispered warning is. Do not order a living thing around that fear.
— Alexstrasza
Deathwing weighs in
My sister tells you to part the watch so your little flame may glow in the open. Tender. But hear what she will not name plainly: the thing you are truly protecting is not the fire — it is your terror of being a footnote in next year's lecture. A title. A clause. A warden's nod. You would smother something alive to spare an edifice of rules that will, like all such edifices, crumble whether you obey it or not.
I know that calculus. I once guarded the whole world's order and learned that order is pretense holding back ruin — so I let it burn, and there was no peace in the ash. So mark me: let the title go if you must choose. Not the flame, not yourself. The whispers love to collapse "I fear the warning" into "I must kill the spark." They are not the same sentence. I confused two things once. Look what is left of me.
— Deathwing
▸ Read next