#me shoving references to my Fake tdp mythology at every instance

[jelzorz]

192.

In the years after the war, after Aaravos, after the castle is rebuilt and feels like home again, Soren finds time in the peace to do... well. Nothing. There are always diplomatic missions and there's always security to check, but the peacetime is stable and surprisingly stubborn, and even when there are skirmishes in the surrounding towns or at the border—which is barely a border at all, these days—they're never big enough to cause any real trouble, and life slows like the sun in the summer months, quiet and calm and sleepy in a way he's never known.

This is what spurns him back into poetry. Dragon Smash Boy was silly, but so was he, in those days, and now that there's time, well. Why not? He doesn't have to be good at it to enjoy it, and he'll never be good at it if he doesn't try at all. Very secretly, he's always liked the skill in it, the ability to say something meaningful and beautiful in something short and sweet, and maybe one day, in the distant future, people will go back to the books and find his there, proof that he's more than just muscle and brawn.

It seems silly. Or maybe his father just made him think anything outside of the box he'd been put in was silly. He's done enough work to know he still carries the weight of his childhood with him, even after all the baggage he's already put down. Those days have long past. He can dream if he wants.

So he goes to the library and pulls down book after book after book. He studies the prose and the description, the weird places poets pause for effect, the metaphor and the assonance and the rhyme, and then he tries to write his own but... It never feels quite right. It always feels a little forced, a little ingenuine, lacking in the honesty of the poems he decides he likes best.

"I don't get it," he muses one day. He is lounging by a window in the library with a book lying open on the desk before him. This one is a recommendation from Callum: Even the Deepest Night is Lit by Stars by Damian Something-or-other. He'd had something wistful in his eyes when he gave Soren the title and Soren had had to know. "All of these are like... beautiful and mine are so..." He grimaces and shoves the book back just as Opeli appears from behind a stack with a pile of books in her arms.

She raises an eyebrow at him. "Can I ask what you're agonizing over?"

Soren glances up and chuckles sheepishly, his cheeks the slightest bit warm. "I'm—uh—trying to learn how to write poems," he admits. "It's... not as easy as everyone makes it sound. Let me take those." He gets up and takes the books from her arms without waiting for an answer and Opeli smiles her thanks.

"The best poems aren't," she says, as she leads him through the shelves to where they belong. "The best are the ones that are hardest to write."

"What do you mean?"

Opeli purses her lips as she starts removing books from his arms. "Art is about expression," she says after a moment. "And sometimes the most beautiful art is art that expresses something the artist can't otherwise express. It's putting a feeling on display and showing an audience where the artist is most vulnerable. It's no easy task."

Soren blinks at her. "It's about... being vulnerable?"

"It's about being honest," says Opeli with a wry smile, "to yourself about yourself. It's about expressing the things that feel too big for your heart to manage."

"You make it sound like those counselling sessions we used to have."

"It is, in a way," chuckles Opeli. "Those were a way for you express your feelings too. Poetry is not so different. You simply tell the world what you're feeling instead of me."

"Oh."

Oh indeed. Soren thinks about the things he told her, the tears he shed, and suddenly poetry feels a lot scarier as a concept. To be that honest, that vulnerable—in words that anyone in the world might see or hear? He likes to think that he's brave but that feels like something else entirely.

But he tries. He thinks about it late at night and in the early mornings. He writes it all down in flowery words and metaphors. Then, about a month later, he presents it to the council.

"It's hard to see in darkness when there's nothing there to see, When you turn, is it still dark? Or is the nothing me? Am I so small the shadows feel like neverending night? Or do you just think you're big enough to block out all the light? I'm older now and wiser and I still stumble through dark, But now the sun is rising, and I hear the singing lark. It doesn't feel so cold now and the morning looks so bright. Maybe I'm not nothing. Maybe I'm the light."

The council stares at him. Ezran drops his jelly tart and Callum looks like Soren might as well have hit him over the head with the butt of his sword.

"Was it bad?"

"Bad?" Rayla looks aghast. "Soren, that was amazing! How? When? How long have you been working on that?"

"Oh, um." Soren flushes a little and rubs awkwardly at the back of his neck. "A few weeks. It was okay?"

"Better than okay!" says Ez.

"It was actually really good," agrees Callum almost breathlessly. "Like. Really good. Great job!"

It's a better response than he ever though he would get, and Soren grins and bows, pleased to have something that he's finally happy with that actually passes as a real poem. The rest of the meeting passes quickly, and he spends it in a state of giddiness, of pride, before it ends and the others file out. Opeli is the last to leave, as always, and Soren hangs back, curious to know what she thinks. It was her advice he followed after all.

"Did you think it was okay?"

"I have a question for you first," she says, piling her paperwork into her arms. She looks him right in the eye, and Soren takes a breath, waiting for the critique--but instead, she asks--

"Are you okay?"

Of course. Soren glances away, a rueful smile tugging at his lips. "I mean. You said to be honest."

"You were," says Opeli. "I don't think anyone else realized it though."

"Yeah, well." Soren snorts to himself. He doesn't blame them, but it's not surprising. "They don't notice anything outside of them, do they?"

Opeli scoffs. "Unfortunate, but true." She studies him for a moment, blue-grey eyes too knowing to avoid. "There is no darkness that can extinguish light," she says after a moment, "and the Sun is the brightest light of all."

He laughs then, flattered by the metaphor (he thinks). "Are you a poet too?"

She smirks. "Perhaps," she teases. "It's scripture. But if you want my honest opinion, I thought it was beautiful."

"Really?"

"Really. You have every right to be proud."

"I am," grins Soren, and for the first time, he lets himself believe that maybe the dream of being a poet isn't so silly after all.