“And it’s not greatyet,” I correct him. “Too dense. What did you change?”
He swallows and says tightly, “Added more yeast.”
“Okay, so that helped the structure but not the texture. You learned something! What are you trying next? I assume you didn’t just give up?”
“Of course not. I’m changing the amount of water.”
“Oh, good idea. And, honestly, the flavor might be my fault—I don’t remember to feed the starter regularly. So it’ll only get better now that it’s under your control.”
There’s a long pause.
Finally Kovan says, his voice wry, “I think I may need to learn how to be useful even when I’m not in control.”
I freeze while taking another bite of bread.
Very deliberately, I swallow.
“Or at least,” the sage sighs, “learning how to not accidentally cause problems.”
“Well, that I definitely can’t help with,” I say. “But I would also... maybe not recommend wanting to be useful to people first and foremost?”
Kovan’s eyebrows draw down. “That sounds... at odds with how I have lived thus far. Can you say more? You don’t want to be useful to people?”
Whoops accidentally waded into the faith crisis. Crap.
“Oh, no, I definitely do, that’s exactly it. But one reason I wanted to be up here so badly was to have a place where it was safe to beme, you know?”
And I’m not sure I do have that place anymore.
I mean, I can actually talk to him, and he doesn’t get mad at what I say or do, and he acknowledges his faults and explains himself.
I slept easily with him next to me.
But sooner or later—and my experience always points to sooner—he’s going to get frustrated with how frivolous I am next to his intensity.
And once that happens, and he leaves, I’m not sure this will still feel like my haven.
Kovan
Theideaoflivingtonotbe useful feels like such an attack on my identity that I know I’m going to need to think more about why, and what that means.
The idea of wanting a place to just be myself—thatis entirely foreign to me. It’s notpossible. I am a sage; there’s no separating that from my identity. The power was mine before the priests took me in.
But if I don’t know who I am if I’m not being of service, perhaps that is the crux of my problem.
Right now, there is only a single person next to me that Imustfind a way to help, and it is damning that I can’t figure out how.
Why is it harder to think about how to help just Tasa than to do work on a grander scale?
In my partial defense, I can’t use magic, which is how I usually solve problems. And I’m usually only directed at problems that resolve can help with.
But since I am the vessel of divinity—which hasn’t changed, and I have made it my life’s work to study the manifestation of resolve that I am the channel for—it is damning that without magic, my ability to help her feel more secure in herself is so lacking.
“How can you be yourself here where you can’t in Crystal Hollow?” I ask.
“Oh boy. That’s a complicated question.” Tasa takes another bite of my inferior bread, not giving any sign that she doesn’t enjoy it.
My chest tightens, and I’m not sure why.
