"Ihate you," Morek announced around a mouthful of bread. "I'm sitting through Tactical Formation Theory with old Davorin droning about wind shear, and you get to skip all of it and go play with Moki. It's not fair. I'm registering a formal complaint."
"With whom?" Shovia asked.
"With the universe. With whoever's in charge of fairness."
"No one's in charge of fairness," Shovia said. "The world is not fair, and the sooner you realize that the less disappointed you'll be."
I shook my head. "I promise you that you don't want to switch places with me. Saphir wants me to become a shaman yesterday so I can take over for him, and he works me harder than any of the instructors ever did. Even Odinah."
"I don't mind Odinah and the conditioning," Morek said. "It's the classroom stuff that gets me."
Shovia leaned back with the strong cup of caff Morek had made for us. "What does Saphir have you do other than read those smelly old scrolls?"
I grimaced. "He has me practicing delivering speeches. You know how much I hate public speaking."
"I do." She chuckled behind her cup. "Are you getting any better?"
"A little," I admitted. "He stands me up in the middle of his office and makes me deliver inspired sermons in front of him and Moki." I picked at the goat cheese crumbs that had fallen off my sandwich. "He gives me his old speeches, has me rewrite them in my own style, and then deliver them with feeling. I have to stand there and project confidence and conviction, and hold myself like I mean it, while the two of them sit and judge me."
Morek snorted, laughing. "Moki judges you? I'd put money on Moki being the harsher critic."
"You'd win that bet," I said. "Saphir just frowns and tells me to try again, while Moki shakes his head and chitters and looks like he's so disappointed in me he can barely stand it. He's so dramatic for a little cat-monkey chimera."
"No wonder," Shovia said. "Moki has been watching Saphir deliver speeches for a thousand years, and he judges you bySaphir's standards. That's the definition of unfair, but as I said, life is not fair."
I shrugged. "Saphir is teaching me to project, to push my voice out from somewhere lower in my belly so it carries without shouting. He says that I'm talking from my throat and sounding like I'm apologizing for making a sound."
"He's right," Shovia said. "You do that."
I glared at her. "Thank you."
She finished her caff and put the cup down. "What you need is proper actor training. A real performer who knows how to work a crowd, how to land a line, how to make people lean in. That's a whole craft. Saphir is a natural, so he doesn't know how to teach the craft."
"And where exactly am I going to find a real performer?" I said. "It's not as if traveling theater troupes are invited to the Citadel."
Shovia sighed. "Maybe we should form an amateur theater group. Do you remember the last troupe that came to Skywatcher's Point before our pilgrimage?"
She meant before the square had exploded, killing and wounding many. It had been repaired since, but I still felt uneasy when I landed there after receiving the Hero of Elucia medal. All those pleasant memories of the place from before had been erased by this one act of barbaric terrorism that had meant to remind Elucians that we were not safe even in Skywatcher's Point, the town closest to the Citadel.
"Was it the Painted Wagon group?" I asked.
"That's the one." She grinned. "With the sun on one side and the moons on the other, and the back folded down into a stage. They were good."
"They made my mother cry," Morek said. "I didn't like it. I like comedies, not tragedies. Elu knows we have enough of those in real life."
"I could use a good comedy," Codric said.
He didn't speak much these days and given that he was the comedian in our group, it was no wonder that our meals had turned somber. He missed Alar as much as I did, and that formed a new kinship between us.
"I don't care for them," Shovia said. "They are often so stupid that I feel like I'm losing brain cells just from watching them."
I kept nibbling on my cheese while the three of them kept discussing various plays, and Codric concluded that television was better than theater.
Sharing an apartment with my friends was what was keeping me from completely losing my mind. I had to pretend to be okay for their sake, and the pretending was lifting my mood as if it were real. There was something to be said for faking it, especially when it was done not to elevate one's worth but to elevate others' well-being.
It was for a good cause.
"We should get going." Morek started collecting the dishes from our lunch. "Formations."
