"I can't imagine but you would age well yourself," he said, head almost ducking with adolescent shyness, but not quite. His was young, but not of tender years. Life had hardened parts of him that some of the softer parts might remain protected. He wasn't a carefree young man, but he wasn't solid through and through. His soul had grown armor. "I think perhaps Menali would want to wait, remain a girl for a few years... I can see why a young woman would want that." But there was a note of longing in his voice all the same. The life of a Watchman was fraught with peril, and if he died, so too would the dreams of his pavilion without an heir to carry on. "It just hasn't gone well," he admitted, "finding a wife. Perhaps my time away has made me unsuitable..." There was the falter of doubt in his voice now, his dark eyes shadowed. "Not Drykas enough. Not man enough. Not Ankal material... Potential perhaps, but not realizing itself fast enough. I don't know. I will keep building my pavilion and hopefully a wife will come, and many wives, and children and laughter and sorrow and... life. Again. I would like to be surrounded by life again. The knot of lives interconnected to which I belong." |