Written By Tikva
Aug. 4, 2020, 4:40 p.m.(10/12/1013 AR)
I'm still learning the fiercest lesson that Shard has to teach. But I'm not done yet, and neither is she.
Sing your own song, always.
Sing your own song, always.
Written By Tikva
June 28, 2020, 10:46 p.m.(7/22/1013 AR)
With so much else weighing me down it's maybe a little silly to take on a new creative project, but honestly, I feel inspired and revitalized to be looking into something new, even if it's quite old. Look for my notes to the Bard's College for future casting . . . in honor of the Knights of Solace and the King's Own, this one is going to be beautiful IF IT KILLS ME.
Written By Tikva
June 3, 2020, 5:26 p.m.(5/28/1013 AR)
Relationship Note on Sunaia
Do as you will, my lady. I tell no one who to love, or not love. The bonds of family are sacred to Limerance.
But choose not ignorance. The facts of what happened are there to be known, not a faraway history of confusion and chaos but a recent and tragic betrayal whose facts are not remotely unclear.
They are facts that cost the Compact dearly. And there is no one who would be more furious at the idea that his brother's betrayal would be lost to time than Killian Ashford.
Except... maybe Cara.
But choose not ignorance. The facts of what happened are there to be known, not a faraway history of confusion and chaos but a recent and tragic betrayal whose facts are not remotely unclear.
They are facts that cost the Compact dearly. And there is no one who would be more furious at the idea that his brother's betrayal would be lost to time than Killian Ashford.
Except... maybe Cara.
Written By Tikva
June 3, 2020, 12:43 a.m.(5/27/1013 AR)
From the Scholars' records of the Assembly of Peers, spring 1005 AR:
"Our city, and indeed, all of the Compact, is in very grave danger from a force known as the Bringers of Silence, and I have made it my personal mission to discover who they are and what they have done, as much as possible. To that end, I have been investigating, searching for the man who ordered an agent to disrupt the meeting of the king’s retinue at the Night’s Grove. I know this agent, because I found out after his death that it was my late husband, Addison Ashford. He was ordered by letter to ‘direct the King’ to disrupt the meeting there, bringing violence down upon them all and breaking our treaty obligations.
"Through my study, I discovered that in addition to causing the massacre, these agents of the Rex'alfar - called the White Stewards - began a campaign to disrupt and destroy the Abandoned of the Gray Forest, all to weaken the Nox'alfar, their foe and our allies. They manipulated our lords into war, and more, they used foul magics to appear as beings of white light to holy people, convincing them that they served the Pantheon when in fact the tasks they carried out were at the behest of the Rex’alfar.
I have a great deal of information more pertaining to these White Stewards, but I feel as though I should sum up, to be brief. I found a letter among my late husband’s things, in Lord Everard’s hand, specifically ordering him to betray the King to break the treaty. In this way, and through investigating his patterns of movements, I determined that Lord Everard worked for the White Stewards, serving the Rex’alfar who now move armed, unnatural forces through the Crownlands. When myself, Marquis Vincere as the Minister of Defense, Duke Leo as the Minister of Loyalty, and the Lady Regent herself went to speak to Lord Everard, to ask him questions about what may be happening, he drew live steel and set to attempting to kill the Regent and setting loyalists among the Iron Guards to the task as well. We were lucky to survive; only a truly heroic stand by Duke Leo allowed us to escape. I owe my deepest thanks to Duke Leo and the House of Fidante, indeed, we all do." - Cara Ashford, then Voice of House Grayson
We know what Addison Ashford did.
"Our city, and indeed, all of the Compact, is in very grave danger from a force known as the Bringers of Silence, and I have made it my personal mission to discover who they are and what they have done, as much as possible. To that end, I have been investigating, searching for the man who ordered an agent to disrupt the meeting of the king’s retinue at the Night’s Grove. I know this agent, because I found out after his death that it was my late husband, Addison Ashford. He was ordered by letter to ‘direct the King’ to disrupt the meeting there, bringing violence down upon them all and breaking our treaty obligations.
"Through my study, I discovered that in addition to causing the massacre, these agents of the Rex'alfar - called the White Stewards - began a campaign to disrupt and destroy the Abandoned of the Gray Forest, all to weaken the Nox'alfar, their foe and our allies. They manipulated our lords into war, and more, they used foul magics to appear as beings of white light to holy people, convincing them that they served the Pantheon when in fact the tasks they carried out were at the behest of the Rex’alfar.
I have a great deal of information more pertaining to these White Stewards, but I feel as though I should sum up, to be brief. I found a letter among my late husband’s things, in Lord Everard’s hand, specifically ordering him to betray the King to break the treaty. In this way, and through investigating his patterns of movements, I determined that Lord Everard worked for the White Stewards, serving the Rex’alfar who now move armed, unnatural forces through the Crownlands. When myself, Marquis Vincere as the Minister of Defense, Duke Leo as the Minister of Loyalty, and the Lady Regent herself went to speak to Lord Everard, to ask him questions about what may be happening, he drew live steel and set to attempting to kill the Regent and setting loyalists among the Iron Guards to the task as well. We were lucky to survive; only a truly heroic stand by Duke Leo allowed us to escape. I owe my deepest thanks to Duke Leo and the House of Fidante, indeed, we all do." - Cara Ashford, then Voice of House Grayson
We know what Addison Ashford did.
Written By Tikva
June 2, 2020, 11:25 p.m.(5/27/1013 AR)
Sing with me
a song of hope
as any song can be if it lifts your heart.
Sing with me,
a song unfaltering,
lift your voice and sing aloud, apart.
Sing with me,
a song unforgotten,
no matter how many tears you've shed
Sing with me,
a song that's changing,
because your chances are never all spent
Sing with me,
because I love you,
and because hope never lets go, and nor do I.
a song of hope
as any song can be if it lifts your heart.
Sing with me,
a song unfaltering,
lift your voice and sing aloud, apart.
Sing with me,
a song unforgotten,
no matter how many tears you've shed
Sing with me,
a song that's changing,
because your chances are never all spent
Sing with me,
because I love you,
and because hope never lets go, and nor do I.
Written By Tikva
May 31, 2020, 3:10 p.m.(5/22/1013 AR)
Names and choices are intertwined. Your name is what defines you, but you also define your name. The scholar Beryllium once wrote that getting a new name doesn't mean you're quite the same person - the new person, the new you, they had to have entirely left behind the person-that-was, the one whose name was lost. So to be a new name, to be a new person, is to reinvent yourself so completely that you genuinely are not that person anymore. You are someone new.
The link between name and identity is one that has come to make me wonder, lately. After all, I haven't been Tikva Laveer in 13 years. Do you remember Tikva Laveer? Do I? Does anyone?
I wonder at the girl-that-was, and the woman she might have become, on a different road, with different choices. Not out of regret, but merely curiosity. Someone was asking me about the geography near Brighthold recently and honestly I couldn't -- really say; I could remember in flashes, of images and scents and sounds, and I'm sure that if I were there and walking the cobbles beneath the lighthouse it would be as much my nature as finding my way home, now, from the House of Questions. Yet that child I was, she never could have imagined me as I am now.
Do you think when Alarice was a little girl, she imagined any of what would come? When Macdon was a boy, did he dream himself a protector?
When do you choose what your name means to you?
The link between name and identity is one that has come to make me wonder, lately. After all, I haven't been Tikva Laveer in 13 years. Do you remember Tikva Laveer? Do I? Does anyone?
I wonder at the girl-that-was, and the woman she might have become, on a different road, with different choices. Not out of regret, but merely curiosity. Someone was asking me about the geography near Brighthold recently and honestly I couldn't -- really say; I could remember in flashes, of images and scents and sounds, and I'm sure that if I were there and walking the cobbles beneath the lighthouse it would be as much my nature as finding my way home, now, from the House of Questions. Yet that child I was, she never could have imagined me as I am now.
Do you think when Alarice was a little girl, she imagined any of what would come? When Macdon was a boy, did he dream himself a protector?
When do you choose what your name means to you?
Written By Tikva
May 13, 2020, 11:59 p.m.(4/15/1013 AR)
Let memory speak, to all who have not listened
By name or kind or kith and kin christened,
and madness it seems upon the tip of the tongue,
from the highest of society to its lowest rung,
but taste not the bitter draught of mockery
when clarity is what is poured out of the crockery.
I know not whose song I sing tonight,
but pour one out for them as shon this light.
Praise be to Vellichor, that none of our songs be forgotten.
Even those whose rhyming schemes at best are misbegotten.
By name or kind or kith and kin christened,
and madness it seems upon the tip of the tongue,
from the highest of society to its lowest rung,
but taste not the bitter draught of mockery
when clarity is what is poured out of the crockery.
I know not whose song I sing tonight,
but pour one out for them as shon this light.
Praise be to Vellichor, that none of our songs be forgotten.
Even those whose rhyming schemes at best are misbegotten.
Written By Tikva
May 12, 2020, 12:30 p.m.(4/12/1013 AR)
Considering how disgustingly in love so many new married couples seem to be these days, I have no idea why anyone is making a fuss about any particular match these days. There are so many barely disguised love matches, so many with only the thinnest veneer of duty. This is not your grandmother's Arvum, gods wot.
The engagement of the heart in a marriage is not itself an evil thing. It is when the leaders of a house are weak enough to let the hearts of their youngest and most passionate members run riot over good sense that love matches are foolish. For then when infatuation and ardor cool, what is left but a cold bed and a sense of resentment?
I was a love match for Ainsley, and I insisted at the time that it was a foolish one. Yet House Riven shall enjoy the abundance of favored trade with House Grayson in perpetuity for the duration of my life, and House Riven's son Lord Tiber Riven shall be a ward of his monarch's House until he reaches his majority; and House Grayson received only the benefits of my own service, but I have recently been reassured that this service is itself, enough, by the kindest and most thoughtful gestures of His Majesty.
Love itself is not the problem. Love overriding duty instead of companion to it is the issue. And I would submit that in those cases where love does conquer good sense, it is not the couple who should deserve the societal side-eye so much as it is their Houses, for their Houses are those that enter into treaties.
By the grace of Limerance.
The engagement of the heart in a marriage is not itself an evil thing. It is when the leaders of a house are weak enough to let the hearts of their youngest and most passionate members run riot over good sense that love matches are foolish. For then when infatuation and ardor cool, what is left but a cold bed and a sense of resentment?
I was a love match for Ainsley, and I insisted at the time that it was a foolish one. Yet House Riven shall enjoy the abundance of favored trade with House Grayson in perpetuity for the duration of my life, and House Riven's son Lord Tiber Riven shall be a ward of his monarch's House until he reaches his majority; and House Grayson received only the benefits of my own service, but I have recently been reassured that this service is itself, enough, by the kindest and most thoughtful gestures of His Majesty.
Love itself is not the problem. Love overriding duty instead of companion to it is the issue. And I would submit that in those cases where love does conquer good sense, it is not the couple who should deserve the societal side-eye so much as it is their Houses, for their Houses are those that enter into treaties.
By the grace of Limerance.
Written By Tikva
May 9, 2020, 12:03 a.m.(4/5/1013 AR)
I have had an incredible birthday in so many ways. I am blessed. And ... baffled, and bamboozled, occasionally. But genuinely, deeply, wondrously blessed.
And provided with a strange overabundance of carved statues of my son's dog, for some reason.
And provided with a strange overabundance of carved statues of my son's dog, for some reason.
Written By Tikva
Jan. 30, 2020, 7:54 p.m.(8.95434730489418/33.443449074074074/1012.6628622754079 AR)
Few bonds carry as much private and yet everlasting power as the bond of sisterhood.
Written By Tikva
Jan. 7, 2020, 9:36 p.m.(7/9/1012 AR)
Life never goes quite how you expect ... and allies don't always come from expected quarters.
But sometimes, sitting down with another person and a warm cup of tea is exactly what you need to ground yourself, for whatever comes next.
Or else sitting down with another person to throw your hands in the air and shout swear words at the ceiling, possibly. You know. Whichever works for you.
But sometimes, sitting down with another person and a warm cup of tea is exactly what you need to ground yourself, for whatever comes next.
Or else sitting down with another person to throw your hands in the air and shout swear words at the ceiling, possibly. You know. Whichever works for you.
Written By Tikva
Nov. 25, 2019, 9:46 p.m.(4/7/1012 AR)
And... I am now officially _in_ my thirties, rather than merely hovering upon the brink at thirty. I've yet to slow down enough to really contemplate this, but I shall, at least, note it here for future study.
Written By Tikva
Nov. 25, 2019, 9:45 p.m.(4/7/1012 AR)
Relationship Note on Nurie
I really must let you all know that Nurie Baseborn's work in creating adorable plush creatures is entirely excellent. Fun for the whole family, particularly when the boys start squabbling over whose dragon it is really (I'm beginning to think, from the number of times I have caused it to be placed upon a high shelf, that it might actually be mine).
Written By Tikva
Nov. 22, 2019, 12:52 p.m.(3/28/1012 AR)
I do weep today, but not tears of regret.
I could not be prouder to hold you in my heart.
And I still have commemorative whiskey from your wedding and I'm going to keep it forever, until it's dust. Bless you, my friends.
I could not be prouder to hold you in my heart.
And I still have commemorative whiskey from your wedding and I'm going to keep it forever, until it's dust. Bless you, my friends.
Written By Tikva
Nov. 10, 2019, 8:39 p.m.(3/5/1012 AR)
Bastion in winter looks like something out of a tall tale, the kind of castle that looks like the castle you see in your head when someone says castle. It was good to spend some time with the family, in the close and quiet, before a roaring hearth.
Yet Arx has become our real home, and returning to our chambers here has filled me with new energy.
Yet Arx has become our real home, and returning to our chambers here has filled me with new energy.
Written By Tikva
Oct. 29, 2019, 11:59 p.m.(2/9/1012 AR)
Honestly, I think we ought to petition the Crown for stricter regulations on heralds! If common rabble can pay heralds to screech quite insane nonsense at us from the street corners, we may find ourselves in the worrying position of missing real news for all the bizarre noise.
Written By Tikva
Oct. 24, 2019, 6:21 p.m.(1/27/1012 AR)
When duty defines you,
to the exclusion of else
and work is the essence
of the walls around your self,
Then rest becomes hollow,
and the world spins on
without you or your laughter
and the value you bring on.
Remember to care for the self
in your heart; reach and embrace
everything that you offer, because
you do more than take up space.
I promise, it is so. Remember to be you.
If you think this song is about you, take a piece of it for yourself.
to the exclusion of else
and work is the essence
of the walls around your self,
Then rest becomes hollow,
and the world spins on
without you or your laughter
and the value you bring on.
Remember to care for the self
in your heart; reach and embrace
everything that you offer, because
you do more than take up space.
I promise, it is so. Remember to be you.
If you think this song is about you, take a piece of it for yourself.
Written By Tikva
Oct. 20, 2019, 3:19 p.m.(1/18/1012 AR)
When all is dark, or cold, or sad, an embrace from a friend will warm the heart and lighten the world.
I highly recommend it.
I highly recommend it.
Written By Tikva
Oct. 16, 2019, 1:21 p.m.(1/10/1012 AR)
Sisterhood has defined me all my life in ways that I never really understood. I am a sister who was chosen, and it turns out I am a sister who has lived.
Family is everything. Beyond lifetimes.
Family is everything. Beyond lifetimes.
Written By Tikva
Oct. 12, 2019, 12:10 a.m.(1/1/1012 AR)
It is time for the first snow sculptures of 1012.
Please note that the scholars may take some time preparing your journal for others to read.