Entry 12
I remember myself remembering.
That feels wrong to write. A man should remember the day he took a wife before he remembers onions in a pan, or bread wrapped in cloth, or the scrape of a knife against a board. But memory has never cared for what a man should do, so I remember Flora by the hearth.There was flour on one sleeve of her dress. I do not know why that remains so clear, but it does. Flour on her sleeve, a strand of red hair near her cheek, and that small crease between her brows when she was deciding whether I had eaten enough.
I had not, and she knew it before I opened my mouth.
Our home was not much to look at. The hearth smoked when the wind turned wrong. The door stuck in damp weather. One leg of the table was uneven, and I kept meaning to fix it properly. Flora called it character. I called it a hazard. She laughed whenever I said so, which is why I kept saying it.
That evening I had come in with mud on my boots and a hare in my hand. I meant to clean it before she saw. She did, of course. Flora noticed things. Blood on a sleeve, a tear in a cloak, a lie told poorly...and a sadness I thought I had hidden. I remember her telling me, without turning, that I was not putting the hare on her table. I told her I had not meant to. She said I had been thinking about it, and I answered that a man could think a foolish thing and still show restraint. She made a small sound then. Not quite a laugh, but close enough.
There were many evenings like that, and they blur together now. I do not remember whether that supper came before the first frost or after. Neither do I remember if the flowers by the window were from her garden or gathered along the road. I only remember they were beginning to wilt, and she would not throw them away because, as she said, they were still trying.
She said things like that. I used to pretend I did not understand them. I did.
Flora knew herbs the way I knew tracks. Not by study alone, though there was study in it, but by touch, scent, season, and patience. She could crush a leaf between her fingers and know whether it would soothe a cough or sour a stomach. She kept bundles drying above the hearth, jars along the shelf, roots wrapped in cloth, little packets of things I could never name properly no matter how many times she told me. I had known druids who called storms and spoke with the old patience of trees. Flora’s gifts were quieter. A salve and tea for fever or pain. Or to help someone find that elusive sleep.
It was the two bowls on the table that brought the wedding back to me. Two small objects that offered something deeper than whatever soup she could serve. Flora set them down as if there had always been two, as if the world had been made with a place for me at that table. That was harder to believe than vows.
We were young, though not as young as grief sometimes makes us seem when I look back. I had left Waterdeep at nineteen, and before I was even twenty, I'd been tied to a tree, half-starved, half-mad with pride, and more helpless than I would have admitted with a blade at my throat. Five years after that, I stood before Flora and thought the roads between had made me older than I was. They had not. They had only weathered me.
I do not remember every word spoken at our wedding. I remember pieces.
First was the light. It was late morning, I think. I may be wrong. I remember the sea more clearly than the hour. The wedding was held on the beach, where Flora and I had first met. It was her idea, though I did not argue. Some places become part of a life whether a man means them to or not.
The sand was pale beneath our feet. The water moved behind us with that steady voice the sea has, as if it has heard every vow men ever made and knows what becomes of them. There were flowers too, but not many. Flora would not have wanted the shore drowned in them. She liked beauty best when it still looked as if it belonged where it was.
I remember being uncomfortable in my clothes. Not because they were fine. They were not so fine as some men would have worn. But they were clean, and they were meant for standing still before people, which made them worse than armor. Armor gives a man a purpose. Wedding clothes give him no excuse.
Someone told me I looked calm. That was kind of them...I was frightened. Not of Flora. I was frightened of the thing itself. Of being seen while standing there with clean hands and a clean shirt and pretending the road had not left half of me elsewhere. I feared that vows were too good a thing to pass through hands like mine. But those who stood there did not look at me that way.
Kolandir was there. I remember him near the edge of the gathering, where the sand gave way to firmer ground. Even at a wedding he looked as if he preferred to keep watch. That suited him. I had learned the woods from him. Not all he knew...Perhaps not even half. But enough to live where once I would have died. Enough to read a trail, hear danger before it showed itself, and understand that patience was not the same as waiting. Enough to call myself a woodsman then. Not a ranger. Not truly. I had not earned that. I had not yet received the blessing that would later set my path beneath Mielikki’s gaze. Kolandir knew it, too. He did not flatter me with titles I had not earned. That was one of the reasons I trusted him.
When our eyes met, he gave me the smallest nod. From him, that was not a small thing. He had found me at my weakest and most vulnerable. I'm sure he was delighted deep inside...
Ilikas stood not far from him, quiet as ever, looking as though he heard more than the rest of us. He was young by the measure of elves, though to me then he already seemed part of older things. Like paths not meant for human feet and songs I would never know the first words to. He was a ranger in truth, already in service to one of the elven powers of the wild. I remember feeling the difference. Not envy exactly. Something nearer to recognition, perhaps. He walked a road I had only begun to see.
Gabriel and Rose Kross were there together, as they often are in my memory. Gabriel had the steadiness of a cleric who knew prayer was not a soft thing. Rose carried music in her even when no instrument was in her hands. They had once crafted and gifted me a bow. Nothing grand. No relic with a name, no weapon to make men whisper around a fire. Only a bow, but it was well-made, and it served me for years. That mattered more to me than grandeur. A useful gift, given without boast, tells a man something about the hands that made it.
Rade Mellen was there, and if anyone had earned the right to laugh at my discomfort, it was her. A wood elf druid. One of the few who taught me any of the druidic ways without first deciding I was too stubborn to bother with. Though perhaps she did decide that and simply bothered anyway. Rade had power in her, but not the distant, delicate sort people sometimes imagine when they speak of elves and nature. She could fight. Oh yes, she could fight. More than once she put me flat on my back before I understood how I had lost my footing, and she never seemed especially sorry for it. I was better for knowing her. Seeing her there for something as gentle as a wedding felt strange. I had known her more often through mud, bruises, lessons, and the sharp correction of my pride. Yet when Flora passed near her, Rade’s expression softened briefly. It was easy to miss. I did not miss it.
Ilric was there too, a half-orc fighter, though that says little of him. Men hear such words and imagine strength first. Ilric had strength enough, but it is not the first thing I remember. I remember his heart. Kind. Simple, perhaps, though not in the foolish way some use the word. Simple as clean water. Simple as a hand offered when a man has fallen, with no question asked before helping him rise. Our paths had not always run together. In Tethyr, few paths did for long. But somehow, across those years, he became one of my dearest friends. He smiled at the wedding like a man who had been handed proof that the world could still do something right. That nearly undid me.
Tansy Tangleweed was there as well, small enough that the gathering might have hidden her had she been anyone else. But Tansy was not easily hidden. A halfling druid, new to the land when first we met, searching for ways to better herself in the druidic paths. We had learned together more than either of us liked to admit, and that sort of thing binds people. It is hard not to become protective of someone who has seen you confused, muddy, wrong, and trying again anyway. She looked proud that day. Proud and a little fierce, as if daring the world to spoil the moment. I was grateful for that.
My sister, Lydia, was there too. I remember her most clearly among the guests. She stood very straight, as if posture alone could keep her from weeping. Her eyes betrayed her. They always did when it mattered. I had seen her angry, weary, proud, and afraid. Seeing her happy was almost harder. It made the day feel real.
There were others from Flora’s side. Some I knew well by then. Others, not so much. One woman watched me with such sharp suspicion that I nearly respected her for it. She loved Flora. That much was plain. Any man standing where I stood would have been weighed and found wanting at first. By the end of the day, she had softened a little. Not toward me, perhaps, but toward Flora’s happiness. That was enough.
The old man who spoke the words had weathered hands. I remember that more than his voice. His hands looked as though they had worked soil, held children, and buried friends. Good hands for joining two lives, I suppose.
And then Flora came.
The rest thins when I try to write it. I remember her walking toward me, and little else stands clearly beside that memory. Her auburn hair caught the light. Her dress moved softly when she stepped. She did not look uncertain. That was what undid me. She looked glad. She looked as if she had chosen me long before that day and the wedding was only the rest of the world being told.
I remember her noticing that my hands were shaking. I told her the ground was shaking too. A poor answer, but she smiled anyway, and that smile steadied me more than the vows did. I held her hand then. Hands full of warmth. I remember being careful, as if I might harm something precious by holding too tightly. My hands were tempered by weapons and wounds. I had pulled men out of mud and dragged myself through worse. None of that taught me how to hold her hand before witnesses.
I spoke my vows. I know that much, though I doubt they were graceful. I made sure to promise what I understood. Faithfulness. Protection, if protection was mine to give. I promised that my road would bend toward hers. That was how I thought of love then. A road. Perhaps I still do.
Afterward there was laughter. Hands on my shoulders. Someone clapped me hard enough to nearly put me into Flora. My sister held Flora longer than she meant to. Ilric laughed at something Rose said. Tansy looked as though she had appointed herself guard over the whole affair. Rade seemed amused by all of us. Kolandir remained near the edge, watching the sea.
I remember Flora touching my sleeve when too many people spoke at once. Only lightly. Just enough to remind me where I was. That was one of the things I learned as her husband. She did not always pull me from my thoughts. Sometimes she only left a hand on my arm, or said my name from across the room, or put a cup beside me before I knew I wanted one. She had a way of calling me back without making a show of it.
The same way she pulled me back to supper.
Flora set the bowl before me and looked at me as if I had been gone a long while. She said I was far away. I told her I was not far. She did not believe me, or perhaps she did and only wanted me to say it twice. I did not tell her what I was remembering. Perhaps I should have.
I looked at the table. Two bowls, bread between them. The flowers by the window still trying. So, I ate. She asked if I had eaten while out. She saw through my lie and gave me more stew. That was marriage too, I suppose. Being known too well.
The wedding was one day. A bright one. A frightening one. A day of salt wind, familiar shore, faces turned toward us, and my hands shaking before hers. But the life after was the quieter thing. Food on the table. Smoke in the rafters. Mud by the door. Her laughter when I said the table was trying to kill me.
I have worn many names since then. Some earned, while others given by men who needed a shape for their anger. Woodsman. Scout. Outlaw, to some. Friend, to fewer.
But husband was the first name that ever made me feel as though I had been invited back into the world.
