@everyone

[politicians]

How do you honor those who have left this place?

Is there a custom you follow? And are willing to share?

Or perhaps a story of those you miss. For remembrance.

Comments

[politicians]

I am.

She would be wroth to see me grieve, and yet I feel it cannot hurt to ask to remember her. Or find ways to do so.

[northerndragon]

I would plant trees for her. This world is the lesser for her absence. But she is needed in her own lands.

As are you, but it's good you're still with us here. Might be that it's selfish of me to think so.

[politicians]

[ he can't help but smile at that.]

I do not mind it. And I think we are all a little selfish to wish for a few to remain close to us.

[northerndragon]

That might be so, but it is my duty to not be so selfish. I nearly failed in it as a green boy. It was a lesson each time.

[politicians]

Tell me something.

Do you believe you can extricate the selfish part of yourself?

[northerndragon]

Cut it out?

No. But I believe that any person can learn to ignore it when they must — when it's better. Or when what you want for yourself is also for the good of the world, if you have that luck.

[politicians]

And you do not trust yourself to be able to do so?

[northerndragon]

When I was eight-and-ten, I was not to be trusted in that way. I had to be reminded of my oaths and my duty, by my friends. I wished to aid my father and my brother in their troubles and their war, but I had sworn myself to the Watch. Any man might have been tempted, but no man should have given in. It would have been my brother's duty to take my head if I had tried to come fight at his side.

Now I think I can be. I hope I can be.

[politicians]

I am sure you can be.

[northerndragon]

I can say that I am resolved.

What do you think? Can that part be cut away?

[politicians]

No. Nor do I think there is any point in doing so.

We are who we are.

[northerndragon]

What's going on around a man doesn't change him, only shows what he is?

Or, well, an elf.

[Progress: he has learned that a single elf is not called an elve.]

[politicians]

Perhaps it is unfair of me to speak of the nature of men.

We are all capable of change, but what does that change do? Does it reveal the part that was always there, simply hidden from the light?