• Protected: At Once Pride and Loss

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    February 9, 2012 /  Uncategorized

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  • February 4, 2012 /  Memoir

    Design was my first love.  Not just a love of clothes or of making things, but of making something beautiful, bringing that image to life.  I have always believed that fashion should be beautiful, dramatic and suited to the wearer.  Apparently Vavard’s elite agreed with me.  I enjoyed the popularity and the favor.  It was exhilirating to see my designs everywhere, to hear my name.

    But who wouldn’t want more?  My father was only too glad to instruct me in financial matters, and every gold from sale of my designs came back tenfold in trade and investments.  And I loved the success.  The money itself didn’t mean much.  I have never not had enough coin for anything I might want, but I took great pleasure in the achieving it on my own.  And I wanted more.

    When I heard that the Merchants would be seeking a new Grand Magnate, I was told that the position would be a mixed blessing.   A step up certainly, but with the time devoted to guild matters, less would remain for my own pursuits.  I would share success with the Merchants Guild, but also failures, and a bevy of politics standing in the way of setting the guild’s course myself.  And despite it all, the challenge intrigued me.  I laughed and I told them that Lithmore could use the fashion help, the color.  And I put my name forward and made certain that it was the obvious choice.

    Arriving in Lithmore in my mid-twenties, I found I was starting over fresh in many ways.  But starting over from such a level as I had never before enjoyed.  I was not a craftswoman, but an artist and a woman of standing.  The nobility and leaders of the guilds were my friends.  My designs were as highly sought after as in Vavard, if more moderated to Lithmorran tastes.  But it was a good time.

  • January 31, 2012 /  Memoir

    I was not always what I am now, but I will always be what I was.  Before everything else, I am Marisa dul Damassande, but before many things I am Vavardi. 

    To look at the Vavardi and the Lithmorrans, side by side, you would not know the difference, but when they begin to speak, then it is evident.  The world outlook is so different.  Where the Vavardi see the beauty and potential for joy in the world, the Lithmorrans see temptation and the possibility of sin.  Where Vavardi admonishments are of what one simply must do, the Lithmorrans focus instead on what one must not.

    But beyond even that, the difference in the Lithmorran outlook can be noted in something I have heard from them countless times.  A question that they ask one another of the Vavardi: ‘Have they no shame?’  The query seemed so ludicrous when I heard it first.  Shame is a displeasure in what you are or what you have done.  It is not something to aspire to, to miss when you do not have it.  And yet that is how the Lithmorrans view it, for they always have something to be ashamed of; being human seems to fit in that category.  But that is the great difference between the Vavardi and the Lithmorrans.

    And I am very much the Vavardi woman.  I am not ashamed of what I am.  Instead I revel in it.  It seems to me the true shame would be to spurn it.