I’ve been too busy to write lately – too much happening, good and bad.
No, to be truthful. It wasn’t just business – it was also a persistent exhaustion, a sort of malaise that lingered. The fight with Florense, the attack on Lien… everything just weighed on me. I spent a while just lingering around the house sleeping too much.
But now that’s over, after I spent a lovely evening just talking to Marisa. It was if the clouds hovering over me somehow parted after just a brief time in her company. She and I will soon be traveling; I’ll get to see Savir for the first time. I’m unaccountably nervous, truth be told. Will they see me as an interloper, a foreigner who doesn’t understand anything about their land and their people?
The moment I was given Savir as my domain, I started dreaming of turning it into a little paradise. Improving trade to enrich the area; then with the money, spreading education, reducing poverty, bolstering health, opposing crime… but what do I know about these things?
I have ideas, it’s true, but my education is a patchwork that more allows me to pose as a gentleman than be thoroughly schooled in any given subject. I’ve done what I can to rectify those gaps, but I never can find the hours in the day. Maybe it’s just foolish ego making me think I could sweep into Savir and improve anything at all.
Then again, perhaps I shouldn’t be so doubtful. The Group has done well since I’ve taken over. The shipping arm in particular has won several highly lucrative contracts. I can’t take much of the credit for that, I just installed brokers and let them do their jobs – but there’s a wisdom in knowing which decisions you ought to make and which you ought to delegate, right? If I just make sure all of the stewards in Savir are as solid as the Group’s brokers, I think I can be quite confident in its future.
On a different note, I’m worried about Lien. She has been behaving better since her encounter with the bandits, but she has seemed subdued and withdrawn, lacking her usual spirits. I think she feels sadly neglected by Jei and perhaps afflicted by a similar malaise to my own, haunted by all the darkness that has dogged Lithmore in recent months.
Perhaps her birthday gift will cheer her to some extent, or just some time in quiet celebration… I owe it to her to try.
