The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2
Chapter 136

Part 20

"Sure!" Mark laughed. "It's fine with me. To be honest, I'm surprised your mother's still with us. Is your father?”

"No, he fell in a war with the Sylvan, long ago now." Alilia related. "Bless his soul. But my mother is only a bit less than three centuries older than me, and she's still very healthy. Her name is Caria."

And with that, an elven woman who was the spitting image of Alilia with the exception of having forest brown hair and eyes appeared not a meter away and jumped into a hug with Alilia with a whoop of joy, her invitation still clutched in her hand.

"Shh, listen." Povon suddenly said.

All around them could be heard the distant sounds of joy and celebration as word of the upcoming nuptials spread throughout the city like a wildfire.

"You are truly reaching wondrous greatness now, my girl!" Caria laughed as she hugged her daughter and rocked from side to side a bit. "May your union bring you an eternity of joy! I'm certain it will solidify your place at the center of world affairs!"

"Thank you Mother." Alilia smiled as the two separated and stepped back, still holding both of each other's hands. "We hope that you can arrange our decorations and catering on such short notice. That is, if you wish it?"

"Do I ever, though I'll certainly have to hurry!" Caria declared with a laugh, then turned to glance around at the others present. "But first, you must introduce me to the rest of my new family!"

She greeted each of them with a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek as Alilia introduced her, lingering in the hug a moment longer with Val, her new granddaughter. Then she greeted the dragons as they were introduced with a friendly smile and a respectful bow.

"Oh, you're not getting away that easy!" Karz laughed as he assumed his cute and fuzzy Simulacrum and soundly hugged the elven woman, an example which his parents chose to follow, and she laughed at the novelty of it as she returned their embraces whole-heartedly.

Alilia cleared the dinner dishes with a glance and Summoned a cart laden with a tea service and other hot beverages, and they sat to chat for a while.

Caria explained that she was a Horticulturist specializing in fruit and nut bearing trees. In her lifetime she had grown and tended the largest and most productive such trees that the world had ever seen. She had never remarried, and Alilia was her only child.

Mark, Talia, and Alilia shared stories and Readings with her, mostly dealing with significant or amusing events in their relationship and the raising of their children.

Then Val came and sat in her grandmother's lap, and spoke to Alilia. "You know Mother, Father was right. What Six said about realizing what an incredibly capable, experienced, powerful and beloved monarch you are, we all felt that. I was in the Link and following your thought processes as you made administrative decisions and heard petitions, and I still can't understand how you can act with such obvious wisdom so quickly."

"Mostly it's the result of experience." Alilia explained with a smile. "I know everyone who was here tonight, and I know them well. I've known most of them for centuries. I've been doing this since I was still young enough to learn quickly and deeply, and there are very few unique issues or problems. Every decision I made tonight was very similar to decisions I've made thousands of times before, and I've learned the correct response after many centuries of trial and error. Believe me, when you've done anything as long as I've ruled this land, you'll be very quick at it, and you'll find it to be easy almost all the time."

"Ha! It goes far deeper than that!" Caria proudly declared. "Alilia was made Princess of this land at a very young age by the unanimous acclamation and implacable demand of our people, and she had no experience then! Nor was it entirely to do with her amazing power and ability as a wizard.

"Alilia was an all-around prodigy from the moment of her birth. The many qualities that made her our people's choice for monarch included her tendency to ignore the status of those she dealt with and to treat everyone, from peasants to emperors, with the respect they deserved based entirely on their own merits. Her ability to see to the heart of the matter, and quickly. Her intellectual and scholastic ability, which was unprecedented, and her intuitive grasp of complexity. The fact that she never suffered fools under any circumstances, and she was never intimidated by anyone or anything."

"Except the gods!" Alilia laughed. "The first time I met them I was struck speechless, while Mark here challenged them and faced them down!"

"At any rate," Caria said to Val with a playful tickle, "It's her ability as much as her experience that makes her great. Though to be honest, this is the first time I've seen her to be so humble that she's reluctant to explain that herself. She's always been brutally honest with her opinions of everyone, including herself."

"When Yazadril was first telling me about Alilia," Mark revealed with a chuckle, "He said; 'Alilia expects a certain deference from everyone, generally, except me, and we all generally agree that she's entitled to it.' And when I first met her, he was sure right about that."

He picked Alilia up like an infant and set her on his lap beside Talia. "I thought you'd lost that part of your personality over the last few years my love, but I've seen tonight that you only set it aside."

Alilia actually blushed. "I had many fine qualities before I met you, that's true. But I had no humility, no real emotional maturity, and no patience. I was a spoiled brat primadonna with an insufferable ego, and you cured me of all of that, Mark Longstrider. But better late than never, I guess.

"On the other hand, when I'm actually acting as monarch, I do still expect a certain deference from my subjects. And I think it's only right that I do so, in order to maintain respect for the office and for those who will hold it after me. My crown represents the power of The People of Life, and that will always be worthy of respect."

"Well said, my love." Talia giggled, and gave her a quick kiss on her lips.

"If you don't mind my asking," Val hesitantly ventured, glancing between Alilia and Caria, "How do you deal with being so old? Do you ever worry that you'll run out of capacity for more memories? Do you ever just get bored and jaded from doing the same things so many times, over and over?"

"Well my girl, being elder does present a few unique problems." Caria explained. "It's true we may only have the capacity for a certain amount of memory, but most unimportant events aren't retained. Like most people, I can't recall with clarity any of the meals I've eaten before two days ago, unless there was something to make a meal more memorable. We don't tend to remember anything that's routine. The farther back in your memory you go, the more important a memory has to be for it to be retained. I'm sure there are entire decades that I can't recall at all, because nothing really interesting or important happened then. If we want, we can reinforce memories by revisiting them and using memorization techniques, or we can store them with spells in objects, so you never really need to lose a memory that you want to save anyway.

"Elders need to fight boredom and jadedness by doing what they love to do, by keeping variety in their lives, and by constantly noting how much everything has changed, and continues to change at a seemingly accelerating pace. There's more happening right now to keep one interested in the world than there's ever been.

"The most important thing we need to do to stay mentally healthy as we become elderly is to live in the moment, and to not dwell on the people and things we've lost in the past. Every once in a while I'll reflect on those I've lost, or I'll meet a young person to whom almost everything I've lived through is nothing but irrelevant ancient history, and those two things do tend to make me feel very old. But most of the time I pay attention to what I'm doing and what's going on around me, and I feel the same as I always have; like the same person I was when I became an adult."000000000000☐☐☐☐

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