THALRIC
I had been building Ashfen for three years without knowing what I was building it toward.
I had been told what I was building it toward now, by a founding era document, by a coalition commander, by the woman who stood beside me at the railing on the morning after the declaration, and said the ordinary morning was one of the things she had been building toward since the night she left Ironveil. I had received all of this correctly, and I had said what needed to be said about it, and I had meant every word.
And then the morning after the declaration I had come to the kitchen and made two cups of tea and pushed one across the table and we had drunk it in the ordinary silence of a morning that was not performing its significance and I understood with complete clarity that the ordina
