Shadow of the Dais

I once had a friend

when I held very little burdens on my shoulders

and we would sit in the shadow of my father's dais,

and discuss the literature of men we considered great.

A few Shalidorian dialogues,

the writings of the ancient Dunmeri houses,

and Nibinese philosophies.

And one day he spoke to me, very seriously, yet shamedly.

“If I wrote my own work, wouldst thou read it?”

and I replied “Surely.” He smirked but it died,

a brief reprieve from a cold wind,

a shaft of sunlight shooting through thick clouds,

“Do thine thoughts keep thee from comfort?” I asked,

for we had discussed sleepless nights before,

“It is my comfort that keeps me from thought.”

The words were strong, sure, yet sad.

Much like the truest art is borne from suffering,

so are the languages of living men.

We departed and time flowed on.

I had growing duties and my mind became occupied,

with the estate of my family and such affairs,

and I rarely could sit in my late father's study and think,

with a fire in the hearth,

and quiet dark all around me.

Years passed.

A visitor knocked upon my door, one day,

and surely, I believed, it a courtier,

or a man who had business with me,

but not the man who had once shared the dais' shadow with me.

Whatever aging I had done he had done threefold,

and before me he was old and wizened,

with white hair and wrinkled face.

“Evening, my good ser, please come in.”

How foolish I was, I had not noticed him!

I believed him some spectre of the evening road.

“Good friend,” he confided to me,

“such reprieve you give me in my finding you here.”

“Well ser,” I responded, “I confess I do not know the nature of your visit”

And he smiled, and this time it did not die,

And then I knew

“Ah, good friend! A thousand pardons! How goes it?”

“Wearily, but it goes. It never stops going.”

I wished to inquire about his look

Or what illness had taken him,

but his eyes were still as clever as I remember,

“Ah, truly, in folly I left. For what are philosophers

and other great thinkers,

if we cannot give back what was given to us

after we learn what we are given.”

And I was puzzled over this,

so I offered him evening tea,

to which he obliged.

That night my hearth found itself ablaze,

and the chairs in my study filled.

“Where did thy feet taketh thy self?” I asked,

curious,

my mind taken from my daily worries,

and he responded,

“To ignorance, I fear.” And he was silent a long time.

“Do you remember,

those long ago days,

in the shadows of your father's dais?”

And I nodded. He smiled, but it died,

A sigh of cold wind during a warm winter,

the chill of death in a living man,

and suddenly I was in my father's solar,

in the shadow of his dais.

In a panicked frenzy I looked around,

but found that I was not alone,

and there with me, in the shadow,

a familiar book,

a protruding pagemarker in the middle,

so I began to read,

and this time I did not leave it.