Kalin’s Height – 1301 – Spring – Morning
I think that we shall be happy here.
The house is large; larger than I expected, from the way that Gavin spoke of it. Always I forget that these people do not move about as we do, but choose a place and settle in it, and build places for themselves. I have been in their houses before, their castles and palaces and inside their walls, but it is a different thing to look on one of these places and say to myself: home. This is home.
Talana adapts more quickly than I. That is to be expected. Gavin is her father, and though there is a strangeness between he and I, the two of them have no difficulties. He is teaching her to ride, and says that it is a usual thing for human children to learn. I suppose that he would know.
He says that I should hire from the village to care for the house. There is a housekeeper already, who looks at me more directly than is polite, and asks me many questions. Gavin says that these are human things, too, but when I was younger and went often to Anaitis, they did not stare so. They were more used to our presence there. I must remember that.
It is another strange thing, among all these strange things: home, the place where I came from, is not far away. When I go to the hilltop east of the house, for we are very secluded here among the foothills, I can see the forest. I walked from it when I came to Gavin, and I had Talana with me, so it took us many days. But Gavin says a man might ride the distance in a day or less. And yet the people here look at me in such a way that I know they have never seen my like before. At the trothplighting they whispered behind their hands; not cruelly, but from curiosity. And perhaps a little fear.
And the truth is, at home we did not talk of the lands to the west. South and east, yes, the great castles of humanity, their roads and kings and cleared fields where they till the earth. We had to concern ourselves with these things. But to the west was always wilderness, and that there was a whole country here of human beings who do not move the affairs of the world, but keep themselves to themselves, and look not to the woods that lie on their border, is something as strange to me as I am to them.
I must think on this.
And I must write to Tanios, who said that if I was determined to this course, she would send me books as soon as I was able to receive them. She has scribes, human and otherwise, copying in Anaitis for me. She says that it is the custom among humankind to make gifts when one is wed, so she will make gifts to me. I think that she is worried, but for what she will not say.
Gavin said that I might have a room to myself, for working and books. He is very kind. And yet I might never have come to him, except that Talana wanted to know her father.
They are coming in now, in great excitement. I think this has been good for her, and for him.
For myself, I do not know, but something compelled me to come here. Let Gavin think that it was love. He might be right.