Changes

A lot could change in the course of a week. It was difficult for Sid, who was used to letting entire decades slip by unnoticed, to take it all in without getting a headache. Then again, the headache likely had more to do with the punch than anything. Suicide punch was something he invented back during the darkest days of the war. He couldn’t remember which war exactly, but he vividly remembered the desperation that inspired it. Thus was born a creative distillation process involving dirty socks, rotten fruit, and a shaky grasp of responsible fermentation. The first fabled batch rendered at least one soldier temporarily blind. Even now, after trading socks for a proper still, the concoction could easily double as an accelerant. Sid would drink nothing else.

Adapting to change was difficult at his age, but liquor did wonders to help him cope. Staying at Ravenwing manor was an easy enough adjustment, the real test came with the emergence of his hitherto unknown son. It unnerved him mightily to see his own features blended with those of Marthe Overholt, a woman he’d all but forgotten in the thirty-some-odd years since the first war. After the initial jolt it was hard not to think of Marthe when he looked at Ivor.

The end was really better left forgotten, but he’d always remember that first day in Hearthglen. Marthe’s was a very… robust beauty, especially when compared to the skinny little barmaids who orbited the tavern like pale moons. Marthe scowled as he ignored them and went right for her station at the bar. “And what do you want, then?” She said, addressing the tips of his ears. His reply made her blush, which in turn made her break his nose.  It wasn’t exactly clouds parting and birds singing, but it was something.

A long night of drinking and talking allowed he and Ivor to touch on those and other touchy subjects. Toward dawn it somehow turned into a shouting match over what really happened at Stratholme, and whether or not Uther the Lightbringer was truly a saint. An accord was finally reached when they were both too drunk, tired, and hoarse to keep arguing, at which point Ivor made a surprising suggestion. Since Sid refused to destroy the Sunlash, he could at least purify it as part of his efforts to restore his house’s honor. After hearing the story of his elven ancestry, all Ivor had to say was that House Sunlash sounded like a bunch of authoritarian sadists even at their best. Sid didn’t want to admit it, but the kid had a point. That statement had sparked the first round of arguing, but he was still right. Restoring the family honor would take a lot more than accounting for the actions of the last decadent generation, and Sid knew it.

On some level he also knew it was all just some desperate attempt to prove he had inherited only one of the family’s best known traits. He had the good one, not the one that drove their ilk to keep bashing away at an opponent long after they passed out, all the while laughing maniacally. He wasn't like that. He only laughed when…

Half a dozen images rose from the murky depths of his memory. The scars they corresponded with twitched as blades dug into his chest and punches sank into his stomach. It always bothered him that he could heal the wounds of others and leave nary a trace, but any injuries he sustained when... when he slipped... invariably left a mark. Maybe it was the Light’s way of saying that, however righteous he may be, there was still something fundamentally wrong with him.  It was a troubling notion, but not half as troubling as the realization he could remember the feel of every punch and stab better than the faces of old friends and lovers.

“Keep it together, you old fool,” Sid told himself. Ivor, having already passed out on the bar, did not hear. No one else really needed to know, anyway

There was an easy way to stop the slideshow of grievous bodily harm—more drinking. Sid was a firm believer that alcohol worked just as good as meditation for the purpose of clearing the mind. It was a lot easier on the knees, too. By the end of the evening all those worrisome thoughts were floating face down in his consciousness, and by the next morning he had forgotten about them entirely. He had more important things to worry about—like the upcoming elections, or his son’s brilliant idea to go back to Hearthglen to retrieve the tome necessary for their purification ceremony. Just thinking about that last task made his stomach turn. Then again, that was probably still just the punch.