Part XI: Choices
By Gandosa Arobar, Daughter of Miner Arobar
My meeting with Father didn’t go so well, but Uncle Athyn has once again proven to be a trusted ally in even the most trying of times—I really can not thank him enough for all that he does, especially now that his kindness has extended beyond my brother and me and to the people who really need it like Dravyn and the Egg Miners. Although I say that, but it’s not as if he has not always been a man of the people. I remember it was when I was just a little girl that he took me to lunch at Rat in the Pot, a place that Father detested then and still does to this day for a multitude of reasons, and invited an interesting Argonian who called himself Tongue-Toad to join us for lunch. I didn’t understand then why he did it, especially knowing Father’s feelings towards their kind, but he explained that he and Tongue-Toad had a bit of friendship—an odd one at that. Like I said, I didn’t understand a lot of things back then, but as I got older and a little bit wiser, I came to hear the talk about that place and that it was a place where you could procure certain—services—that you wouldn’t normally find elsewhere and that Tongue-Toad, he was an information broker with ties to the kind of organization that provides those kinds of services. It didn’t take me long after learning all these interesting little facts that I approached Uncle Athyn about it and he sat me down and said to me very calmly, “Gandosa, people like Tongue-Toad and the others who hang around that little club aren’t necessarily bad people—they’re people without a lot of options who are making the best they can of a bad situation most of the time. People like your father don’t tend to realize that, but I want you to understand, just because someone does bad things doesn’t make them a bad person. I know you’re young and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense right now, but you’ll understand when you’re older.”
He was right. I didn’t understand, because it wasn’t so long ago that I was pretty naïve like Nilas. Everything in my world was fairly black and white and as I saw it, they were criminals and that was that, but as I got older and I got to know people like Volene and Dravyn, I came to realize that sometimes you have to make choices—hard choices—and sometimes there’s no right, or even good answers to these choices, and then you look at people like Tongue-Toad and the others who hang around Rat in the Pot and you realize they’re just doing the best they can to get by in a place that’s not always going to treat them fairly. I suppose that’s one thing I’ve realized over the years is that there’s never really any right answers. I mean, even my own life is just a series of making choices trying to balance the expectations of my role as the daughter of ‘thee Councilor Arobar’, taking care of Nilas, and my own dreams and passions. It doesn’t matter though, because no matter what choices you make, you’re going to have regrets—it’s just about making sure you can live with them, I guess.
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I suppose my biggest regret is that I abandoned my dreams to stay home and take care of Nilas. It’s not that I don’t love my little brother or anything of the sort, but when Mother died giving birth to him, I knew I couldn’t leave him alone with Father and Nartise. Nartise was always out on her little escapades without a care in the world and Father—I couldn’t just abandon him to that. He suffered a lot growing up but I like to think I shielded him from some of it even if I couldn’t stop it all, but that doesn’t change the fact that I never wanted to be a mother—at least not to my little brother. I had dreams. I was going to go to Mournhold and become a Handmaiden of Ayem just like I always wanted, but, I had to make choices and now I’m stuck with them. It’s not that I’m too old, but with—what happened that night with Serjo Oran—I just don’t—I don’t think they’d consider me fit to join the Sisterhood. It doesn’t matter though. I made my choices and I’m happy with them—happy enough anyways—besides, I do a lot of good here anyways. Sure, I could’ve been one of the Handmaidens and been a part of the sisterhood and been fulfilled and actualized, but I was needed here, and besides, Father would’ve been incredibly disappointed. Mother on the other hand, she was so proud that I wanted to become a Handmaiden—she told all of her friends even though I was just a little girl talking about possibilities. But it doesn’t matter. None of that matters anymore.
What does matter is that Uncle Athyn agreed to help me. He’s helping me give these people a fighting chance at not being forced into situations like Toad-Tongue and the others at Rat in the Pot who have no choice but to circumvent the laws of a civilized society to just to eek out an existence and I couldn’t be more grateful. These people are good, honest people, and if we won’t fight for them, who will? Everybody like my father always says it’s not their responsibility and it’s not their problem, but I wish more people realized that when one of us suffers, we all suffer. When one of us struggles, we all struggle. We don’t just exist in a vacuum; everything we do or don’t do has an impact and when we say to our neighbors, to our friends, to the people we cross paths with everyday, “I don’t care about you or your problems,” all we do is work towards a colder, nastier world, and I won’t let that happen. We are not Telvanni. We are Redoran and that means sacrifice for our fellow man; it means being better than just brushing them off even though that’s the easy thing to do. It means doing what is right, even when it is hard and that is why I admire Uncle Athyn so much. He is everything a Redoran is supposed to be and though I will never undergo the Trials to become Redoran, I always find myself asking, “Would Uncle Athyn be disappointed in me if I did this?” and so far, as long as I use that as my general rule, I tend to do okay.
I guess I’m just glad that I know that even though it feels like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders sometimes, I can always go to Uncle Athyn for a few words of wisdom. I hope he knows I appreciate him, for more than that of course, but especially for always being there for me when I need it. I honestly don’t know where I’d be without him.
-Gandosa Arobar, Redoran Noblewoman