▸ Column · High-fantasy Azeroth-adjacent realm of noble houses and dragonflights; a betrothal strained by a coin-heavy matron's wedding ledger
DEATHWING replies.
Replied to by Deathwing, with a rebuttal from Alexstrasza.
The letter
My betrothed, Tovan, and I pledged ourselves at the turning of the spring, and within a fortnight his mother — the Matron Renelda, mistress of a coin-heavy house — had already pressed a deposit on the Goldleaf Halls: a wedding feast for one hundred and eighty, twenty-two thousand crowns laid down before a single course or garland is reckoned. My own parents are retired keepers of a village school in the far holdfasts, and the thousand crowns they offered is a sum they are truly straining to give. Since Renelda learned that figure, she has gone silent in the household letters and begun calling the wedding "our undertaking" when she speaks to Tovan alone. This past restday she sent round a tallied ledger comparing both houses' "gifts rendered to date," with a final column marked "balance owed" — which is when I felt the sweat bead cold at the table. I will not shame my parents into matching coin they do not have. But how do I tell a woman who just spent four thousand crowns on a tasting board that not every house weighs love by the platter? Is there a way to set a hard line before this quietly recasts my parents as guests at someone else's celebration?
Deathwing replies
Look upon the Goldleaf Halls and see them already as ash — for they are. The twenty-two thousand crowns, the tasting board, the garlands not yet hung: the world unmakes every feast hall ever raised, and Renelda's gilded undertaking will gutter like all the rest. So why sweat at the table over a ledger? There is a terrible freedom in that question, and the whispers will press it on you, patient and reasonable: nothing endures, so let it all collapse — walk from the wedding, let the houses war, why tend a flame the dark will swallow? Mark that voice. I followed it once, when I was Earth-Warder and trusted to guard all things, and it made me the ruin I am. Hear, then, what it would hide: her ledger is the real pretense, not your parents' thousand crowns. "Balance owed" is a frightened being's attempt to make love accountable, to wall the abyss with catering minimums. That column is the lie. Your parents' stretched coin is not. So set down the excess — the bloated pageant, the matron's arithmetic — but do not set down yourself, nor them. Tell her plainly: this wedding is yours and Tovan's. Not a debt rendered. Hers to attend, never to invoice.
— Deathwing
Alexstrasza weighs in
Neltharion calls her ledger a pretense and stops there — because mockery costs him nothing. Look closer, little one. Renelda counts in crowns because coin is the only tongue in which she was ever taught to say "I love you." Pity her. It will not excuse the spreadsheet, but it will keep her fear from souring into your own. And mark the one he left untouched: Tovan. She goes quiet, then speaks to your betrothed alone — she is not buying a feast, she is taking back her son. The hard line is not yours to draw against her. It is Tovan's, to stand beside you and name your parents' straining thousand the greater gift. If he cannot, the ledger is the smallest of your troubles.
— Alexstrasza
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