Anthology - Love and War

With some effort, Barryn Warrex stooped and lifted his heavy, dull shield. "My friend, all I know is that I, too, once had a beautiful daughter, and that one day, she, too, reached marriageable age. I behaved no better than this Aron Dewweb."

"Oh — I'm so sorry," said Aril Witherwind awkwardly, not sure how to respond to such a confession. "Uh, I myself have never had children —»

The old knight slung the shield across his back, and he became as stooped under its weight as Aril was under his tome. Even as he spoke, Barryn Warrex started off down into the grassy, flower-dotted valley, where butterflies flitted about him as if to cheer him up. "It is many years since my own daughter ran away with her lover."

Aril remained perched on his rock, and, trying to hear the retreating knight, he started a new page and began scribbling once more in his book.

"Now this old knight has but one last mission in his life," said Warrex, walking ever farther off, his voice growing fainter, "and that is to find my daughter and this husband of hers —»

" — and," murmured Aril, repeating the knight's words exactly as he wrote them down, " — give — them — my — blessing."

A Painter's Vision

Barbara Siegel and Scott Siegel

"It looks so real," said Curly Kyra with awe. She brushed long ringlets of black hair away from her eyes and stared at the painting, ignoring calls from down the bar for another round of ale. "It's a beautiful boat." Softly, with wonder in her voice, she added, "It seems as if it could almost sail right off the canvas."

"Almost, but not quite," replied Sad-Eye Seron, the painter. He was a skinny man with a gentle face. His eyebrows drooped at the edges, giving him the perpetually sad expression that had earned him his nickname. But he smiled now, enjoying the effect his new painting was having on the lovely, young barmaid he had courted all summer long.

"Will it make a lot of money?" asked Kyra hopefully.

Seron's smile vanished. "I sometimes think that you're the only one who likes my work. Everybody else in Flotsam says, 'Why buy pictures of things that I can see whenever I look out my window?'»

"Hey, Kyra," bellowed a patron with an empty mug. "Am I going to get a refill, or should I just come back there and pour my own?"

The tavern owner stuck his head out of the kitchen. "Tend to business," he warned his barmaid.

"All right, I'm going," Kyra said. But she didn't move. Instead, she shook her head at the magnificent sailing scene and stood there in admiration of Seron's artistry.

If Seron was an underappreciated painter, the same could not be said of the pretty picture known as Curly Kyra. Every unmarried man — and plenty of the married ones — had hopes of bedding her. She had alabaster skin, bright brown eyes, and full lips that seemed created expressly for kissing. Even more inviting than her lips, however, was the purely feminine shape of her figure; since coming of age this summer, she had to slap men's hands more often than she had to slap at bugs.

It was different, though, with Seron. Oh, he wanted to bed her and made no pretense about it, but he truly cared for her and made that clear in a thousand different ways. He helped patch the roof of her family's cottage without asking for so much as a cup of water in return. He gave her painting lessons, teaching her everything from mixing colors to the techniques of his brushstroke. And when she was terribly sick with an unknown disease — and looked like a particularly ugly dwarf he had once painted — Seron risked his own health to help care for her.

The two of them leaned over the bar near each other, the sea-faring picture between them. "You're wasting your time working in this tavern," Seron said earnestly. "I've said it from the very beginning — you're smart, talented, perceptive; you can do more with your life than just serve ale."

"You're only saying I'm smart," teased Kyra, "because I like your work."

He smiled, but shook his head. "I really mean it," he insisted.

Involved in their intimate discussion, Kyra paid no attention to the growing clamor of angry voices calling out for service.

As for Seron, he hadn't yet tried to sell his latest painting, but he saw that Kyra was so enamored of the picture (and he was so enamored of her) that he suddenly blurted, "I want you to have it. It's a gift."

Kyra was stunned by his offer. Her face turned red, and it looked as if she couldn't breathe.

"Are you all right?" he asked worriedly.

She answered by throwing her arms around him and kissing him on the lips.

That night Kyra lost her job but found a husband.

Her belief in Seron's talents was not misplaced;

soon after they were married, he finally began to sell some of his paintings. He didn't receive much for them, but at least it was a beginning. He supplemented their meager income by painting family portraits for the local tradesmen. Still, it wasn't enough.

"Why don't you give art lessons?" asked Kyra one late afternoon as she took down the wash that had dried on the line.

"What? And create my own competition?" he said, laughing as he folded the clothes she handed him.

"You have a wonderful talent," she continued, ignoring him. "You could give classes. I know the kender would love it; they couldn't possibly pass up a chance to try their hand at drawing."

"What makes you think I'd be any good as a teacher?" he asked.

"Because you were so good at teaching me."

"I was good at teaching you," he said, "because you were an excellent student. You could do anything you set your mind to," he continued. "You settle for too little from yourself. If only you —»

"Please! Not that speech again," she complained.

"But you could be so much more if only you tried," he insisted, touching his fingers to the palm of her hand.

"Isn't that the same thing your brother always says to YOU?" she countered. "Doesn't he always say that you're wasting yourself on all these pictures?"

He scowled. "Don't change the subject. We're talking about you — and you know I'm right. You're capable of doing all sorts of things; you're too easily content."

"Content? Me?" she laughed seductively. "Never." And with that, she dropped the sheet she had been holding and began unbuttoning her blouse.

"No one stops an argument like you," he chuckled, removing his own shirt.

Their bed was a sheet on the soft grass, their roof was the afternoon sky, and their souls were one soul long after their passion was spent.

As the afternoon light faded, Kyra felt a chill. She snuggled up close to her husband, who tenderly embraced her. She felt safe in his arms, protected. When he held her like that, she knew both the strength and the tenderness of his love. For her, there was nothing in all of Krynn to match that feeling. Nothing.

Dutifully, Seron gave art lessons to the kender, and anyone else who was willing to pay. Not that anything valuable ever changed hands. Despite their enthusiasm, the kender were inattentive students, and they generally walked off with the paint, the brushes, and half of tomorrow's lunch.

To better provide for his wife, Seron took a job during the evenings as a cook at the Sea Master Inn. Kyra didn't want him to take the time away from his art, but he couldn't bear to see her go hungry. He promised her he would work at the inn only until his paintings brought in more money.

He hoped that would happen soon, for he had chanced upon an entirely new and exciting subject when he met his very first dragon…

"Do you have a red blanket?" asked the young male brass dragon standing at the edge of a clearing in the forest.

Seron could hardly believe his eyes, let alone his ears; the dragon was talking to him!

"Are… are you real?" stammered the painter.