Stormhaven Glimpses are short pieces delving briefly into the lives of characters in the world of N’Ume. Any resemblance to real persons is not entirely coincidental, but is tangential rather than direct. These brief stories are offered as moments glimpsed in a mirror, strange and yet recognisable, but not portraits.
Ragyard Strubban and Rúthiel Elarúne dwell in the borderlands between Elvakai Aelvargaria and the Grendenese Union – a polity Ragyard himself helped to forge long ago.
The Dwarakai had once divided themselves into clans, each wary of the others and more wary still of all who were not Dwarakai. The Union arose in response to intrusion, particularly from the Manakai, whose numbers grew too swiftly for Dwarakai comfort or consent and whose talent for organised violence exceeded that of even the Orakai. What began as defence hardened into habit, and habit into structure. Ragyard was among those who shaped it – not as conquerors, but as a binders of fractures, as diplomats.
Ragyard is younger than Rúthiel, nearing one hundred and fifty years while she has passed three hundred. Yet given the differing spans of their peoples, both are in their autumn years. The quickness of youth has left them; what remains is depth, memory, and the question of how one ought to finish a life well.
They walk often in the forests along the border, where stone gives way to root and steam rises faintly from hidden springs. Ragyard walks with Rúthiel, and with Elarúne – the quiet that dwells within her – and for a time the pull of councils and charters loosens its grip.
Yet it does not release him.
Ragyard feels the call of Grendenese politics still. It gives him a reason for living, a sense that his years yet serve a shape larger than himself. When Rúthiel tells him that the Union will survive without him, she speaks not unkindly, nor with reproach. She speaks as one who has already loosened many bonds.
Ragyard hears her – and knows that she speaks truth – but he wonders whether he can survive without the Union.
He does not yet know the answer.
And so he walks.