Luck and Fate
Ellis was late, which had driven Celyn to climbing one of the apple trees in distraction while Llew sprawled under another. This tree was old enough to have sturdy branches that extended out from the trunk, enough so that Celyn could wrap his legs around one of them and swing around to hang upside down, among other diversions. That occupied him for a while, but he eventually got bored with that, too, wriggled to put his hands against the ground, and rolled to sit. “Do you know why Ellis isn’t here yet?” he asked.
“Breaking things off with Gwennie must’ve been more drama than he was expecting,” Llew said without looking up from his reading. “And then he’s got to walk up from Nefyn.”
“Ah,” Celyn said. “You hungry?”
“Nah.” Llew turned a page.
“Okay.” Celyn rummaged in his things and fished out a bit of bread and cheese to nibble on. “Why’d he want to break things off with Gwen? I thought he liked her.”
Llew peered over the top of the book. “Well enough, sure, but she was spinning plans to make him settle down, and you know you’re the only one he’d dream of actually settling down with.”
“Oh,” he said. “Okay.” He flopped back under the apple tree and peered up through the foliage; the blossoms had gone but the fruit was not yet substantial enough to be notable.
It was several minutes before he heard the book close and Llew speak again. “Is that all you have to say about it?”
Celyn rolled onto his side so he could peer. “Was there something more to say?”
Llew frowned and visibly organized his thoughts. “Lots of people would have more to say about it,” he finally tried.
“I’m not like lots of people!” Celyn chirped. “I thought you’d noticed.”
Llew groaned and scrubbed his face with his hands. “Let me try this again.”
“Okay.”
“Some people would, would have feelings about their boyfriend breaking things off with someone else. Particularly when they’re not the sort of person who, you know, flirts widely.”
“Okay!”
Llew stared at Celyn in blatant incomprehension. “And you don’t.”
“Why would I have feelings about it? It’s not about me at all, and I’m not involved, and Gwen lives in Nefyn anyway and I hardly go to Nefyn ever so even if she wanted to make things weird she doesn’t have any particular opportunity to. I don’t even know where she lives, Nefyn’s big.” He paused. “Not as big as Ruthin, but big. I bet Tafolwern is much bigger though. If you ever make it there.”
Llew rubbed the bridge of his nose, for variety.
Celyn frowned, trying to come up with a better explanation. “The feelings I actually have can be difficult enough to deal with, I don’t need to have extra feelings about things too. Maybe being mad changes things?” He gestured with the hand he wasn’t leaning on. “I’ve known what Ellis is like for ages. I don’t want to change him, he’s happy the way he is.” He felt his expression flicker, and he set it aside, though he could also see Llew’s gaze sharpen in response.
The question of whether or not Llew was going to pursue it sat there for a little while, long enough that Celyn sat up, grabbed his drum, and started tapping on it, trying out patterns and rhythms while he let his friend think.
Eventually Llew said, “I’ve seen lots of different ways people react to, you know, people who flirt widely.”
Celyn snorted and said, “You don’t have to be euphemistic with me. Flirting, but also going to bed with.” He added a couple of sharp percussive strikes to underscore the point.
Llew rolled his eyes. “The whole thing. Whatever. You know what I meant.” He frowned. “Take Gwawr and Tegan.”
“Gwawr flirts with everyone but I’m not sure she even likes boys, she just likes what she can get them to do for her,” Celyn said, his fingers pattering across the drumhead. “Tegan’s loved her forever, and Gwawr loves her back, but sometimes she gets mad about Gwawr’s whole everything and then she goes to Cadwgan and lets him court her for a bit. Cadwgan’s shy enough to not want to chase much, and doesn’t mind being Tegan’s second choice, so long as she chooses him sometimes. Maybe when they’re older they’ll stop being weird about it and settle down into a single household but I’m not sure Gwawr would go for that, if she looks committed she can’t have as much fun.”
Llew blinked at him. “So you know all that.”
“And I’m not like Tegan and I’m not like Cadwgan.” Celyn peered over at Llew. “And that confuses you?”
“No. I mean, sort of?” He huffed out a breath, faintly frustrated. “He’s my brother.”
“So you want to understand.” Celyn set the drum aside and flopped back down on the ground. “I know what Ellis is like. I’ve known since forever. I don’t,” he paused, “I don’t like to get upset with people for being what they’re like. That’s what I mean about extra feelings? Ellis wants to flirt, if people take him up on it he wants to see where it goes. He’s curious about people, and he likes seeing people happy. He’d probably stop taking them to bed if I asked him to, I think, and that’s why I can’t ask him to.”
“Can’t?” Llew sounded incredulous.
“Can’t,” Celyn repeated, firmly. “Because that would mean not being okay with him, trying to change him. Clip his wings to keep him close, but does that mean I want him or do I want someone who has that curiosity, that generous kindness, but to keep it all to myself, and because I don’t have that someone I need to try to make him into that? If I wanted that it would be better to find someone who’s like that and doesn’t want to, how’d you put it? Flirt widely.”
“Do you want that?” Llew asked immediately.
It was Celyn’s turn to have to think. “I don’t think I want. Not like you and Ellis do. I mean, I know he’s interested in sex things, and I’m glad he has other people to do some of them with so I have time to figure out how I feel about sex things. Which is hard, sometimes, because of being out of season.” He waved a hand, dismissing that thought as a tangent. “Sometimes I think that sort of thing is more extra feelings. Most of my strong feelings are from being mad, and I’m not mad about Ellis.”
“Okay…” Llew sounded dubious.
“It’s okay, he doesn’t want me to be! He thinks it would be a lot of responsibility, me being mad about him.” Celyn sighed. “I worry about him sometimes, though, I think he might be a little mad about me and I’m not sure he really has the temperament for it. I think he might make choices he’d regret because of it, and I’d rather he not get hurt like that. Being mad without being a complete mess is kind of a skill, and I need the Wyrdling’s help to manage it, which he hasn’t got.”
Llew was clearly not up for dealing with about half of that thought. “What sort of choices?”
Celyn shrugged helplessly. “Just… things that he wants. Where he has to choose between them. Like whether he wants to stay here with me or go with you to Tafolwern and seek your fortune. He can’t do both and one of these days it’s going to be something we have to deal with.”
“Oh.” After a pause, Llew said, clearly to change the topic, “Do you ever wish you weren’t mad? That you didn’t need that skill?”
“No.”
Llew blinked slowly. “I know,” he said, choosing his words with care, “that Ellis worries. About the madness. I don’t know what happened a few years ago, but—”
“Don’t.” Celyn cut him off with such a sharp, quelling tone that Llew’s eyes went wide with startlement. “That’s not yours.”
Llew was frozen like a rabbit for several breaths before he managed a murmured, “Sorry,” and tried to regather his thoughts. “And you don’t wish you’d been, that you’d been a boy from always?”
“No.” Celyn sighed and tried to figure out how to explain. “Who would I be, if I wasn’t born out of season, if I wasn’t mad? Would the fey even like me? Would Ellis want me? The Wyrdling surely wouldn’t have granted me a miracle, would they? You can’t pick apart time like you can pick apart a bad row in knitting. I want to be me, I don’t know who that other person might be, who wasn’t mad, who everyone knew was a boy from the day he was born, but I’m pretty sure he’s not me.” He gestured, a roll of the wrist, a flick of the hand, fingers spread. “Once the dice stop rolling you have to play with the pips you have. That’s the game.”
Llew had to think that over. That was a thing Celyn liked about him; he had a number of strong opinions, but he did try to think them through rather than have strongly held opinions that weren’t actually sensible. “I’m sure the fey would still like you,” was what he said, eventually.
“I’m not. It’s not like we know why they favor one person over another. The sight runs in my family, sure, but,” he shrugged. “It’s not about the sight. Maybe it’s the out of season part, there’s something about the Wyrdling’s power that reminds me of them sometimes. Or maybe it’s the madness. Sembarans think anyone fey-touched is mad, after all.”
Llew scoffed. “That’s just because they don’t understand the fey. Or Tyrwingha.”
“But what if they’re right? And so if you went back and made me not mad, absolutely everything would be different about me. My family would still love me, but who would I be? Everything else is,” he shrugged, “everything is upended.” He rolled back onto his back. “The dice fell where they fell.”
“That’s very fatalistic of you,” Llew said, after a moment.
“Is it? But my god is the god of fate.” Celyn gestured in the air above him without looking over at his friend. “Fate is a word we use for the past. What happened, happened, so it must be what must happen. We can’t unravel time, so we comfort ourselves with the idea that it was what was meant to be.”
“Even bad things? Comforting?”
“I’m mad, aren’t I? Mad enough to worry Ellis. It may be a small comfort to imagine that this is how I am, how I’m fated to be, but it comforts me, at least. It has a meaning, even if it’s a meaning we struggle to understand sometimes. The things that happened before I understood myself, I learned things from them, that matter, that I can use now; I couldn’t have learned those things without that, and maybe I need to be someone who knows them. Fate is for the past. Luck, now, luck is for the future.”
“So you don’t believe the future is fated, then?” Llew was now engaged in the intellectual process, which was all right so long as he didn’t push so hard and make it exhausting.
“It will have been fated when it’s done being the future,” Celyn proclaimed, one finger jabbed towards heaven. “Now? Now I roll the dice. Anything can happen when you roll the dice. You can hope for anything as long as the dice are in your hand.”
Llew snorted. “Did they teach you philosophy at that temple?”
“No, I’m just like this.”