studiobondurri Chapter 200: Playtime
Chapter 200: Playtime
Within half a year, all of the children could spell their names, however poorly, and some of them knew all of their letters, though reading was still beyond them, and when the time came for stories, only a few would even try to sound out the smaller words, leaving him to do the reading on his own.
Simon had no idea if that was fast or slow. He couldn’t remember enough about his own childhood to say, and school wasn’t exactly common in this world, no matter which region he dwelled in. He was in no hurry, though. He had a decade to get them where they needed to go, and in scales he thought of things that was all the time in the world.
With these things, there is always the temptation to rush them, he told himself. But you must resist. There is no need to hurry.
There really wasn’t, either. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only temptation. There was also the temptation to favor Seyom, or spend more time with him than the other children.
That could have been natural, because he was the Prince and the heir to the country of course, but Simon held back. It was a slippery slope and he knew he’d been tempted. Instead, if anything, he held him further at arms length than the other children. Simon still greeted each of the boy’s small triumphs with a patient smile and questions about what they would learn next, but it was a hard balance.
Time alone helped with that balance. Since he’d started, he took one weekend a month to go into the mountains. He told the court that he needed alone time to gain inspiration and ponder the stars. He sometimes even did those things, especially at first when he was sure he was being followed. Truthfully, though, he went for bloodier reasons.
Those little camping trips didn’t always find beastmen or bandits. Both were in short supply this close to the city, but he found them both often enough that he was very slowly reversing his aging. As time passed, he was becoming younger. Simon doubted he’d even be a year younger by the time his son reached eighteen by this rate. He would at least hold himself steady in the stream of time, and that was enough. @@@@
Truthfully, he didn’t want to do much more than that. While it would have certainly been convenient to be a little younger around so many children who were constantly trying to wear him out, it wouldn’t do to start rumors. The last thing he wanted to bring to the Queen’s court were whispers of witchcraft and heresy.
There were already enough troubles brewing, and for once, none of them were of his making. While, at least, he was pretty sure they weren’t of his making. He did worry about his doppelgänger, though. The evil version of Simon hadn’t just disappeared. He was out there somewhere, causing no end of trouble. He was certain of it.
He also started taking small hikes with the children up the mountain during this time. The Queen forbade him to take them beyond the nicest parts of the high city, so they mostly walked to the shrine at the very end of the main road, at the foot of the mountain he’d almost died at so long ago. Even then, they were trailed surreptitiously by a handful of guards at a distance.
Still, it did all of them good to see life outside the palace walls, even if only a few steps. They probably weren’t ready to interact with commoners, or worse, poor people, but from so high up, he and his little gaggle of students could sit on the rocks on sunny days and talk about volcanos, mountains, and all the little sailing ships that came and went, which made it time well spent.
“Why do you think the sky it red only in the morning and the evening but the stones are red all day long?” Simon would ask. “Do you think its a coincidence that the sky and the water are the same color?”
These were the sorts of questions that Simon would ask his little flock of students, and though the answers were never particularly accurate, it did get them thinking, which was the whole point. Once Seyom suggested that one was probably a mirror of the other, and Simon was forced to agree with him, though he did not remember the true reason that the sky was blue.
“Don’t you think they’re a bit young to be worrying about such things?” the Queen asked after she caught him explaining it to them once.
“Certainly,” he agreed. “But these are your future leaders, and the longer it drags on, the more likely it is to be their problem.”
“This will not be the first time the Murani have tried to claim southern lands, nor will it be the last,” Queen Elthena sighed, not bothering to refute his point. “Their last attempt was in my Grandfather’s time, so I do not expect that Seyom will have to worry about it.”
“I hope that is the case,” Simon agreed, but he had his doubts. He’d read accounts of that previous war, and it didn’t drag on as long as the last one had. Either Brin was weaker, or their enemy had grown stronger. Simon didn’t have enough information to say.
He did, however, use the ongoing war to eventually introduce his pupils to swordsmanship, causing another scandal in the process. It would seem that the elite of Ionar had a problem with their daughters learning to fight with swords. That surprised Simon, even though he knew that it shouldn’t.
“I've known many women that can fight,” he insisted, leaving out the fact that most of them were peasant girls who needed those skills a lot more often.
Not even Elthena accepted that excuse, though, strange as it was for a woman to be enforcing sexism on his students. In the end, Simon relented because it wasn’t a fight he could win. So, they compromised. Instead of teaching his female students swordsmanship, he would teach them archery. The bows he had made for this had laughable pull strengths, but it sufficed to make sure that no one felt left out.
So, on those days when he forced Seyom and the other boys to practice their forms when all they wanted to do was duel with each other, the girls practiced marksmanship, and everyone was happy. Well, everyone except for Simon.
He’d come here to teach Seymon reading and art. He’d planned on raising his son up to be an independent young man like Bertrand, but the longer the war dragged on around them, the more likely it was that he was going to have to train a warrior instead of a man who could choose his own fate. Simon didn’t care for that at all, but he still found time to take a measure of pride in the boy’s advances. It had been only a couple years, but he was making great strides.
He was no longer the timid, distractible young boy Simon had found when he’d first arrived. Instead, he was fast becoming a decisive young man, and though Simon was concerned that the whole “heir to the Kingdom” thing was going to his head, he did not often try to invoke that authority during his studies anymore, which was as a small victory.
It was at about this time that Simon took to walking with a cane. He didn’t need it but felt it wise to age gracefully, as much as he enjoyed using it to duel his students on occasion. He was as spry now as he’d been in years, but no matter how softly he trod within the social sphere of the palace, he was sure he was makeing enemies in the background and wanted them to underestimate him as much as possible.
Unfortunately, that meant that when it was time to review new units for the army, he could do little but watch. The last thing he wanted to do was give the generals cause to grow concerned with him, too. In a time of war, they were becoming ever more influential.