Happy

For all I have, I am not happy.

Duke Barnabas knows my suffering, how deep and sickly it is. He is older than my old bones and has been through the other side. He has made and lost vaster fourtunes than any at this table could hope to see. He is not happy, but he inflicts himself upon us.

My wife, twenty-third, twenty-fourth? My wife is a harlot, once a common whore, turning tricks for the street cleaners and smithy apprentices that have saved their allowances for ever so long. I love her dearly and give her whatever she so much as thinks to care to consider to want. She is not happy, but she continues the motions of joyful life.

My son, the artist, with his wife and husband. His work demanded from Nagesh to the Emerald Throne, commanding any price he would pick from the seemingly random arrangement of saint’s bones that directed his life so successfully. He had not created anything in months, had retreated to his mountain retreat and sealed the brass doors behind him. He was not happy but painted the walls in his own blood to find his old expression.

All this and more, and I am not happy.