"Hello, Kai. Please sit down."
Torin's tone was so formal, so serious, almost mournfully so, that Kai dropped the small bouncy ball he had been tossing up and down and sat down in his chair.
"Thank you, Kai. I appreciate you having this meeting with me."
Kai started tracing the pattern in the moldings on the wall with his eyes, following the spiral of it up and around and down again.
"Kai, are you listening?"
Kai nodded, and Torin nodded back. "Excellent. As I was saying, Kai, we need to talk about. . . ."
The rest of what Torin said was lost on Kai, who retreated directly into his head. As the nine year old crown prince of the Eastern Commonwealth, Kai was used to being part of boring activities, and he was excellent at finding entertainment in subtle ways. At the moment, he was creating a maze in his mind, a boredom-conquering trick he had come up with at a national conference the year before.
He took a mental turn around a bend when he noticed Torin had stopped talking, and he blinked out of his maze and met Torin's eyes brightly. The trick to coming out of a daydream, Kai had discovered when he was only six, was to act enthusiastic. This usually worked, unless he was at a sad event. At the Secretary of State's funeral when he was seven, for instance, things had gotten just a bit awkward.
"Kai, please," Torin said, leaning forward in his chair. "We are having an important meeting, and I need you to be mentally present. Do you think you can do that?"
Kai nodded.
"Good. You agreed to this meeting, Kai. This is your first individual meeting with one of your future advisors. You're going to have to do this all day one day."
Kai supposed he would have to get used to building even bigger mental mazes.
Torin continued talking, and while Kai paid attention for the first minute, he lost interest quickly enough. He started on another game he liked to play, where he imagined himself in a room anywhere in the castle and tried to remember as many small details as possible. Now he was in the kitchen, which was harder since he didn't spend a lot of time there. He was trying to remember the basic layout of the room when Torin once again interrupted his mental flow.
"Kai, I know you aren't paying attention. This is important."
"I'm paying attention."
Torin gave him a skeptical look, and for a moment Kai wondered if he was going to ask him to repeat the last sentence he had said. Some of his teachers in school made him do that when they suspected he wasn't paying attention - which he often wasn't - and he didn't like it. He was glad when Torin just sighed and said, "Kai, you're going to be emperor one day."
"When I'm very old."
"Right. And you're going to need to learn how to pay attention in meetings like this one."
Kai looked down at his hands and concentrated on not thinking about the kitchen. Torin continued speaking.
"Kai, you tell me. What is your plan for when you're emperor? How will you handle boring meetings?"
He paused like he was waiting for an answer, and Kai looked up and met his eyes. Torin nodded, and Kai said, "I'm going to be old then."
"That is correct. Hopefully, you will not become emperor until you are old."
"I won't get bored."
Kai was glad Torin wasn't one of those adults who repeated your statement like it was a question while they thought about it. Instead, Torin tented his hands and thought for a moment before saying, "Why won't you get bored?"
"Because I'll be old."
He nodded like he was expecting that. "And when you grow up you won't get bored."
Kai nodded. "Because I'll be old."
Torin nodded once again and leaned forward. "Kai, I need you to listen to me, and I need you to really pay attention. All right?"
Kai nodded, his head going back to the kitchen. Was the sink to the right of the oven or the left?
"Kai, listen."
Kai swallowed a sigh and tore himself away from his flawed mental image of the castle kitchen. Torin said, "Kai, growing up doesn't make boring conversations any less boring. Boring conversations will be boring whether you are a child or an adult."
Kai frowned, skeptical. Torin, however, kept his hands together, talking slowly and efficiently in the same solid voice he used when he spoke to Kai's father. "Some conversations are boring, Kai. The trick is to make them be less boring."
"Because I'll be old?" Kai said hopefully.
Torin shook his head. "No, Kai. Because you are paying attention to what the person is saying, and you're thinking about it. It might still be boring, but then you're accomplishing two things." He paused. "Would you like to try and think about what those two things are, Kai?"
Kai shook his head. Torin's lip moved in what might have been something near a smile. "All right, Kai. I'll tell you. Firstly, if you do that, you aren't bored. You don't want to be bored, right?"
Kai shook his head, and Torin continued. "And secondly, you are listening to the conversation. That's important, isn't it? When you are emperor, people are going to be telling you important things. They might have questions for you, or requests for you, or information to share with you, and if you are busy counting the panels in the floor, Kai, you are not going to be able to help them."
Kai tried to hide his surprise. He wondered if someone told Torin that people liked to count floor panelling when they were bored, or if Torin had once been a bored little boy himself. The idea of Torin as a little boy entertained Kai immensely, but he put it away quickly and nodded. Torin nodded back at him.
"Excellent. Now, I'm going to continue having this meeting with you, and while I am talking, Kai, I want you to pay attention to what I am saying. Listen to it and think about it. If you have questions, ask them. If you have something to say, say it. All right?"
Kai nodded.
"Good." Torin extended his right hand, and Kai shook it, surprised by the warmth of Torin's firm hand. "Now, let's go back to discussing what our meeting was about. What are your options for your father's birthday present again?"