damascus
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"It's not fair," Jasson says. He sits on the edge of her bed, swinging his legs and watching as Kalasin carefully packs away the last of her belongings.
"What isn't?" Kalasin pulls the roll of paper towards her, measuring out the lengths. She should get a maid to do this, but she doesn't. This way she can say her own goodbye, of sorts.
"That you have to go away. Roald gets to stay at home. I don't see why you shouldn't."
Snip, snip, snip. "Because that's the way things are. The wife goes to the husband's household. Shinko had to come here."
"It's still not fair," Jasson says stubbornly.
There is nothing Kalasin can say to that. Instead, she starts to wrap up one of her dog statuettes; the one that Roald gave her last Midwinter. (She tries not to think about how that was probably her last Midwinter, ever.)
After a while Jasson comes up and puts his arms around her. Kalasin is surprised; his eight-year-old pride doesn't allow for much show of emotion. She abandons her wrapping and hugs him back, rocking him gently, as she did so many times when he was a baby.
"I don't want you to go," he mumbles into her hair.
"I don't want to go, either." Kalasin tries very hard not to cry. Instead, she pats Jasson's back and pulls away gently, because now, she tells herself, now is the time to be strong.
She can't help thinking that she would rather have been weak.
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