Vash is growing up though, look at the way he was with Wulf and Gils. He acted like a loving uncle.

Umm... I don't know. I am rebuilding the castle, actually, so the correct answer is "it has been annihilated!"

However, in truth I haven't even drawn up the plans for the south end of the castle yet, and all of the notable rooms are already accounted for in the north end, so I am assuming it's either not in use at all anymore -- like a spooky abandoned wing of the castle -- or it's just used for servants and storage and other things.

Cenwulf was happy enough in later years that I can imagine him finally opening up the room, maybe even giving it to one of his kids. But I don't know. If he did not do it, on the other hand, then I can imagine poor Edris leaving it boarded up for the rest of her life.

Basically what I am trying to say is I don't want to decide right now.

Of course he takes the boys to the villages! They're just ordinary boys.

Sela never went anywhere near any inhabited area -- unless it was just hiding in the bushes and watching or something. But the village then was not what it is now. There was not much to speak of until after the castle was built and farming really started, and she was dead by that time.

I am sure Lili went shopping whenever she got the chance, even if it was only to pick out some cheese, which she could have sent her housekeeper to do. Lili liked to be out and doing things and talking to people. Once Mouse was around I can certainly see the two of them going together.

But don't think the villages out Egelric's way are anything like what we saw in the latest chapter. They're more like a bunch of farm households gathered approximately close together, with a few people who make and sell things out of their houses, such as the shoemaker. If Lili really wanted to "go shopping" she would have to go down on market day, when there were a few stands set up. Or go to Nothelm or Kingsmarket, where there are real shops.

I was looking at the posts with Wulf and Gils and I noticed they have a lot of there father in them but also their mother as well. Wulf has Sela's outgoingness, while Gils has his mother's shy nature. Even when they were babies it was evident Wulf was outgoing and Gils was shy. A great example of that is the post of them in November of 1080. When Vash came to visit Egelric , Wulf cried "Ears" and pointed at Vash, while Gils was in his mother's arms off to the side not really interested in Vash. I think Gils is a little reserved with strangers.

Lothere do you know why Egelric and Sela named their second child Gils?

Oh I see.

So does this guy.

BWAHAHAHA!

My mouth dropped when I saw Lar's page. That was a good one Meryt!

To that I answer a hearty Aye!

For some reason, Devin, you rule out the possibility of him being a total asshole. How do you maintain your optimism in the face of the cruel destinies I have visited upon nearly all of your favorite characters?

OMG you killed Wwil whyyyy?!

But it was just a baby..

It means clan leader, Devin. Old Aed is the leader of his clan, but there are the eight sub-clans within it, and they have their own leaders too. (Well only 7 I guess since Egelric all by his lonesome doesn't count.)

Of course there is a leader of all Scotland -- King Malcolm. But Aed and he don't get along very well at all since Malcolm executed Aed's father. (Before Aed's eyes, but that's another tale...)

However King Malcolm is over in the east and Aed's lands are in the west in what is now Galloway. So they get along by mostly ignoring each other. Magog has good relations with King Malcolm, but that's OK because Gog and Old Aed don't get along very well at all either.

Young Aed has big chunk of land consisting of the area surrounding the river called the Water of Fleet, and that bay area. He and the 16-year-old Eochaid that Eirik and Diarmait were talking about are the leaders of the only two subclans that have access to the sea, and Old Aed's ships are divided up between their two areas.

Young Aed is the type who would not hesitate to move to Lothere.

After he conquered it, that is.

Lothere in the village where Aia resides in "Up-eard" will all the houses be identical to hers? Same structures numbers of rooms etc etc....

So the interior of Aia's house is similar to Alwy and Ethelmund's first houses... Time to read old chapters.

Whoa you are fast Devin! I just added those people yesterday.

Brittany is the northwestern part of France nowadays. In our time period it was its own Duchy. The people who live there are Celtic rather than Frankish or Norman, but they speak a language more like Welsh than Scottish/Irish Gaelic.

I thought the kid looked like your classic street urchin/peasant child. Like he stands out on corners with a tin coffer, pretending to be an invalid.

Lothere when did Estrid and Brede move out of their barn?

But it's soo big compared to Osh and Flann's barn...

Meryt I was born in the city and have never been in a barn. lol I didn't even know people could actually convert a barn into a house before I read this story.

Are there any more unused barns in the valley for a special someone and her child and future husband?

Nope, there are tons of barns in up-state N.Y. but I never went in one. i don't like farm country its too quiet and there is nothing to do.

Lili certainly was. I don't think there is any question about that.

Sela, it's hard to say. She got to be pretty mysterious towards the end. I suppose she had some happiness since she was with the man she loved and she had her children, but she had lost her family and sister, lost her ability to speak, lost her culture.

And she lost her status. We don't really know what that was, but her father was some sort of poet/hero and she herself was apparently a renowned poet (unless that was all due to a lovestruck Imin's patronage), and the fact that she hadn't had any mate by the time Egelric found her seems to hint that she was either respected enough to be hands-off or was able to make her own refusal.

Anyway, that will probably send you off into more speculation about her, but I do think she gave up a lot to be with Egelric, even before she lost her words. She had some kind of identity as herself and as a woman, and when she went to live with him she gave that up and just became the sequestered common-law wife of old Grinchy MacGrumpersons, without any social identity outside of that. Unless she paid some visits to other villages in his absence, but even so, she was lost to her people by that time.

Also, one final clue -- there was that scene in "Egelric realizes a number of things":

"Happy is for me, happy is for you," he corrected.  "Won't you be happy?  You?"

She hesitated, still gasping occasionally with sudden sobs, but she laid her cheek against his.  He was almost surprised to feel it wet.  "I am happy for you," she said at last.

I don't think Sela cared one bit whether she was married in a church, and that's all that really mattered. Egelric is certainly not the type to drag a woman to the altar against her will.

How can I explain a culture, Devin? We will have to learn it by reading about it.

And she lost her culture because she was taken away to live in an entirely different culture. Maybe she still went through some of the gestures of it (like, pray or something?) but Egelric wasn't a part of it. Once you're completely cut off like that from your society -- that is, the people you share a culture with -- the mere gestures lose their power, I think. Maybe we will see that with Yusuf too. (And perhaps Leila with him, now that he's back in her life to awake her old memories.)

Anyway the original kisór culture is completely shattered. It appears to have been a male-dominated culture -- to the point that only the men know the songs and secrets of their religion -- and there are only twelve men left. The vast majority of the kisór no longer have any idea what it's like to grow up in a household with two parents and kids who are all full-blood siblings. The vast majority are lucky if they even know who their father was.

So obviously their culture has become vastly different in the space of a few decades or a century, and that culture-in-collapse is what Sela knew. Quite tragic really. But tragedy is often fertile ground for poetry, I suppose.

At that time I never did chapters from elf POV, and then she also lost the ability to speak, so I suppose it was inevitable that she became a mystery. I didn't intend it that way at the beginning.

I don't think she did, Devin. The only time she might have was when Egelric went to Scotland and she ran away from the house, but even then, I really doubt it. Because no one among her people really knows what became of her except that she went to live with the men (who later supposedly killed her). And nobody knows she lost her words, so I fail to see how she could have hidden that.

I doubt the elves particularly know or care who Egelric is. The more important fact to them was that it was a man, and that's just one more good reason not to have anything to do with the men.

The only people who know what really happened in that house are Lar, Imin, Dasi, and Llen. If Lar was going to kill anyone to prevent that from getting out, it would be those guys.

And there would be no reason for him to attack the men even if they had killed her. Sela was dead to her people by that time. She had willingly turned her back on them.

The only point at which Lar would have attacked anyone was when Sela went to live with Egelric. Then he might have killed Egelric to teach the men a lesson. (Or Imin might have, just out of jealousy.) Instead he raped some random women and taught the lesson that way.

I expect the lesson has lingered, and there are surely quite a few people in the neighborhood who are not happy about Aia coming to live among the men, even if she is living alone. It will especially be a problem if she starts openly hanging out with some man or men in particular. I can imagine plenty of fathers and husbands worried that their innocent daughters and wives are going to be raped as retribution for that, just like last time. The situation with the elves and the populace has always been tense, and it wouldn't take much to make it blow up again.

You're the one looking for a husband for her, Devin!

And according to elven gossip the men have already started knocking at her door.

I don't know if they know. I am sure Alred didn't go advertising it to all the world, but these things get around, and I believe she was blaring something like "Sela sister, Sela sister" when she showed up at the castle looking for Egelric. And people will talk.

People will gossip! Knowing the girl's name is the kind of detail that gets you instant busybody cred, so I am sure it got around. And especially guards at Nothelm would know the name of Egelric's 2nd babe.

Once you're completely cut off like that from your society -- that is, the people you share a culture with -- the mere gestures lose their power, I think.

That's an interesting theory, Lothere, but I'm not sure it's always true. I go to school in Boston, and while there are Muslims on campus and in the city, there aren't a whole heck of a lot. I spend a lot of time in the sacred space on campus, which is a non-denominational set of rooms with an ablution area, meditation space, etc., and that's where the Muslims go to pray. I'm seen people there who've seemed to become more devoted over time, more careful in their practices and bolder in the way they pray, even when they know they'll be alone every time.

I also know that my yoga and meditation practice is my spirituality, but none of my family or friends are at all interested in a spiritual practice. It's lonely, sometimes to the point of feeling isolated from everyone, but if anything that strengthens my faith in the way my practices makes me feel...

Of course, it could easily go the other way. I've never been one to go for peer pressure or to conform, and am usually pretty confident in myself and my decisions. Maybe that's what makes all the difference. I think Yusuf, at least, would find his faith deepening. When he talked to Leila he was shocked at her conversion, and by himself he seemed to be a confident and proud man. That kind of person doesn't easily give up what is dear to him.

Lothere would you say that Alred is much more closer to Egelric than Sigefrith?

Ever since the post in which Alred told Egelric that Aia was Lady Sela's sister I can;'t help but feel like their friendship is a little unhealthy...

I'll tell you the first thing I thought when I wondered what Matilda would be like if she were still alive: Hetty would have married Ethelwyn, and they both would have been very happy (and quite pretty) together.

Matilda would have gotten better eventually. She and Alred would have worked things out. I know they would. Matilda was making Alred feel very unloved, which he extrapolated into feeling unloveable, and his own self-loathing deepened at that time -- this chapter comes to mind -- but I think some third party would have stepped in and helped them straighten themselves out and find each other again. Maybe Sigefrith. Maybe even Leofric, if he truly loved Matilda and wanted what would make her happiest. Leof does seem capable of that sort of self-sacrifice with Hetty.

And after that I don't think she would have changed much from the Matilda we had always known. The Matilda we saw at the end was not the real Matilda. She was ill -- mentally and in some combination with physically : post-partum depression, plus her gestational diabetes or whatever else.

Things would have been so different for Gwynn and Meggie though if she had lived. Matilda never would have let Alred shelter Gwynn the way he has done, and conversely I think she would have gotten wise to Meggie's antics and stepped in before anything too catastrophic happened. (Which hasn't yet, but who knows?)

Maybe even the Old Man would have turned out differently, but I don't like to dwell on his fate too much.

As for Sela, I doubt she would have lived till 1085 even if she hadn't been killed when she was. Something else would have happened. Even without her speech, she was in a dangerous position -- because her relationship with the men might have been a perceived danger to the kisór as well as the khírrón, and because she would have gone on having half-breed children, which quite a few elves -- and men -- find repulsive. Even Osh and Paul (as we can guess from Osh's treatment of Aia) would not have treated her the way they treat Lena.

I'm not sure what would have become of Egelric if she had lived, or lived a little longer. I don't know whether Alred ever would have convinced him to climb that hill and move into that castle, and he might have simply grown away from the men himself. Egelric could easily become a hermit if left to his own devices.

Ooooh, that might have been fun, Egelric and Sela's adventures in Scotland! Although then Lili wouldn't have come into the picture... hmmm...

Aia is not in a good position. The men don't seem to really want her, and Lar has given Llen a mission to remind her of the difference between men and elves, and Osh didn't seem too thrilled to see her. Plus, where she's living, it's not exactly the nicest suburb of Lothere. I would say there's danger all around.

Would Egelric have taken Sela to Scotland? Would Egelric ever have left the valley so long as he hadn't found Finn again? I can't imagine him giving up on Finn like that.

I would say it's more like a far west town, without a sheriff.

Sigefrith put her pretty much where he found her: her baby's parents were from that area too. It's an out-of-the-way place, which was the most important criteria for him (and Aia too!), I'm sure. He didn't want to put an elf-woman right in the village outside his front door.

*Penelope's eyes water preemptively for when Sigefrith kicks the bucket*

Tour of Malcolm and Iylaine's house now up on Verso.

Lothere if Egelric stayed at the cottage wouldn't he have to eventually move since the house only had two bedrooms and he has 4 kids living with him? Or would he just make the cottage bigger?

I really can't see Lili living in that cottage too small for her.

So what would have happened to the castle if Egelric didn't move in it?

Please don't say that.

I wonder where Egelric would have add an extra bedroom or two to the cottage?

He trains and raises horses. At the moment he has a couple of mares that he is breeding, but he never stops plotting how he's going to get more and more. Eventually I suppose he would like to stop training other people's horses and just sell horses that he raised and trained himself. Then he would stop working for hire and become a property-owner, you see. Anson is nothing if not ambitious.

Lothere when did or where did it stem from rather, the boy's curiosity in elves? I wonder if Wulf has already asked Finn questions about elves and such..

Has Finn or anyone else noticed Gils' resentment towards him?