Day 140
Standard Year 1118
Irikwae
In which the twins give Jethri the benefit of their vast, sorrowful experience.
When the twins are telling Jethri about how much Pen Rel loves his vines, they tell a story about the “mother vine” that echoes the events of “Necessary Evils” and the scholar’s hearsay in Crystal Dragon. Where those were reports of contemporary events, though, now it is just a legend of “the old days, when such things were possible”.
That’s a connection I didn’t make the first time I read it, probably because I hadn’t read “Necessary Evils” yet. If memory serves, I read all the novels Meisha Merlin published before I read any of the short stories.
The other thing I didn’t realise the first time I read it was that Jethri’s confidence that it wasn’t within his power to match the twins’ devastation of the vines was a sign of trouble to come.