Sigh

Sigh is gone ....again.

There was no discussion. No tearful goodbye. I went to Vigilant Witness to visit and the caretakers left behind informed me that the lady had packed her belongings and taken The Promise to Sais.

It is silly of me to be heartbroken. I was raised without a mother and did quite well. Sigh came into my life after I had passed the age of majority. The serums were given me at the end of my twenty-fourth year, so I appear much younger than I am. Her first arrival was perhaps six years ago. One day she just walked into the house with Abu. I confess my reaction was not as one might expect. I did not fling myself at her, nor welcome her with gushing professions of filial love. I did not know this woman. My mother had been dead all my life and now stood before giving face to the lies I had been told.
Abu never explained the reasons for the long deception and I, never one to confront him, did not inquire. It would be Sigh who would tell me the sordid truth over many hands. She held back none of her animosity for her former companion, although I believe she circumvented the entire history, leaving out the kernels too painful to reveal.

My heart, at first, was steeled to her regret. How could I forgive the years of deception? Many of those years were spent right here in Schendi and she never sought me out. Even as her station improved, as Ubara of Treve to my great-uncle Kaleb, she made no attempt to see me despite the fact that I spent some years there in my great-grandmother Drusilla's home.
In the end, I think it was her patient, fervent need for my acceptance that won me over. Regardless of the separation, I was quite like my mother. Both of us are Storm women, rigidly proper, cunningly perceptive, outwardly serene. Uncannily, many of our mannerisms mirrored one another. My heart gave in to my own need for maternal love.
I know now the difficulties she bore in returning to Schendi, to face both Abu and me. I am not sure I could have endured what she did. It was all done for me. We became fast friends. To this day, she calls me Rainbow. She knows my secrets now and protects them as fiercely as her own. Yet, as she has withheld some of her past, so I have concealed some of my thoughts regarding her.

I never told her the man who sought her as companion had sought to make suite for me. I could not have hurt her like that. He was a sword of the city, a boon comrade of my father's. I hoped his joining her would keep her here forever.
It was not to be. Soon after their contracts were signed, he took her away. I could not regret that she had found happiness in her life again, but I resented being left behind. The restrictions of my travel imposed by my protective father did not allow me to visit her; nor did she, in all her travels with her companion, ever dock in Schendi. Her own home, Vigilant Witness, remained, tended by caretakers, to remind me of the loss.

Years passed and so did the man she loved. Eventually she returned and, as if no time had passed, we resumed our close relationship. As it is wont to do, time had changed her. She was no longer the silent, accepting Sigh who took few chances, licked her wounds in private. The old ghosts of the past caught up with her here and threatened to diminish her novel spirit.

And so it is that I, unknowingly, went to Vigilant Witness one morning to invite her to some state function in the city, only to be told that she had moved to Sais. The stately house with its Widow's Walk was vacant but for the old couple who maintained it. No word left for me.

Since then there have been invitations to visit, and I have actually been to the distant city and seen that she thrives with her new friends, her new work. I cannot condemn her. Schendi was hard on Sigh.


Have you seen her all in gold
Like a queen in days of old
She's shoots colors all around
Like a sunset going down
Have you seen a lady fairer

She comes in colors everywhere
She's combs her hair
She's like a rainbow
Coming colors in the air
Oh everywhere
She comes in colors

From She's a Rainbow (c) Jagger and Richards, 1967