Chapter 187: What She Understood
Chapter 186: What She Understood
Lyria’s POV
I blinked.
I had not been expecting that.
For a moment, I simply stood, the parchment still in my hands, while the weight of what Duke Valenridge had just asked settled over the hall like something substantial.
He wanted me to explain.
The Queen turned toward the Duke with a smile that did not reach her eyes.
"That was not," she said pleasantly, "part of the established rules, Your Grace."
Duke Valenridge inclined his head.
"With respect," he said, "the task set before the suitor candidates was to compose something that resonated with the Moon candidates." He paused. "Both Moon candidates, Your Majesty. Not one."
The Queen said nothing.
He continued, unhurried.
"I cannot know whether my poem has achieved that purpose unless I hear from both of them."
There was a short pause, and then he continued.
"And while Her Highness Princess Jacinta has offered an explanation that is—as I have said—eloquent and accurate in its structure, I do not believe it fully does justice to what the poem was intended to convey."
He looked at the Queen directly.
"Before I offer my own explanation, I would very much like to know what Princess Lyria understood from it."
The silence that followed was brief.
The Queen’s eye twitched, and then she smiled.
"Very well," she said.
She turned toward me.
"Princess Lyria."
I straightened at that point.
I was aware of the court. The nobles. The scrying veil carrying all of it outward.
And so, I folded my hands before me and took one slow breath.
Then I bowed my head toward the Queen and rose, facing Jacinta.
"Her Highness was not wrong," I said, "in her explanation. I believe that much is true."
My voice came out steady.
"But perhaps," I continued, "if it would please the court, we might look a little further than the structure of the poem itself."
I paused briefly, gathering my words with care.
"The poem begins simply," I said. "That much Her Highness has already noted. It opens with something everyone in this hall has understood since childhood. The word home. What it looks like. What it sounds like. The people one finds within it."
I let that settle for a moment.
"But I think," I said, "that the simplicity of the opening is itself the point. Because it b-begins where we all begin—with the most obvious answer. And then it asks us to look past it."
Try as I might, a stutter slipped through. I hoped no one noticed, though.
"The poem is, at its heart, a question," I said, not dwelling on the fact that I had stuttered. "It does not tell us what home is. It asks us what we believe home to be. And then it asks us to look at ourselves honestly when we answer."
I moved my gaze across the people present.
"It asks what we hold dear," I said. "What we return to, not out of habit, but out of something older than habit. What it is that makes a person feel most themselves."
I thought of my mother. Of how I felt when I was with her, and how even when she was sick, she was still a safe place.
I thought of Patricia. Of how I could tell her anything, and how she would listen without judgment and without requiring me to be anything other than what I was.
I did not say any of that aloud.
"Is it a building?" I continued. "Perhaps. For some, yes. But the poem asks whether it must be. It suggests that for some, home is a person. A sister, perhaps. A brother. Someone who knows you without requiring an explanation."
I paused.
"Or perhaps," I said more quietly, "it is not a person at all. Perhaps it is a thing. Something small and worn and kept long past the point where anyone else would understand why it has been kept."
"Or perhaps," I said, "it is a place. Not necessarily a fine one. Not a grand hall or a well-appointed chamber. Perhaps it is simply the one place where a person has ever been entirely themselves. Where they did not have to choose their words before speaking them. Where tears were permitted, and days could be recounted freely, and nothing was required in return for the listening."
I steadied my voice.
"The poem is a search," I said. "A quest, almost. It asks us to go inward and find the thing—whatever it is, whoever it is—that answers to that name for us individually."
"Because the Duke does not assume that home is the same for every person in this hall or the kingdom at large," I said. "He does not tell us what it ought to be. He offers possibilities. A sister who has always been right. A brother who feels things too deeply. A cousin who cannot seem to help breaking things."
"Perhaps one of them is home," I continued. "Perhaps all of them together are. Perhaps none of them, and home is instead something abstract—a feeling of comfort, a quality of peace, a particular kind of quiet that one only recognises because one has gone long enough without it."
I paused again.
"But the poem does not decide that for us," I said. "It refuses to. And I think that refusal is deliberate. Because home is not something that can be decided by another person on one’s behalf."
My voice dropped slightly on the last few words.
"It can only be found," I said. "Or chosen. Or, in some cases, built from whatever one has available."
I was quiet for a moment.
Then I lifted my head a little further.
"The poem ends with a question directed at whoever is reading it," I said. "Or listening to it. And I think that question is the truest part of the whole piece. Because it does not ask what home is in a general sense."
I paused.
"It asks what your home is," I said. "Yours specifically. The one thing, or person, or place that anchors you. That gives you a reason to remain when remaining has become difficult."
"It asks," I said quietly, "where you go when the world becomes too much to carry. What you run toward. What holds you in place—not by force, but because something in it is worth remaining for."
"That," I said softly, "is what I believe the poem is about."
