A deep sigh emerged from the other side of a folding screen.
“No, this one’s not quite right, either,” a deep voice said. Shortly after yet another wave of clothing crashed over the screen. They tumbled to the floor to join the collection of previously discarded gowns, trousers, and vests that littered most surfaces of the room.
Finally a tall woman stepped out wearing a deep blue ensemble that could have been mistaken for a dress assuming one didn’t see that what appeared to be a skirt was actually two wide trouser legs. A sensible but fashionable grey waistcoat had been added to the look. Sheer sleeves showed off the tattoos etched into the woman’s skin beneath them.
A final appraisal in the mirror and the addition of comfortable boots seemed to satisfy the woman. “I think this will do nicely,” she said to her reflection as she tucked a watch into the pocket of her waistcoat.
Professor Vera Aleksandr had been one of Dr. Thatch’s first students in Tellas. Her passion for ensuring that the traditions of her people were well documented and appropriately passed on had quickly made her one of Arden’s favorite students, though he’d never willingly admit that he even had a favorite at all. When he took a sabbatical to go off adventuring on behalf of the Valodred family, she had been very vocal about her desire to step into the role he had left behind.
Dr. Thatch hadn’t yet had the opportunity to see her in her element, her diminutive stature doing nothing to detract from her ability to capture the attention of her students. The tall woman in her smart grey and blue outfit slipped into an empty seat in the back of the classroom as Professor Aleksandr had launched into an explanation of proper note-taking while in the field.
As the lecture came to a close (“Remember, if you don’t write it down, your notes are useless to you later!”), Vera noticed that she had had an additional member of her audience. “Well, it’s not often I get a fresh face in my lectures in the middle of a semester,” she called out. The tall woman pushed the soft, golden waves of her hair out of her face as she rose from her chair and joined Vera at the front of the room.
“That was quite the lecture, I must say,” she said in a soft accent that Vera recognized as similar to Dr. Thatch’s. “Had my own professors back home been even half as passionate as you are, I believe I may have slept through class a little less.” Laughter made her mismatched green eyes shine, emphasizing an almost unnaturally purple sheen over the woman’s left eye.
After a moment of silence, the woman started. “My apologies, professor, it would appear that my manners have escaped me entirely! I’m Lady Hyacinth Thalias, a colleague and former classmate of Dr. Thatch. He said that it was far past time that he observed your class, but it would seem he hasn’t been feeling much like himself lately,” she mused, the ghost of a smirk briefly crossing her face.
Vera regarded Lady Thalias with suspicion. “So he asked you to come here. All the way from New Thassilon. Just to watch me teach,” she said. “I am certain that there were easier ways for him to conduct a review, even if he has taken ill.”
Hyacinth nodded sagely. “I’m sure he did have alternative options, but I had been traveling around for some time and thought that it would be nice to pay a visit to an old friend. I doubt he would have called upon me for this task if I hadn’t already been here. If it puts your mind at ease, I have naught but praise to give Dr. Thatch in regards to you. I’m sure inflating his ego with compliments about one of his own students would do wonders for his mood. He’s been rather sullen since he’s taken ill,” she said, a soft frown tugging at the corners of her mouth.
I’ve no idea if she’s even telling the truth, but I don’t see why she’d lie, Vera thought. I did hear that Dr. Thatch had ran into a bit of trouble on his last trip out and had come back looking rather ill. Regardless, I like this one. She’s as cheery as sunlight and seems as playful as a spring wind. Just as pretty as spring, too.
Vera gathered her papers and tossed them haphazardly into the small canvas bag leaning against the podium. “Well, if Dr. Thatch wants to know more about my teaching habits, he can visit me himself. He’s been away so long I’m starting to wonder if we were ever friends or not.” Her words sounded harsh. She hadn’t mean to imply that Lady Thalias was unwelcome, yet she had.
A look of hurt flashed across Lady Thalias’ face but it was quickly replaced by her sunshine-bright smile. “I’m sure he’ll stop by when he’s better,” she said as she made her retreat.
Over the next few days, a parade of visiting scholars stopped by Vera’s lectures, each claiming to be associates of Dr. Thatch sent to review her classes.
The newest of them, Lord Sovann had done just as the others had: quietly entered her classroom and taken an empty chair towards the back. She had had to do a double take when the newest visitor had entered as they could have passed themselves off as a member of the Valodred family with ease. Their face had traces of the newly returned young Lady Valodred’s soft beauty with hair nearly identical to the young Lord Valodred. If she didn’t know better, Vera would have thought them a long-lost sibling. However, those, as far as she knew, had all been accounted for.
She had had enough. Did he really doubt that she could do this when she’d been teaching for months now? What a horrible insult. It was time to pay her mentor a visit.
Yet his office door remained firmly shut with the newest version of the same note that had been plastered to it all week: Dr. Thatch is currently on leave. Please leave any messages for him with Lord Hollis Sovann and they will see that Dr. Thatch receives them promptly. Vera recognized it as Arden’s handwriting, smooth and looping and messy as it was, but she could have sworn she saw Lord Sovann write the message themself that morning. How suspicious.
She decided that if he wasn’t in his office, she’d have to visit his personal quarters instead.
There was no note, but nobody had answered when she knocked on Dr. Thatch’s door. She had passed people in the hall that told her, yes, Dr. Thatch is indeed home and seems to have entertained quite a few guests since his return. She knew he was there. She could smell that floral Varisian tea that he loved so much.
Vera knocked on the door again. “Dr. Thatch, I’m giving you to the count of ten to at least give me proof you’re alive or I’m coming in!” She shouted. From the other side she heard a lock turn, then a voice say “Fine, come in, then.”
Dr. Thatch’s small study tended to always have an air of chaos to it, but she had never seen it like this. Clothes — many she recognized as belonging to the visiting scholars — were strewn about, covering nearly every available surface. She tried not to think about what that implied as her cheeks warmed with a light blush.
“Doctor, where did you go? I thought you were just at the door,” she called.
“I was, but I thought I should double back. Figured you’d prefer I wear trousers,” he answered as he emerged from his bedroom, tying the laces of his shirt closed. He gave her his usual charming smile.
Vera laughed, comforted to see her friend and mentor up and about. “Arden, while I appreciate your halfhearted attempt at placation, you should know that it might look better were you not still sporting that Valodred hair. It may have looked very nice on Lord Sovann, but I don’t think it’s quite your color.”
Arden blanched as he caught sight of himself in the mirror. Immediately his hair began to change back to the familiar artfully messy brown curls he usually had. “You’re so very right about that. And here I was hoping that you wouldn’t figure me out so easily. Sorry about that.”
At least he’s got the good graces to look properly ashamed, she thought. Though the more she looked at her mentor, the more she began to notice that he truly did look ill. His usually bright eyes seemed to have dulled and his skin had an unusual grey cast to it. Even his demeanor seemed off, as if he were a well-crafted shadow of the person he had been.
While Vera scrutinized him, Arden brought her a cup of tea and settled into an armchair with one of his own. While hers steamed merrily, she noticed his did not. She had just watched him pour it; it couldn’t possibly have gone cold yet.
“Quite a terrible joke I made, wasn’t it? Telling you I wasn’t quite feeling like myself. It was true, for what it’s worth, in more ways than one,” Arden offered. He paused to sip his tea, cringing in a way that told Vera his tea really had gone cold, before he continued. “I’ve been feeling off since my last…outing. I began to question myself. I allowed myself a few days of indulgent languishing as I attempted to piece everything together, but it hadn’t worked as I’d hoped. Once I decided that I should possibly put some effort into the matter, I thought that, maybe, a new me could help.”
Vera nodded. A new version of Arden? All of the visiting scholars had really just been him the whole time? She felt foolish for not realizing it sooner. “They were all very…interesting. I really liked…what was her name? The sunshine.. flowery lady…”
“Oh, Lady Thalias?” he offered. “Thought you’d like her. She’s an older one of mine. Based her off of a friend back in New Thassilon. Hyacinth is fun, but I don’t think that I could become her more long-term.”
“Oh…I’m flattered,” she replied. In reality, she was embarrassed. She had ran into Lady Hyacinth again later that day and invited her to a meal together. She certainly hadn’t been flirting with the lady over their dinner and she certainly wasn’t rather peeved that her offer to return to her rooms for a nightcap had been turned down.
Vera was the one to break the short silence that had settled between them. “If these new…personalities? People? Are your way of trying to find yourself, then does that mean…” she paused and took a deep breath. “Does that mean that the one I know — Arden — isn’t real, either?”
Arden stared into his ancient Thassilonian dream receptacle as he spoke. “In a sense, yes. I’ve never truly known who I am. I don’t know what my father named me or even who he was. I don’t know my own birthday or how old I truly am.”
He finally met Vera’s eyes. While still paler than usual, she could see the impassioned light in his own eyes that she had come to associate with a very stubborn and determined Dr. Thatch.
“What I do know,” he continued, “is that I know who I want to be. Arden is the embodiment of that dream. Everyone assumes that I celebrate my birthday on the 23rd of Aroden, but I’m actually celebrating the day I gave myself my name. The day I started down the path to becoming someone greater than I had been. Arden is who I have been the longest. He’s the one that earned respect, who achieved things that anyone I had been before had ripped from their fingers before they even had the chance to prove themselves.”
“So what I’m hearing,” Vera said, a smile curving her lips, “is that Arden is who you’re most comfortable as, but you’re not sure that he is you? Is that right?”
“In short, yes. I had thought that he was, but lately I’m not as sure of that as I once was. This is my process in moments like this — I dream up another identity, another person that might be me. I try them out for a while, then put them away when I decide they don’t fit as well as I’d like them to. It’s sort of like trying on new clothes. Sometimes, I just play with certain features instead of becoming someone entirely different.” In demonstration, he changed his hair to a fiery red that looked rather garish on him and grinned at her.
Vera couldn’t help the laughter that bubbled up. He looked ridiculous like that, especially as he had decided that merely sitting in the chair didn’t suit him and chose instead to drape himself over the arms with one leg dangling off the side.
“As amusing as your antics are, Doctor, I have to say that I fail to see the point of changing every single thing about yourself. Each new person who showed up to my class, now that I think back on it, had a piece of you in them. Hyacinth had your strange charm and Hollis moved their fingers in the same practiced spellwork patterns you tend to default to when you’re thinking hard about something. Ellery, the really weird one, had that creepy aura you tend to get when you’re angry, except she had it all the time,” she pointed out.
“While you do seem a little out of sorts, you still seem like you. Still drinking the same delicate tea out of the same ridiculous cup that you still refuse to call a cup. Still making the same terrible jokes. Regardless of what face you wear or what name you use, you are still distinctly you. At least, that’s the only way I know how to say it. See, this is why I chose history. A philosopher I am not,” she said.
Arden looked pensive and sat up a bit at that. “I guess you’re right,” he responded. “I think I’ll eventually stay as Arden again. He’s always felt more like home than any other person I’ve been.” A smirk overtook his features. “But I’ve experienced a bit of trauma recently, even if it was as a result of my own choice. I think I’m entitled to a bit more dramatic melancholy before I have to make an attempt at sensibility again.”
Vera grinned. “Arden, my friend, the day that you manage to achieve proper, boring sensibility is the day I’ll truly be convinced that you’re an imposter.”
She knew it would never happen.
