New Year

With another somber Waiting Hand having passed, we welcome the start of another En’Kara and with it, another new year. I was up before the Central Fire crested the Voltai. Tasta prowled the cul-de-sac as I painted the door to my Anbar domicile green, a celebration of the season. The first hand of En’Kara is always a festive time. There is much to celebrate entering this new year, but much to be wary over as well. The Initiates have been exposed, but one cannot help to reason they will be preaching their dogma again soon, gathering the faith of the fearful and the adherence of the pragmatic in the process. The repeal and prescribed restitution of unjust levies have been met with begrudging consent, but that may hold true only so long as the ambivalence of our current Administration remains intact. New challenges are sure to arise. Our city is at its best, I fear, when conquest is on the agenda. During times of peace, the power-brokers are all too willing to turn inward, against their own to satiate their greed. I can only hope they have seen the folly of pushing the People too far. When you leave a man with nothing to lose, logic dictates he has nothing to lose. Each day another ten walls are defaced in districts across the breadth of the city, the contempt plain in the words, in the crude renderings. Some speak of it as social commentary, others dismiss it as the petulance of the poor. What it truly represents, in my mind, is a warning. The men who sweep your stables, light your lamps, sing your standards, vend your food and drink, brand your bitches, tool your sandals and perform a thousand other menial tasks most take for granted are not to be thought of lightly. We are all of Ar, from the tavern master renting a flat in the Trevelyan to the Scions of the City with their Tabidian Tower residences. There are no men of humble birth in this city. We are men of Ar.