A Cup Raised

I let myself get drunk about a hand or so ago. Well and truly drunk, the way I used to with men like Seth Gage, Plythias, and Russ Finn. My brother, Varhan, and I, too, used to drink to excess now and again. And Sal DeVade, wherever he may be. I raised a cup to them all. It was the first bottle from the vineyard, you see, that aged two years without turning to piss. I've since sent a few crates to the Marketplaces of Ar, along with several small pots of olives. There isn't any profit in this endeavor, nor is there meant to be. Not that I intend to drink myself out of any potential profits, just that the margins for such an enterprise are best understood by the Vintners; men whose business it is to grow, harvest, ferment, and bottle ta-grapes, and the succulent fruit of ka-la-na trees. I have a modest grove, nothing more than a testament to vanity, perhaps. I am a vagabond Poet, sometimes a playwright, once a politician and whoremonger. I know plenty about turning a phrase, twisting a plot, the realities of red-tape, and turning a slut out. I know very little about how one becomes wealthy from the growing of fruit, nor do I care to know. It is enough to have the wine and the olives, and to have enough to share. And while I had raised a cup to my brother, and friends I once called brother, I raised my cup first to a mere girl. She followed along with me to wipe the sweat from my brow as I tilled the field and plotted the stakes. Her hands picked the first harvest with me, and her feet later stomped them. After pressing, and filtering, she handed me the nails when I hammered the lid to that first barrel, sealing it shut for fermentation.

Were she here today, she would have been permitted to drink this first bottle with me.