For you, the erstwhile Tender, a good bar serves mead and counsel to common men, and bawdy talk to strangers is but a prelude to battle, a toast to what may be one long, last ride. You, as if by unspoken vow, are a keeper of tallies, of wagers, of secrets, a steadfast sage often mistaken for a mere villager.

For you, Baltimore is but one of many kingdoms, its harbor a passage to freedom, to war. Yet your wanderlust has been waylaid and you’ve felt tethered, as if by some sorcerer’s edict, to home. Though a firstborn son, a namesake, an heir, you do not seem as interested in these familial vestments as you are in the many storied marvels that lay months away from your own hearth, as you are in worlds written into the endless reams of parchment you are able to consume in far less than a fortnight.

You are someone else; you are more, meant for a life beyond the hills of druids, beyond fair Canton’s shore. You’ve an earned nobility, if not a noble’s name, an unused valor, and purposes as yet unmined. You are most at peace among large, intimidating tomes that foretell unspeakable futures as well as untenable pasts. You are warm, even in winters of the soul, when the hearts of lesser men grow coldest. You deserve to slay dragons, to gaze on citadels of light, to stare into the eyes of sirens without succumbing.

Though I suspect I am able, I’ve no desire to turn you to stone.

When I met you, you were full of tales, of lives interrupted, of grounds both gained and lost, and you looked at me as though I were a great ship’s bow, a star pointed eastward, a vast sea itself. Would that I possessed the power to knight you. I would see you kneel this very night. I would hear your solemn oath.

But none knight men like you, save God and Self. You are your own, and everyone you serve is better for it.