not too shabby

For as long as Iona's known her grandpa, he's been feeble. The coughs weren't always so bad, wracking his entire bent-over body, but she's never seen him move freely, now hardly ever doing much more than lifting heel half an inch off the ground to shuffle slowly from room to room.

He puts on a great show, when his shows are over and people come to shake his hand, congratulate him, ask questions. Still, though, for all he acts like it'll be a great ordeal, a terrific throng, there are never really that many people. Plenty come to the playhouse, and Iona can ever remember once when Mister Vandham had to hold her up on his shoulders for her to be able to see. But when the fanfare and bows are through, most spare a sympathetic eye to the old man that made it happen, and go right back on home.

She heard Mythra talking to him about whether or not it really happened; whether or not Grandpa had just started...making things up. Because his mind was going, or he was "living in nostalgia" even when the real world, stagnant as it was, threatened to pass him by. Because he couldn't let go. Because he didn't want to. Because he refused.

Iona wonders if maybe that's why he did it - so people would talk about the play, and argue with him, and "engage" with it.

Or because he missed his friends, and being able to walk up the ramp and out of the playhouse without holding onto the railing (most often, he held onto Iona).

Well. But that was just the depressing way to look at it, Grandpa said. Really, he'd had a grand old time being able and free to do so many things, all over the world. He'd fought with, for and against, mercenaries on every Titan in Alrest, and a few of those that had sunk, five hundred years ago. It didn't matter what Praetor Amalthus preached was true about the world, because Grandpa had lived through all of it, too.

He'd fought with Mister Vandham, of course, and assured Iona that she needn't do the math on how true that could possibly be - eh, Roc? Roc's sage nod revealed nothing about where the training to wield dual scythes, or knives, had come from.

Instead, Iona watched him direct fight scenes that he'd choreographed, modeling with a flick of his wrist just the right bounce and turn to sell a fluid motion and silhouette that kept clarity throughout all depths of the stage. He had nothing against younger artists, he said, and harbored no great desire to hog the craft all to himself, but see what the people would be getting if he didn't share his expertise with the troupe in this way!

Iona giggled with the cast about his horrible, wonderful ego. How he'd keep his lips sealed, sometimes mischievously so, until his guidance was expressly asked for, or until the mistake was so egregious as to require holy intervention and rectification. Or, how he'd chafe from the hallway, the wings, the balcony, about something they were doing wrong, but wouldn't say what, and would only dangle coy clues towards the true culprit. It was never infuriating, always settling within the range of amusing.

He was so careful. He was so old.

He used to attend every rehearsal, they said. Well, more recently, he did. He used to used to be out and about everywhere, and would leave them in a flourish with the newly-polished scripts - sometimes even just the drafts - for them to work out amongst themselves. Then he'd come back just in time for hell week, and in a storm of neuroticism make every necessary tweak (with prescience, with precision, with efficiency). Once both his output of manuscripts and his input of writs had slowed, he became a more regular presence in Fonsa Myma.

Then, as the players all came into their own, individually and collectively, the maestro stepped back once more. Many of them were old themselves, now, with young children clamoring in the seats or making up ensembles of animals. Participation in the Mymoma Playhouse community theater troupe was a family affair for quite a few. Leads rotated. Legacy rumbled on.

He couldn't fix everything. Iona knew that Grandpa wasn't always very confident that what he'd done had done very much, for himself or for anyone. He'd had to use up the endless years somehow, of course. Just as his favorite work was the one he'd just completed, his favorite child was the one he was raising now.

So, in that way, she thought, he'd done pretty well.