Time to Admit

Yarel realized it was time to admit it. He was exactly where he deserved to be.

Life hadn't been unfair to him. His life wasn't even that bad. It was just always less than he thought he would get. As a child, he expected to be among the Great Ones. The wizards who had changed the world in their image. He had expected to have fame, fortune, and love given to him easily. But natural talent only gets you so far.

For decades, he had spent most days making excuses. Reasons why today wasn't the day to turn things around. He'd been sick, there was this stress from something or other, someone else needed him so he couldn't spend time on his own work... but then there were days like this.

Today, he had energy. He'd recovered from his recent illness. Life was smooth at the alchemist's shop. His mentor was pretty amazing, in fact, and never pushed him too hard. Alchemy wasn't going to break new grounds any time soon there, but it was stable and safe. Things were even starting to look up with Gennia, who had agreed to meet him at the pub next week for dinner.

So he had no excuses, today, on his day off. He had time, energy, and all the dreams in the world still trapped in his mind. When it came right down to it, though, he didn't want to spend those things on his dreams. He just wanted to rest, read a bit, maybe tinker with a few experiments. None of the things they said you had to do to “make a breakthrough” like he'd always planned.

Yarel hadn't been given a bad hand. He just needed to admit he was too lazy to do much more with it than he had.