Fights between families are never about the individual quarrel of any given moment, the inciting incidents linger in memory, the scars and slights accrued over decades: some petty scratches, some gangrenous wounds. They can be ignored only so long before resentment boils over.
Hence, the vacation of a family as old and powerful and as steeped in disagreement of the Gonurlys was a powder keg. Each member held a match. Be it the eldest daughter playing second to her younger siblings, or the son, the namesake, struggling under the yolk of expectation.
The youngest, brother and sister, raised from birth to play peacemakers and tired of the roles thrust upon them, mourning their mothers who died and were summarily replaced and forgotten by all but them.
Be it the Father, who looks at his children, feels their resentment, believes it to be far less than be deserves. An old man, tired of fighting but quick to anger, caught between dueling impulses to retreat into the arms of his wife, a peer of his eldest, and defending her honor.
And so it was he who drops the match, when, in the chatter of the table after dinner, he perceives his son Lem's lack of response to a question as a purposeful slight. He drops the match, and the Gonurly flame burns more fiercely than ever, consuming them all.
