To ask 'why he was not born talented' was to interrogate fate, for why distributes gifts and burdens with no regard for justice. It was less a question of fact, but an attempt to reconcile the unbearable truth that ability, like beauty, was unevenly dealt with.
That one's life may be defined less by effort than by the absence of innate brilliance.
Talent, after all, was not merely a skill; it was a kind of preordained permission. Those born with it were permitted entry into worlds that others can only stand outside of looking in.
Corwin knew that better.
To be talented was to begin life already closer to the summit; to be untalented was to begin in the valley, where even the highest climb might never reach the foothills of another's effortless ascent.
It was a disparity that cannot be corrected by fairness.
So, if talent was denied, what then defines a life?
