Post by Kit on Feb 22, 2010 22:53:12 GMT 10
Title: Confiding
Rating: PG
Lengh: 570
Competitor: Baird
Round: 1/D
Summary: Neither of them is sure when their letters became as important as they are.
Dear Baird,
Quarterstaffs. My clerks are fonts of knowledge and truly are all I want for Midwinter, though a healer less dismayed by blood would also be a luxury. Jerel means well, and does well. The problem is that the times he’s not doing well, he’s fainting. I cannot wait until Neal is safely back from the Islands, where he’s probably doing his best not to faint now. (He always found the bows a bit tricky). I haven’t heard a peep out of Alan, but imagine he’ll send some sly missive when he’s ready. Thanks for the warning.
I’m not sure why this is, but writing to you seems to make me spill my mouth off far more easily than, well…anything, really. So I hope you don’t mind. And I hope you don’t mind my asking after you, because for all your talk of peace, that seemed a little lonesome
Your friend,
Kel.
Keladry,
Anything you told me, deliberately or otherwise, in these letters I would keep in confidence. I treasure this confidence and, my dear, I find that I treasure you. I cannot tell you all of what happens in Corus, as that would break more confidences I am required to keep, but know that while I have hardly the right to expect your letters, receiving them makes the day, or rest of my night, that much more enjoyable. I am concerned about your situation with Jerel—please, don’t be polite if things continue not to improve. Something may be done, and I hate to think you’re badly staffed as well as understaffed—there is a difference.
As for ‘lonesome’. Well, dearest, I do well enough. Drawing into winter, there are anniversaries I would rather not have—Graeme, my eldest. Neal will be wonderful for Queenscove, and is, in his own way, the best and bravest of all my children, though fathers are, of course, not supposed to have favourites. But missing my boy, Kel: my first boy…winter is a difficult time, between whooping cough and grieving. I am, perhaps, sharing too much. But you are easy to talk to, through this means or any other, and your words—kind, serious, funny, precise—do touch and lighten my heart.
Your friend,
Baird.
Rating: PG
Lengh: 570
Competitor: Baird
Round: 1/D
Summary: Neither of them is sure when their letters became as important as they are.
Dear Baird,
Quarterstaffs. My clerks are fonts of knowledge and truly are all I want for Midwinter, though a healer less dismayed by blood would also be a luxury. Jerel means well, and does well. The problem is that the times he’s not doing well, he’s fainting. I cannot wait until Neal is safely back from the Islands, where he’s probably doing his best not to faint now. (He always found the bows a bit tricky). I haven’t heard a peep out of Alan, but imagine he’ll send some sly missive when he’s ready. Thanks for the warning.
I’m not sure why this is, but writing to you seems to make me spill my mouth off far more easily than, well…anything, really. So I hope you don’t mind. And I hope you don’t mind my asking after you, because for all your talk of peace, that seemed a little lonesome
Your friend,
Kel.
A long, heavy day pressing into his neck and his shoulders. His back, and the backs of knees. Lianokami, thinner than she ought to be and too polite to say a word until fever and bruising and too many echoes of her great grandmother has him up and pacing and trying to remind a father and grandfather that while, yes, he is to healing magic what Numair Salmalin is to changing the heart of trees, it takes time.
His wife’s portrait on his desk, smiling and green-eyed and slowly transparent as the years pass. Her name does not solidify her, so he has surrendered it, feeling her turn into sweet scents and sounds and lightness of memories half-caught, heartbreaking and insubstantial in the dark.
The letter: thin, cheap paper in his hand, is also transparent. But the ghosts he sees here—her faintly worried smile, the intent look he has seen as she forms words on pages, placing them as carefully as soldiers—had life at the end of them. The hands that had held this letter, written, sealed it, were doing something else. The comfort of living ghosts was something he hardly dared think about.
Keladry,
Anything you told me, deliberately or otherwise, in these letters I would keep in confidence. I treasure this confidence and, my dear, I find that I treasure you. I cannot tell you all of what happens in Corus, as that would break more confidences I am required to keep, but know that while I have hardly the right to expect your letters, receiving them makes the day, or rest of my night, that much more enjoyable. I am concerned about your situation with Jerel—please, don’t be polite if things continue not to improve. Something may be done, and I hate to think you’re badly staffed as well as understaffed—there is a difference.
As for ‘lonesome’. Well, dearest, I do well enough. Drawing into winter, there are anniversaries I would rather not have—Graeme, my eldest. Neal will be wonderful for Queenscove, and is, in his own way, the best and bravest of all my children, though fathers are, of course, not supposed to have favourites. But missing my boy, Kel: my first boy…winter is a difficult time, between whooping cough and grieving. I am, perhaps, sharing too much. But you are easy to talk to, through this means or any other, and your words—kind, serious, funny, precise—do touch and lighten my heart.
Your friend,
Baird.