Somehow, the Gilded Lily was still standing. For a theater to survive the aftermath of the summer of forced frippery some years past was impressive, but then its owner and operator was a man who excelled at survival.
Stefan,
It has been years since our last encounter and even longer since our first. Instead of pleasantries, I would bring forth from memory two encounters in the middle that were of some importance between us. Once I came to you with opportunity and an accompanying need. Once I came to you with need and an accompanying opportunity. In the first, it was an equal exchange. In the second, it was anything but.
As you must know, I have retreated from Myrken Wood. I have and you have not. We all have our failings, Stefan. I had many in the years you knew me. I had experienced such things that would bring you a sort of well-contained delight, purely, let us say, from a scientific point of view, of course. I regret not having shared them with you years ago. I wonder if it might have changed things between us. I wonder if it might have sparked something magical (that is a word you have much learned experience with after all). Regardless, they caused certain failings and exacerbated others.
For one, I thought i had time that I did not in fact have. I avoided the position of Governor for quite a while, knowing it would lock me into a sort of inevitability. I tried to find others to provide cover and to be consumed with the tedium that went with it. Power is best utilized in the shadows. I'm sure you'd agree. When my hand was forced, the sands started to slip down and that was that. It meant I had to delegate certain tasks that would have been served well within my hands. To you, I delegated one. By that point, I was on my way towards a sort of recovery and thus I did not agree to terms that we would have found common ground upon just a year before. You went forward, trodding upon that ground despite my clear misgivings. It did not end well for myself or for Myrken.
We have our failings and we have our strengths. Your patience and restraint amazes me now, years and miles away. That patience remains one of the most remarkable things I ever encountered in my time in Myrken Wood, and I think you can understand the breadth of that statement. You must be assailed with endless temptation there and yet you know your own proclivities and desire so well that you sup from the cup instead of drinking deep. There is a near endless supply and yet you show restraint. In the face of those around you who do not, who are loud and coarse and unrestrained, a little misdirection is almost unnecessary. Yet there you are in the business of it.
Have the years treated you well, Stefan? Have you treated them well? Do you find your thirst easier or more difficult to manage as the years drone on? Do you merely survive with by meeting the bare minimum of your needs or do you begin to desire something more?
Glenn Burnie