The #Broken_Dagger Forum

Eli would slip to the door of the room in which Ariane Emory had been known to stay while not in his Master's chambers. Notably, she had not been there in some weeks.

A simple note, thrice folded and scented with lavendar, was slipped beneath her door, bearing the governor's personal seal.

Here is a little-known fact: that despite a state of borderline-illiteracy, Ariane Emory is a regular correspondant, a regular recipient of letters from more than one source. Over the years, she has amassed quite a collection of these things, a small and dusty landscape of conflicting parchment and ink and penmanship, so that eventually she'd given up binding them in twine, and bought a box for their storing instead.

Bethau ag ngwerth, the heir might have dubbed these things, a term which Ariane herself would have declined - with some discomfort. It is a difficult thing, she might have demured. I am of two minds, she might have explained. But still, there is some evidence to the contrary: that they are kept so carefully, these gently-folded things; the box is a fine rosewood and made for the shape of them, and some whimsical design has been carved into the gleaming lid of it. That they are preserved so well, despite that so many of them are dated to nearly a decade ago...
[INDENT]The weather is very fine of curse, and my sister is well and you will smile to know that the Councilor's size remains undumminushed. Doutless all goes well with your merchants -[/INDENT] There is the matter of dust, of course, but that is endemic to the swordswoman's environment, and has been since she'd first begun to spend her days upon Darkenhold's construction. It has plagued that pretty box for several years, and now it devils the floorboards of her room as well, and the hems of loose trousers, and the heels of worn boots; perhaps Eli will recognise this flaw, having bent so near to the floor of her room, after all. Oh, so very busy a thing she's made herself, so fervently distracted, that it's a marvel she's received the thing at all.
[INDENT]Syl Duquesne, it has been three weeks and five days since you died in the fires of Aithne -
I have new words: solilykwee, nekrosis, Atgofia, bori'ch afal -
I forget nothing and never shall - [/INDENT] But she returns to this place for its ample hot water and its excellent liquor, and even occasionally for the company that it offers, for in recent days that has become slowly tolerable again. So that in a moment of quite spectacular irony, she has returned from discussion of Ashfiends and witches to her room, and has found upon its floorboards ... this.
[INDENT]In the fields they labour, Nochka, until their hands bleed sorrow into this salted earth, do you recall these things? Look towards the horizon when the blackest storm comes, idi ko mne, moya milaya - [/INDENT] It is always this way, she might have explained to Bromn long ago, and very likely ought to have. It is always this way, that it begins with staircases and ends with letters, so that sometimes I dream to choke upon the dust of them. For proof of this, consult my sister, whose experiences are not dissimilar, who grasps the nature of inevitability as well as I.

It is always this way, even though the heart might lurch within her chest upon reading the words Bromn's given to her. Belief is not for her, this iron-edged creature; in the end, a letter is simply a letter, and she cannot forget that. Its place is with those which came before it, and so it is placed.