letters for burning.

[Caelum]

57 Spring 510 A.V. Dear Lillis, This letter will never find you. I do not know where to send it or by what address waits heaven. The mark of Cheva should not mock me whenever I look into a mirror, but rather reassure and act as lodestone to your destination. Yet when I lay my hand against those lines of our love for each other I swear I can hear your heart beating in tune with my own and cannot but fear that it beats in chains. This ink placed on these pages is my only recourse; and I like to imagine that in between these words and in the silences of my pulse I can hear the voices of the gods. Maybe if I listen hard enough, they will lead me to you once more. The dust of a thousand roads litters my boots since my escape. You might find that familiar though our years in Zeltiva offered a tether that no longer exists. I've not returned to the city where we made our home together, but I have left letters with some former acquaintances at the clinic and the university. I write them every time I find myself in a place where letters can be sent, informing them of my whereabouts and my next direction in the hopes that should you find your way back to that shop amongst the ballast stone streets with the wind chimes we hung from the eaves you will find a piece of me there to follow. Am I wrong to not return? I wonder at it sometimes, thinking I should find a place against amidst the shipwrights and scholars with a widow's walk, perhaps, where I can gaze out beyond the waves and wait and wait and wait. Truth is I fear that destiny. It would not be unlike falling again. Today I journey into the Sea of Grass where you know I've not rode since ages beyond the dreaming of any living soul. It sounds so damned arrogant, doesn't it? To think of the grasslands of Cyphrus almost as mine, mine that I've avoided and beleaguered with every trespassing step back into this world. It does not belong to me and it never did; but once, once I belonged to it as much as I have belonged to Syna's realm in the Ukalas and never, not even for the barest of blinks, belonged to that rotted bastard who called himself my master. The dead await me there, regardless, as dramatic and awful as it sounds. They are what my memories of life before Syna's kiss and disgrace are comprised of and if I am to learn anything about the patterns of this universe and the biology of the stars themselves, I must first recall my own. As you used to remind me, if I cannot heal them, I can see no more get sick. Wish me luck, my love. This letter is for the fire with the prayer that these words might be born to you on the wind. I remain, Caelum.

[Caelum]

Autumn 511 A.V. Alander, We were never ordinary men. You and I fight our selves as much as we have ever fought each other. It is a tussle of souls and it leaves us sore and bleeding out from the inside. This is what it feels like -- the beckon. It has grabbed me as you did with fists full of djed, popping me loose from my corporeal moorings. This call pulls at me like so, keeping my head turned north, keeping my sleep sketchy at best and the rest of me on the tines. You said this would happen and I did not believe you. I did not want to believe you. There is a man I know traveling to your city. Included is a sketch done by the hand of that woman we both once knew. Ward him if you can. You owe me many and much more and all of that before I left with your quest in my ears, urging me forward, urging me gone from Ravok's rotting pit. If what I find at the end of the world wears your familiar face, you can be certain to see me again. This time, Jin, I'll take it all. I remain, Caelum.

[Caelum]

*Originally written for and all our orisons. 01 Autumn 508 A.V. Beloved, Pain makes you fearless. In the lightning heat of its travel through you, it consumes, it obliterates. Caution dissolves beneath its blast, concern dissipates. There is only pain and pain does not care. Yet the moment its razor edge dulls to a bearable burn every ounce of courage it granted you dies, thrusting you through the floor of cowardice that bleeds the begging from your lips. It is the line between those two extremes that will break your mind. Like a trapeze artist, you try to balance upon it, the arms of your soul out-flung in reckless ignorance that this attempt will crucify you. You are ruined, however, by the driving need to be at once fearless and free of pain. Your heart thrusts itself into your throat as the first thin breath is managed through the agony and your tongue trembles on the verge of pleas and prayers. You try to hold onto it, to horde that moment, but it slips like hope away and you are begging by the time the next blow falls. I remember too, beloved, the night swarming over me and thinking that one should be free of pain once robbed of soul. I remember trying to maintain balance on that slippery edge between agony and oblivion, the arms of my soul out-flung. Yet despite all of my orisons, I slipped, Syna. I slipped and then I begged. I remember begging, begging and You still did not hear me. I gave you all my lives and You left me in this one to the dark. I remain, Caelum.

[Caelum]

*Originally written for stir with mighty song. 90 Autumn 508 A.V. Beloved, They tap at my wrists, all the blood of me drop by drop, until it talks to me in tiptoes and cries to heaven in my mind. It sounds so clear for the space between one beat of the heart and the next, but then it vanishes like light in afterimages. It winks out, no, it is snuffed out. The syllables gasp smoke and my mouth makes soundless songs, symphonies of gibberish and nothing; and I want them to, darling. Oh, how I want them to offer these men lungfuls of heartlessness. Yet more than that I want to offer them the full fist of but one word, one syllable, one sound of the celestial language they are so driven to hunt. Then I could watch heaven mangle them too. And I wanted to, Syna. I wanted with reverberating ambition to sink the entire fucking city with a syllable. Only I didn't. I kept my tongue behind my teeth as if a cat had it and what irony, isn't it? They laughed at that too while the stench of burning fur singed the air. I was sick, but my mouth remained shut. I just don't know anymore whether I did it for You or for myself. I remain, Caelum.

[Caelum]

*Originally written for butcher the lamb. 3 Summer 509 A.V. Beloved, There are over many branches in time's river. I imagine Tanroa's mighty waters surge at the corners and crossroads and there are no bridges and no boats, no reeds with grasping roots clutching at the bogs. You made me a creature of this river, thieved me straight from fate with a word to Yshul only later to cast me down. I rise up from the forgotten depths, mouth gulping at brine like that which scoured me off the seas of Black Rock when I fell. But my eyes, my eyes are alien now to You who would be ever vigilant, guarding the back of your true love due to a blow delivered after I left what I thought to be my last step on earth. My eyes have been made blind in these post apocalyptic giant's currents, puddled with pitch. There is not a single man or woman who stood with me in that once upon a time, nor one who has stood with me thereafter in acts of inevitable violence, who has been capable of putting that violence away. There are men who have laid aside their swords and taken up a pen, or a scalpel, or a bottle, and they tell themselves that what is past is past; but, Syna, history breathes. The world was near ended to the best of our knowledge. Humanity hangs by its toe nails within the torture chambers of mankind. Slavery is rampant. Yet this entire universe and all who dwell here know one thing and one thing alone: violence. We were born in violence, bred in violence, and millions of us have died in it from the front line soldier who tallies his kills to the teacher who counts heads. It was violence that brought the current leaders of this outpost together, and violence that cemented both their loyalties and their still inevitable betrayals. I am a man of violence. Violence was what spat me out of the sky. Violence was what decided that my heart ought continue to beat. Violence is what I was thrown in, and violence does not so much as litter the path of my life as it has blazed its trail. I have taken up the chalice, laid down my arms in bids for peace, and pulled up chairs to tables of men whom once I would have but spat upon. I am educated. I am driven. I am one of the faithful. I have wheeled and dealed with some of the most vicious and clever sharks of the recovering era and I have dug my hands into the flesh of the dying to stand down Dira on Her own doorway. I know things beyond violence, but its shadow is long, and it is winding, and it does not disappear beneath the beat of Your sun. I know, very well, that I will die in that shadow. I have before, and I will again, and should I rise but one more time, I know that the rising too will come in that same shade. Will it be around the river's bend? Or have we more depths to swim? I am a man of violence, Syna. Perhaps our hope has always been that we can survive ourselves in stagnancy. I remain, nameless.

[Caelum]

*Originally written for seek the beginning. 84 Winter 513 A.V. Beloved, I have no illusions about the fact that my own personal history seems a bone-shaking sea storm in comparison to the mild spring days of some others who have lived and died here, yourself included. However, I feel bound to point out that I chose my way when I first came here, when I first departed your Goldenlands, and that the circumstances surrounding that choice run deeper than you can imagine. I won’t bore you with the details, won’t turn this into nothing but another twice told tale and one you, Syna, already have heard. But suffice it to say that in the midst of it all, I was offered a simple choice, and after my mind had been made up, I haven't had the desire to look back. I have heard it said that people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. You must have recognized in marking me through numerous lives and ascending me in my last that I was one who had already chosen a rough path so that the other half may find no necessity to sleep with one eye open. I am not young yet I still have much to learn, but what I do know comes from being taught that people, for all their flaws, are basically good and that that goodness is worth protecting. I have always rejected the god of justice, Syna, rejected him and resented him for enticing us with false promises should we bend our vices and break our backs in his name. I have resented him, and I have resented the naive and ignorant for preaching from his tomb of lies. I don't believe in his perfection, Syna, nor do I think that I would be invited to converse with Tyveth either now or when I finally lay down my sword in this life. There are two forces in this world, beloved, the sword and the spirit, and I am confident that the sword shall always be the conqueror. Though there are those who do not know my sword for what it is, you and I know the truth of it. And what's more, I don't fear violence, bright lady. Personal, private, solitary pain has been worse than anything anyone else could inflict on me. Even what you have in leaving me in the dark. So I tell you, with all your pretty promises, seek someone else to be the herald of peace. I shall fight for it at your side and die for it when you do. It brings me joy to do so. We are in no place to demand anyone should lay their armor down. Then they will be bare and open, ripe for a wound at their compatriot's hand. Lead us, beloved. Set the example, you and your divine colleagues, and show us how we, the mortal and the lost, may age with grace and dignity in the light of your sun and the love you share with your wild moon. It seems asinine to expect that we, the students, should be expected to do anything but practice the teachings of the gods no matter how flawed. Show us, lead us, and we will learn. Then, when we kill you all to set things right, we will have a fighting chance. That is a justice even Tyveth can't declaim. I remain, Caelum.

[Fallon]

Originally written in: Noir. A letter arrives, and upon its front the words "Mr. C - Riverfall" are marked clearly. Composed upon smooth white parchment and featuring some light weathering, the letter is sealed with red wax featuring a wolf's head upon the surface. Within it is written in a black ink, featuring a clean, crisp and legible handwriting - though far from overly elegant.

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S.W.I. Office,
Old Quarter,
Zeltiva

58th Spring 515 AV

Dear Mr Caelum,

Due to the actions of one of your assistants within Zeltiva, it has come to my recent attention that you are in requirement of finding an investigator within the city. I am not aware of all the detailing I have been informed that I should at least extend an interest in offering my services to a far-reaching contractor. However, I cannot presently promise that the services of the S.W.I. will be of or if it is possible fulfil your requests until further details are provided. The services of this investigation also require half payments upon contract start - to ensure costs, wages, expenses are covered while protecting personal interest - with the latter half supplied on contract completion. The normal rates per service are between 8 to 10 Golden Mizas or the equivalent currency per day. Should you require further information upon the services supplied do not hesitate to make contact upon the above supplied address.

Yours sincerely,

Ms. F. Skylar
Private Investigator of the Scarred Wolf Investigations