Work Text:
The silver chest remained untouched in Aylin's chambers at the House of the Moon. The chest was likely to remain untouched forever had she not been spontaneously overcome by the need to share what were the darkest moments of her life. Though she wished another to see those slips of paper with the crumpled edges and streaks of blood coating them, she didn't know how to show them to her. All she could do was set the chest in front of a wooden door down the hall one day.
The following night, she found the chest returned to her at the foot of her bed. Inside there were new letters with the ones Aylin wrote all those years ago. These newcomers were written with a finer hand in a gentler script. Tears stained several of the pages.
Habit drove her to read all of them that she could manage. Both hers and the ones in that more beautiful hand.
Darling Isobel,
I write to you because I know not what else to do. The pen was never my forte, nor do I really know what to write here on this parchment. I struggle to recall how to even form the letters into words.
I thought perhaps I might find solace in this fury. This rage that grows within me, a rage with which I know not what to do. It does little. So to the pen I go. The sword refuses to calm my heart, and yet.
And yet everything about this exercise feels meaningless. Without you here to light the candle, what is the point of the little flickering flame? Without you here to bring me wine or water, why bother caring for my parched lips? Without you here to call for me, why must I hear anything at all?
If the candlelight dies, so have you.
I waited to hear that you were born again. That your soul returned to your body by my mother's grace. It is not a gift of which she has deemed me worthy.
I hope you are safe there under Her watch. I hope you are playing with the dogs that you loved, and that you see nothing but sunrises and full moons when that sun dims.
I hope you see me. I hope you will see me again.
Love,
Your Aylin
My love eternal,
Where have you gone? I know it isn't likely that you've disappeared forever, but I write this because I don't know what else to do. I know you're not fond of writing or really much of anything that isn't swinging a sword or kissing me, but I think I need to write this down.
I can't speak to you; I can only yearn for you. I can only think of those moments when my father sneered at you for who you were. No. Who you are.
Writing in the past tense implies you died, you know? I should never use the past tense with you. You exist. There is no world in which I think of you where you become my past. I can't let it be that way, no matter what time's cruelties say to us.
Time took me away from you. For how long, I don't know. I only remember darkness and then emerging from the cold earth, resurrected. I looked everywhere for you, you know? I searched for leagues in every direction until my tears finally dried and my father tried to convince me that you left me.
I don't know what he did, but I know you did not leave me. If you are gone, it is not from my side.
Searching always,
Isobel Thorm
Darling,
I miss the sound of your footfalls in the morning, like the movements of a goddess gifted to the stones. The very way you spoke to me. The way you breathed. It all enchanted me and remains within my mind locked forever in those moments that I worry will one day vanish.
I keep your memory within me. Nothing compares to the day I will savor when I can once again cherish your lips against mine.
Keep me in your thoughts, please?
Love,
Your Aylin
To the one I hope sees this,
I'm writing this near the lake where we used to sit and dream together. You're probably smirking right now reading this, aren't you? It's scarcely a day goes by when I'm not enamored in those memories, thinking of us together by these same waters. They're still just as cold this time of year, you know?
Always was a bother when we wanted to go for a little nighttime skinny-dipping.
I can hear your laugh at that too. I sometimes think I hear your laugh in the woods, but it's always a gust of wind clipping through a branch. I hope one day I'll think I've heard you, turn around, and find you waiting for me. I don't care where we meet again anymore, only that we meet again.
I want to hear you laugh again.
With a love that could overflow the Sea of Swords,
Isobel
To my darling gone,
There are rumors of horrors in Reithwin again. They say your father lives again and that he has strayed far from my mother's light. I know what I must do, and I know that I must carry the sword heavy with regret with eyes for your father's broken body. Does it make me cruel that I do not care what happens to him? That I long to use this anger within me to purpose once more? It seethes and boils and I understand not why I yearn for it.
I have asked my mother this and more on many a night. Ere long I shall walk to him with hate in my heart, and I know not why I care so little to feel it. Though he was never a saint, he is still your father. And I must lower him into the grave once more. I know this.
I wish I could explain why I write this letter. It soothes me, I think, to believe that you now read these with my mother at your side. Though neither of you can interfere, you see. You watch. You wait.
Please wait for me,
Your Aylin
To my fallen angel,
The darkness arrives. Adventurers came to us, but these people seem unlike the usual band of worthless glory-seekers. They even walk with a Sharran, if you can believe it. But even in her I sense something, something that lurks behind the callous way she speaks to me and of Selûne. She is lost. I think helping her might give me some purpose. Is that stupid?
I feel a little silly writing these letters now, truth be told. I know you'll never read them. It's long since been the time when I thought you'd see the tear marks dropped all along these pages. I must've written ten or twenty of these things. They litter the bottom of a chest that I hope you'll be able to read one day.
If not, I've accepted it. Not accepted it. No, that's wrong.
I don't know how to say it.
I've let myself believe that you are gone from my arms, because leaving my faith in the dream of you is far too much pain.
Forgive me for my weakness. If I'm wrong and you will one day read these, come to me. Kiss me. Tell me that it is all right. Tell me we'll look upon the moon together not with seas nor mountains nor the grave parting us, but with our arms intertwined.
Come to me.
Yours until the Sisters of Night and Moon cease their feud,
Isobel
The sound of paper crunching together into a ball alerted Isobel to someone at her door. The heavy wooden weight swung inward on hinges that desperately needed oil, creaking loudly through the evening quiet.
In the low light of the half-lit midnight torches, wearing only her shift, Aylin stood statuesque at the door's threshold. Her marble body glowed with the golden streaks of scars inflicted over a century of suffering. A century of waiting.
Her eyes watered with tears. In her hands, she held the letters that Isobel had placed within that silver chest. She covered the distance between door and windowsill where Isobel sat in one breath. When they met, Aylin held her face in her hands and stared. She kissed Isobel deeply and whispered four words over and over again. Her voice cracked like her skin, unbreakable yet unmistakable.
"It is all right," she breathed against Isobel's lips. "It is all right."
Isobel whispered, hands shaking, "You came to me after all."
"Always, my darling," Aylin answered. She sat down to cradle Isobel in her arms. Or perhaps to allow Isobel to cradle her. "Always. It is all right."
"It is."