Chapter Text
Dearest Olruggio,
It’s a bit funny to me that we’ve never written each other letters.
Not even during that year I was so young and frustrated and off gallivanting through the wilderness while you were still working in the Assembly. I’m not sure why I never wrote you. Honestly, it was pretty unfair, wasn’t it? You must’ve had no idea where I even was. But perhaps one’s early twenties is a time for being selfish. It’s not that I didn’t think about you–I thought about you every day, probably. Maybe it was more like I was afraid if I wrote to you, something would break. I would lose my nerve and come home.
Or maybe it was a sort of stubbornness. I will only talk to him when I can look him in the face, because he deserves no less. That seems so arbitrary and pointless now, but it was a confusing time for us both, wasn’t it?
You never wrote to me either, so I’m sure you had your own reasons. Just as silly, maybe. Or just as serious.
It’s also a bit funny to write to you now, when we actually live together and have for some time. I suppose I have been feeling like I have so much to tell you that doesn’t find its way into our nightly conversations.
There are reasons for my reticence. I would like to tell you all of it, someday.
Perhaps that is why I’m writing now. For someday. So that I can remember all the things I want to tell you, for when I am finally able to tell them.
Yours,
Qifrey
☆
Dearest Olruggio,
Tetia has recently come to live with us. This morning, she and I went on a walk alone together. I would like to record some of the nice things we saw for you:
1. A nest on the ground, I’m unsure what sort. There was a downy fluff woven in with the twigs and leaves, and it was held together with a grayish tacky substance that had dried in the sun. I explained to Tetia that some bird may have regurgitated this substance. She found this absolutely horrible, and it delighted her. She asked if the glue I use to hold my glasses in place was also a regurgitated something, or the glue that binds our books. She has many questions. Agott is not so open with her questions, is she? They are like night and day, these two.
2. A family of salamanders. They are not in their burning stage this time of year, so they looked like curmudgeonly globs of wet soot. The children were so tiny, I’m sure I’ve dripped ink stains larger. Tetia wanted to catch one and hold it so badly. You’re going to be annoyed by this, but I couldn’t say no. She balanced one of the babies on the tip of her finger and it smoked a little, like a sputtering candle. You of course are going to be muttering to yourself “Qifrey, a salamander can burst into flame at any moment. You’re going to give your students blisters.” But it’s been drizzling all day, a wet and dark week. I suspect the rain was why Tetia was feeling melancholy in the first place. This was why I suggested we go for a walk, of course. It’s what always works for me, when I am melancholy.
3. So many spined nuts. I believe I will boil them for a side with dinner. Tetia has helpfully collected them in her hat, like a squirrel.
4. The sea looks lovely on an overcast day. You’ve seen it plenty of times, so I will rely on your memory to provide the details here.
5. Tetia doesn’t tend to remember the smaller facts I tell her, but she remembers the big picture. I named all the flowers for her that she asked about, and I’m sure she’s forgotten all those names by now. But she will remember how they scatter their seeds, and which ones the butterflies prefer. This is the sort of student she is.
6. I laid down my cloak over the grass and we sat for awhile at the top of the hill, with a nice view of the atelier and your always-smoking chimney. She was quite sheepish to sit on her professor’s cloak, but after some ambling conversation she felt more comfortable and confided in me some things she’s been thinking about, regarding her past. It’s not my place to share these things, but I’m sure she will tell you too in due time. She adores you. This girl… She always has a smile for everyone, because the last thing she wants is for anyone to feel lonely or unnoticed. It’s such a simple thing to give too. It breaks my heart a bit that this world can care so little sometimes that it can’t give a girl such a simple thing. I’ve never thought my smiles meant all that much, but she clings to them like she’s drowning. If it’s like that, I want to smile for her every day. It’s how she feels listened to. It’s how she feels that she is liked, and I do like her, very much. I think she is wonderful. I’m sure you’d agree.
7. When we returned home, Agott had finished her assignments for the day (and much more, because it’s Agott) and although she doesn’t smile much for Tetia at all she is still willing to help her new classmate with glyph structure. Tetia has many questions and it just so happens that Agott has many answers, eh? This is the sort of student Agott is. They get along surprisingly well, don’t you think?
8. It’s probably a good thing they don’t share a room, though.
9. I have made dinner, and I’m writing this as the girls eat. I think I will abstain until I can coax you out of your room and we can eat together later tonight. You know I’ve never minded cold stew.
10. I love it here. Some days it just hits me. I wanted to hold onto this feeling, to keep it.
11. Well… And I also wanted to give it to you. I hope you enjoy it.
Yours,
Qifrey
☆
Dearest Olruggio,
Oh you were WILDLY drunk tonight, my dear. We had such fun. I’m not sure you’ll even remember it, but I certainly will.
The girls were asleep and you dragged me outside to show me some contraption you’d made for lighting one’s way, like a giant tree of light sprouting out of the ground and bursting into white and gold spines overhead. It was like creating your own star. It was for people who got lost, you said. For guiding people to them.
I often think you are the star that has guided my life.
Well… To be fair, there are other factors that have led me to places I don’t dare write down, not even to you, not yet.
But for someone who was lost… Yes. There’s my metaphor.
You gave me that spark to shine over my head and it still baffles me that people followed it here, to this little schoolhouse. It baffles me that you are still here. And yet, I cannot imagine it would be any other way.
I still have no idea how this invention of yours works, by the way, because your “congratulatory drinks” were a bit strong and your explanations were tripping all over themselves. I admit, I took great pleasure in asking stupid questions just to throw you off and confuse you in your weakened state. You have the curse of being very amusing when you’re annoyed.
Then we danced. Will you even believe that when I tell you in the morning? Surely I’ll barely be able to contain a laugh, so maybe you’ll think I’m taking the piss again.
Those poor girls snuggled up in their beds have no idea how ridiculous their professor and Watchful Eye actually are, lumbering around each other in the dark, tittering and snorting like a pair of bog dragons. Why did we even start dancing? I don’t remember either. Maybe we were just happy.
I was perhaps a bit tipsy too, just a little.
There was a point I think you may have wanted to kiss me. You met my eye for overly long, with this… something on your face. Your red face. You seemed to think better of it.
I’m glad. It’s growing increasingly difficult to say no to you.
I wonder sometimes if kissing you would change anything. On good days, I think it’s harmless, and it would make us both very happy. But on bad days all I can think is that it will make things worse for you, in the end.
Forgive me, old friend. I will say no as long as I can.
But I will also dance with you, just a little while longer.
I will cherish your stupid red face, and pull the blankets up to your chin in the morning.
Yours,
Qifrey
☆
Dearest Olruggio,
It might surprise you, but for most of our youth I never once lied to you.
I’m not sure that was an act of service so much as my own poor self esteem back then. I did not deserve to lie, and you did not deserve to be lied to. I’m surprised you weren’t scared away by the hard truths I told you. If anything, you seemed to find it refreshing. We were strange boys, to be sure.
I’d tell you something like “I’m mad at you, Olly. You’ve really pissed me off.” And you’d act like that was a relief. Maybe you knew you never had to wonder with me. You would always be given an obvious chance to correct it.
I told you how much I loved you too, of course. And how wonderful you were. I hope that my awkward directness at least helped you believe those moments beyond a doubt. I think those were hard things for you to believe back then. They still are, probably.
Do you still believe me when I tell you how good you are now? Perhaps not as easily. But I hope you do. I really hope you do.
The first time I ever lied to you was after the Tower of Books.
You knew, didn’t you? I saw it struggling on your face. The concern and the hurt. You chose not to call me out on it, not to press for details. You believed in me enough to trust that I had my reasons, and it didn’t escape me how you decided right then and there that the Tower of Books had nothing in it for you. You wouldn’t strive to enter it for yourself.
Thank you, Olruggio. Thank you so much.
Out of appreciation for your sacrifice, I will tell you now a little bit of what I saw, what I couldn’t tell you back then.
When I first entered, I couldn’t tell if I was frightened or not. I was almost mad with my frantic hoping. There were bookshelves, but not only just bookshelves. Stacks of books on the floor. Pages drifting loosely through the air as if on a nonexistent wind. On the first floor there was an enormous stone fireplace, with no fire but instead stuffed to bursting with the charred scraps of half-burned documents. Similarly there was a long fish tank reeking of mildew, with no water but instead the soggy remnants of waterlogged books, cursed to never dry, always running ink into a gooey slush beneath them. At first I thought the floors were black, but actually they were scrawled over and over with writing, in various chalks and inks, until I couldn’t even make out the words anymore. They had all merged to just black.
I can’t tell you how I knew where to go. It was like something pulled me. The right book was calling to me voicelessly and, somehow, I simply knew how to follow it.
Of course you know there are endless floors reaching up into the air, but there are just as many down below the lake, and is it any surprise that’s where I was beckoned? Downstairs, into increasingly dark rooms. Cold, silent except for my own movements. The smell wasn’t like the Assembly. The air was more still. Clogged, almost. It didn’t seem to want to move into my lungs.
I started to get afraid then. Alighting on perhaps the twentieth floor down, it occurred to me that this smell, this feeling, the knowledge of dark water all around, reminded me of…
I suppose, in a way, I was born into an odd little death. My life has always been remembering it. My coffin, my own burial. Being nothing, for an amount of time I can’t articulate. Having no past or future, just hanging on some incomprehensible cusp of physical pain. In the dark.
I started hyperventilating. I think at this point I would have turned around if it weren’t for your tassel on my hat. It seemed to know, in its own way. As I was holding myself on the floor, it drifted against my cheek and I clawed for it, grabbed on and held tightly.
I thought of our promise. I even spoke it out loud again, or at least lipped the words with whatever air I could get straining through my teeth.
I want you to know, beyond a doubt, that in that moment I intended to never break our promise.
When I was again aware of myself, I realized this entire floor had no books, instead just endless piles of paper, like hills of snow. Scraps even fell lightly through the air. Like snow again, or like ash.
The thing I needed was here, I realized. I felt it calling to me, in that book voice. Like we were made of the same substance and it was just a matter of us finding each other again and reconnecting into the same being. I got to digging.
It must have been an hour or so of just digging, not even reading the scraps of paper I pushed aside, just feeling for that lost piece of myself, that lost story.
I found it.
It was just a handful of papers, half burned and half unreadable, but I understood what they meant despite the gaps. It all clicked in perfectly, aligned in my mind exactly as it was meant to. The empty spaces. My empty spaces.
I remembered.
And Olly, the first thing I realized was that I would be breaking our promise so soon.
This destroyed me more than anything else in that place.
I lied to you. I told you I didn’t find what I was looking for. That my past was simply lost forever, and I was done looking for it.
You must have seen in my face’s paleness, or in something else, that I was lying.
You chose to say. “Alright. Let’s get something to eat. Those worms gave me a workout, you know.”
Would you believe me if I told you that so many of my choices since then have been just like that? In the face of insurmountable, unknowable things… I find that all I want to do is simply hide away somewhere with you, warm myself out of death with food, with drinks. Force myself to be alive with the sound of your voice.
Whatever happens, please understand. Please believe me, beyond a doubt.
I lived because of you. With you and beside you. That was never a lie.
Thank you, Olruggio. Thank you.
Yours,
Qifrey
☆
Dearest Olruggio,
The birds are beginning to trust me. They hang out on the windowsills waiting for seeds and table scraps. On a whim, I offered my hand to one this morning, a little round sparrow of some sort, and it hopped right up my arm. I swear this bird was accusatory. Saying “Hey now, where’s the seed? What are you on about, mister?” It left in a huff.
Unfortunately, it will take more than sunflower seeds to win Agott’s trust. But every so often… I think she might secretly respect me. At least as a witch. She’s noticed I have some useful pointers from time to time. Isn’t that all a teacher can hope for, really?
Here’s another secret, don’t you dare tell anyone.
She likes maple custard.
I might have even seen her whole face light up taking a bite. But don’t tell anyone, don’t tell anyone.
It’s my secret, my little treasure.
She looks up to you a lot, by the way. You have not seemed to notice, which is funny to me because it’s extremely obvious. She sees what a skilled craftsman you are, and she wants to impress you.
You can maybe afford to be a bit more impressed, my dear.
But I understand you. You care about the girl more than you care about her magic, and she hasn’t adjusted to that yet.
It’s like she doesn’t even know what to do with that. So much so that it doesn’t even occur to her enough to see it.
You’re both a bit dense sometimes. Don’t tell anyone, don’t tell anyone.
I’ve made extra maple custard so there will be some leftover for lunch tomorrow. I think a picnic would be nice. Your deadline was last night, right? That means you’ll arise from your deathlike slumber sooner or later.
Yours,
Qifrey
☆
You LIAR. You CHEAT.
You never had a girlfriend in our teens did you?
Alaira made a snide comment about “Matella” tonight while I was meeting her for drinks, and then laughed at me when I must have given her a blank look. All at once I realized. How in the world did it take me this long to figure it out? You weren’t even lying well!!! You barely lie well now, but you were even worse at it when we were 16. You little sneak… I really believed you. I was being kind that those scraggly hairs on your chin could be called a beard, but when it came to Matella, that was all honest gullibility. What sort of name even is Matella? I can’t believe you just made her up.
I’m not going to let you live this down, I intend to make my attack as soon as you get home from your business trip, but WHY in the WORLD did you commit so much to such an elaborate and obvious fib? You must have been “dating” Matella for at least two years. I am wracking my brain trying to divine your absurd teenage thought process. I might be going insane. You might come home and I’m just nattering to undiscovered gods in a corner. The girls will be devastated.
I’m trying to remember when it was you first told me about her…
Something about a dance?
An Unknowing dance out in someone’s barn. We were done with our adventures by then, but I still liked to go topside from time to time, and you usually followed me. Even then, I was already one foot outside of the Assembly.
Now I remember, we were hanging out with some cousins of Sinocia’s. They invited us to dance. We were supposed to pair off.
Oh my goodness. I cannot even describe the sensation I’m having of this dawning realization, of this ridiculousness.
I didn’t want to dance with a stranger so I said something like “Olly, let’s pretend we’re dating so I don’t have to touch someone’s hands I don’t know.”
And you just… You turned this alarming red-purple color, it was quite impressive actually. And you were stammering and fumbling and I thought you’d swallowed a junebug or something. And then you finally get out this ridiculous story about how well you CAN’T pretend to be boyfriends, Qifrey, because that would betray your TOTALLY REAL GIRLFRIEND YOU HAD whose name was Matella and oh hadn’t you mentioned her before? She was TOTALLY REAL.
Why did I believe this? It was so obviously made up.
Maybe I was flustered and stupid myself. We were best friends, so close, and I didn’t even know you had a girlfriend?
Perhaps I was…
Well, no.
I was definitely jealous. The jealousy got worse and worse the longer your dumb lie went on, and it was worse that you were so secretive about it and wouldn’t even have me meet her. I thought oh. This horrible Matella. She’s taking Olly all for herself, the monster. I should have known this day would come, but so soon… Oh, the lament. (Please read this in the reedy pathetic cracking voice I had back then. Oh we were so funny…)
But why the lie, Olly? It makes no sense.
Eventually you gave up on it. I think you only kept it going for so long because you didn’t want to admit you’d lied in the first place, and of course that led to the necessity for more and more increasingly bizarre lies. (She was a dragon rider? REALLY? She was never in town because she was RIDING DRAGONS? It’s worse and worse that I believed this wholeheartedly.)
My suspicion, from knowing you for many years…
… Is that you were just bashful to dance with me. And, in the blustering pubescence of teenagerhood, you couldn’t bring yourself to actually say no, lest you hurt my feelings, so you had to come up with a distraction.
It hurt my feelings worse to think you’d hid a girlfriend from me, you dolt.
I swear I muttered curses against “Matella” all holed up in my bed at night… That bed in Beldarut’s tower that was too short for my legs at that point. What a silly, dreadful creature I must have looked. I do think Beldarut was quietly laughing at me for much of those years.
We’ve danced together plenty since then. But I suppose we’ve never pretended to be a couple. Was that the part that was too much?
I suppose I can tell you safely in these letters that, before I even knew it, I think a part of me did wish I could be your non-dragon riding, utterly average boyfriend.
When you and Matella “broke up” I frantically drew this… Oh, it’s so embarrassing. Teenagers! I drew fireworks and let them off in my room, I was so overjoyed. Beldarut rarely visited my room in person. The stairs were difficult for him, and his health was having a down spell at that time, so he’d just send illusions of himself to drag me out of bed if it was noon and I hadn’t appeared yet. But that night he came clopping up the stairs in person, looking more panicked than I’ve probably ever seen him, thinking I’d gone and exploded myself in some bout of teenage angst… Instead he found me quite chuffed, truth be told!
All this, and I didn’t even understand that I had a crush on you.
Teenagers…
Olly, were you putting on this whole absurd act because a part of you also… And you were too embarrassed to tell me… Or perhaps you didn’t even know what all your feelings meant either.
Hilarious.
I forgot to write it at the beginning but: To my dearest Olruggio.
You ridiculous, ridiculous, RIDICULOUS man.
I am yours forever,
Qifrey
☆
Dearest Olruggio,
For all that I could say about Lord Bel, at least I can always trust him to respect children.
I saw a girl crying at the edge of the island staircase into the Assembly, her skinny legs dangling over the ocean. Her tears were silent but… Something in the way she was sitting maybe… So small, awash in her own hair blowing all around her in the sea air. I was even worried she might fall, or…
I hurried to her right in the middle of our conversation, which by the look on your face confused you utterly, but you followed me and of course you understood quickly.
We asked her what was wrong. I offered her my hand.
I was quite adamant about getting Riche out of that academy after what she told us, and I will admit I was not altogether diplomatic in my approach. You’ve told me before that, when it comes to kids, I’ll get a bit of a manticore look about me. Subtlety is not my strongsuit in those situations. You’re better at appeasing customers than me.
But Beldarut knows by now that when I get that way, he has need to pay attention.
The old man impresses me sometimes. He got the academy shut down in under three days. A Sage is terrifyingly influential, but for all that, I know when it comes to the realm of education, his choices are of the utmost genuineness. When the children were choosing their next professors, it came as no surprise that Riche’s brother chose Beldarut. At least in terms of Beldarut’s capability as a teacher.
It was quite a shock to Riche though. She had already quite obviously staked some claim to us… She had been staying at the atelier with me, while you were being a saint doing our paperwork, and the whole time she was glued to my leg like a limpet. I’m not sure she even likes me much. But for some reason she seems to trust me.
I hate to think her previous professor was so terrible that she was just willing to cling to the first possible choice she could have after, regardless of whether she liked him or not.
Her brother… Surely, he saw her hiding halfway behind my cloak. Surely he must have known.
And yet, right there in front of her, with such pinched pain on his face, he chose Beldarut instead of me.
“You can go with Lord Beldarut too,” I told Riche. Of course I told her that. She needed to be aware of her options, her choice informed. Any student has that right, but especially someone as hurt as she was then.
Her eyes never seemed to leave her brother. Maybe she understood his message.
She still chose me.
Olruggio, what do I do with such a terrible responsibility?
I suppose the answer is just… my best.
You were so kind to Riche, immediately. She still hasn’t talked to you much either, but you showed her a little game with string held in designs between your fingers, and this managed to distract her from even that immense grief. How do you do that? It’s always written into your magic as well, this quality… This way you have of easing people’s hearts. I love that so much about you.
Have I ever told you that in those words? “I love you”?
Surely you must know, in some small way… Surely you will at least know in retrospect.
Riche is rooming with Tetia now, and I trust Tetia to extend her warm welcome. Once the girls were in bed that first night of my new student’s officiality, I was hit all at once with such tiredness. We were all running around getting things in order, weren’t we… I’d felt like a rampaging dragon, and you were there always as my warm shadow, the way you always are. You were there with me in the kitchen, as I poured you a cider somewhat automatically. I don’t think you even wanted it, but you accept my micromanaging at times like that.
You said something odd then. You even seemed a little choked up about it.
“I’m really proud of you, you know?” you said to me.
I don’t entirely know where that came from.
All I could think in response was to cup your chin and sort of… scritch my thumb over your beard. I’ve done this before, and somehow you always let me.
You laughed, or at least did a sort of snorting thing.
You seemed awfully fond of me, and that made me glad.
I’m awfully fond of you too.
Yours,
Qifrey
☆
Dearest Olruggio,
Riche has had trouble adjusting. It’s understandable enough.
I admit, I’m at my wit’s end, just a little.
You joined me on the sofa last night when I was still up around midnight sewing a stuffed rabbit. What funny situations we find ourselves in, these days. I remembered that for all our girls have been through, they are still quite young. When Agott first joined us as my first student, she defrosted just a little when I gifted her a cat plushie. I think she still has it, along with the rest of her collection. Tetia, of course, got a bear. I hope Riche will like the rabbit.
The problem is, Riche is a little older than Agott and Tetia were. They’re all of them a bit older now. Do plushies even work anymore when you’re 11?
Desperate measures, as they say.
I was so frantic over this rabbit, I tell you what. I kept poking my thumb with the needle. I’m pretty sure there’s a spot of blood somewhere on that finished plush, like a pact.
You poked fun at me for it, and settled beside me with your thorn tea and your own brand of exhaustion, from all your work that day.
At some point I fell asleep in your lap. I’m sure it was in your lap, but you somehow managed to move me to my bedroom in some bleary half-asleep state, and that’s where I woke up. I appreciate it. I don’t like the girls seeing me like that, but you know that and of course that’s exactly why you moved me.
I did finish the rabbit. Here’s the funny thing, though… When I hobbled my way through the living room on my way to make breakfast, I noticed that there were in fact two stuffed rabbits on the coffee table, waiting to cheer up their girl.
Your hand stitches have always been much neater than mine.
Our Eye is very Watchful indeed.
Yours,
Qifrey
☆
Dearest Olruggio,
We found the secret ingredient.
Agott and Tetia have never been much interested in my garden, but Riche likes digging in some dirt. She deposits seeds so carefully, like she doesn’t want to break them. Like they are already tiny babies. She pats the soil over them just as neatly. She’s an appreciator of small things. Her specialty is drawing such small and precise glyphs. Maybe she considers herself a small thing too.
I prattled on a bit, but she wasn’t particularly interested in learning about the plants. Something in the physical action though… It’s the happiest I’ve ever seen her. When I got wise and shut up, she even talked to me. She told me about a dream she had with a giant anteater in it.
“How do you know about anteaters?” I asked, since none of them live around here, and certainly not down in the Assembly.
“I like books,” she said.
I think I will buy her some books about animals when I’m next in town. Our library is lacking on that subject, don’t you think?
I almost forgot to mention – she also enjoyed the worms.
Each time one of us would accidentally unearth one, she gently plucked it up and sat it in her palm, until there was a whole pile of worms there.
“Do you want to keep any?” I asked, already thinking of making a little mason jar home for them.
But she looked at me like I was crazy.
“They belong out here,” she said. “For all we know, they could have more family in the dirt, and families belong together.”
Hm. I’m not sure she even realized what she was saying. But I’m glad she’s opening up a little.
Tetia has been bringing out her bear plushie to “talk” to Riche’s rabbits, and Riche is fairly tortured by the attempt. I haven’t seen Tetia’s bear outside her room in ages, have you? But Riche likes to take one rabbit or the other to breakfast, so I think Tetia is just trying to engage with her. Agott is staunchly not going to lower herself to these childish games. Riche seems to appreciate them both in their own way though–Tetia for trying, and Agott for leaving her alone.
I’m just glad they can still be children sometimes. There may come a day this all falls away, so quickly. I don’t know whether that excites me, the idea of them growing up, or whether I want them to stay like this forever.
Either way, they’ll grow up just the same.
What kind of people do you think they’ll be? I know your answer.
“Good people. That’s all that matters.” Something like that, right?
I think I can believe in that more solidly than most things in this world.
They are already good people.
Yours,
Qifrey
☆
Dearest Olruggio,
You caught me crying today. You know how I hate that, but you’re always the one who catches me, aren’t you?
By now you know it’s not unusual for me to have bad days. Sometimes it’s just too much. Just… everything. I’ve always been like this, even when we were boys. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed the difference or not now. It’s a matter of your cleverness versus your trust in me to tell you the truth, to ask you for help when something new is wrong. I hate to say it, old friend, but I think sometimes you love me too much to see what’s really happening.
Or maybe I underestimate you. Maybe you see it all, and you suffer quietly in your ignorance, and you just sit beside me by the fireplace, silently, while I let angry tears fall, watching the flames.
I realized today that my eyesight is fading. That the headaches I’ve been getting with increasing frequency and intensity are because of it.
I’ve known my health is getting worse, but I was trying not to notice. To distract myself…
Is that all this is, just trying so desperately to distract myself?
I didn’t tell you any of this. I didn’t say anything at all.
Neither did you.
But after awhile, you reached out and in such a gentle, sweet way you unwove the braided collar at my neck. The lack of constriction was so freeing in that moment, like I could suddenly breathe. You sometimes know me better than I know myself. It freed a sob from my throat and I bit down on it, not wanting the girls to overhear. It was the middle of the day. I felt like such a failure, such a mess.
And still you didn’t say anything, you just trailed your knuckles up the curve of my relieved neck. I thought perhaps you might wipe my tears away, but instead you brushed the hair away from the other side of my face, my scar. Has that scar ever bothered you? Miraculously, I think it hasn’t. When we’d cling to each other as boys, out of loneliness or just because we were cold, you didn’t mind pressing your forehead up against it, or your cheek. I can’t feel touch there—the skin is leathery. But looking at your face in this moment, I saw such tenderness… As you brushed my hair behind my ear, and then took my glasses off and gently set them on the fireplace ledge. Then you took my face in both your hands and pulled me over, hunched me down to your height, and you held my head to your shoulder.
Lean on me, you seemed to say. You stupid bastard, lean on me. You can do that, you know.
I had to ball my hands into fists in my lap not to throw my arms around you and tell you everything right there. How much my head hurt. The increasing numbness in my legs. How frightened I am.
Instead I just sniveled into your shoulder and got your shirt wet. I’m sorry.
I know you would bop me over the head for saying “I’m sorry”. You’ll notice I knew not to say it out loud to you. I have grown as a person, thank you very much.
A lot of that growing has been with you.
You let me cry and trailed your fingers up through my hair, down my back. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how we touch one another, just that it’s supposed to happen.
You did calm me down. It was exactly the comfort I needed. You always know, huh?
It wasn’t long before I was ready to put a smile on and check on the girls’ self study. When Tetia asked about my sniffing, I told her I was having allergies.
I think I heard you chuckle at that.
You must have been shaking your head.
Yours,
Qifrey
☆
Dearest Olruggio,
Today you kissed my hand. It seemed to alarm you, like you didn’t even notice you were going to do that.
You dropped my hand instantly afterward and pulled away, but I reached out to take your hand again and just hold it.
We were at that festival in town, the girls all run ahead to catch the parade.
I enjoy going slowly with you.
I enjoy the calluses on your palms, that one knob on your finger where you hold your pen.
I enjoyed the kiss.
You looked about ready to sink into the earth and accept an early death, but I enjoyed the kiss.
We don’t have to talk about it.
Yours,
Qifrey
☆
Dearest Olruggio,
A part of me wants so much to write letters to the girls as well. And to Beldarut. To tell each of them what they have meant in my life.
But I’m not strong enough. Not strong enough.
Oh my dear, I’m sorry to put so much onto you alone. It’s just… You are what it all comes down to, I suppose. You always have been.
The center of everything. My Olruggio.
Actually, I’m not strong enough to write these letters for you either. But I must, because it’s you. Because of course it’s you.
You know?
I’m making less and less sense…
I miss you so much even though you’re just in the next room right now. Even though I could just walk in and touch your shoulder if I wanted to. I do want to.
Oh Olly, all this wanting.
Please believe me, I wanted so much just not to hurt you.
- Qifrey