Gloria,
We will return to these things. I think it will be important for us moving forward to continue to communicate, even if it is frustrating. I'm sure we would both rather be writing to Sylvius, for instance, but you have me and I you and neither of us much of him, and it is best that we continue to work at this and put effort into it as opposed to simply seek escapism. I've learned over the years how to distill something moderately interesting out of Aloisius, believe it or not. If i wanted the most pain I could currently endure, I would force my way into Agnieszka's life. That is an open wound and I will not touch it yet. So you are more pleasant than Agony and less escapist than Treadwell. What boundaries we find here in Myrken.
So we will return to these things. Hold me to them. For now, you mentioning hoarding information and sharing it. Let me share. Perhaps this will help you in one of your tasks.
The matter of Elliot Brown.
Please know that sharing this bit is difficult for me and I do not do it lightly and I also do not do it completely, but what I do of it, I do honestly.
As you know, I shared a mind with Rhaena Olwak. She shut me out in the weeks before sending Guiseppe to betray me. After that, it was Golben that blocked her off from me. By that point, however, we were too deeply interconnected for any fell magic to keep us apart. Instead, it was my perception of her mind that was blocked. We were connected but I was unable to realize this, was unable to see or feel the connection. I suspect she couldn't see or feel it either. That did not make it any less true.
Due to a mishap a year or two back, those memories, the ones of the last six months of Rhaena's life were revealed to me. They brought me no joy.
Elliot Brown was, to her, a nuisance, and a test case for what she would ultimately try to do to Ariane. She saw it like planting a garden, not that she ever had much of an honest interest in such a thing. A seed planted that took nutrient from the ground of a person, all of his memories, all of his past. She saw it as a flower, but it was surely a weed, invasive, invading, parasitic. It took the entirety of a person and took them down a different path, choking out the old version. She'd give the broad strokes and they'd use the memories they had to prop it up, use them all up as a finite resource to serve her purpose. It was disrupted with Ariane. It was not with Elliot Brown. A strong enough mentalist could perhaps repeat the procedure into some simulacrum of who he had been, some of those key touchstones in his life, if they were well enough known, but it wouldn't truly be the same person, just a poorly drawn image of him.
It is good she was stopped, for otherwise, her weeds would have choked out the whole world.
Your hope is valuable. Put it to the best use.
Glenn