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One Commoner to Another

Mon Sep 08, 2014 3:13 pm

A short letter scrawled on Inquisitory-quality parchment, the letters stretching from one far edge, across the mountain-range of a simple fold, and toward the page's other borders. The wax seal was sloppily-pressed.
Msa. Glenn Burnie,

My contolinces on your recent public hardships, I woult like to ha ve a dinner with you, or rather a talk, o ne which will not occure from marketplace floor to marketplace scaffold, for almost a year past you have given to me your ring and I au ght to give you news of it.

I shoult like to share a common meal in a common place be tween two common people, for now we are equals and I believe it fitting for us to speak too on common terms, I take my mid day meal in the patch of grass agasent to the marketplace across from the Inquisitory, perhaps you will sh are it with me for if now there must be enough for two then sure ly there may be yet still more for three,

Yours,
Glour'eya Wynsee

Re: One Commoner to Another

Mon Sep 08, 2014 3:42 pm

Dear Glour'eya,

I was never anything but common. They sold me in the womb, remember? Did I ever tell you that story? I fear that we had less time together than I would have liked, and none at all during your brief stay at the Inquisitory. Well, at least we got to spend some time in Golben. What I had was a job and neither a job nor who you just happened to be born to, through no act of your own, makes you anything more than common; doing the job well maybe? I never had the impression you thought that of me, though, especially once it got going. Also, if you manage to find a way to choose you're parents, I'd consider that greater than common. Utterly horrific but certainly greater than common.

Moreover, I have no idea what's befallen you as of late. I used to know everything there was to know and now I don't. You can imagine how frustrating that is. Information is everything. It's the only weapon we have against the darkness and the unknown. We can handle any situation at all, so long as we know it, so long as we get the whole of it and push back the shadows that

But then I am boring my hostess, who will certainly read this before it reaches you. I think she much prefers it when I make metaphors comparing things to the steel in her eyes. Nothing seems to apply here, though. Perhaps if you sent me another letter later with a more martial theme? Dinner would be lovely. I don't eat lunch out unless it's with someone I'm bethrothed to. Tradition's sake, and that is all a murky matter right now. You'll excuse me one little bit of sentimentality for the dead; I'd not excused her anything else after all.

Sometime next week, I think. Perhaps I'll be a prince by then, or perhaps you will be. That would be nice. If you keep writing the word common over and over again, a hand might well get stuck that way. Even yours.

Your friend,
Glenn Burnie

Re: One Commoner to Another

Tue Sep 09, 2014 1:58 pm

By courier the following evening, another letter. There is no shortage of coin to pay for young, enterprising men whose feet can run and whose hands can safely hold letters until they arrive to their destination, after all.
Msa. Prince Burnie,

The information you say you have missed is not a wea pon, but it is the stuff of lives, it is best not looked at as baubles to fill your pouch for that by verry nature de values it,

I shoult be right to think it very disagreeable that a man aught to be sold from the belly so for that you have my simpathy, but otherwise I ask that you do not pay pey paytronise me, I have learned a number of foul lessons already whose tutilage has left its marks perm anently on me, and do you truly believe me a friend or am I anot her face to be spoken at? Do you know that when I came here I thought you a divine thing, for a man in con trol of a land must be chosen by greater un seen forces to do the task he has been given, but now I see you too are base and human and this is a worthwhile lesson--

Treat well the Lady Warden and do not in trude in her preshous time by filleing your letters with needless words, for our busyness now Msa. Burnie is a matter of importants: you see many months ago you told to me that here we shape what we wish to be but you have be come to amorfus and now I have got a thing to offer you in the interest of helping you

The words overflow the page and spill onto the parchment's backside.
discover the countors stolen from you by your previous Lady, may her good soul be at rest,

and so I am eeger to take dinner with you, for I ha ve now naught but time as do you,

Yours,
Glour'eya Wynsee

Re: One Commoner to Another

Fri Sep 26, 2014 11:05 am

To a fine, young Myrkener, and we are ever so sorry for that,

It's so very funny in this life how you find yourself unable or unwilling to deal with something and completely and utterly unaware of that act. It's the unaware bit that's funny, not the lack of willingness. That's human and understandable. The other bit is as well. I may, and I would like to stress the may (here, let me go back and underline it), have been unaware of just how thoroughly I did not want to discuss Rhaena with you. It was quite a considerable amount. In fact, I still do not want to. It's nothing personal against you, so do not feel too badly. It's more a seering, horrible pain in my heart whenever I try to think about her too much, which is not a mental effect, save for in the most literal sense. It is physical and as much as I would like, not overstatement. Alright, again, it may (though this time, without an underline), be a little personal, but only as it pertains to the concept of subtly.

Glenn

Re: One Commoner to Another

Fri Sep 26, 2014 2:26 pm

Then we need not talk of her

but we need to talk.

Bri ng with you both hands for with but one I can not easily spread peppermint praserves with out the assistants of my toes and I shoult not believe you would be fond of a lunch biskit prepared with my feet, you know where to find me, the Fadeing months come very quickly upon us and I woult rather like your company before the leafs have smothered too much of the grass.

Yours,

Glour'eya

Re: One Commoner to Another

Tue Oct 07, 2014 12:00 pm

Dear Gloria,

Your attempt at humor veered into the unappetizing. It also gave me a wonderful excuse to not answer you for another week. Are you sure you really want this? Or is it just something that is suddenly atainable and you want every little thing that you can get. I understand that. I lived it. It gained me quite a bit and cost me so much more. You are problematic to me, because I lived through things that you live through now.

Oh, here is where you point to the obvious differences, some more obvious than others, or call me some fool who does not know you or find some misspelled word in the previous paragraph and harp on that. Don't.

Know that I say what I say for a reason, in all earnestness. Know that I know you won't believe me or care and it will change nothing. I know it is foolish to say it, but you frustrate, so I say it anyway. I frustrated. I still frustrate. I don't want to sit and talk to you because it'd be too much like talking to me, talking to the me that made all those mistakes which led to where I am now, a me that won't listen even if I tried to tell him otherwise, and frankly, I have no desire to do that.

All of that is completely ridiculous Gloria, and of course it's wrong, but I can't afford to be wrong about it. I can't afford to be so thoroughly wrong about anything right now yet I can't afford to be right about it either because then I'll be walking into all of that frustration and aggravation.

Give me another solution. Give me anything else. What else would you offer me? What else do you have to offer? And what else would you actually offer me?

Glenn

Re: One Commoner to Another

Tue Oct 07, 2014 2:27 pm

The letter returns to him, its original seal peeled away. A new blot of wax suggests that it has, indeed, been read.
On the folded parchment, a few additions litter the margins left by his words:
Ad vice given from a lonely pulpit is for no one but yourself

and
You wish only to speak to your self Glenn Burnie, this much is efident,
may your own words bring you comfort in your personal egsile.

Re: One Commoner to Another

Sat Oct 11, 2014 5:05 am

In return, a few days later, came a letter.

It was a letter she might have been familiar with because it contained the following.


To the Honorable Glenn Burnie, Master Regent of Myrken Wood, regarding a Request for Literature, and a Concern for One Very Blind Dignitary

If You remember our Earlier Correspondence, Regent Burnie, I hope that You recall the Request you made, that if I obtained a Number of Jernoan Books, You would compensate me for their Acquisition. Well You see, I have just returned from a Foot Journey of Four Days to Foggy Bottom, where I retrieved Various Jernoan Tomes, which include

- Jernoah and its Sands: A History
- A Critcical Analysis of Jernosta Tactics: or, Training Young Boys to Kill Young Boys
- The Rat'vak of Growing Parts and Reclamation of Way of the Nameless – Why Foreigners Should Be Forsaken
- H'zlz and G'leuse [This is a Wonderful Longform Poem, my Personal Favorite, in which H'zlz, a Good Man and General, has fallen in Passion for a Younger Man, G'leuse, and kills G'leuse's Wife and Child to display His Love; It is tragic]
- The Three Day War and Relations with Einsland
- How to Bathe without Water
- Giving Your All to the Nameless!!!: A Poor Lady's Belief in Many Gods Or One!!! [She must have been very excitable when This was written]

These are Titles in Translation – I will inquire of my friend in Myrkentown, Professor de Lanz, to translate the contents.

Acquiring them was of some Difficulty. My Associate Messa Murrukh protected me on the Journey, and while I am not fond of his Whoring Ways or his Desire to pass Offensive Amounts of Bodily Gas when his Bowels so Choose, I was grateful for his willingness to protect me from the Potential Threats of Bandits, Highwaymen, Angry Wolves, Very Disagreeable Ticks and Fleas, and Lascivious Men who thought me Quite a Catch.

Murrukh will require thirty-three shillings for his time; I will require four shillings for the night we lodged in Foggy Bottom; Professor de Lanz will require at least five shillings per translated chapter; I hope you are Willing to Honor our Previous Agreement of Payment, for the sake of bringing My Agreeable History and Poetry to Myrkentown.

Also, there is a Matter of Fright that I wish to Express: that a one Dignitary, Messa Treadwell, chose not to Interfere in a Matter of Potential Violence in the Broken Dagger Tavern the other night, as if He was Exempt from the Task. A Dignitary of Any Status should be willing to speak against such Transgressions; He was more concerned with my Books than with the fear that a Child might be Hurt, or that a Lady was in Danger.

This is not a Good Representation of Myrken Diplomacy.

In Addition, I would like to offer my Services as a Servant of the Court, or as a Junior Student of Diplomacy. You see, I have practiced speaking against that Book Voice, Melody, and Man as You suggested, and think I might be fit for Politics, and would like to hone these Skills of Rhetoric along with my Mathematics and grip on Standard Language. I have heard Many Times that Politics are not a Woman's place, but I have a skill to Incense and Frustrate and think it may be a Calling to follow.

I look forward to your letters.

Sincerely, your Loyal Supporter in Myrkentown, faithful Jerno-turned-Myrkener, Humble Seamstress and Hopeful Student of an Academy of Rhetoric and Letters that may teach Her the way to a Life of Faithful Work,

Signed,

Gloria (Glour'eya) Wynsee


It was in fact a almost two years old.

On the back of it however, was, of all things, a map, and it wasn't a map of anything but of a section of the Wood itself, which frankly, was a very difficult thing to detail. Paths seemed to come and go depending on whether it was day or night, depending on the season or even just the weather, depending on the crispness in the air. This was a map though, and a very lovely one at that. It started with the Dagger and the lake, an entry point as it were. Time and effort had been put into it, even if it was drawn on the back of just one page of this letter.

There was one letter and five words.

The words, for the former governor was not entirely ignorant of what was going on and the timing of things, were as follows:
"Best to send someone else."


Deep into the wood, or as deep as the map would show, given the level of detail, the scale of it, and the size of the paper, was the letter: an X.

There was no other explanation nor any expectation or hope of a response.
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