Precipice

[channe]

Dear Glenn,

I'm not dead yet. Are you surprised?

Have you made things better yet? How is your splinter and your blood and your treatise on the wall? Are you done being a judgmental fool? (Why did I even ask the question? You will always be a judgmental fool especially when it comes to me.) Will this even reach you or have they finally drew everything you are out of your body in Razasan and burned it?

I have been in the Dauntless mountains with Ani learning the most beautiful things and found this letter shoved into the bottom of my travel chest. Perhaps I always desired to respond but you just made me so mad whenever I looked at it. And the anger in my blood is as you say something I cannot change. It is a useful feeling even as I grow older, tempered (ha ha that word) perhaps from consumption to a tool I can use. I have tried to change but we cannot escape what happens to us when we are young and what it makes of us. What it made you and what it made me. Every building needs a foundation and you can change out the decorations but what is below must stay.

At any rate very little has happened to me in the past years and maybe I have come to see a little of what you mean because of it. There has been so much peace. There is some space in my mind now, some places to breathe, some new choices to be made. I want everyone to learn about this peace. And perhaps you will. My mother (she is still alive good heavens) says it is time for Ani to be married but my dear daughter has other plans. We have learned so much together. I am returning to Myrken forthwith to meet the boy my mother has in mind but probably will say no. Or I will let Ani fight him or something. Either way she is not getting married right now, she is still very young. She is so very good at swordplay, much better than I ever was with my little knife. But then again we all have our talents. I only learned mine after the foundation was already set. Perhaps that is a tragedy and perhaps it was what I was destined for all along.

I do hope you are not someone's noble Razasani lapdog right now and are some governor somewhere changing things. You really could have gone either way.

Yr friend,
Agnieska Kaczmarek River

[Glenn]

Agnie,

A brief perusal through old letters (and I kept it brief, because it hardly seemed fair otherwise. I can't imagine you keep letters save for the ones you lose and later find. I keep all that are not sensitive so do not feel overly privileged) let me know, to my mild surprise that you do start letters with dear. Not always, but more often than I would have expected. I expect it's a sense of wanting things to be proper so as not to be judged. I do understand that I have certain luxuries both being what I am and who I am. Probably how I am too. The world's hardly fair. You're the last person I need to tell that to. But I can try to be.

After all this time, we are dear to one another, I suppose. Survivors surviving, a bond forged from living through such events, of having caused our share of them and failed to prevent so many more, that others do not have. A litany of loss between us with more than a little overlap. Don't ever quote me on that first bit though. I'm certainly not putting it at the start of my letter.

Your writing has improved. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise either. I'd tell you I'm proud but you'd take it the wrong way and we'd bicker. I might enjoy that, but let's find something more substantial to bicker about if we're going to act like teenagers again.

Yes, I am back in Myrken. No, I've made nothing better. Ironically, I did make things better in Razasan in small ways. Little clever things under the notice of both great and meager powers. Little of that here. I thought I might open certain trade channels but it was a fairy dream and I simply find myself more engrossed in the affairs of other places. Figurative, not literal, thankfully. Mirrors for princes. Or Queens.

This is home. I live here. Do I have a life here? It depends on the definition of such.

Memories in Myrken Wood are both short and long. My name is begrudgingly accepted, unquestionably tolerated, but only so long as I do not touch anything important. My adventures have made me financially comfortable, at least when it comes to comfort in Myrkentown. I need for little save for being needed. And since that was one of the things I needed most, ... well, in that area, you can say I got what was coming to me. I stay fit, could almost certainly best you with a blade (but likely not your Ani), am both older and younger than I ought to be (my adventures, after all).

I remain young enough to still build and topple things that require building or toppling and I may yet before it's all said and done, but I suppose I wait for the right moment. There have been far too many wrong ones.

I miss her far more than I miss you but I miss you more than most. We'd be fools to think that would survive an actual encounter though, but then we've often been just that, you more so than me, me to a greater degree than you.

I am both surprised and glad you are not dead.

Glenn

[channe]

dear Dear dearest Glenn dearie pie (does that make you feel uncomfortable i hope it does),

Yes my writing has improved! I got disgustingly tired on Istota Gora of waiting for Catch to faff off and instead took Ani to a school where she wasn't That Woman's child. And since we're all Dauntless by blood na krashche chy na hirshe we went north. There was a school where we both learned how to write and I paid tuition by killing some people that needed killing (evil) but less said about that the better. I think Aleksei would have approved. Maybe not of the killing part but you can't win them all. At any rate they taught me to start letters with "privetstviya" which is very formal, so I think I would rather just use the Myrken "dear."

You say you are "financially comfortable" but honestly that paragraph made you sound like you might be horrifically miserable. so they don't "let" you touch anything? Who -- that cretin Treadwell? You know very well that nothing ever got done in this town if you waited for people to let you do a damn thing. This is not the language of someone who says he would tie himself to a chair and write change in his own blood. There is no right moment. There is just the moment that is. No doubt you have noticed that my family is all over town in everyone's business. They are not waiting and neither should you.

Also: you are right, we will probably never speak in person again, I look like a middle aged fishwife now, which is basically what I am. Turns out when you stop testing fate, fate stops testing you. I would like people (you) to remember me in armor, the shining kind janeiro had. maybe on a wall with a sword all young and pretty like and the air all filmy with the sunset, before all the shit went down. And I will remember you as the governor who tried. you did try. and I don't think you should curse yourself for the rest of your life to sit around all lonely like on a stick up your ass made from self-pity. That is gross. And not worth your time. I know you miss her but maybe it's time you move on.

And yes. I am still alive.

regards,
Agnie

P.S. I am still going to burn Thessilane
P.P.S. And probably Myrken too

[Glenn]

Agnie (unlike you, I am too mature for Agony, but then I had outpaced you along those lines about a week after we first met),

Except for the beginning and end, your letter had an air of finality to it. Granted, so did mine to you.

The problem with writing to me is that you have to close every parenthesis. How lovely it is to write to an Agnieszka who actually knows what those are. (And yes, I use far too many of them in my writing, but they are purposeful and have a certain dramatic impact. While I am impressed you can now spell both your name and the word cat correctly, do not try to use them; they allow me to write in between each and every line and fully control the text at all times. That, by the way, in the last sentence, was a semicolon. If I ever see you again in person, I'll teach you how to use one). Point being, there's always more to say. I never let go. With you and I, one would think it's about the last word, and it might be that too, but it's never just that.

The danger in writing me, however, is that it gives you reason to chase something that you long ago let escape. Not me. But something within you.

For me, it's just over the horizon and it's just outside the door. I have to stop myself.

I can't talk about both her and it and given my particular correspondent, I'd chose her over it. That wouldn't be the case with literally anyone else in the world, so you'll forgive me or you won't.

I'm sure you had a taste of it now and again, but it was only ever that. She was the love of my life. She was my constant companion, my accomplice in every crime, paramount to every victory. When I broke, she broke as well. When she broke, I broke myself to mend her. But eventually we broke too much, the both of us, and the mending was warped and distended. She was my wife in every way that matters except for two or three that you happy to value. But none of that is it really the point.

We were connected in a way that no two lovers can ever connect. I knew her thoughts. She knew mine. We were never apart, no matter how many miles separated us. Some conspire with looks or whispers. For us it was so much more than that. In the face of that, every interaction will, of course, be superficial. It takes thousands of words to even begin to bridge a gap that did not even exist when we were together, she and I. I could write you an endless letter and not begin to explain it but were she here, I would not have had to explain anything at all.

There's no moving on from that.

It's the collateral damage that stays my hand as much as anything else. Not only did I hurt many people and ruin many lives but I damaged the very idea of progress. I set things back in my attempt to push them forward, poisoned the well that this place, more than any, needed to drink from.

Were I to act, it would not be Treadwell who would come down on me (a terrible thought) but Wynsee. Just a few years difference between the two of you, all the difference in the world. You would have been the best of friends or the worst of enemies. The two most stubborn people I've ever met, and you know who I've met.

She protects them from me and she's probably right to do so.

It doesn't sound like you've moved far on either though.Your excuse is more conventional.

The fate I test and the fate that tests me is so far removed from the fate we knew. Those stories of a man who falls asleep beneath a tree and wakes up a hundred years later with a long beard? I am asleep more than awake.

But in Myrken the dreams are so often more real and vivid than the waking.

Glenn

[channe]

Glenn,

I forgot this, during the last few years away..

You always looked down on me. You were always better. And even when I was at my most loyal (which I still am which is pathetic) (also i will use paretheses if I want to and you can't stop me) you could never stop picking at me, picking picking picking, not like I had fleas or pox but that you made yourself feel better by stepping above me. I guess sometimes I get a strange Memory of how things were when they were Good and Forget what the reality was. There's a lot I lost in the Wailing Tower and although I don't forget what you did for me rescuing my future from Kostroma and what we did together you can't stop, can you? Not for a moment. Agony. She who Hates. She who Cannot Understand and Cannot See. I cannot possibly understand anything! I am a zombie resurrected FISHWIFE WIDOW!!!! everything I did was just COINCIDENTAL! That I was the first woman on the Council (before Glorybutt Wynsee, is it illegal to call her that yet?).

But that's the Myrken in you. That's how I know you are a true Myrkener now. You know Loss. Let it sit in your blood and curdle you.

I am going too far. (You will say I always do.)

You would rather talk about Rhaena than about the future. Maybe you should. You can, if you want, in your next letter. I noticed you haven't said her name yet. I say her name all the time, praying to the Bright One, but the Bright One tells me nothing about where she might be. She was my best friend too. Maybe that doesn't mean anything to you but it does to me. But I maintain that you sound fecking miserable. I maintain that the only way to get out of a place you do not want to be is to take a step forward. Aleksei has been dead for over ten years and I miss him every day but I have things to do and people to see and a bunch of nobles to murder someday and AT LEAST one territory to burn (Thessilane).

You treat yourself like you treat me. You sit in your curdlement and you pick pick pick pick at yourself and the past and your own desperate self-agony. He who Hates Himself. He who Cannot Understand and Cannot See. All the things you say you know and the places you say you have been and you are just the same. I can say this because I know you. You are dear. Even if sometimes you are Not.

Stop it.

yr friend,
Mme. Agnieszka River

[Glenn]

Agnie,

Rarely do I stop and think before writing. Rarely do I throw away or cross out what I initially wrote. Here I did have some thoughts that would have served as their own letters. One sentence and no more. I'm just not sure I can choose between them. Therefore, here they all are. The first two are hopelessly sentimental. The third is maudlin, but entirely true.

1. Yes, I judge you and have always judged you, but you love me for it nonetheless, because I judge you for who you are not what you are and especially what you are not.

2. You are an idiot but you are still, even after all this time, my idiot, and I love you for it.

Note that in both those case, the love is best defined as fraternal. You love family like a brother and I've no love for my siblings, having never met them and always having resented them, but I suppose the principle transfers well enough. Regardless, I don't want you getting strange notions.

3. I don't know how to stop.

There may be alternative versions of that one, but that is the most straightforward and accurate. There's no room for movement there. It's a simple truth.

So this is not much of a letter, or it is the most a letter can possibly be multiplied by three. I'll let you be the judge of that.

Glenn

[channe]

Glenn,

Oh wait, you think I want to f

(there's a large splotch of ink here, slightly dabbed at, like someone was trying to clean it up and got only halfway through.)

Izvitine, I spilled my inkwell while I was laughing so hard I knocked it over.

I suppose our conversation has settled my thoughts, so thank you for that. Look, what I said years ago still stands: you're dangerous, far too dangerous to ever see again or allow Ani to see. I was hoping that perhaps that had changed but I guess not, that we could be closer allies in the future but perhaps Gloryblarf Wynsee is right to neuter you. You say all these things but they're only academic.

I don't know why I wrote back. I wish you the best.

Yr friend,
Mme. River

[Glenn]

One bit left to explore, I'm afraid.

You say that I could have been your ally. And I just wonder, what you even need an ally for? You mentioned your mother working to marry off your daughter. Do you need an ally to counter that? That hardly seems likely. If the boy is going to come to some sort of unfortunate accident, you're qualified enough to set that up. If you want me to find you a baron instead, but then you don't. I assume you want her to marry for love and for her to have the choice instead unless you've learned absolutely nothing in your life, which while possible considering who I write to, is quite improbable.

That brings us to your loud declarations of tearing down Thessilane or Myrken. I might be a useful ally when it comes to that, but you've mentioned multiple times (or maybe just once loudly) that you've gotten old and soft so I don't actually think you want to do that. You wrote fondly of Myrken, the way only one who hasn't been there for a long while might write of it, and the truth of the matter is that it provided you with far more freedoms than you would have had otherwise. Plus you wouldn't want to hinder your family's businesses (a word I use quite broadly).

Ah, but perhaps I'm the one who needs an ally then. I've mentioned trade. I would still like to better this place even if the cost now seems too high. You burn too many bridges and there are only cliffs to jump off of. Something like that. If I needed an ally against Wynsee, someone to help murder Treadwell for everyone's sake, someone to watch my back as I try to take back being Governor.. well, I could do far worse than you.

But I don't intend to do any of those things any more than you intend to do anything but pretend to acquiesce to your mother's wishes just long enough to get her to stop nagging you or even worse, your daughter.

You don't need an ally. I don't need an ally.

But it's clearer than ever that I do need a friend. Maybe we could just not pretend for once, try not to force ourselves to hide it in purpose and glory? Maybe we could just be direct about it for once. We could try?

[channe]

Glenn,

How does a person not pretend?

You say: don't pretend. But I think I pretended myself here. I pretended with the knife and I pretended with Janeiro and I pretended with Aeryn and I pretended my way straight to the Tower and up this damn stupid hill. I think the scary thing about it all is knowing that perhaps all this time the pretending becomes real and then you forget who you were before. If you were anything before.

It's been about a month since we last wrote and I have been Busy. See I came down the hill and helped out at the teahouse. I did not get Recognized and it was very nice. I went to my Nephew's smithery and made hooks. It is nice to be out and about.

Do not kill Treadwell. I am morbidly curious to see how long he lives.

We can be friends.

- Agnie

P.S. if you still call your horse Aggie you can go to hell. Nice, like in a friendly way though.