Categories
Quill

Quill – Warmth, Frigidity

Collection – Love Letters
Scenario – A Cruel Distance
Character – Courtier
Skill – Illumination

To Monsieur Aubrey Cornais,
The Bookbindery, Saut-Leronne 

I have set pen to paper at the very first moment I have been left alone since you bade me farewell from the docks of your river city. It is a memory that shall remain with me all my days, an image indelible of the charred Peaks of Vandrias against the gray sky, the mercilessly freezing wind whipping at your coat as if to tear it from your shoulders. A morning too cold for tears, though my eyes stung with them just the same. 

Though hardly a week has passed since our parting, I miss you so very painfully. The month we spent together, stealing moments from under the watchful eyes of our masters, seems a lifetime glittering with shining memories, each moment a facet in a gem I hold more dear than life. Were you here with me now, I would madly hold you to me, with no care for what my lady might say.

In my mind’s eye I see you now, finishing your days’s work just as I take this moment from my duties. Are you thinking of me? Do your lovely, gentle fingers remember my skin as they plait the smooth pages of some tome? Do they recall the laces of my dress as you sew up the bindings?

You must come to me. I ardently want nothing else. Your island is all cold and dampness – here with me you will know only warmth. I would walk with you in the fields of bright flowers here in the sunny afternoons of Voet’s countryside. I long to watch you bloom as they do in the uninterrupted sun of my love.

My request must not rudely tick you off, my dear one. You must leave off your pride and know that it is here with me that you belong, that you shall flourish in delights. Your books do not love you as I do. Come to Voet, where you must continue to court me publicly until my lady is satisfied and allows me to be merrily wed. Do not delay in your response my love, and better yet, forget writing back and simply bring the news yourself.

Awaiting your presence with love,
Marie-Irénée Chastel
Damoiselle to the Lady Seraphine Ferrand

Result: Marie-Irénée receives a response to her letter, explaining that Aubrey could never be with her. Her true love tells her to never write again.

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