#letter to: tiriel

[spacebarbarianweird]

Lost and Found

Synopsis: Astarion dissapears, and Tiriel goes looking for him.

Tags: dadstarion, dhampirs, hurt/comfort

Alethaine's age: 6 years old

Thanks @themadlu for beta-reading!

Read on AO3

Masterlist

Headcanons This one is more Tiriel x Astarion centered but Alethaine has her role, too

Astarion can’t move - his regeneration doesn’t catch up with the damage he received. His ribs are broken and so are his hands. There is nothing left of his renowned vampiric strengths - he is helpless in front of those warriors.

Kill the vampire. Kill the vampire. Kill the vampire.

He feels  dawn is close. His body stirs, and a wave of panic floods his mind. The sun will kill him. The sun will burn him.

Astarion tries to stand up but a strong blow knocks him down.

The first rays of the sun cut him like blades.

The last coherent thought comes to his mind.

Tiriel was right. He should have listened to his wife.

**

Tiriel is worried sick.

Astarion left a month ago with those men from Tunland - promising it would take only a dozen days and she wouldn't be stuck home with their daughter all alone.

But it’s been four weeks and he still hasn’t returned.

Alethaine sits on the ceiling with a book. Her adorable little face looks so serious that Tiriel can’t resist smiling every time she glances at her daughter. 

Like every elven child Tiriel has seen, Alethaine looks a bit like a perfect doll - a bit smaller than human children, with soft silver hair, and pointy ears that twitch, reacting to sounds. The quarter of human ancestry doesn’t manifest at all in her. She could pass for a high elf if it wasn’t for her vampire fangs, skin too pale for a living girl, and the fact she barely breathes. Sometimes Tiriel can’t resist  waking Alethaine up just to make sure she hasn’t died in her sleep. Just motherly anxiety, besides, nothing could have prepared Tiriel to be the mother of a dhampir.

Well, what did she expect, taking a vampire as a husband - but she had no idea dhampirs were anything but a myth.

“Mum.”

“What is it, Kitten?”

“When will Dad come back?”

“I don’t know”, Tiriel says.

The six-year-old flips the page. Tiriel notices elven letters, Espruar. Meanwhile, she is barely capable of reading a page in Common without having a headache, Alethaine easily reads books in both of her mother tongues. 

She is smart, her daughter. Just like Astarion.

Who disappeared without a trace.

It’s not like him. Of course, dealing with pacts and contracts isn't a fast job. It often takes Astarion days just to understand what exactly happened between his client and whatever force they’ve decided to sign papers with (because no one wants to admit to their mistakes). 

But Astarion doesn’t like to be away for too long. Tiriel knows it too well. They have been together for twenty-six years but what is it in comparison with two centuries of slavery, considering his previous life is completely erased from his memories? Astarion still has nightmares, he is still haunted. He needs her as much as she needs him. 

He would have come back already - to her, to their daughter, to their home. 

Tiriel is sure something bad has happened.

Vampires are vulnerable to the sun. To silver. Astarion could have been killed and she would never know about it. 

Tiriel didn’t like Astarion’s last client at first sight—an obnoxious chieftain from the Tunland who was so similar to Tiriel’s abusive drunkard of a stepfather that she almost had a panic attack. He even spoke with the same shitty dialect native to Tiriel’s human relatives.

Tiriel even suggested finding someone in town to look after Alethaine in her absence. Hells she was going to let him go alone! But Astarion talked her out.

I love having you as my bodyguard, but let’s not leave Alethaine without both of her parents.

Tiriel feels a gentle touch of fingers on her hair.

“Mum.”

“Hm?”

“Your mum and dad were half-elves like you? Or one of them was an elf like me and Dad?”

Tiriel looks up. Well, sooner or later she would have asked. For some reason the absence of Astarion’s family doesn’t bother Alethaine (at least now), maybe because she understands the concept that “dad was killed and resurrected and it was so long ago it was all forgotten”—but the  fact that Tiriel doesn't have anyone except for her husband probably surprises her.

“My mother was a human and my father was an elf.”

“But where are they? Is grandma dead?”

Tiriel is quiet for a second. Grandma. Well, sure. Tiriel did have a mother. A woman who gave birth to her. And hated her so much didn’t even bother to give her a name. 

Tiriel does mental math. She has no idea how old her mother was when they last saw each other but considering some of Tiriel’s brothers had already had children,the old hag must be around ninety. If she is alive, which is dubious considering the living conditions in the Tunland and, especially, in the Sunset Mountains.

“And grandpa? If he is an elf, he is still somewhere!”

“Alethaine, I don’t know who my father was or is. I don’t know his name, I don’t know where he was from. And as for my mother… she wasn’t a good person.”

Alethaine winces her nose. 

“But she was your mum!”

“She was a woman who gave birth to me. But she was never my mum. Alethaine, sometimes it happens. Sometimes mothers don’t love their children. And sometimes fathers just disappear without a trace. There are plenty of adults who shouldn't become parents at all.”

Alethaine shakes her head. 

“What if Dad has disappeared too?”

“No,” Tiriel says firmly. “Your dad will come back.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am. Because he loves us.”

Alethaine squeezes her lips.

“Mum.”

Tiriel smiles. Once Aletaine starts asking, she doesn’t stop.

“Were you happy when I was born?”

“Of course! We were very happy to have you!”

Tiriel feels tears pricking her eyes. Of course, she can't know it but she is sure her own birth was met with curses and insults once her bitch of a mother and the midwife saw that the newborn had pointy ears. 

Elven bastard. Dirty blood. Pixie. 

Holding her own daughter in her arms for the first time, Tiriel couldn't understand how anyone could carry a child in their own body, experience childbirth, and still hate such an innocent human being.

“When I have a daughter, I will love her very-very much, just like you love me”

“Well, then she will be lucky to have both a mother and grandmother.”

Tiriel looks outside as if hoping to see a familiar figure approaching the house.

Nothing. 

There is only one thing Tiriel can do about it except for waiting.  

“Alethaine, I need to go away for a few days. You will live with the innkeeper's family.”

“You will go looking for dad?”

“Yes. And, please, don’t make me feel sorry I’ve left you with them.”

Alethaine nods. The innkeeper, his husband, and their five children are the only dwarves in Daggerlake - and almost the same “weirdos” as the Ancunins. Besides, the innkeeper is a retired adventurer and brews the best ale Tiriel has ever drunk. 

“And promise me you won’t crawl on the ceilings. Even if you are asked to.”

“But it’s fun!”

“Yes, but people usually don’t like it when the child they are asked to look after can run away from them to the ceiling.”

“Bu muum…”

“ALETHAINE.”

Tiriel rarely uses her “rage” voice on Alethaine but it always works. Anethaine flinches, her eyes wide open and the book drops to the floor.

“Alright! I won't crawl on the ceiling!”

“Good girl. Now, get dressed and take what you need”

Tiriel hopes it will take her less than a week to find Astarion.

She is even ready to provide an offering to some deity to ensure she won’t coming back home  a widow.

**

It’s hunger. Pain. Desperation.

Astarion wanders through narrow stone halls looking for prey. Nothing. There is nothing. This place is lifeless. 

He is still there, in the dungeons, isn’t he?

Still locked somewhere under his master’s mansion. Starved, beaten, tortured.

It was all a dream

The sun. The warmth of a mortal body. The kisses, the hugs. Home, wife, daughter. It was just a mind trick.

The memories fade so does his consciousness.

A red-haired woman. Freckles on her back. She is saying something to him. Who is she? He can't remember.

A little girl. Cold pale skin, no breathing, blood with a bitter scent of wormwood. Dhampir? Or just an unfortunate child turned into a spawn?

No, they are not real. He is going to hear HIS voice. Humiliating orders. Astarions waiting for it like a lash.

Boy, don’t slouch before me.

Astarion lies on the cold stone. His body is paralyzed. Vampires can spend decades like that - they can’t die of hunger, they just freeze in a neverending torture.

The woman. She keeps invading his thoughts. Who is she? The vision slips away.

You’ve brought cattle, boy.

Yes, the master is here. He is disappointed. He will flay Astarion’s skin and chain him to the wall. But what did astarion do? Did he run away? Did he fail to bring the food? Did he break one of the unwritten rules he couldn’t possibly remember?

The night vale, the stars in the skies, the mountains in the distance. A bunch of red-haired warriors. Kill the vampire. Kill the vampire.

Sun is burning Astarion’s skin.

Did they just return him to his master?

Astarion doesn’t move. Soon there is no name, no reason. Just an empty starving shell.

BLOOD.

Astarion’s body stirs up. Someone alive is close, close enough for his vampiric senses to catch them.

HEART BEATING.

So loud he hears it from a distance.

He jumps on his feet and walks toward his prey.

A woman. Probably, a half-elf. He catches her mixed scent. She is armored with a two-handed ax.

And she is alone.

“Who is there?” she asks, ready to thrust her skull-crushing weapon. Too bad the prey has  dark vision. It gives her some advantages. But she will be dead soon anyway, once she satiates his starving body. 

He bares his fangs and almost physically senses her fear. The blood of a scared creature is the sweetest.

“Astarion?” her voice trembles. She takes a step back.

And drops her weapon.

He rushes toward her and knocks her to the ground. She doesn’t resist for some reason but the vampire doesn’t pay attention to that.

Astarion pierces her neck. Blood streams down his throat. 

So sweet, so delicious. He can’t stop - he won’t stop. Every drop of this woman’s body is going to be his, he is going to satiate himself and then he will go hunting for someone else…

His body slowly gets warmer and his sanity slowly returns.

Astarion. My name is Astarion.

He doesn’t have a master.

He can… feed… on mortals…

Freedom. Sunlight.

Tiriel.

He pulls away and the woman falls on the stone floor, unable to move and barely breathing.

“Oh no…” he mutters observing what he has done. “Tiriel…”

Astarion crawls back to his beloved. Her eyelids are half open, and her skin is almost as pale as his.

“Tiriel!” he slaps her cheek. “Tirel! Stay awake! Look at me, look at me! Oh gods!”

He presses her weak body to his chest, cradling her in his arms. His darling Tiriel, his wife, his thiramin… 

“M-my bag… There is… a… potion” she whispers.

Astarion opens it and finds a small bottle. He unclenches Tiriel’s jaw with his strong hands and pours the liquid into her mouth.

The color returns to her cheeks and her heart stops beating so fast. Her eyes are still full of fear and it hurts Astarion even more.

“Tiriel… I…” Astarion mutters but he can’t say anything else.

What is he going to say, after all?

“Astarion, what the hells happened to you?” she finally says. “You looked like a fucking ghoul! Well you still do… a bit”

Astarion gulps. His throat hurts. He needs more. He is too weak, too exhausted. Astarion looks at his hands to avoid Tirilel’s eyes and horror pierces him once again.

His hands are all covered in burns. Nail plates are broken, and the skin hangs in shreds. 

“Hey! Astarion, look at me!” Tiriel finally makes herself sit up and grabs his mutilated hands. “Hush, I am here, I am here!”

She hugs him and he feels how weak she is. His body trembles, the panic crushes his mind with boiling hot waters, tears stream down his face and his mouth is open in a silent scream.

“Hush, my love, it’s going to be alright. We are going home. Alethaine misses you”

Alethaine. His daughter.

He is safe. His master is dead. He has it all.

And he’s almost lost it.

Tiriel cups his face. “Astarion, I shouldn’t have let you go. I knew something was wrong. Did they try to kill you?”

“I don't remember.”

“Where are your things? Daggers? The armor?”

Astarion looks down - his feet are bare, the trousers and the shirt are all in rags. He does look like he just emerged from a tomb.

“Damn. Well, let’s hope no one will attack us on the way back. Come on, let’s go outside and get you more blood. And then we are going home and the fuck I am letting you go alone next time!”

**

Tiriel lies on the bedroll. She’s set up the tent in the cave—close enough to the surface but with access to the underground tunnels.

She didn’t manage to understand what exactly happened to Astarion and why he was that feral when she found him. But the burns on his skin betrayed the only reason—the sun.

It seems like whoever did this managed to overcome Astarion in a fight and then let him burn in the sun. Astarion managed to get into the tunnels but lost his way. And since the tunnels were completely empty the hunger didn’t let him heal.

She knew they couldn't trust those bastards from Tunland! She has a good intuition after all. Next time Astarion had better listen to his wife!

Her whole body hurts, especially her neck. Astarion rarely feeds on Tiriel—her blood is more like a medicine to him rather than food but when he does he is always gentle, making sure the process doesn’t hurt her. But this—this was a full-fledged assault. He ripped her throat with his fangs and she is alive only thanks to the fact he returned to his senses before it was too late.

She hears light footsteps.

Astarion is back. His hands are healed and he looks like himself, not the starved monster she encountered in the tunnels.

She elbows up, but Astarion pulls away in embarrassment.

“Astarion, come here,” Tiriel asks. “I’ve spent a month in an empty bed. Don’t deprive me of your presence,” she takes his hand in hers.

Together they sit on the bedroll and Tiriel hugs him nuzzling the crook of his neck.

“I am sorry,” he says.

“Don’t.”

“I’ve almost killed you.”

“But you didn't. Astarion, please, you’ve lost yourself because of hunger. I won’t deny I was scared,but it doesn’t mean it has to change anything about us.”

“I almost killed you,” he repeats. “I would have stepped in the sun if I had done it.”

“Hm, and left our daughter an orphan? I don’t think there are many people ready to raise a dhampir.”

“Where is she?”

“I left with the innkeeper’s family. Good thing I went out looking for you. Who knows where the darkness would have taken you.”

He nods and presses his legs to his chest. Tiriel hugs him from behind. When they just started being together she did it daily—a ritual to console him. But it’s been a while since he needed it.

She kisses the nape of his neck. Then she kisses his cheek. Caress his ears. Plays with his curls.

“I love you,” she whispers. “You are the best thing that happened to me.”

Astarion weeps and Tiriel tugs him closer.

“You need to meditate, love” She kisses his forehead. “Think about something good. Remember how we left Baldur’s Gate twenty-six years ago? We hit the road at sunset and just walked hand in hand. Or when we were stuck in some shitty northern town for the whole winter? I couldn’t make myself leave the room and one night you came back with a pair of rings. You just put one on my finger and kept staring at me as if you saw me for the first time.”

“I prepared the whole wedding speech but forgot it all,” Astarion says, not even trying to get into reverie.

“Or remember how we were both freaking out because of the pregnancy? One day you just knelt in front of me, placed your hand on my belly and burst into tears because your vampire hearing allowed you to hear Alethaine’s heartbeat.”

“We need to go home, Astarion, and you need to rest. Then we can talk about anything that bothers you.”

**

Alethaine flips the page of the book. Thanks to dark vision she can read in complete darkness. The story catches her mind—it is a story of old times when elves ruled Faerun. Thousands and thousands of years before the Age of Humanity, her ancestors walked those lands, building the towers and castles and practicing the ways of long-forgotten magic.

But the intrusive thoughts keep getting into her young mind. First, Dad disappeared without a trace and Mum was so worried she could barely do anything. Then, Mum left town and Alethaine was all alone. Sure, the dwarven family is friendly and they don’t mind taking care of one more child (it’s not a big deal if there are five or six of them), but with every passing day Alethaine was getting more anxious.

What if both of her parents had died? What if she was already an orphan? 

Two months passed like this. And then, she was woken up by familiar voices, and her tiny world was restored.

The dhampir puts the book away and takes her plushie. It’s nice to sleep in her own bed for once, but she feels so lonely it cripples her.

Alethaine walks to her parents’ room. Mum and Dad lie in each other’s arms. They discuss something she can’t understand.

“I think we have a visitor,” Astarion chuckles. “What is it, princess?”

“Can I sleep with you?” Alethaine asks, pressing the plushie to her chest.

“Sure, come here!” Astarion opens the blanket up inviting Alethaine in. The dhampir immediately nestles between her parents.

Tiriel hugs her and kisses the crown of her head and Astarion adjusts a bit so he can see both of his girls.

Alethaine relaxes. Her mother’s heartbeat is so loud it’s basically the only thing she can hear. Dad doesn’t breathe and his heart doesn’t beat, but she finds special comfort when he holds her—there is something more natural about his cold hands than her mother’s warmth.

“Did something scare you, princess?” Astarion asks, intertwining his fingers in Alethain’s long soft hair.

Alethaine feels a wave of sadness and fear rising up in her body. Before she manages to say anything coherent she bursts in tears causing both of her parents to immediately rush to comfort her.

“Were you afraid we were absent for so long?” Tiriel asks, placing Alethaine in her lap. Her motherly kisses are so tender the dhampir cries louder and more desperate.

Astarion sits up and wraps his hands around them both.

“I am sorry, princess. We aren’t going to leave you anymore, we promise.”

Alethaine sniffs, pressing her nose into Tiriel’s chest. 

And then she hears a quiet lullaby.

Astarion hums it in Elven. Alethaine can’t decipher words but the song soothes her as Tiriel sways her a bit in her arms as if the dhampir was still a baby. 

Both her mother’s warmth and her father’s undead coldness weave a perfect sense of comfort for her. 

Of course, they were going to come back. They are her parents. They can’t disappear, they can’t die.

As Alethaine drifts into sleep, she notices the way her parents look at each other. 

This image is being engraved in her mind and Alethaine will remember this even years later.

Even centuries later Alethaine Ancunin will remember the way her mother smiled to her father and the way Astarion held Tiriel’s hand. The way they talked to each other, the way they saw the world in their lover’s eyes.

Three centuries later, when Alethaine takes her own daughter in her pale hands, this image will flee into the dhampir’s mind, and she will weep, mourning her long-dead mother.

--

Tag list

@tugoslovenka @marcynomercy @wintersire @vixstarria @not-so-lost-after-all @ashiro20 @theearthsfinalconfession @herstxrgirl @starlight-ipomoea @micropoe10 @astarion-imagine-archive @veillsar @elora-the-slutty-songstress @fayeriess @lumienyx @tallymonster @caitlincat-95 @tragedybunny @valeprati @lynnlovesthestars @marina-and-the-memes @waking-electric @ayselluna @connorsui @asterordinary @darkarchangel96 @locallegume @brainfullofhotsauce @coffeeanddonutscafe @my-queen-rhaenyra-targaryen @queenofthespacesquids

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Tiriel,

Tyko keeps you updated on my letters, I think, reading between the lines, so I'm sure you know at least some of what I've been up to lately (this time, it's been helping a former spy escape the former employers who weren't likely to accept her retirement, which meant wandering through a jungle full of cliffs and chasms, warding off her former co-workers, and doing our best to lay down a false trail, but you'll be glad to know that she's safe as she can be now and in good hands). However, even though I was just visiting you not even a month ago, I feel like I've hardly had time to catch up with you. I heard about Kari and Thari's latest accomplishments and setbacks, and what Alion and Tyko are up to at work, but I hardly heard anything at all about yours!

So: how is life at the tailor shop lately? I know you like to try something new every decade or two, and you've been there a while. Are you thinking of moving on, or moving into a different field? Have you been working on anything exciting or interesting? I feel like the last time I knew anything about what you were up to (besides your amazing and sneaky collaboration with Tyko and Niko and Fariya about the fabric for my gloves) was when Pika was ordering a party dress from you, though I do think I remember you mentioning a wedding dress too. More clothing construction than alterations these days, then? And more fancy clothes than before, perhaps? Maybe Pika started a trend! If you start getting customers from Mashoy, I suppose you know where they came from.

And is there anything else going on? I think you and Alion said you were thinking of remodeling the kitchen a little, to make things easier for people like Kari and Thari and me who might have trouble reaching your top shelves, which I'm retroactively very grateful for—the stools and such were always appreciated, but some steps and some things moved lower is an even better idea. Have you been reading anything good, or watching anything? I'm sure Alion has developed an entirely genuine interest in dwarvish thrillers or something similar, but I wish I'd thought to record you some of the movie broadcasts I saw on Kirim, I think you'd have enjoyed the romances.

Made yourself anything beautiful with the silk from Rotharl, yet? Or is it the kind of bolt that has to sit around for a while and wait for just the right fabric? You'll have to send me pictures when you decide, and then make Tyko babysit and take Alion out for a night on the town! You deserve one.

Love,

Elyn

[storiesnwitches]

Tiriel - Senses

CHARACTER AESTHETIC — BOLD WHAT APPLIES & REPOST

SOUNDS.

tinkling of piano keys / the click of a lock. / an engine starting, stalling / sinful whispers / stiffled sobbing / the rattle of death / alarm blaring / a siren call / spanish guitar strumming / loud laughter at mightnight / banshee screeching / drunk hiccuping / the giggle of a child / rolling thunder / disdainful chuckling / bones creaking / carefree whistling / singing off key / flesh hitting concrete / white noise / a mirror cracking / laboured breathing / a groan of pain / waves lapping at the shore / the roar of a lion / pages turning / swords clashing / deep humming / birds chirping / dial tone / tongue popping / fingers tapping a surface / crystals breaking / music turned up to the limit / raindrops on a roof / angry yelling / yawning at noon / horns going off / ravens talking / bubblegum bursting / splashing water / teakettle squeal / militia drums / wolves howling / slow, sarcastic clapping / soprano notes / whispering pleas / gregorian chants / mournful cries

VISUALS.

filled notebooks / dogeared books / clean shaves / empty stares / sleeping at a desk / the witching hour / driving all night / restless tides / broken windows / coffee any time / freshly baked goods / bonfires / lounging felines / circles under your eyes / bedhead / tangling in the sheets / leather jackets / paint stains / music sheets / too many tabs to find the music / weary brows / card games / messy ponytails / strained smiles / unsent texts / heart on your sleeve / slow dancing in the rain / star gazing / torn jeans / piles of clothes / filled bookshelves / hurricanes / chapped lips / cliff diving / the lights in venice / stolen kisses / poet shirts / half melted candles / empty coffee mugs / hot tea / unlaced boots / shameless flirting / too young to be so old / laced fingers / eyes in the trees / bloody knuckles / french letters / neon lights / ivy covered balconies

SCENTS.

burnt leaves / turkish coffee / spiced rum / moss / vanilla beans / freshly cut grass / decay / sea salt / strawberries and cream / cinnamon / honey / copper / pineapple / wet dog / pine needles / wood shavings / rainsoaked bark / something sharp, indefinable / russian tea / dandillions / squeezed limes / italian wine / freshly laundered clothes / coming rain / hardtack and gruel / roasting flesh / something cloying in the chest / ichor / lillies in spring / pollen / damp clothes / meatpies / greasy coins / curdled milk / leather / bone marrow / wet cement / ricecakes / open paint cans / cocoa leaves / tar / apples / sandlewood cologne / orchids / molded onions / cheap perfume / mistletoe / rubber on fire / grave dirt / old books / new books / melting plastic / roses / poison oak / sea cucumbers / peppermint hand cream

[spacebarbarianweird]

OC Questionaire

I saw this post by @astariongf and decided to do the same!

tagging: @lumienyx @vixstarria @marcynomercy and @tragedybunny (and whoever else is interested)

NAME: TIriel

NICKNAME: None

GENDER: Female

STAR SIGN: Has no idea, since no one bothered to tell her the date of her birth

HEIGHT: 5.7

ORIENTATION: Heterosexual (but @vixstarria mentioned she is actually "Astarionsexual" since he is the only person she ever had sex with)

NATIONALITY/ETHNICITY: Half-Elf. Father was a High Elf of unknown name (just a one-night-stand), mother belonged to one of the many human clans living in the north of Western Heartlands

FAVORITE FRUIT: Flambraes

FAVORITE SEASON: Winter

FAVORITE FLOWER: Brimstone Snapdragon

FAVORITE SCENT: Wood burning

COFFEE, TEA, OR HOT CHOCOLATE: Herbal tea (tasted the real tea very late in life and got addicted to it)

AVERAGE HOURS OF SLEEP: 10. She is a heavy sleeper, rage takes a lot of energy

DOGS OR CATS: Dragons

DREAM TRIP: She dreams of seeing The Spine of the World, a mountain chain in the north of Faerun

NUMBER OF BLANKETS: two or even three, you can't be too warm in the wilderness (and she sleeps naked under fur blankets)

RANDOM FACT: She is illiterate and, probably, dyslexic since she calims "letters jump on the paper". Astarion tries to teach her but she makes puppy-eyes and tricks him to read to her by praising his voice. By the time he finishes, they are both too tired or have other things to do.

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Tiriel,

I know Tyko must have passed on my thanks for your involvement in the beautiful cloth I was given for my gloves, but I want to thank you in person as well. We've been staying on Gletta-86 for nearly three weeks while I worked on the newest iteration of my gloves, and now that they're nearly done I can tear myself away from them long enough to write you a letter when I'm not in the middle of some dangerous or otherwise stressful situation.

Tyko told me that Thari had a solo at a school concert. How did it go? Give her my best, please. I'd offer to give her lessons next time I'm on-planet, but I do most of what I do by accident, so if she wants to go further with her music, Serime might be a better bet.

Having three weeks of something like peace has been a blessing, after an exciting week or two hunting down some smugglers on this station. (I never know how much Tyko tells you—probably more than I wish he would and less than you wish he would, knowing him—so I'm sorry if I'm repeating something he's told you.) As I said, I've mostly been working on my gloves. It's been a lot of delicate work, stitching them together with conductive areas lined up, getting the waterproofing from Aluarashi off the old pair and onto the new (I only knew it was waterproofing, but tests while I was building also prove that it can help me handle cold and hot temperatures too), and getting connections made between them and the rest of my system.

They're not quite done yet, but they're a lot more efficient than my old pair, I can already tell, and the massive amounts of power I can move through them means they're holding spell residue when I've tried casting spells with them, which is interesting—I think I could probably cast a spell an extra time in a day, depending on its power, just from the arcane residue the gloves cling to, which is amazing. You and Fariya and Niko between you (and of course Tyko) made an absolute wonder for me, and I can't tell you how grateful I am.

I haven't done much else, aside from buy some spell components and spend a lot of evenings playing darts, or watching Maliah do so. She is extremely shy, and doesn't know much at all about flirting, but a ship's captain had been flirting with her enough over darts that she finally figured it out, and miracle of miracles, managed to talk herself into accepting a date. Which, well, I won't furnish details, not that she gave me very many, but it seems to have gone very well, and now the captain and her ship are off on a run, which I think Maliah is a bit relieved by. She probably needs some space to think about things—what she wants, how she feels, all that kind of thing. I'm trying my best to advise her, but she grew up with really only her mothers for company. It's not as easy as saying “Good luck and call me if you'll be out all night,” or anything else like that.

No idea if she and Captain Lerwun intend to see each other again, and I suspect she's got no idea either, but she's been pretty pleased with herself these past few days since the ship took off, so I think she's at least feeling good about the situation as a whole.

She's also been busy going out onto the station every day, where she's apparently rented gym space and decided to work some on hand to hand combat (she started learning some self-defense on Rugira Prime, and hasn't had much chance to continue) and to work on hitting smaller targets with her bow and arrows. On top of that, I was very baffled when she asked me about the location of a jewelry store and proceeded to wander off and return with some very nice bracelets and two potted plants. When she left with those, I asked her where she was going and she only said “Praying,” so my theories of anything to do with Marsa Lerwun were ruined, but I'm still not certain exactly what was happening there.

It might have something to do with the fact that she's been worried, ever since we dealt with the smugglers on this station. One of them has a connection to the Feywild, and when we talked to him, he made her worry that something might be wrong there. Her mothers sent a reassuring letter, but the prayers might well have something to do with that. She also asked me if I can set up a search alert on news items about the Feywild, and specifically the Queen of Air and Darkness, and between me and PA, a personal assistant bot I've adopted, we got something set up that should be able to filter that, and hopefully that will reassure her as well.

There's also Cloudleaper keeping herself busy here. I don't think I've told you much about her yet, since she joined us as we were leaving Rugira Prime, but I've found her hard to get to know and I think during these weeks I'm finally starting to do it. She's got a lot more enthusiasm than I know how to do with most times, but she's smart and she's thoughtful when she takes a moment to be, and she's just as pleased for Maliah as I am that she's been having these dates (she might have embarrassed Maliah some in her enthusiasm, but it was kindly meant, anyway). She's also been disappearing during the days while I've been applying myself to my gloves, and when I asked where she was she just said “training,” so who knows what kind of tricks she's going to have under her sleeve in the end.

I don't know where we're going next—we're at loose ends, I suppose. Maliah thought for a while we might have to go to the Feywild to help her mothers, but they've told her they're fine. We're likely going to have to go there at some point, due to some issues surrounding Squirt, but frankly I'd like to wait until I have a few more spells under my belt, and Maliah's lack of urgency suggests that she agrees. I don't have any new pieces of my puzzle to go hunting down after the wealth of them I got on Rugira Prime, and don't know where to go hunting more answers. And if Cloudleaper has somewhere she wants to go, some quest in mind, she hasn't shared it with me yet. So I suppose we'll be looking out to see if there are any jobs that need doing, in this sector of space, or elsewhere, unless something exciting comes our way.

I'd been a little worn thin after Rugira Prime. We went back to Nosirion-1, and had good times there, but also a few stressful ones, and then we jumped into the job with the smugglers right after that, and the end of that was certainly stressful. Three weeks of peace and working on a tech project and encouraging Maliah's attempts at romance has been exactly what I needed, and I'm hoping that I feel refreshed moving forward.

Give my best to Alion, and to Kari and Thari, and to Tyko as well, since I've been so busy working on my gloves that I've been lax updating him about them. I'm not sure of the next time I'll be back on Sestrilles, but I'll let you know the next time our route seems to be taking us in that direction.

Love,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Tiriel,

Have you received your present yet? I'm hoping it didn't get lost in the mail! I know it's not time for your decade celebration yet, but when you find the right gift, I think you're honor bound to send it.

Maliah and I settled our business in Rugira Prime, and left Pika there—I'm sure Tyko told you, if nothing else, that she's married a pair of fine people in Mashoy and they've set up a household together to care for her son. She sent her friend Cloudleaper along with us, and the three of us escorted Loraine and the children back to Nosirion-1, where we've been staying for a week while our friends Kian and Athan collect some information for us about a job Brathin mentioned to me.

Cloudleaper is settling well enough into the team, even if she's more than a little confusing at times (she's an elf who refuses to speak Elvish, and doesn't really encourage questions about her past, so that may be all I know about that for quite some time). She's settling in well enough, in fact, that we're formalizing our partnership with a team name for the first time—Electro-Magnetic Chaos, since it takes all our initials and can easily be shortened to The EMC for brevity's sake.

A large part of the reason I'm writing to you is because of our friend Niko here on Nosirion-1! I think I told you about her—she crashed through to the planet from another plane, and is adjusting to life on this one, and she's a paladin of Reorx whose craft is weaving. Maliah had the idea of sending her a loom from Mashoy, and she's set it up and has started some beautiful weaving. Some with plant fibers as part of experiments with Alorven, the local druid, and some with other materials, some commissioned and some not. I've enclosed a picture of a scarf she wove me (she wove them for Maliah and Pika as well, as thanks for the loom), as close up as I could get to show you the weave.

Anyway, if the shop ever needs any particularly fine work and doesn't mind getting something shipped from far away, please feel free to ask for her direction! I don't think she'll have much trouble establishing herself, but I always like connecting the people I care for.

I'll let you know the next time our travels take us by Sestrilles, so I can stop in to see you. It might be difficult persuading Cloudleaper, with her story, whatever it is, but hopefully she'll at least be willing to stay on a ship for a few days while I visit family!

Love,

Elyn

[attached: a picture of a Gnome-sized scarf, finely woven and patterned in vivid shades of pink and orange]

[letterstosestrilles]

[at the top of a package, slightly dinged by space travel, that contains a beautifully painted fan and five yards of finely woven fabric in a shade of deeply saturated marigold yellow]

Dear Tiriel,

I know it's not quite time for your decade-celebration, but when you're on a planet that provides, you seize the opportunity! Rugira Prime is a little hot for your taste, but some of the fabric here is more finely woven than I've ever seen—this is an example that's hopefully useful without needing to be layered a million times. Please use it for yourself, and not a client! You and Alion deserve a few nights on the town.

I'm leaving Rugira Prime soon, and I'm not sure where I'm going next, but I'll let you and Alion know where I'm going, or Tyko will.

Love,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Tiriel,

I'm on Rotharl right now—I wrote to Alion on my first day here, and a lot has happened since. I'm going to beg your patience and ask you and Alion to ask Tyko about what's been happening since I've been here, if you haven't already. Hopefully he'll be circumspect (no danger to me, just other people's secrets) but tell you enough to know what's going on. I've been infected with enough paranoia that the fewer times I write it all out to send, the happier I am, so that's the best I can do until the next time I can make it back for a visit.

I do hope that might be soon. We're due another visit to Mir in the not-too-distant future, but we've got some stops we want to make before then: Nellaser's Landing again to restock our healing potions, Nosirion-1 to see the children, and hopefully Sestrilles to see all of you! Especially since I've got a present for you in particular, which I took as part payment for a job Maliah and I took in a village called Deluta that had a nasty griffon nest nearby.

We just came back from that job this morning, in fact! It was a nice ride on the transport for the first part of it, until of course we were in the deepest part of the woods and the bus broke down. I went out to help the driver and another passenger or two with fixing the engine up, since the mechanics weren't that different from what I've been used to and it's been a while since I did much tinkering except with my PA bot's transport. I should find another project soon, really, make sure my gloves are fully tuned up or add some more bells and whistles to PA or something, it was nice just getting to deal with some wires and belts.

When we'd just finished up, though, Maliah, who'd been stretching her legs and keeping watch in case the last few straggling griffons had followed us so far, walked off, having seen something, and the next thing I knew, she was talking to what appeared to be a mound of grass and muck and vines heading our way—think of your compost pile, only somehow less appealing. And of course it wasn't a friendly muck pile. Why would it be, with our luck? Maliah, who'd cast Speak With Plants, said that it wanted to eat us, and it certainly seemed intent on getting past us and to the passengers of the bus.

Maliah kept an eye on it while I protected the civilians outside the transport as well as I could until they were inside with the door shut, and then she and Squirt and I took care of it. I wasn't at my most effective, I admit. I got it a bit with a few Shatters, but it's hard to aim, and my one attempt at Vicious Mockery, while I was recovering my breath from being swallowed by it (unpleasant and smelly to boot and I found a worm on myself after, which doesn't bear thinking about), had no effect at all. Possibly because I was yelling about your compost pile at a plant that I'm pretty sure didn't have ears. I got too cocky after yelling at griffons seemed to actually work.

Squirt ended up taking it to pieces, throwing bits of it everywhere in the process, but at least it was done for and no civilians hurt. I was actually the only one who got hurt by it at all, which is both annoying (I really do try my best to stay safe in fights these days, but I was between it and the transport full of easier victims, so I was the first person it went after) and a relief, since a healing potion and a Cure Wounds had me back in pretty good shape.

I was disgusting, though, and I still haven't learned Prestidigitation (I really should spend a week and beg Alion for help one of these months), and I felt really awful about getting back on the transport full of alarmed people who had just seen us get into a pitched battle with, I cannot emphasize this enough, a sentient piece of forest floor, smelling as awful as I did. They were nice about it, and a few of them were the prepared kinds of travelers who had wet wipes on them, so we cleaned up at least a little bit, and as soon as they let us off here in the city I came back here to our hotel, where we'd kept our rooms reserved on our trip out of the city, and got clean. Sometimes, the most exhausting part of adventuring is being dirty so often.

(I mean, that's the better times, you know enough to know that. I'd rather complain about dirt than about almost dying any day.)

We don't have anything pressing at our attention this afternoon, so I'm planning to go out to either find some buskers to join or find a corner of my own to busk. There's a pretty brisk tourist trade in parts of the city, around the temple, so I might get a bit of a crowd, and it's been a while since I had a performance. More performance and more fiddling with tech, that's what I need. We had our vacation on the beach, and that was restorative, but I think music and technology will do me just as much good.

I'll let you and Alion know, by note or by Sending, if and when I plan to stop by, and if it won't be soon, I'll send you that present by mail. My love to both of you, and to Thari and Kari, who I hear are finished with their recent work experience rotation and looking forward to the break. Have you met Tyko's Lindanas yet? He refuses to tell me much about him, probably as vengeance for worrying him, so I have to rely on you for information.

All my love,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Brennu,

It will be a bit before I can send this one, and believe me, I’m going to be very relieved when Kirim is connected to wider communications networks, which is apparently due to happen in the next year or so, so it will be much easier to keep up with family here then, and to keep up with everyone at home when I’m here.

This time, at least, I have many of the people I care about with me—my Sestrilles family are all here for nearly a full month, and Maliah and Niko have promised to stay as long as I need them.

I’ve needed them, because even great joy is hard sometimes.

The first thing I had to do when I got here, aside from settle into the house set aside for us here in the city of Sunwest, was collect my Kirimi family around me: my grandmother Am’elyn, my aunt Khama’air, my cousin Tidge. I told them enough of what my latest and biggest quest was to explain why gods would feel they owed me a boon, and then I told them what that boon was. There were tears, and a lot more explanations, and we all took a few days to prepare, to talk about all of it some more, and in my and Am’elyn’s cases, to stop by the temple to the Lady of the Stars to give her fervent thanks.

Mishakal gave me the power to cast the spell three times without cost, and I thought that I could probably do them all at once, but that it was likely to drain me of nearly all my energy and bring my parents back to life with the very poor welcome of their daughter fainting on the floor.

So instead I wasted a whole day debating with myself what order to bring them back in, when I was so desperate to have all of them close enough to hold at the last moment that I couldn’t for the life of me decide. In the end, with a bit of cowardice, I decided to go not on my own desires but on the other family members left to my parents: to give Am’elyn back her son, Khama’air her sibling, Tidge his cousin.

That meant that, when I finally gathered everyone together (nearly a week ago now—as you might guess, I’ve been busy), I prayed to Mishakal and to the Lady of Stars and drew on my magic and called back my father Kadan. I’ve cast Raise Dead a few times, and Resurrection, watched a dead body stir back into life, but there was something strange and almost unbelievable in casting a huge magic and then there being a person where there wasn’t before, from nothing at all to someone who hasn’t been alive in half a century standing there in front of me, taking me in his arms, both of us staggering a little until we ended up on the floor.

I talked without realizing I was talking, trying to tell him everything at once, until he quieted me a little to say the more important things, and then I could pull myself together well enough to introduce him to my family, and my family to him. They all greeted him warmly, asked him questions but not too many, until both of us started to nod off, at which point my brother carried me off to bed over my somewhat muzzy objections.

The next day I brought back Hanai, who stepped forward to press our foreheads together almost immediately. They’re the one who gave me my earring before they put me in an escape pod and saved me, and they commented on it, with an apology for leaving me alone, and what could I say but that I wasn’t, with that close—and with the rest of my family as well? And then they could be introduced around as well, and to hold on tight to Kadan, to meet Alion and have a few pleasant minutes of scientific conversation. I was hardly out of range of touch of either of them for the rest of the day.

And the next day, with the last of my reserves of magic from Mishakal, with one more prayer, I brought back Ezenki, my other father, who paused just long enough to be startled at the very impressive match of our hair colors before hugging me, holding on tight until I beckoned and Kadan and Hanai could join us, all four of us together again for the first time since the day the Procyon wrecked.

Since then, it’s been days upon days of talking, in every possible combination. None of us wants to let the others out of our sight, so we’ve mostly set up camp in the house’s living room, only peeling off one or two at a time to take a break and cry or take a walk or simply nap alone.

The rest of my family seems to know exactly when to stay close and when to find things to do elsewhere. Maliah has been wandering the trails outside of Sunwest, sometimes taking Tidge or Niko along, and Niko has been exploring some textiles and working on learning a bit of gnomish. Alion and Tiriel, my Sestrilles parents, have after some brief awkwardness seemed to decide to adopt my Kirimi parents as honorary siblings, and my Kirimi parents have decided that since I consider Tyko a brother, he’s another son to them. I’ve already found Alion and Hanai talking about data storage, Tiriel getting a recipe from Ezenki, Kadan asking Tyko about his plans for buying the shop he runs.

It hasn’t all been easy. I never expected that it would be. Ezenki and Tidge have been working through a lot of awkwardness and grief, since a lot of their branch of the family was on the Procyon, Tidge’s parents included, and I couldn’t bring back everyone. Hanai and Khama’air have had at least one hissed argument they thought I couldn’t hear. Am’elyn can hardly seem to look at Kadan without crumbling into tears. I keep waking up at night wondering if I’ve made it all up, if I died after all in Onver’s lair and this is all just something I’m imagining.

We’ll be here a while, as we work through it. A few months, I’d say, though I hope you’ll get this letter before that, and more letters too. When my Sestrilles family goes home, maybe they’ll do a relay, or if Gaizka finds a diplomatic excuse to come as they threatened when they found out what I was doing, they should be able to set something up, or take a relay likewise.

And then I’ll come back, and start learning what I want my life to look like now. There are a few fixed points: the quest for Jhasdej, my own and Maliah’s, which I want to help her with. Giving some concerts, now that I’ve promised you, Maliah, and Tyko that I’ll do some. Devon’s college tour. You.

Other things are a mystery, but I can almost see the shape of them. I’ll find a somewhat permanent residence, and my parents want to live near me, to make up for some lost time, so I’ll have them close. I’ll find something useful to do, more about building than searching or destroying. I’ll have the people I love around me. And, I hope, very soon the joy will feel more real.

I think it will. One of my fathers just called for me, and it didn’t cause a moment of disbelief. It’s a good beginning, isn’t it?

Love,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Brennu,

I’m due to meet back up with Maliah and Niko in just a day or two, and I know I’ve been too busy to write much, so I thought I’d give you more detail on what I’ve been up to since I left Mashoy and my companions. That’s its own kind of oddness, it’s the second longest I’ve been apart from Maliah since we started traveling together, but I’ve heard from her about as much as from you, so at least I know she had a lovely visit with Marsa and is now running all over the Feywild with her mothers and is bitterly disappointed that she didn’t get a chance to visit with the displacer beast kitten she cared for while we were there.

(I don’t think you got the whole of that story, I’ll have to remember to tell it sometime.)

Meanwhile, I went to Kirim, as you know, since you only got a Sending from me while I was there. I spent some time seeing the sights, a new neighborhood or two of Sunwest whenever I visit, since it was the city my parents were from and I want to know it well. This time I found a wonderful cafe that has live performances and got to listen to some local performers over tea and pastries.

I know I told you about the home that was, amazingly, gifted to us on Nellaser’s Landing, but I can’t remember if I told you that there’s going to be a counterpart on Kirim as well, in a lovely corner of Sunwest, in a neighborhood not too far from my grandmother’s, I think. They’re still working on finding a precise place that will meet our needs (and I imagine there will have to be at least a bit of renovation so we can have tall guests, they asked me for some height estimates for doorways and things and I did request at least one guest bedroom sized for taller people), but they think by my next visit, whenever that is, I should at least have a place to stop in, even if the renovations aren’t totally done.

The rest of my visit was taken up by family, and more exactly, by telling my family what I experienced through the Lady of Stars and her kindness: the visit with my parents that I told you about when I was there. None of the three of them—my grandmother, my aunt, and my cousin, each belonging to a different parent—seemed to know what to do with themselves, hearing about it, and in each conversation every one of us ended up weeping, but I think they were grateful, too, to hear about it, and I was grateful to say it. My cousin Tidge didn’t seem sure how to deal with the sheer concept of it, but was glad to hear that I’ve come to some answers about Resurrection, and glad to share more memories of my father Ezenki. My aunt Khama’air, my parent Hanai’s sister, kept her thoughts more to herself, but hugged me for a long time. My grandmother asked me to go to the temple with her, to give the Lady of Stars thanks herself at my side, which I think helped to steady us both, perhaps all the more so because nothing divine happened at all, at least that I noticed.

When I’d done that and then had my time and my explorations, I came back to the Prime Material Plane and to Sestrilles, where I’ve been with my family nearly every waking moment. My brother Tyko likes to reassure himself that I’m safe and to yell at me to make up for the fact that he can’t protect me, so a lot of time was devoted to that, though I also had a nice dinner with him and his boyfriend, followed by drinks with the members of a book club they’re both in, all of whom were full of questions, more about Tyko, childhood stories and the like, than about me.

(Which, to be clear, I am beyond grateful about. The gods know I end up talking about myself plenty.)

I’ve also seen my Sestrilles parents a lot. My mother Tiriel is delighted I have a home to decorate, and after inquiring about my taste, Maliah’s, and Niko’s, as well as getting approximate dimensions of the windows of the apartment from me, she whipped together a vast array of curtains that we could change out every season and still not use all of in a year, just from sheer delight at me asking for her help. My other parent, Alion, is always a bit quiet, but they had a few family photographs printed and framed for me, so I know they’re happy as well. Their current foster children, Kari and Thari, contributed mostly by making faces at my taste, but that’s their job, as adolescents.

In between that, and seeing old bosses and the bard who first trained me, and visiting a few favorite restaurants, I caught up with Damaris Nimate, who’s overseeing the excavation of the wreck of the Wrath of Procyon, which is going well. They found some security cubbies of some kind and are bringing those up before they break into them. I’m hoping that whatever is found inside can be returned to some families, or maybe even provide answers, though whatever happened was so sudden that I can’t imagine anyone had time to stow anything securely. Damaris will tell me when she figures things out, though.

When I meet up with Maliah and Niko again, we’ll go to Mir, where Maliah and I first met, to visit some friends, and then down to Nosirion-1, where the children I’ve told you about live. (Though Devon will be looking at universities very soon, I owe him a trip to look at a few, so I don’t know if I should really be calling him a child.) I don’t know what we’re doing after that—we don’t have any steps planned between the star and what we hope will be the final battle, but I do think that at the very least we need to consult with Mishakal again, so perhaps we’ll be heading to her temple. I’ll keep you updated, though. I don’t want to disappear off to that battle without you knowing where I am.

I’ve also, I want you to know, been thinking about our promised vacation, and what quiet planets and stations I know where few people would bother us and where you wouldn’t be forced to be introduced to my children or my brother and my parents, which it seems a bit soon for. If you like the mountains, Hangi Syr is nice. Or there’s Caliz Beta, where there are beautiful beaches and where you would bump your head on a lot of doors. Or a dozen other places, depending on our moods. If I have any brilliant ideas, I’ll let you know, as long as you promise to do the same.

Is all well there? I won’t hover and ask about lingering effects of the water like the worst kind of mother hen, but tell me about everything else. Are your cousins still badgering you? Are you still working on that tricky bit of fingering in the music you showed me? How did that latest anthology work out? You seemed unsure if enough of the stories were good to be worth reading the whole collection, last time you wrote.

I’m forwarding a chapbook of Kirimi poetry in Common by a poet who wanted to write on the theme of the reconnection with the Prime Material Plane in a language more people could read. Note the acknowledgments! I am far more famous than I am comfortable being, most days, but the poetry is wonderful so I’m sending it anyway.

More news soon! I’m supposed to go to family dinner—five minutes ago, actually.

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Tiriel and Alion,

Tyko will have told you that I’m back on the Prime Material Plane, safe and well and taking a break before the next quest. Probably he’s told you some other things, comprehensible or not, that I’ll fully explain when I see you next. I’m planning to come for a few days or a week soon (Maliah, Niko and I have all decided that we need a break after the Astral Sea before we can even begin to think about the next stage of our plans), but since I’ve got several stops on my list before you and don’t know how long a few things will take, I’m not going to guess at dates yet.

However, I did want to write you with some nice news that I made Tyko promise not to share before I could, and I am removing temptation by writing you as soon as I’ve ended a video call with him.

When we got back to Nellaser’s Landing after our time in the Astral Sea (Gaizka ended up staying the whole time, which is a long story, they had adventures of their own while we were off meeting a star), Gaizka said that when we had time, they had something to show us. We’d had a day of pure rest and exploration at the end of our visit to the Astral Sea, so we were all more than happy to be shown whatever it was before the weight of bureaucracy landed square on their shoulders again, and they took us on transit out to a quiet neighborhood on the station outskirts.

I had, as we went into a quiet building right at the outer edge of the ring, the vague notion that we had been invited back to Gaizka’s home, where perhaps they had something to show us, since we’ve only met them at restaurants and the university and other public spaces. Up at the top of the building, though, they let us into an apartment that seemed to take up the whole floor, partially decorated and with trinkets around but with odd gaps that showed no one could be living there, even someone like Gaizka, who doesn’t tend to show much to people who don’t know them fairly well.

And as I registered that, Gaizka told us, with a flourish of paperwork that made it real, that the apartment is ours. That apparently the Kirimi delegation and various gnomish embassies on this plane decided that we merit a reward for reconnecting Kirim with the larger universe, and this is the gift they chose (with, I’m told, a matching suite in Kirim—I’m planning to go there right before I see you all, so I imagine I’ll have pictures to show you, and a place to put you when I bring you for that visit I’ve been threatening). I suspect, though Gaizka didn’t say, that they had no small hand in choosing the nature of the gift, knowing how often we come back or through and how a magical mansion that will never be permanent no matter how many times I cast it will never quite be a home. So they’ve given us one, ours in perpetuity.

I’m sending you a load of pictures with this message, I’m shamelessly enamored with the place and hardly know what to do with all the space. The living room is the one that shows both sides of the building, the space side and the city side (we’ve also got a balcony on that side, which I think Maliah already has designs on using for her collection of plants), and there’s all the amenities—a kitchen so perhaps I can eventually regain the cooking skills you two attempted to teach me, a table big enough to fit a decent sized party of family or friends, four bedrooms of very decent size, two on each side (Maliah and I shamelessly claimed beds on the star side, which Niko took with good grace), and a few of the vague unassigned rooms that any home has. I’ve already stowed my harp and the other instruments I’ve collected in a small room on the city side where I can put a desk and some recording equipment.

There are some pieces of furniture—a couch, as you see, and all the bedrooms have fairly plain beds, other things any house needs, with enough gaps for us to have fun filling them.

You’ll also see all manner of trinkets and small things—the quilt on the back of the couch is new, and there’s a lovely music box I’ve already stolen for my bedroom, and a collection of sea glass in a jar, all things passed on by the various people who had a hand in us having the place, tokens of thanks. There’s a stack of letters as well, which I haven’t had time to go through but which I smile at whenever I pass.

I want to see everyone, but I also want to stay here and decorate this place, make it properly a home! We’re going to have to find rugs and curtains and art that are to our tastes, though at least I have the Mansion as a testing ground, even if what I enjoy in there isn’t perhaps what I should use for a long-term home.

Though maybe it is! I’ve spent most of my adult life in a small bunk on a ship and since then I’ve mostly been camping or living in inns, so I’ve got very little idea what to do with a home of my own. Maybe the two of you have some advice? I’ll have to bring you to see it sometime soon.

We’re going out to explore the neighborhood soon (it’s a nice one, quiet, lots of good restaurants and easy access to transit), so I’ll leave off here! We’re going to visit our friend Bizza in a few days, I think, and from there to Honione and then Rugira Prime and then our families, with no real clue as to how long each visit will take, so I’ll let you know once I’m more aware of how things are going!

Love,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Brennu,

I’m so glad your vacation continues on its previous lines, and I will definitely let you know when I’m free to visit Rugira Prime! It might not be very soon, like I said, but I’ll make it a priority to get there before I end up on the celestial plane.

This past week and a bit, though, I’ve been on Sestrilles, visiting my family and taking care of a few other things to prepare for what comes next, and since I’ve been visiting my brother and he’s usually the one I write my most detailed letters to, I thought you might enjoy the minutia of a week in the life of an adventurer who’s between adventures.

I’ve been the busiest of the three of us, though we’ve all had to deal with some business in between the pleasure. Niko, as a weaver, was delighted to finally be introduced to my mother Tiriel, who’s a tailor (and who also made me show her an outfit I commissioned in the Feywild and spent a good half hour taking notes on its construction), and they spent a good number of hours together, when Niko wasn’t walking along the shore or other such things. Maliah kept herself busy with two things—first, a visit from her girlfriend Marsa, who snatched a few days to take a Teleportation Circle in and visit her, and trips out to a stable near town, where she’s been learning to ride.

(She’s been invited to join the Wild Hunt, whenever she happens to be in the Feywild when it’s riding, and she hadn’t ridden a horse before, so she’s remedying that lack. And believe me, as surreal as that must feel to read, it’s even more so to write.)

I’ve done a few things, aside from spending time with my family. I am staying in an inn for the first time that I’ve been visiting home while adventuring, which has been an adjustment, but my parents are using all their bedrooms and my brother has a serious boyfriend these days, so sleeping on his couch is more of an imposition than it used to be.

(I did invite him to spend a night in my Magnificent Mansion, though, he deserves a night in a lavish place that nobody has to clean up afterwards. Though he laughed at my sense of decoration, which is maybe a bit garish for the average person. Do you know anything about decorating? I’m happy to be garish when it’s me and my closest friends, but I have had a few guests in there who aren’t used to me, I should probably be able to decorate an inoffensive common room and some guest rooms. What would you do with those spaces, funds not being an issue? Maliah and Niko both gently declined to offer opinions when I asked them, and Tyko just laughed at me. I should have thought to ask Tiriel.)

Even staying at an inn, though, I had plenty of time to spend with Tyko. I’ve got a PA bot, and they are rather fragile pieces of equipment, but I don’t like to leave it stuffed in the bag of holding when we’re not in the middle of an adventure. Previously, it’s been rolling around in a remote control car finagled for it to control itself, but it got dumped in the water in the Feywild, so I’m figuring out other options. With Tyko’s help, I’ve rigged up a drone that it can control, with basic hovering and a decent amount of movement in all directions (though it’s still getting the hang of up and down). It’s definitely not anything that will stand up to difficulties, but it’s a start, at least, and I might be able to manage something that can handle at least a few feet of water for emergency situations in the medium to long term.

While I’m here, I also checked on Damaris Nimate, who’s in charge of excavating the wreck of the Wrath of Procyon here. They’ve mapped the bulk of the wreck, and are sending out exploratory parties to find scatter left from the atmospheric entry, to make sure they know the location of any piece of the ship that landed instead of burning up or getting spun out into or past orbit. Apparently the most interesting finds so far, aside from some remains (they’re in talks with Kirim about what’s to be done with those), are a decent amount of containers that on the whole still seem to be sealed. Best guess from size and manifest is that they’re personal safes, so once the mapping is done, they’ll be bringing those up and starting to sort through, returning what they can to families and otherwise distributing them as appropriate. At least some Kirimi tend to keep genealogical scrolls of their family lines (I was given one by my grandmother when I visited), and I would think that safes would be a smart place for those, so at least that might help with identification.

I offered to help out for a day, not underwater, and Damaris gladly sent me around to remind some bureaucrats that this project is a priority for me, Archmage Gaizka Zebari, and the new demiplane we both recently helped to contact, to keep them from grumbling about permits and shore storage. Since there are several departments of bureaucrats, mostly in emergency response and aid and ocean custodianship divisions, who I’ve had less than friendly relations with in the past, I do admit that was very satisfying, even if it wasn’t anything like a vacation.

All of us have also put some time into the next steps of our adventure. In the longer term, as I think I’ve mentioned to you, we’re seeking out a star. (Another one of those sentences that I promise I know sounds ridiculous when written out.) We’ve been seeking two things so we can do that: a tuning fork attuned to the Astral Sea, and a gnomish artifact called the Khardab’zielach.

The former dropped into our laps when I thought we would have to go hunting for it—a friend of ours has access to a lot of ancient magical texts, and we’d asked her to do some research on stars for us, if she could. She did, with a notebook of notes I still want to spend some time dipping into (including a story of a wizard who learned magical secrets from a star, though of course the wizard didn’t care to share what those secrets were), and also, behind a very neat magical seal that I was initially baffled by when I really shouldn’t have been, a correctly attuned tuning fork. I have a lot of questions about where and how she found it, but she’s a rather mysterious person and I’m too grateful for the loan to press, so we’ve got it tucked away behind the seal again until we needed it.

That, though, leaves the Khardab’zielach, and when we were on Nellaser’s Landing, we were given a lead that it’s almost certainly in a hoard of powerful magical items that were given into the care of a druid named Avka some time ago on Chusya, and whose protections on them remain. We figured that we’d have to do a lot of searching and asking around when we got there, but I thought to look up local information a few days into our stay and discovered that we were going to have to change our strategy.

In the past, when I’ve run into magical ruins (which has not been as infrequently as most people), they’re old enough and the magic has been hidden or faded enough that while there might be stories about them, nobody is guarding them, or much cares about them. Avka, though, is more recent, and posts agree that the Chusyan planetary government knows the location of the volcano where she left her hoard, and that unless you want to sneak past guards (there to prevent looters from getting smeared across the landscape, since Avka’s protections seem to do a good job of preventing them from looting. This is, lest you get worried about me, because apparently at least some of these protections take intent into account, and I think ‘saving the universe’ is the kind of intent that will probably get us over that hurdle just fine), you need to convince the government that you should be allowed in.

That could mean proving ownership, or impeccable references while proving great need, so we immediately set to doing the latter for the Khardab’zielach in a way some might call overkill. Gaizka is widely known and respected and also knows our quest and the reasons for it, so we started with them, and then for good measure, sent to the temples of Mishakal and the Lady of Stars where we’d received the counsel that led us on our journey. And then we got the full source documentation from the library that leads us to think that Avka’s hoard contains this artifact. We figure between all of that, not to mention things like introduction letters from King Roohi of Mashoy, they’re unlikely to try to stop us.

(And I do get a certain amount of satisfaction out of knowing it’s likely to discommode another bureaucrat.)

Once we had all of that (I really owe Gaizka about twenty favors at this point, they were primary point of contact for a lot of that) and Maliah had seen off Marsa and I’d spent a last bit of time with my family, we set up a Teleportation Circle to Chusya and landed just this afternoon in Miraie, the city that’s the seat of much of their planetary government.

Chusya, if you don’t know much about it, as I didn’t, is a primarily tiefling world, which is fairly comfortable for me since I speak the language thanks to my brother. There’s a decent amount of volcanic activity (and it’s widely known that Avka’s hoard is in a volcano, which I am not looking forward to), enough that behind the jungle heat here in Miraie, it smells like sulfur. We haven’t had much chance to explore the city yet, just to find an inn called The Wandering Cat and check in, as well as to send a message to their office of cultural history requesting a meeting tomorrow, but I’m looking forward to be doing a bit of it.

Hopefully, getting the location of the appropriate volcano, with the massive stack of officially signed and sealed paperwork we have, is going to be the easy part of this. Then we have to prepare with what they know of the defenses (I’m assuming we’re not the first adventurers to make it all the way through, anyway). With the volcano, we’re hoping to get some fire protection—my gloves protect me from some measure of heat, but not fire, and Maliah, Niko, and Squirt have no protection at all.

Our most likely avenues there, we think, are either the bureaucratic office itself, which might have things to loan or rent or buy (I’d think so, if they want the people they let through to survive), or local blacksmiths, who are likely to have some measure of protection. I’ve asked Niko if there might be a local temple of Reorx that might help us on the strength of our quest on that front, and she doesn’t think there is one, but thinks it has merit if there does happen to be one.

She also said that probably there will be blacksmiths who pay tribute to the Crafter even without a temple in the city, but we agreed we do not want to cause a panic by telling everyone we meet about the quest we’re on. I don’t tend to keep it a secret, as you’ve no doubt realized, but there’s a difference between making friends and people powerful enough to do something about it aware and just telling random artisans who have no way of doing anything about it.

Once we’ve had our meeting, we’ll try those various avenues and make sure we’re properly prepared for whatever they’re willing or able to tell us. We have a friend who owes us a Divination (she’s part of the whole story that led to me asking you if you’d been under Geas, a dear friend of the man who had been), so we’re narrowing down questions that will help us see some of the arcane defenses coming, too.

Anyway, what all of this leads to is that I’ll probably be a bit busy in a volcano for the next while (I’m not excited about it, but as I was telling Maliah—we’ve explored plenty of caves, had two underwater adventurers, and fallen through the air from a great height, so we’re due a bit of fire). One can never tell how long something like this will take—I could be in and out in a day or two, or I could write you again in two or three weeks, mildly singed. Spare a thought to hope for the former more than the latter?

I hope you haven’t minded a more detailed peek into my life than usual, this letter. I like writing out what I’ve been up to, it helps me get my head on straight, but I also know that sometimes a large amount of information from someone in perilous situations can be more stressful than comforting.

I do think we’re going to be mostly fine, with this one. Avka wanted to protect these artifacts but not make them wholly inaccessible, and if the spells remaining can read intent, maybe we’ll have an easier time than some.

And either way, it will be another story to share when I do manage to arrange a visit to Rugira Prime!

Yours truly,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Maliah,

I hope you don’t mind me writing you—I know you and Marsa are camping by now, and you shouldn’t worry about responding to me, especially when we’re due to meet up in a week or so. I’m just here on Sestrilles, and I’m realizing that this is by far the longest we’ve spent apart since we met, and that it’s very strange that you don’t know everything I’ve been up to in the past month.

How are you, though? How was everyone at HASAI? I hope you passed my best on to Fariya and Sserit and Lian, and had fun spending time. You said you might ask about those displacer beasts and if they had anything to do with the spell. Any word on that? Are the scientists all excited to hear about your bows? You don’t need to answer all these questions in a letter, obviously—I’ll be seeing you soon, but I still want to ask them. And I hope that Marsa is well too, and that the two of you are enjoying spending some time together with no urgency or need to do anything but spend time. Stretch it out as long as you like, if she has more time between runs! The last thing I want is to pull you two apart when you’ve finally got plenty of time.

I’ve been keeping busy. I was on Nellaser’s Landing for most of three weeks, reading through a whole lot of esoteric articles and books about demiplanes and how teleportation magic works and about how to adapt wizard magic for bards, which was interesting and made me very very glad that I’m not a wizard. I also managed to drag Gaizka out of their office to watch movies or otherwise catch up on what they’ve been missing with their nose stuck in academic books for their whole life (especially since they’d never read or seen The Naming of Virtues and I could fix the latter). I can’t exactly offer much to one of the most powerful wizards living, but I can offer some relaxation and some nights watching movies, especially since these ones have Common subtitles or are in it in the first place.

When I needed a break from the reading, I’d go and find a place to busk, which netted me a few crowds, which is always fun. I tried to do a version of one of the arias from that opera on Zarakib, and it went decently well, but perhaps not my greatest crowd-pleaser. I’ll have to brush it up more.

All the time and effort on the spell worked, because I think I can cast the spell now. Or rather, my test attempt worked, but I haven’t tried it properly yet because I wanted to go to Sestrilles first. Gaizka is fairly sure I have it, though, and was saying something about writing a commentary on one of the books about interactions between wizards’ and bardic magic, so we’ll see what comes of that. Poor Gaizka needs a real vacation about as much as we do, but at least we tend to bring them new and interesting problems to solve.

They did have to get back to work, though, so once I had the spell down properly, I came here to see Sestrilles, where I’ve been keeping myself busy.

Damaris and the water elementals have been off to an amazing start, especially since between her and Gaizka speaking on Kirim’s behalf, the permits for the excavation went through very quickly. (Damaris says hello, by the way.) Mostly so far she’s been teaching them just what to look for and how to categorize it, and they’ve identified what they think are most of the large parts of the wreck, though obviously it’s hard to be sure how much burned up in orbit or wore away in the water, or whether some of the wreckage got scattered farther. It’s going to be months before there’s more than that, I’m guessing, but I know it’s in good hands.

And the elementals apparently picked up some nice rocks for her and for me, which I’ve given to various family members. Kari and Thari are the only ones who properly appreciated them, and had a lot of questions about the water elementals to the point that Alion promised to ask if maybe they can join Damaris on the surface boat of the expedition one day, as long as they promise to be well-behaved. It was a relief, at least, to have something to talk about the two of them with that won’t encourage them to go off and do adventuring themselves, especially since I took them for an evening so Alion and Tiriel could have a date.

I also got time with both of them—Tiriel is still feeling creatively fulfilled, but doesn’t seem to know anyone feeling the opposite, or at least didn’t mention it. (I still don’t quite have the courage to tell her she’s part of a larger pattern, it’s going to worry her and the rest of the family dreadfully. Tyko is already fretting about it.) Alion’s having a quieter but still pleasant time at work, and both of them are enjoying a new park that’s opened up on the edge of the city in the past few months, in the marshes to the north on the edge of the Edhest. Some really nice paths, apparently, we’ll have to go next time you’re here with me.

The biggest news, though, is that I met Tyko’s Lindanas! I convinced him that I wasn’t going to be terrible (and, I’ll add, I wasn’t), and that there’s such a lot of variation about when I can and can’t come that it was worth trying, and Lindanas agreed, though I am guessing from his attitude meeting me that it was an extended and difficult negotiation.

I do like him a lot, though, and can see why Tyko likes him so much too. He’s quiet (and Tyko assures me that he’s normally quiet, I didn’t just intimidate him), but once you get him talking, he’s very clever, and he’s got a group of friends who seem to have wholeheartedly adopted Tyko (which is good, since I feel like most of his socializing is with Alma or Tiriel and Alion), all of whom sound absolutely delightful. I’m vaguely familiar with his mother and a few members of her crew, since ships out of Sestrilles tend to hail each other when we’re at the same port, which was nice. And he’s clearly fond of Tyko, which is the most important part of all.

Tyko trusted me enough (and Lindanas did too, this only happened after a strenuous conversation held mostly through raises of the eyebrow) to leave us alone for a few minutes, even, when I continued to be friendly and welcoming, because Tyko can take care of himself and even if he couldn’t, Lindanas is plenty nice. I promised him embarrassing stories about Tyko’s adolescence the next time we spend time together, as is my right as a sister, but we’ll see if I can manage it without Tyko stuffing a pillow in front of my face.

Your plans are going to be wrapping up soon, so I think I’m going to leave tomorrow, to try out the Teleport variant and visit Kirim, where I can get to know Am’elyn and Khama’air a little better, and maybe Tidge if he can get to Sunwest (or I could always try visiting him, though if I go anywhere I am definitely taking transport, I’ve learned my lessons about hiking on Kirim). And where I can keep on catching up on the things I might have known or learned if the Procyon hadn’t crashed.

I don’t want to bother you while you’re enjoying your privacy with Marsa, so I won’t check in by Sending, but that means if you need me, you might have to ask Gaizka to pass a message on, since they’re still working on getting Kirim into any of the relays that could bring ICD messages through. Hopefully you won’t need me, though, especially since I’ll be there four or five days at most!

I’m meant to have dinner with the family in a few minutes (and possibly Lindanas, who pretended he wasn’t sure of his work schedule but might just not want to be at our whole-family dinner so soon), so I’ll leave this letter off, and I’ll see you very soon.

Love,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Alion and Tiriel,

Whenever I get back to the Prime Material Plane, I'm sure Tyko will share everything I've been writing him, but you deserve a letter of your own too, especially after everything today has been. After everything this last week has been, really.

I wish you two were here on Kirim with me. I think you would love my grandmother Am'elyn, Tiriel, and I think all the family I've met would be happy and reassured to meet you two, to know I've been loved and taken care of. It's a small family, still—I had three parents, but I think the kind of people who sign up for long-term space missions that might not ever reach home again are the kind of people with small families. So my father Kadan's mother, Am'elyn, who I'm named after, is all the family I have on that side that I know of. And Hanai, the parent who left me the earring, only had a sister left behind, Khama'air. My other father Ezenki (whose hair I inherited) had more family, but most of them were on the Procyon, so the only member of his family I've met is a cousin, Tidge.

And I keep thinking of introducing my two families, letting you all get to know each other. Cobbling together a big family from the many smaller ones I have. Maybe, when it's easier to travel from Kirim to the Prime Material Plane, I'll be able to introduce you all, whether it's them traveling to you or you traveling to them. And if you can't meet my other parents, at least for now (I'm sure Tyko has told you about my hopes, I don't need to elaborate on them today), there will be that.

Part of the reason I'm writing you two tonight, though, is because I've been thinking a lot today about how much you and Hanai'fe would like each other, Alion. They were a scientist too, you see, a data expert working with crystalline data storage—the project that became my earring. Today, I met one of their co-workers, a woman named Yavhiz'reen, and she told me about Hanai (as everyone is, I am piecing my parents together like a puzzle, from what all the different people say about them) and then offered to introduce me to the elementals—or specifically the chief of the elementals—who they worked with.

So we drove out to the coast this morning. It's a lot different from the good old Edhest, or at least the parts of it I usually see, with the city drawn right up close to the coastline, temperate and sandy and not much slope on the beaches. In the village we're staying in, they're near enough to wooded areas to make it feel cozy, but the short drive up the coast to the scientific outpost where Yavhiz'reen works and where they have contact with the elementals took us into barer country, where you could see a lot farther, and where it's rockier than home, or even than Nosirion-1's coast, at least the part of it we walked on on our first adventure together.

Then Yavhiz'reen led us right down to the water, and made a bird call, and a minute later, the water started steaming, and she said something in Aquan, and I cast Tongues for myself and Cloudleaper, and then they rose from the water. We've met elementals before. A surprising amount, actually, Maliah and Cloudleaper and I were trying to count earlier and even then we'd forgotten a fire elemental we called on during our fight with the dragon Peninth'zarthan, so I think our count is nine, which most people don't make it to. But we have never met one this big, or this powerful. They very kindly sat or stayed half-submerged in the water so as not to tower over us, but at full height they would be three times Cloudleaper's height, and she's fairly tall, for an elf.

At least one elemental we've met was cautious with their name, but Yavhiz'reen seemed to make pretty free with this one's, so I think I feel comfortable saying that their name was Arpialtheamanu, and that the conversation was awkward but meant a lot. Hanai was the first one to convince any elementals to work with their project, and as the chief elemental in the region, Arpialtheamanu was the one to give final permission on the matter. They seem to have been friends, for all they knew each other for not long in Hanai's terms and barely a blink in Arpialtheamanu's, and we did what I've been doing a lot on this planet—exchanging condolences. People give them to me for what I never knew, and I give them right back for the very specific ways they miss these people.

I asked a few questions about the earring, as well—and about its mate. There is one, apparently, probably one with work files rather than personal ones on it. I worried that if it's at the bottom of the Edhest, it might naturally rejoin its own element at some point, seeing as the tears are Arpialtheamanu's and might just become part of the ocean with fifty years of erosion. They assured me that that's almost certainly not the case, though they can't speak for the integrity of the data storage over that much time, so if the wreck is ever explored, it may be there.

And that's the next part of this letter, the wreck and what might be found there. It had never occurred to me before that there might be wreck to search, other than a few hull panels and other detritus. I figured the ship burned up in orbit, because I always thought of it as so much smaller than it really was. But I've stood on part of the wreck, now, and I've got no idea how much of the ship it is, or if there are more sections scattered on the ocean floor. And there are a few reasons to explore it: on the most altruistic level, Kirim and I want to know what happened to the Procyon, what made it crash. There might still be retrievable information, or parts of the wreck that could give answers. If there are bodies, people might want them retrieved, and here I get a lot more selfish, and here my thinking comes down to resurrection again.

It's so hard to imagine having the time to make the money I would need to bring all three of my parents back with True Resurrection, even if I could fathom learning the magic at all. I want to do it so badly, but it would mean devoting time to it that I could be spending on my living family, it would mean dragging Maliah and Cloudleaper into jobs just so I could have a share of the money, it would mean so many things would be harder and worse while I worked for it even if the end result would be the best. But if there was enough of them to salvage and to find, in those wrecks, there's hope. Resurrection feels more possible—if I can find them, and if there's enough of them to bring back. They're big ifs, but I have to think about them.

Talking to Arpialtheamanu also made me wonder if there are water elementals on Sestrilles who I might be able to treat with to do at the very least the initial exploration of the wreck, to search for bodies and personal belongings and the ship's black box, if Kirim has that convention. Alion, do you know of any? They're likely to be secretive, so I'm guessing not, but this isn't a question for Tyko's Lindanas either, and I don't know anyone on Sestrilles who would be more likely to know. I know there might be a ranger or druid or two on-planet who specialize in the oceans, but I never met them, since chances are they don't live in the city.

Any chance either of you can put me in touch? Otherwise I'll try the librarian. Or Tyko, who might kill me if I send a message to his boyfriend without going through him.

This is a strange and difficult trip. I'm glad I'm making it, please don't think I'm not, but I'm on a planet of people who have more history with me than I do with myself. They know my ship, they know my family, and now they know my face. I've come bringing the answer to a mystery, and terrible news, and I feel like a harbinger of tragedy to all of them, even if they've all been so kind and welcoming I can hardly bear it. And we just traveled through a mountain path and found some belongings of someone from ages ago who'd died and left behind a box with letters and some other things, and we brought them to the town office in the village we're visiting today and it turns out I solved another mystery by accident: Mehra ni Jahi ken-Arin was a famous adventurer on the planet centuries ago, and I stumbled into a massive historical find. And of course after centuries, no one expected to find her alive, but it still feels like I'm bringing them tragedy.

It might feel better if things weren't difficult for Maliah and Cloudleaper right now too. We've had a hard fight (and a few lesser but still rough ones), traveling from the city of Sunwest to the coast. It's too long a story to tell tonight—you can ask Tyko to share what I've been writing him if you want more details—but Maliah is on shaky ground and angry at Cloudleaper, but one can hardly really be angry at Cloudleaper, because something is wrong with her. She lost a minute of time (the minute that made Maliah so angry at her, or I suppose more accurately that loss of a minute made her act in a way that made Maliah angry), and had a brief hallucination, and the combination has us all very alarmed. If it was magic, it's passed, and I don't know what else it could be, but it has us all on edge, I think.

And I'm trying to help them both as much as I can, but it's hard, with so much else on my mind. I got some more files off Hanai's earring—all of them, I hope—and tonight's the first time I've had a chance to look at them, which I think might be the other reason I'm writing to you two tonight.

It's an earring full of puzzle pieces, more hints and clues to who they were and where I came from. A lot of pictures, of course: of them in various combinations, of me as a baby being passed from one to the other (and to Ezenki's family, including a few people I think were my grandparents), with background glimpses of the ship, things that feel almost familiar. I'm almost sure that I remember one of Kadan's sweaters as a safe and comfortable place to rest my cheek, and there are small glimpses—I only wish there were pictures from toddler-height. I'd be more likely to remember table legs and doorknobs than anything else. The pictures I'm almost growing used to, here—everyone has been providing me with them, showing me the family history I'm missing.

The rest of the files are a little harder to grapple with. There are notes in shorthand I don't know how to decode yet but that I'm terribly curious about. There's a video file that I think Ezenki must have filmed, of Kadan and Hanai having a sweet moment together. Another video file I'm attaching, that proves I've always been a musician of some kind. And an audio file of Ezenki (at least I think it's him, I don't know their voices well yet) singing a lullaby that I know I know, at least part of it. I've been listening to that maybe a little more than I should, in the minutes since I found it. There are a few more files to check out, I think, but I don't think I can do more tonight.

Soon we're heading back to Sunwest (after our disastrous trip across the mountains, we're waiting for a truck or a plane or something to take us), and I don't know how long we'll be there. I both want to stay for months to get to know Am'elyn and Khama and Tidge and want to go home immediately, but in the end it might not be up to me. Right now only one person in the universe knows how to cast the spell to get us here and back, and when they want to leave, we're going. With Cloudleaper not feeling well, I'm not going to risk otherwise.

I wish I could say I'll be coming to Sestrilles as soon as I'm back. Realistically, I'm not sure that's true—we may have business on Nellaser's Landing, and if Cloudleaper needs to go to Rugira Prime or Maliah anywhere, they've been very patiently following me around here and I can do the same or them. But I will come as soon as I can manage, I can promise that. To talk to you two and Tyko and Kari and Thari and everyone else, and to try to deal with the wreck of the Procyon as well as I can.

All my love to you. Give each other a hug from me.

Elyn

[Attached: a video file of a redheaded gnomish toddler banging happily on overturned pots with a wooden spoon]

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Tyko,

I thought I would give you a few days off, while things were quiet, from letters. That makes it sounds, now that I read it again, like things aren't quiet now, which they are. There's a new mystery, which I'll write about as the message goes on, but it doesn't seem urgent or immediately dangerous, and it's the kind of thing that can only be solved with wide and careful observation, not with wandering off into the wilderness and casting spells at things.

Before I write about that, though, I'll write more about the talk we had with Athan and Kian (and Delthi) the other night, learning more of the story of their lives, since I know that from you, “that sounds interesting” is as good as a page's worth of nosy questions.

Rannon, it seems, recruits spies and other such useful government workers from … people like you and me, basically. Orphans, wards of the state, children of other government workers. People without many outside connections and loyalties. If that gets your hackles up as much as it did mine, it only gets worse from there. They don't seem to care much about the happiness, health, and safety of their workers. Probably you got that impression from what I was telling you of what Delthi told us.

Athan and Kian met when Athan went to Kian for help with equipment he meant to take into the field, and they started things from there, which for a while was no trouble at all, since the imperial government doesn't care if its workers fall in love as long as the work still gets done, but Athan kept getting promoted, and promoted, and promoted—field promotions, he calls some of them, which no doubt means his supervisor was killed on the job and he stepped in. But the higher you get as a spy, the less you're encouraged to be attached to people like mages in the engineering corps, so they started to be walking on delicate ground, especially when there started to be a transition of power in the spy corps and it was clear that the heir presumptive of the department was going to promote Athan so far that he'd know too many secrets to ever be let free, let alone to maintain his relationship with Kian. So they were thinking about leaving, in a quiet and secretive kind of way, especially after sometime in there, Athan lost his eye (I wonder if that had anything to do with the field promotions, but I was not about to ask). And, sometime in there, Delthi trained under Athan and they got fond of each other, which is how she knew him well enough to reach out.

And then, while Kian was doing spellwork maintenance on a ship, with some experimental spells, it was blown to pieces and he almost died. But the work had to get done, so they sent Athan chasing answers while Kian was figting for his life alone in a medical facility, and the answer he got was sabotage from another planet in their system. When he came back, answers in hand, Kian was awake, and Athan set about gathering every scrap of useful information he could, and they didn't talk about it because even in a medical facility they were being spied on, and the very abridged end of it is that Athan offered an end to the saboteurs for his and Kian's freedom, backed up with nasty secrets the emperor didn't want out, and the emperor took him up on it. So Athan dealt with the saboteurs, and when Kian was recovered enough to move, they left. Leaving all of Rannon to think that Kian had died and Athan had gone rogue in his anger and grief, which Athan says wouldn't have been far off the truth if Kian had in fact died.

They spent a while with Ampion, the friend on Nellaser's Landing who we met, and some various other places, could finally marry away from that stifling environment, and ended up settling here, far out enough that Athan could establish his own network before anyone else could, making this as safe a place as it's possible for he and Athan to be—and Delthi. She seemed hesitant to stay, worried her presence would remind Kian too much of his trauma, but he insisted, so I think she'll be here for a while, and I'm relieved.

And, well. If you hear about a revolution or an assassination on Rannon, I had nothing to do with it. Athan insisted it's not necessary, and he's well enough, but I can't think about everything they were put through without wanting to go have a less than pleasant chat with the emperor of Rannon about the humanity of the people who work for him.

We haven't seen much of Delthi since. I think she has a lot of thinking to do—she wanted to leave, but I don't know if she realized just how wrong the way she lived was, and it's going to be a long road ahead. She also has years of sleep to catch up on, I'd guess. Spying leaves you paranoid, and then we hauled her through a wilderness, which she found far more distressing than the snakes.

Maliah and I have been talking a lot, though, about something else—the mystery I mentioned above. Niko sent us a letter while we were still in Ektarika's tower, but we didn't want to distress Delthi with it, so we waited until we'd handed her off to talk about it. Really all Niko says is that while she's been traveling, looking for answers, she's found something strange, something to do with crafters. She didn't want to say more, so she wouldn't bias us, but as you can imagine, Maliah and I instantly panicked—thinking of Bizza, with his crepes and his cursed necklace, Devon and Loren, their creativity bent to purposes not their own, and everyone else we've met in the middle of hard weeks, and sent Niko a rather panicked message about it.

She was at least somewhat reassuring in turn, saying that it seems to have begun within the past few years, and it's just a subtle pattern she's noticing, not enough to base a theory on, mostly involving people who craft for a living or at least as a frequent and passionate hobby. I haven't noticed it in myself, but I wouldn't, so I'm leaving myself off for now, and I've asked a few other people, without tipping them off to why I'm asking, so I don't taint their thinking like I am mine and yours. (And Athan's, we asked him about it earlier too, since he hears everything about everything eventually.)

One of the people I asked is Tiriel, so please, please don't tell her about it yet. If I thought she was in any danger, I would have told her already, but with no real answers and a question so nebulous, it's only going to stress her out in a way she can't do anything about. She's said that things are busy at the shop and that she's had a nice variety of new and interesting projects, all in a good way, and I'm trusting that.

And, in case it's the pattern and I got it on the first try: have you and Alma noticed that? A larger proportion of design and custom jobs to repair ones, and interesting and engaging ones? I think Lindanas's friends are more observers than crafters, as such a group of academics, but if any of them mentions something, maybe you can tell me? Or Anthin, when you grab dinner? And if you haven't noticed that, are there any changes in the shop in the past two years or so?

I've also got questions out to Midat, who has a new project that diverges a little from what she was doing when I was on Mashoy, and Nuli, the singer I met on Hangi Syr with an interest in crafter ballads, asking if she knows any modern crafter ballads to recommend to me to see if there's anything there that I can use.

Maliah and I stopped by Glaheath Arcana, under new management since the Yeruses are long gone. Since they have arcane crafts, we wondered if there might be anything there, but it's more of a collection of things made elsewhere, and nothing Niko has said makes me think it's about the crafted objects, more about the people doing the crafting, so I wasn't really surprised when there were no fluctuations in the business that couldn't be accounted for by the history of the ownership.

This isn't a mystery I'm going to solve quickly, like I said, especially when it's hard to see something you're in the middle of and I'm certainly a crafter (thank goodness I have Maliah to keep an eye on me), but I will be thinking about it, and hope to catch up with Niko once I have a few answers from the queries I've sent out, especially since she's planning to head back to Nosirion-1 soon.

In the nearer future, though, Maliah and I need to show up somewhere public without Delthi so we can make it clear that she's disappeared and the trail is cold to anyone from Rannon still trying to trace where we went from Vothi Vesta. Iriossis has its annual Downtime festival coming right up, so I think we're going to show up there, and I'll find a jam session to join, or a corner to set up a performance, to make myself as loud as possible for anyone looking for mentions of us. I'll tell you how it is! It will be nice to go to a festival, even if it's for reasons of subterfuge.

After that, I don't know. No jobs are calling us yet, since dismantling a planet-wide empire unasked is probably not the best use of our time. Maybe Maliah will want to visit Marsa, since it's been a few months, or maybe we'll check our guild page and see if there's anything that could use our talents. Or maybe a friend will ask for help! It seems to happen more often than you'd think.

Or, I suppose, we'll find out that the chords of creation are bestowing everyone with inspiration for some reason, but I really don't know what I would possibly do about that.

Love,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Saram-Devon,

Thank you for your letter. It's given me much food for thought, and happiness as well. Freedom may come in fits and starts, may come through your own experience or the words of others, and I'm glad to have made you a little freer. There's much out there in the universe for you to see, now that you're able, and I look forward to hearing about your discoveries. This adventure, for me, has been a lesson in how much I don't know, how many things the universe holds that I haven't yet begun to learn.

You'll like HASAI, if you ever make it there, and I'll be happy to tell you all I can about the projects that were current during my visit, and if you like I can ask the scientist I'm still in touch with if there's a remote education coordinator who might have some information you could find useful. They've got some fascinating projects to do with light-trains, and others about flexible body armor that I admit I as an adventurer find fascinating. You'll have to ask Maliah about the bow she was given, it's a masterpiece of arcane engineering and she's field testing it.

Now that we're done with that adventure, we've come to Sestrilles, where I grew up. I told you some of my brother, the tiefling who taught me Infernal, and I've done plenty of visiting with him. Maliah and Pika like him, and I think you'd like him as well—he manages a shop where they fix tech, and his boss taught me a lot of what I need to know to make my gloves, so he knows a lot about soft tech. He and my foster mother, who's a tailor, have been conspiring about electronic textiles to help with my next iteration of my gloves, my own masterwork and learning experience.

Family, I think, is meant to help with that kind of thing. Should you find something you want to make and my small expertise with tech could help, don't hesitate to let me know.

A confidence for a confidence: you and Loren and Jesson and your willingness to trust us and adopt us as your guardians has made me think a great deal about family, and the thoughts have lingered across this visit home. I spent a long time, so much of my life, thinking of my family only as Tyko, who I chose, and the family that's lost to me, dead or unreachable. I've been so careful thinking of Alion and Tiriel as foster parents, of Sestrilles as simply the planet I grew up on. It's you and your siblings that have made me think that's been unkind to the people, the place that raised me.

Elvish and Gnomish don't have words like Asar or Saram, and they are the weaker for it, I think. If you young ones are my family, and I would never deny that you are, then aren't Alion and Tiriel too? Mightn't Maliah and Pika be, in their own way? We just don't have the words for what we all are. But people who worry for you, and embarrass you mightily by telling dramatic tales of your exploits of your dinner, and can laugh through it all—blood or no, they're the people worth calling family.

In the end, I suppose this is all to say that learning is never done. You have a boundless universe open before you, and I before me, and I am very glad that they've intersected. You've taught me something I needed to learn, and I've helped you take a piece of freedom for yourself. That, I'd say, is the sort of thing family ought to do.

Love,

Elyn