16th of Fall, 518AV
”Oh,” Lani’s sighed out loud as she read Madeira’s letter. Although she only cached two notes from the woman prior to this, both had come in more or less ten days, but this one had taken longer. The mixed blood had been prone to more worry in this city than she was used to, and so had obsessed over the late letter for days until its arrival. She did not suspect that Madeira had simply not given the scroll back to the Wind Eagle tradesmen before they departed from Lhavit, but rather than the Wind Eagles had not made it back through the storm. If her letter was lost forever, then any communication with Madeira would be severed. Surely she could send another letter with the suspected demise of the last one, but for the sake of manners she would be forced to wait nearly a season to do so, and Lani expected to be off again come Spring, losing the trade routes of Wind Reach that allowed for the letter sharing.
Something in the back of Lani’s mind reminded her that she should be more concerned about the safety of the Eagles and their riders than of the return of her letter. A letter could be rewritten, a lost life was surrendered to the afterlife, and a greater reason to grieve and worry.
When it finally came, leaning against her door frame as it had before, Lani was immediately ecstatic. She pulled the letter from the stony floor, swinging into her chambers, and setting the scroll on her table beside her other writing utensils. Lani was quick to slip out of her work pants, tired of the constricting things. She flung them against the wall, picking up her candle to light it, and set them on the center of the table. All too eager, she folded into her usual chair and broke the seal on the scroll, unrolling it to begin reading her friend’s thoughts.
The words that had made her speak aloud, was the offer of hearth and home from her dear friend. They had known one another as children, where their carefree lives were more concerned with discovering what they were not allowed to learn, than with the strains of adulthood. She considered Madeira one of her closest friends, the only one she had found worth reaching out to once again, but it still touched the half-Chaktawe to read that she was thought of in the same or similar regard. She had little doubt they both held the fantasy of their effortless friendship of childhood in high regard, trusting the foundation from which they had met one another to carry their relationship through the years of absence. It was a high hope, and Lani was content to hope it.
The transparency of Madeira’s discontent with the outside world saddened Lani. If she could be certain her written words could not be construed as criticism of the woman, Lani would have told her directly that she was too much a part of the city of illusion to face the stone world outside Ionu’s comforting bubble.