- 50th of Winter, 518
A letter.
The voice was a sigh of wind through eves and the creaking of floorboards past midnight. Madeira heard it not with her ears but as a reverberation in her mind, rising from the awareness that bled from the walls of her small workshop.
A letter comes for you.
The Spiritist straightened from her hunched position over her work desk and all the bones in her back realigned themselves noisily. The pig hoof she was studying was scratched half to hell, as she was using it to test different carving techniques with the array of unused and misused tools in her possession that she still had no idea how to wield. She acknowledged the newly voiced Architectrix infection with a press of wordless thanks for the warning and struggled to her feet. How was it that the longer she was pregnant the farther the workroom stools seemed off the ground?
She met the startled courier at the door, opening it half a heartbeat before the girl actually knocked. The letter the courier thrust into her hands before scampering away for more deliveries did not have the tower device stamped into the wax as she expected. But then if it was not from her employer...
Madeira closed the door and all but ran up the rattling iron stairs to the master bedroom on the third floor. The hearth was already lit when she arrived, and the scones on the wall reflected dully off the domed ceilings painted stars. She could feel the manor watching with interest as she broke the seal with a bladed letter opener and laid the long and tightly rolled parchment flat beneath her hands.
"Lani..." she breathed, recognizing the clean and careful script before she even read the words. "House, its little Leavou! She wrote back!"
She was beginning to think she had lost contact with her childhood friend just as they were rekindling their relationship. She had written in the Fall, and the Wind Eagle post was so blindingly fast she had taken for granted just how far away Lani Stranger really was. When she hadn't heard back from the woman after the accustomed ten days she was left to fret over a letter she worried she would never receive.
The manor couldn't care about this person it had never met, but it murmured its wordless pleasure all the same to see its creator so happy. You miss her, the house spoke in its soft voice, puzzling over the flood of emotions that little piece of parchment was inspiring in her.
"Seems silly, after all this time. But she was part of my first home, and you never really forget the people who used to be home."
I'm your home now, the very walls seemed to shiver possessively.
"Yes, you are. As you are Emma's and Jomi's and Savis', and we love you dearly. But she was the first."
Taking her seat at her writing desk, and calming the excited flutter of her heart, Madeira began to read.
The voice was a sigh of wind through eves and the creaking of floorboards past midnight. Madeira heard it not with her ears but as a reverberation in her mind, rising from the awareness that bled from the walls of her small workshop.
A letter comes for you.
The Spiritist straightened from her hunched position over her work desk and all the bones in her back realigned themselves noisily. The pig hoof she was studying was scratched half to hell, as she was using it to test different carving techniques with the array of unused and misused tools in her possession that she still had no idea how to wield. She acknowledged the newly voiced Architectrix infection with a press of wordless thanks for the warning and struggled to her feet. How was it that the longer she was pregnant the farther the workroom stools seemed off the ground?
She met the startled courier at the door, opening it half a heartbeat before the girl actually knocked. The letter the courier thrust into her hands before scampering away for more deliveries did not have the tower device stamped into the wax as she expected. But then if it was not from her employer...
Madeira closed the door and all but ran up the rattling iron stairs to the master bedroom on the third floor. The hearth was already lit when she arrived, and the scones on the wall reflected dully off the domed ceilings painted stars. She could feel the manor watching with interest as she broke the seal with a bladed letter opener and laid the long and tightly rolled parchment flat beneath her hands.
"Lani..." she breathed, recognizing the clean and careful script before she even read the words. "House, its little Leavou! She wrote back!"
She was beginning to think she had lost contact with her childhood friend just as they were rekindling their relationship. She had written in the Fall, and the Wind Eagle post was so blindingly fast she had taken for granted just how far away Lani Stranger really was. When she hadn't heard back from the woman after the accustomed ten days she was left to fret over a letter she worried she would never receive.
The manor couldn't care about this person it had never met, but it murmured its wordless pleasure all the same to see its creator so happy. You miss her, the house spoke in its soft voice, puzzling over the flood of emotions that little piece of parchment was inspiring in her.
"Seems silly, after all this time. But she was part of my first home, and you never really forget the people who used to be home."
I'm your home now, the very walls seemed to shiver possessively.
"Yes, you are. As you are Emma's and Jomi's and Savis', and we love you dearly. But she was the first."
Taking her seat at her writing desk, and calming the excited flutter of her heart, Madeira began to read.
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