#letter to: tiriel and alion

[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 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 Tiriel and Alion,

Tyko might have told you, but I did want to tell you that I’ll be landing on Sestrilles in about a week. I was wondering if perhaps you might be willing to host me for dinner? Tyko as well, if you’re amenable, and I’d love to get to know Kari and Thari a bit better. I’m traveling with two other adventurers, friends, named Pika Stormflight and Maliah Breyfield, and I’d like to invite them along (as well as Maliah’s very large dog, as fair warning) rather than leave them to their own devices, but if you’re not sure of so many guests I don’t think they’d mind a night to wander the city.

But I would like you to meet them, if you don’t mind a bit of a dinner party. I can catch you up on what I’ve been doing, and you can do the same, since I fear I’ve been a patchy correspondent at best lately.

If nothing else, I’ll certainly come spend an afternoon while I’m in port--let me know when would be convenient for you.

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,

I just wanted to write you a quick letter, though I know I owe you a few. I haven't found anything (yet) about the Procyon here in the Mir region. Mostly, I've actually been doing a job for a ranger organization called the Silver Tree, exploring a nearby planet. There's a bit too much nature involved for my tastes, but as Tyko may have told you, I've some new friends, and we're all doing a good job of keeping one another safe.

Mostly, I'm writing because the other day, we were asked to step into something of a custody dispute, and it made me very grateful to know the two of you, and to have lived in your house. I can't tell you much about it, both because it's a little raw and because it's all a little complicated to explain, but the children involved (a pair of tieflings, one a little younger and one a little older than Tyko was when he came to us) were in a terrible situation with the parents who'd raised them. They're so worn down and wary, and I recognize that.

Is it hard for you, having children come into your house and knowing you can't really help them, or do more than keep them warm and safe until they decide you're worth trusting? From the other side, I wonder if I was hard on you when I first ended up on your doorstep.

The children are safe now. We're on a ship as I write here, taking them to their third biological parent, who wants desperately to look after them and make sure they're safe and happy. This story will have a happy ending, or at least I hope so.

Though I suppose I know better than anyone that going somewhere safe with people who want to make you content isn't quite the end of the story. But you did well by me, better than anyone did for these children, and all I can hope is that I passed some of that along. If I did well, it's thanks to the two of you and of course thanks to Tyko, since I think my Infernal is the only reason they listened to me in the first place.

I don't have long—we're preparing for docking—but I wanted to write a quick letter, and make a promise that I'll come for dinner the next time I'm on Sestrilles. I hope all is well with the two of you, and with Kari and Thari, who I hear are settling in well. Make Tyko his favorite dinner for me, he can never cook it right.

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 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

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Alion and Tiriel,

I think I told you when we were visiting that I discovered something about my earring—namely that it's a data storage device. Here on Rugira Prime, I've found someone who built a device that can read at least some of the files, and one of them is the picture I'm attaching to this message. I thought you might appreciate seeing me as a child. I didn't come to you with family mementos and pictures the way Tyko did, or some of your other foster children, and I know you like to have those memories up sometimes.

I'm doing mostly well. This planet has Pika rattled, and Maliah and I on edge in response, on top of a few adventures we've gotten ourselves into that had all of us worried, but right now we're just having some quiet, doing some sightseeing and resting, Maliah practicing her hand-to-hand skills and Pika off at the monastery where she took her orders, centering herself.

I hope all is well for the two of you, and that Kari and Thari are doing well also. I enjoyed getting to know them on my visit to Sestrilles.

Love,

Elyn

[Attached: a picture of a Gnomish baby with Elyn's red-orange hair and a grave expression, being held by a pair of strong arms, the top and bottom of the picture too blurred to make out the person holding her.]

[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

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear El,

“Elyn has a question for you,” I told Lindanas, who of course had an academic’s immediate interest in whatever is going on with that insignia of Maliah’s, took copious notes on the little information you had, and then opened a query on my library account, because we both know you certainly never check yours. (He says you’ve had a book out since your third year on the Promise, by the way. Maybe look for it sometime. They’ve replaced their copy, but it’s the principle of the thing.)

He said he’d have a look in the older documents from Sestrilles, talk to his friends in the city archives to see if they know anything about refugees from the Honorien Dominion, and that he’d be in touch with Nellaser’s Landing if he thinks there’s anything to cross-reference. And then, of course, naturally, because he’s very nice, he asked how you are, getting back to work after your vacation.

What was I supposed to tell him? “My sister, who you are still very intimidated by, has just had an invitation to go visit a god, so she’ll probably be doing that tomorrow. No, don’t be too impressed—she’s met them before, one of the first few to do so, and they’ve communicated by prayer in the meantime.”

The worst thing is that I almost did say that, or something like it. I try my best to remind you what kind of lives people who aren’t powerful adventurers lead, when you start talking like dinners with archmages and deals with hags and using spells five people in a century can cast are normal. Unfortunately, after almost two years of getting your letters, just a step more removed from normal life every time, it’s sometimes hard to remember that if what happened to you two years ago seems normal in comparison to what I hear now, it’s certainly not normal to the average person.

Lindanas has picked up plenty of information about your adventures (and I suspect he keeps an open query on your name and Electro-Magnetic Chaos for himself at the library. His friends are all nosy about you too, but I am not planning to introduce you to the book group for a long while yet), but he hadn’t heard about Aluarashi, so I got to explain that mess, and then got three books recommended to me about first contacts with gods. (And the first I’ve tried is actually good, so I suppose that’s helpful. Lindanas says there are rumors that a friend of Mishakal’s from before she ascended wrote a memoir about all of it, but that only a dozen copies were ever printed and nobody’s seen one in well over a thousand years.) And then he excused himself and I didn’t hear from him for several hours, so thanks for that.

I asked him, when he’d finished with the thinking he needed to do, what he knows about creativity as a force, which isn’t really anything at all, he says. He could do some research on the matter, but he admits that what you want is bardic lore, or religious texts, neither of which his public library specializes in. It looks like Niko is your best avenue for religious texts. As for bardic lore—you came at being a bard sideways. Serime might know something, if you tried her, but I think if she cared much about lore, she would have made you learn it alongside everything else. What about your friends from Siroyer? They make crafter ballads, after all, and you’ve enlisted their help before. Ask Aluarashi’s help, by all means, but ask them too, if you need to. It seems to me that the help you get from gods is hard to understand at best.

But then again, maybe Aluarashi hasn’t been worshiped long enough to get mysterious with the first few people they chose to reveal themselves to.

As for Tiriel—I trust you, even when I’m exasperated with you. And I know as well as you do that hearing this will worry her, and worse than that, make her feel guilty for something she can’t control, as if she’s taken this spate of creative fulfillment from someone on purpose. I don’t like keeping secrets from her (and from Alion, who I suspect is going to be very disappointed in us both), but I’ll follow you on this.

But you’re the one apologizing and telling her you swore me to secrecy. And you’re doing it in person, because she deserves that. Do it before you inevitably find some way to solve whatever terrifyingly huge problem this is, do it after, I don’t care, but I am not playing messenger on this one.

Maybe Aluarashi is calling you over to say that the gods’ problems are the gods’ business, but I don’t have my hopes up. If I’ve got the time conversion right, you’re in the boat over there right now, and I’ll hear from you in a day or three as you say you’ve got some information and you’ve taken this quest as yours.

I know you. You kept people at arm’s length for a long time, but I was the one you didn’t, so I was the one who saw that the second you let someone close, you make them your responsibility. I was your only responsibility for a long time, even after I could take care of myself. And now you have Maliah and Squirt, and your children, and people all across space, from a restaurant owner to a fucking archmage, and the problems you’ve been taking on have been getting bigger and bigger, because you don’t like to see people suffer, especially people you care for, and you care so much more easily these days.

So you say you don’t know how to solve this problem, that you feel hopeless at the outset, that three people trying uselessly is better than one. But listen to me, because I know plenty about you: this problem is too big for you to solve, and you’ll solve it anyway, because you always do, and because I can already see you taking the responsibility on. You’re going to terrify both of us along the way, and I imagine you and Maliah are going to find yourselves in more danger than any of us would like, but I don’t for a second think you can’t solve this.

I probably can’t help. Probably even Lindanas can’t, though I’m sure he’ll try to do more research if you ask. But I’ll listen. And Tiriel and Alion will too, when you’re ready to tell them.

Love,

Tyko

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Tyko,

I hear that Kari and Thari met Lindanas the other night—Tiriel seems unsure whether to be jealous or impressed with your masterstroke in gaining their affection and trust. Seems to have gone well, though, from all that thirdhand information! And if I know you, going to the museum with all three of them might be a preface for having Alion and Tiriel over for dinner while he's there, so I'll look forward to their recaps of the dinner, since I don't trust you not to withhold the information from spite.

Though, I hasten to say, I haven't done anything dangerous since I wrote last. Maliah and I spent a bit more time with Bizza and then started out to Nulbarak. It was a quiet few days of travel—I caught up on a few newly released movies and read a book Alion mentioned in a letter a while back, a thriller about an arcane researcher who winds up pulled into a spy plot. There's nothing deep in it, but that was just what I wanted while I traveled.

Once we were on Nulbarak and traveling to Caystone, though, I did at least start some cursory research, since everything about this job seems vague—disappearances and improbable events. That got me looking for portals and godsfalls, but there's not much evidence of either in the area, and Maliah declined to theorize before we knew much about the problem, so we arrived in town this morning and immediately started trying to figure out more.

The job had been posted with the guild by Lasym Aner, with the town council, so we went looking for him and found him easily enough, a friendly halfling man, professional and experienced and clearly quite distressed by the events befalling his town.

The events, unfortunately, are nebulous, and from the way he talked about them, I get the impression that there are more than a few doubters in town. He doesn't really seem the sort for flights of fancy, though, and I trust his intuition and his worry. What seems to be happening is rashes of unusually good or unusually bad luck. On one hand, people dropping dead and buildings burning with no discernible cause. On the other, a woman who found what amounts to a buried treasure. In between, people leaving and disappearing. A lot of them, they have a rash of unusually good or unusually bad luck, and they pack up and go away, and tell people they're going. Others just seem to disappear between one minute and the next.

There's no regular pattern to who's going, or when they're going. There don't seem to be commonalities. It's always happened, to some extent (and there are intriguing mentions of unusual luck in local superstition, apparently), but the past few years it's happened far more, and the past few seasons even more so. Intriguingly, he mentions a couple as part of this pattern, the Cengas, who disappeared about thirty years ago and returned about ten, with no explanation either time, and little said about where they were in between, so we're definitely going to talk to them, and to the woman who found a fortune.

First, though, we wanted to go out to speak to the Morley family—a wealthy local family that's paying for part of the adventurer rewards, and whose daughter disappeared without the packing up and warnings, just gone one day. We asked directions but Maliah ended up finding a woman selling all kinds of local maps, who loaded her down with every single kind of map she's got, from surveyor maps to current maps of the water, and marked locations of interest on them too, and wouldn't take money for them, to encourage our solving the mystery (though Maliah insisted on paying anyway—a little awkwardly, which she pointed out to me, as a leftover of our drunken argument about how good or bad with people she is, but nonetheless).

Between maps and directions, we made it to the Morley estate just fine. We didn't know anything about their daughter's disappearance, assumed she must have disappeared literally overnight, from what we'd been hearing, and assessed how likely it was something could have gone wrong if she'd sleepwalked out or something—there are rapids behind their house, but it turns out not to be relevant. Tomes, one of the children of the house, answered the door and seemed surprised (we're not very good at letting people know we're coming) and showed us to his father, his mothers being out of the house.

Edmur Morley, the father of the family, was gracious, and started with an understandably defensive explanation of the situation. Rowan Morley is seventeen, and according to her father, a sensible young woman not likely to make reckless decisions. Smart, but not passionate about any one thing. Friendly, but not a social butterfly. Looking forward to finishing her local education, taking a bit of time to spend with her family, and going to explore her options at a university. She wasn't dating anyone, according to herself and her friends. The day she disappeared, four months ago, she went to see some friends—met them in town and went to a marina, Caystone being on a lake and a river and having lots of water activity, to go out on a friend's boat. They spent some time on it, swimming a little, and went back to shore. She said she was going to town to run a few errands before she went home, and nobody has seen her since. There's no sign that her friends are withholding information. There were no unusual arguments or interactions, her mood seemed normal. Nobody has made threats or asked for ransom. Nothing unusual or extra is missing from her room.

We've just finished having a look at her room, actually (Edmur went off to let his wives know we're here and talk to his children who are around, to marshal them all into some kind of order to talk to us, and now we're sitting with tea and refreshments gathering our thoughts). It was almost painfully normal, honestly—the usual kinds of mildly illicit things any adolescent might hide, like a too-short dress and a failed math test, but nothing more. Her LICD is with her, but there's a computer and an old LICD I'm hoping we can have a look at. She doesn't seem to have had a swing of luck in one direction or another where her grades are concerned, and I imagine her parents would know about finances on that front. Not that I'd expected any after four months, but there was no sign of magic.

I am, to put it frankly, baffled. Maliah has had the very smart thought of scrying, especially considering the Morleys are wealthy, but they haven't found anyone who knows the spell or has the power to cast it. I've reached out to Gaizka to see if they know anyone, or if they might have a scroll available if I can find the right materials to try one casting for. I've had a Locate Object scroll around forever that we might try looking for Rowan's planner or LICD on the path where she got lost, but if her possessions disappeared with her, as they likely did, it's a pure waste of a limited resource.

It's something to do with luck. Maybe a finite supply of it, the way cursory observations of crafters at Niko's behest make it look like there's a finite supply of inspiration that's getting concentrated (she's probably heading back to Nosirion-1 soon, and we've told her she can ask us to come back and we will as soon as the more urgent jobs we're looking at are done) (also, I am almost fully sure these two mysteries are not related, nowhere near all of the people who have disappeared are crafters). Maliah's suggested wishes going wrong, which isn't a bad track to think of.

Whatever it is, it's subtle—things are happening that could almost be coincidence, if they weren't so numerous. Nobody's found any obvious magic in it. Every incident can be explained away, to some extent. But it's a lot, and it's focused here in Caystone. It could be a magical person or creature, though I'm not sure yet how the manipulation of luck could benefit anyone happening in a large mass. It could be something environmental—there are caves nearby, and a waterfall too, and you know our luck with finding magical things in caves and behind waterfalls, plus there's all the water. I am wondering if there's an elemental or two in the lake or the river who might be able to find out if there are particular bodies, or who might have seen something. It's worth a shot, and Maliah might know, since I know she's studied elementals.

I'm hoping that by the end of the day, or at least by the end of tomorrow, we'll have a few more theories to work with, or at least enough information to build theories. In the meantime, thank you for being my sounding board while we wait for the Morleys, but I'm hearing some rumblings that make me think it's just about time for them to come in, so I'll leave off.

Good luck with that dinner, if you do decide to host it. Praija Festival's coming up, right? You could always use the excuse of the holiday.

Love,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Alion,

Maliah and I have left Rotharl, after only a few days there. Cloudleaper isn't with us, and—I'll explain a lot more about it the next time I'm there (which I'm hoping will be soon), but I think she needs the rest, and has some things to work out. So things feel strange and unsettled, but I'm also glad to be up and moving.

We're settling into our inn on Nellaser's Landing, where we've stopped to visit Archmage Zebari for a few reasons, so I'm writing you a quick letter before Maliah and I go out for the evening. There's a street fair not far away, and it sounds like a lot of fun.

Our next steps are—we're not sure, and some of them will depend on you. At some point, within the next month or so, we're due on Mir to help Athan and Kian out with something, and we definitely want to stop on Nosirion-1 before that. Our plan is also for a stop on Sestrilles, but I'm not sure how long a stop it's going to be.

I mean, for one thing, I'd love to sit down with you for a week and see if I can learn Prestidigitation from you, or at least make a start. We just had a particularly filthy bit of work dealing with some griffons, and it really made me feel my lack. Someday I'll spend another week or two and learn Mending from Tiriel if I can manage it, but considering how much time we spend in the wilderness, Prestidigitation is going to be very useful very often.

But mostly, I'm hoping you might have news for me about your university connections! I know it hasn't been very long, only a month, but since I've got free time and knowing that coming up I could be busy from anywhere from a week to a month or longer, with no details on our upcoming job, I thought I'd ask. You'll get a visit either way, don't worry, I'm just balancing whether I should drop Maliah somewhere so she doesn't have to sit around while I try to learn Prestidigitation, or if I might need her help treating with elementals.

Either way, all my love to you and Tiriel, and I will tell you everything about what's been going on when I actually manage a visit. Soon!

Love,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Tyko,

We're going back to Nellaser's Landing in the morning, so I'm writing this tonight so you know and are up to date on everything as soon as I get back to the Prime Material Plane. Give me a call when you catch up and have a few minutes? There's a whole lot to talk about, as you're either about to see or have seen already, and as you no doubt knew from the Sendings I had a chance to get to you. And I want to hear all about you. We're going to have a few things to do fairly urgently when we get back to the station, but a talk with you is a priority for me. But I figure better you call me than me call you, so you can have a chance to catch up and then either call to yell or cool off for a little while.

You'll see from the timestamps that it's been most of a week since my last letter—I never did write you about my meeting with those elementals, since I wrote Alion and Tiriel about them, but I met one in particular, and we talked about Hanai and then we talked about the wreck of the Procyon a little, and how I might find what remains. The thought of finding and hiring a whole expedition with submarines and equipment sounded exhausting, but their presence made me wonder about elementals on Sestrilles, and if they might help, and Arpialtheamanu seemed to think they might, if we could find them. (You or Lindanas wouldn't happen to know a Sestrillian druid or ranger who knows the oceans well, would you?) It's not a priority right now, can't be, but there's an infinitesimal chance that if the wreck is explored—well, most realistically, we'll get answers about what made the Procyon crash. That alone is reason enough to do it. Second most possible, recovery of any personal items—my family's or anyone's family's. Maybe Hanai's other earring, or other things that won't have been ruined. And such a tiny hope: recovery of bodies. Of bodies in decent enough shape that Resurrection rather than True Resurrection might be an option.

You have to admit it would be a solution. It wouldn't take me decades of adventuring for money to cast that spell, even if it's still enough money to make me wince. I haven't told Am'elyn or any of the rest of the family that it might be possible, because I don't want to get anyone else's hopes up, but we'll see what any undersea expeditions could tell us. But it makes things feel more possible, even if it's a vain hope, and if it works, it's the healthy choice. I don't know what I'll do if it's not a possibility, but for now, I'm not going to throw myself into the harder spell and what I need for it when this is still a possibility.

I can just about hear you laughing at me using the phrase “healthy choice,” after your exasperation with me in our last Sending. I was a little miffed, at you clearly thinking I have no common sense left at all, but, well—I don't. Gaizka showed us all a pretty shameful lesson in that, when we made it back to Sunwest.

We came by car. Maliah's new fear of flight wasn't tested, which is good and bad both, and it was much faster than a hike even if we took the longer route, by the coast instead of through the mountains. In Sunwest, we went to the mayor's office, where we said hello to Gaizka, who said that a few more days would wrap up the initial business and home was calling, and we said we'd make arrangements to go with them, and asked to talk with them later, in the privacy of our hotel suite. Then we talked to Mayor Miroya about those letters we found in the behir's cave—it turns out they belonged to a fairly famous adventurer on Kirim, so they were an important historical find, and I'm a little amused and a little bitter about always seeming to bring Kirim important but tragic news.

Mayor Miroya sent us over to a scholar at the historical archives, where we answered a lot of questions, and the scholar even said that once they'd been catalogued the magical items we'd found with the letters could be ours (and an astrolabe for Maliah, since she can't resist a good navigational tool). They're with us now, in fact, in preparation for our departure.

And then we came back to the hotel to talk to Gaizka. We didn't explain well, but Cloudleaper talked about losing time and hallucinating and—I forget exactly what it was Gaizka said. Something about it perhaps being less urgent than it sounded, since we hadn't told anyone about it before. And then, when we were worrying about spells, they asked very practically if we'd spoken to a doctor. And of course we hadn't. Since my healing hadn't immediately fixed it, since a Lesser Restoration didn't do much, I'd waved aside that it could be a medical issue, and I can't do that. I'm supposed to be the healer in this group, somehow, and I just assumed that since it passed, and she was feeling better, we didn't have to go to a doctor about it, at least not right away. I just jumped right to conspiracies and magic and forgot about very real practical worries.

And worse, if Devon or Bizza or any of our friends who don't adventure had experienced what Cloudleaper had, I would have had them in front of a doctor or a cleric before they could say anything to the contrary. But Cloudleaper, who's had enough concussions in the past that this could well be related to repeated brain injuries? I dismiss that option out of hand. Six months ago, a year, before I started adventuring, what happened to her would have horrified me into turning around then and there, going back to Sunwest and apologizing to Yavhiz'reen and flying or driving out instead of trying the mountain pass, and only then after Cloudleaper had had extensive brain scans.

But the thing about adventuring is that problems get so much bigger little by little. What terrifies you one week becomes commonplace the next. A bite, or a bruise, or a fall, that could have killed you a month ago becomes something you can almost shrug off. You almost die, and you almost die again, and suddenly it's just an occupational hazard that happens to all of you, and you have a drink and cry to your family about it and then move on, and start ignoring anything less. What does a broken arm matter, when it can be healed in seconds? What's hit after hit to the head, patched up every time but still collecting in a tally? I've lost all sense of proportion, and worst of all, I should have known it months ago—Cloudleaper and Maliah even pointed it out, when I said something stupid about how I needed to be better at backing down in fights now that I can cast Raise Dead and they said I wouldn't need to cast it if I would just stay on my feet to heal them in the first place.

Though neither of them is good at being careful with themselves either. Maliah does best, and that's just because she knows that if she throws herself into danger, Squirt is going to follow her.

I'm left feeling humbled and stupid and determined to do better, starting with getting Cloudleaper to a doctor and then doing whatever that doctor says is best, whether that means rest or something else.

Of course, Cloudleaper's troubles may still be magical. Gaizka took those concerns very seriously. They can't detect any magic on her now, and if she was cursed, that's been dispelled, which is a beginning. I brought up my worry, which is that it was a Scrying spell with strange inter-planar side effects, sent by Cloudleaper's family if they saw the video of her in the Commemoration of Grace. Gaizka reassured me that if Scrying fails, it usually just fails, doesn't involve strange side effects. I decided not to bring up that my concern wasn't the spell failing, but succeeding with unusual side effects, like the minute they'd spied on being inscribed to their own memories rather than Cloudleaper's.

Cloudleaper's concern seemed to be that they were trying to resurrect her. Gaizka first gently dismissed that, saying that she didn't seem to have left enough of herself with them for Resurrection to work, and that True Resurrection was so vanishingly rare as to be an impossibility, which made me squirm a little. But Cloudleaper said her family has the money for any spell, including that one, so Gaizka wasn't sure if the side effects would track, not being a necromancy expert, but didn't dismiss the possibility.

It might magical sense, but it doesn't make logistical sense. If they're trying to resurrect her, why now? Why now when she's just been in the media—in disguise, but not so much that Pika didn't recognize her in a video? I still think it's more likely magical than neurological, but that's no excuse for me not doing my due diligence.

When we'd all exhausted our paranoia, Gaizka looked around at all of us and mentioned that Nellaser's Landing has lots of good therapists, some of whom specialize in the particular traumas of adventurers, and said they've certainly visited one and found it helpful. Since the balhannoth especially, people have mentioned the matter to us—well, they offer to be ears themselves, Bizza and Brennu and so many friends and family, but they also say maybe someone else, maybe a professional. And I keep putting it off, for other things, but I really can't anymore. I should have found someone as soon as I walked out of the mountains on Hangi Syr, but honestly, I should have done it long before that—when I said I should stop getting hurt since I could raise the dead now, or when Pika pulled a knife on Maliah, or the first time I almost died. I was fine on the Promise, the coping techniques Imil Felltree taught me worked well enough in an ordinary life, but I'm not living an ordinary life right now, and especially after Kirim, my mind is whirling all the time, and it's time and past to talk to someone about it.

Are you relieved? I hope you are.

After that, my last days on Kirim for the time being have been quiet, to some extent. Quiet for me, which means busy and emotional but not life-threatening.

I've seen Am'elyn a few more times, and Khama'air, and Tidge came up to see me one more time, with a few pictures and trinkets. Am'elyn gave me an absolutely beautiful copy of the ni Huilin lineage to keep, and a trinket of Kadan's that I'm going to treasure, and I had good talks with all of them, and a lot of tearful promises to stay in touch as much as I can, with Sending and with letters as soon as a communication system can be set up to transmit them. They're all sad to see me go so soon, and I'm sad to go as well, but I'm going to be a lot happier if Cloudleaper can deal with her troubles on her home plane, where we can easily bring in Pika and Stormflight if she needs support we can't provide. And I'm going to be happy to be within easy reach of you again, too.

I bought you a present, by the way. Not sure if I'll be delivering it in person or by mail, that will depend on Cloudleaper's situation and anything else urgent that's come up since we've been gone, but I'll be sure to get it to you. I'm going to be spending a lot on postage, actually—presents to send to Rugira Prime and Nosirion-1, too. I wanted my family on the Prime Material Plane to have mementos of my other home, I suppose. Next time I come to Kirim, I'll do the reverse. And it looks like Gaizka will be back and forth until they can teach a few other people the spell, so I'll have the opportunity.

Sometime, I'll bring you. You can suffer through everything being too short for you the way I always have to suffer through everything being too tall for me, but other than that you'll like it. So much tech, all unfamiliar, for you to work with. And you'll like Am'elyn, and especially Tidge.

I finally, in the past few days, have had a chance to look at the music around the city. There's an interesting folk tradition of singing in the round that I think I could echo in interesting ways on my gloves, and I saw a few performances and have bought plenty of recordings to learn from, traditional and popular music both. And this morning I went to the temple of the Lady of Stars in Sunwest for the second time, bringing an offering this time, and felt a little better afterwards, at least, better than I had since our conversation with Gaizka, anyway.

There was a priest there, Zayni, who recognized me and thanked me for bringing word about the Procyon back, and we had a little talk. I admitted to knowing almost nothing about the Lady of Stars but feeling that I owe her some gratitude, and he offered to answer any questions I had. I asked for texts instead, if he had them—I had only meant it to be a fast visit into the temple and really didn't know how to say “All I know about her is her name and that I think she's got an interest in me” and not feel foolish. He came out with a slim book that has the story of how she became the Lady of Stars and some of her rites and prayers and practices, and that will serve me very well, I think.

He also gave me a pendant from around his own neck, a silver disc with the pattern of her constellation punched through it and a blessing etched around the edge—she's a goddess of travelers, and it's a request for guidance, both in travel and in life. I think that feels appropriate, don't you?

Kirim has been dizzying, and amazing, and I'm going to miss it and this new part of my family fiercely, but I've also been missing home just as much. I'm going to be so happy to talk to you again, to tell you all of this and let you pretend to laugh it off, and to talk to Alion and Tiriel and everyone else when I can. I hope you all help each other with it, I know I burden all of you a lot. Just know that it helps me, to be able to tell this all to you.

Love,

Elyn

[letterstosestrilles]

Dear Tyko,

Earlier, Maliah and I were discussing that so many things in these ruins that ought to have crumbled away to dust in close to two thousand years are in such good shape—books, wooden doors, even to a lesser extent tapestries. And there are runes all over, keeping things in stasis, and we wondered if the stasis on the whole place is enough to warp time inside or out, so we might come out of here having spent five minutes or five years (I don't think that's actually true, don't worry, considering I've been using a Sending Stone to update Erel Dhuna on our progress and she doesn't seem to think the updates come either too soon or too far apart, and also considering the people on Haewood seem pretty firm about the time when things started going wrong).

I couldn't help thinking, though, of what it would be like to come out of these ruins and find five years had passed, and I imagined you just standing there at the entrance of them, tapping your foot against the stone, beard grown long because you would be so busy enacting your annoyance you wouldn't bother to get it trimmed, a little bit of gray in your hair, since five years means more to you than to me. It was almost a funny image and almost a horrifying one. I'm still not quite sure where I land on it, though Maliah's reaction was pure horror, when I mentioned it.

I know it's not really how you'd react. You would have talked to Erel Dhuna, sent in a search and rescue party once my will kicked in to give you the funds to do it. But I was just thinking of it, and missing you. I needed the time to think, but I also deprived myself of weeks and weeks of your letters, even if I think you told Tiriel and Alion the bare bones of the matter, since I've had letters from them a little more newsy than usual. And now even if you've written me back I won't get it for days yet, or who knows how much longer.

Probably not five years.

You must think I'm dying, with an introduction like that. I'm actually doing quite well, though I'm lower on magic than I've been in a long time. We're making good progress in these ruins—well, I think we are, I don't know the extent of them so it's hard to say. We've been on one level, and it could be the only one, or we could find stairs up or down to lead to another massive area needing to be cleared out of any number of nasty creatures.

The first part of our explorations today was fairly quiet. We went down some stairs, through a door I had to force, and down another set of stairs, where we found yet another door—this one not wood, but metal, and it was too dark to see much of the runes inscribed on it or I might have realized it was enchanted. Maliah and I didn't end up enchanted, but poor Cloudleaper did, immediately saying that the ruins were dangerous and we should go back out of them and fight more giants instead.

That's not at all like her, I think you'll agree, so I cast Dispel Magic, and she immediately proved it was an enchantment and was not pleased about it. I was just glad it wasn't magic that hurt anyone, just tried to turn us back! It's like the warlock's spellbook, on Gletta-86, that wouldn't let us be opened—and it's strong magic, to have lasted thousands of years.

We went through the door before it recharged that particular spell, and into an antechamber, where we inspected a pristine coat closet (clearly someone or someones who adventured lived there, from the remnants, but it was nothing very exciting) and then went through a door that someone (probably the trolls) had done violence to, into a lounge area that had been very thoroughly looted, and then through another door into a huge, curved hallway.

(Honestly, for a while there, with how big the tunnels were, I was a little worried we were about to walk into another dragon's den. We haven't yet, though, so that's something. Also I think that a dragon would make short work of trolls and weird cloaks that bite you and everything else we've found down here so far.)

We walked the hall—first clockwise, making note of doors that were open and closed, and to the end of it, where there was an open door Maliah poked her head through … only to have the weird cloak I mentioned drop on her head and attack her. That was a terrifying fight—any damage we did to it seemed to go just as much to Maliah, so she kept getting hurt until we figured it out and Squirt finally managed to drag it off of her and let us take care of it. Maliah was looking much the worse for wear, so I healed her up, and decided to clear the other end of the hallway before deciding to go into the room that thing was in, so we turned around and again made note of doors, which were open and which were closed.

At the end of the hallway, it tapered off, and there was a pile of rocks that made us worry about a cave-in. When Maliah went to inspect it, though, it pulled itself together into an earth elemental. Cloudleaper attacked (with my help, though I also asked Maliah if she could talk to it, since she can speak the fire elementals' language and they're close enough to be understood), and then we all waited until it considered her proposal. It eventually decided, she later told me, that it wished to fight, but as a contest of arms rather than a true battle. Maliah said that if we won, she'd like safe passage for us and for the archaeologists if and when they come down here, and it seemed amenable to the plan, so it gestured us on, and Maliah attacked.

It was a quick battle. Cloudleaper and I were both a little nervous about attacking someone who wanted to fight for fun (well, and in my defense, I also thought maybe it might want a longer battle, if it's been bored), but Maliah told us off, so we fought more—I threw off a few Shatters, which have a very marked effect on earth elementals, and Cloudleaper's fists did more good than her weapons, and it was a kick to its chest that made it declare the fight in our favor in the end. Cloudleaper was looking much the worse for wear, and Maliah was still unwell after the fight with that other thing, so I offered healing to them and, through Maliah, to the elemental, which it accepted with courtesy and surprise, so I cast Mass Cure Wounds for the first time and was staggered with how much healing it made all at once.

It seemed surprised and happy, and offered us—well, me, but all of us really—a chunk of star sapphire as big as my head, which is gorgeous and incredibly heavy, so thank goodness for the Bag of Holding. Then it told us a secret of the ruins: that there's a secret door right next to where our battle had been taking place. It faded away to recover more (Maliah's tried to call for it a few more times, to ask its name since she gave it hers as a token of passage for the archaeologists when they come, and I wouldn't mind knowing how long it's been here, if it moved in or was a part of the defenses from the first, but we haven't seen any sign of it), and we pressed at the stonework in the wall until we found the part that would open it for us.

That led us to some living quarters. We were exhausted and took a half hour to rest first, before going through them. It was just five rooms, mostly cleared out but with the stamp of their owners still on them—some books left behind, some worn-out boots, in one room a spell scribed on parchment, not one I could understand. We wrapped up some of it—the books and the spell, mostly, since if we can't clear out these ruins we can at least bring back artifacts for the scientists. I have one of the books currently in my possession, an elvish romance called The Spacefarer's Bride, which I'm going to read a bit of when I'm finished writing to you, since it's still early in the day.

(Or early in the five years. Joking, joking.)

I wish I knew what happened here, why the people left. If they left in a hurry, it was with enough warning to pack up almost all their things, just leaving behind what they didn't care about. If they left of their own volition, did they think they were coming back? Did they just figure the mountain would swallow up all the last things they didn't care about? Maliah seems to think they fled. I think they chose to go. I just wish I knew where, and why. It really was something like two thousand years ago, judging by the publishing dates on a science overview textbook we found.

The living quarters seemed safe and protected behind their secret door, so we decided to call it base camp for the time being and went out to clear a few more rooms. In the end, we only did one more, the nearest, what look to have been guard quarters, which contained two horrible insect-like things with huge hooks, that started the whole fight on the ceiling of the room. I split one open with a Shatter, and Cloudleaper scorched the other with a Fire Bolt, and we all got some good hits in in between, and then Maliah got what meat she could from them in case the gnolls would like it, though who knows how well meat keeps in the Bag of Holding.

After that, we dithered. With a little healing, none of us were hurting particularly much, and the day is still pretty young, but I didn't like how low on magic I was getting, so eventually we decided to rest the rest of today and start fresh tomorrow, and then I'll do my best to be braver about going out without much magic left. I think maybe now that I've decided to be more cautious, I've decided to be too cautious. Maliah and Cloudleaper seem willing to indulge me, anyway.

I'm going to read, and maybe, since we're safe behind a secret door, I'll see about taking PA out of the Bag of Holding to roll around a little and get some stimulation, since I can't imagine our collection of random trinkets is exactly exciting for it.

You'll get these letters soon, I promise. As soon as we can manage. And maybe we can set up a call so we can talk face to face when I'm back in civilization? Just to say hello and catch up in real time, and so I can apologize again for the silent treatment.

Love,

Elyn