Imagine being Quynh and going back to one of your and Andromache's older hiding places, one of those you shared with Lykon because some of your stuff is there, damn it, and you want it back, and if you happen to steal take more things that belong to the others, well, it's nothing but compensation, those traitorous, backstabbing, unreliable...
And then you open the first chest and find the letters. You find only letters, all with your name on and you weren't going to read them, but the second chest is full of letters, too, and the third, and...
Yusuf wrote you. Nicolò wrote you.
Andromache wrote you and that's... that's just... Andromache, who got into arguments with Yusuf over the superiority of oral tradition and good memory. Who thought writing was a newfangled passing fad, no, really, she means it. Andromache who held any writing instrument like she held a knife, only she was much more at ease and graceful with the knife.
Andromache who complained at length about all the better things she could be doing rather than writing. Andromache who signed with an X every time she could get away with it and suddenly you hear Yusuf’s teasing voice in your head telling her that she could have at least used her initials, at least an A, it's not harder than an X.
Andromache wrote you. More letters than the other two Yusuf and Nicolò combined and they wrote you a lot.
So you take them all out of their chests and they make a stack that's taller than you - possibly taller than the Frenchman, too - and they weren't exactly in order before and now you made it worse but you don't care, you keep jumping from one letter to the next to the next...
It's 500 years worth of I love yous, I miss yous, I'm thinking of yous and remember whens. It's 500 years worth of apologies.
You are still angry, of course you are, but... it's different. Seeing this. Knowing you were not forgotten.
Maybe it's not enough, you're not sure yet, but... it's Something.
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