It’s so quiet in the tower without you. We’ve kept it up nice, keep the curtains drawn open, refresh the flowers on the balcony. It’s nice up there, even with the appearance of a large fel planet overhead. It’s not quite a perfect view. Argus blots out a lot of the stars.
I didn’t get the chance to tell you a lot of things I should have before you moved on. Good and bad. Your influence on my life was not always positive, but I think toward the end we began to see eye to eye. I felt like you heard me, saw me, rather than the person you wished I was.
I wish you had told me about him. Ah– I do and I don’t. If you hadn’t, perhaps you wouldn’t have lingered. It sounds selfish of me, but my appreciation and affection for you grew in those last few months while you still clung to the tower. Still though, a part of me wishes I had known from the beginning, why I looked different, why the Magister ignored me. Maybe it would have been easier, but I have no way of knowing.
I might die. A lot of progress has been made, and things look more hopeful now than they did several months before. Still though, there’s risk, there’s a chance that all of this might end, after I’m finally happy. A part of me would want to haunt the halls and never let go, mostly for his sake. But knowing how you languished in the tower for years and years – it wouldn’t be any meaningful existence, nor any way to encourage him to find happiness elsewhere.
I’m scared of dying. I’m scared of leaving him alone. It weighs heavy. I know you were miserable stuck here. I don’t want to be miserable, and I don’t want to bind him to some threaded, frayed shell of what I used to be, either.
Then again, there’s a chance all this can be fixed, a chance that I can go back to being healthy and whole and myself, a chance that I can live past sixty-five. If I do, I’d like to make more of myself. I want to be proficient in something other than cryomancy, but I’m afraid of committing to anything like it while so many heavy things and what-ifs are floating around me.
I miss you. I never thought I’d feel that. Being stationed in Netherstorm and missing you in the midst of it doesn’t quite count. Everyone longs for the familiarity of home when they’re terrified.
I miss you. Your presence at your strongest, encouraging at the last second. It’s selfish. Why couldn’t you be that from the beginning? I don’t think it would have mattered if the Magister ignored me, then. Not nearly so much. Better late than never, though. I’m glad you’re at rest. I might let Andreo take free reign of the tower. He deserves a tower.
Maybe when Argus isn’t blotting out some of his favorite constellations.
