Oriens writes from the city. She looks out from her tower as the light of the communal camp bonfire glows in the distance. There’s magnolia trees just beyond the wall too. She runs her hand over her shaved scalp, feeling how the hair has grown. She last shaved it before marching into battle at the Torchbearer’s side. She chose to stay with Nova in the end. Her hands shook when she took the robe, the allure of power almost impossible to resist despite the voice in the back of her head telling her to return home to her love.
She wishes she got to say goodbye to her dear Lyra properly, rather than a quick kiss and promise to return. A promise she had broken. Maybe she will receive this letter and agree to meet, giving Oriens the chance to explain her choices, or maybe even agree to stay. She just hopes for now that maybe Lyra had surrounded herself with others who grieved someone still alive, just like how the Torchbearer mourned Clancy.
Lyra reads the letter in camp, looking out across the land to where those towers still stand against the horizon, grey and unmoving. She plays with a braid in her hair, adorned with twisted metal she had shaped herself, and clay beads she had painted with her love. She wonders if Oriens still wears hers on a necklace like she used to. Lyra didn’t march into battle, she stayed behind as a medic for those who would return injured, and had sent Oriens on her way with a kiss and a sworn promise to come back to her.
She cried when Oriens was not amongst the survivors. She cried harder when Torch told her personally that her lover had chosen to stay. She cries now, quieter yet still pained, upon seeing the typed letters when she wished to see the shakes of ink from Oriens’ own handwriting. Some of the ink is still wet somehow. She feels ill seeing it transfer to her fingertips.
