The letter’s arrival was entirely unexpected.
Not only did Okuni seldom receive mail in the first place, but the sender was one she’d honestly presumed dead or at least gone. A dead person writing a letter... That wasn’t entirely what she thought a “ghost writer” was.
A joke. A bad bad joke. Because accepting that the letter in her hands was for real was next to impossible. But the longer she held it, the longer she stared at the neat lettering that spelled out her name in a familiar hand, the more she was forced to accept it. It was true. The letter was real. He really had written her.
She did not wait until she was inside her home to tear the letter open, ripping a jagged gash in the envelope in her haste to get to the ink on paper, ink that would tell her why he had sent this damning thing. She pushed open the door to the house, skimming as she walked inside.
I know that receiving this letter must be something of a shock, to you.
[That was an understatement.]
How many moons have waxed full in the sky since we last saw one another? I still remember the soft lilt of your voice [Since when had her voice ever been soft, unless she had her customer service voice going?], the hair falling down your back. How my fingers used to tangle in those locks, twisted between my knuckles. I remember the look on your lovely face when I told you I was going on a mission and did not know for how long. And so long it has been, my lovely one. So long that you must have surely forgotten my face by now.
[How was she supposed to react to that? It all sounded like bullshite, leading up to some sort of apology she didn’t want to hear. Okuni read on.]
Have you missed me in my absence? For I have missed you. I have missed you, and yet I have wronged you. Because when last we met, I lied to you. I lied and told you that I was waging a dangerous war, that I was sworn to secrecy. The truth, my lovely one, is more ugly than any ware. I was not leaving, but returning to something. To someone.
[Her heart was frozen, frozen, and an odd panic welled up in her chest. No no no no no no no...]
I can never apologize to you enough for what I am about to confess, but you were always a decadence I allowed myself in Eorzea. I asked your hand on impulse, though I had the imprint of that ring already. You see, I had drowned in you so completely that I felt like I had no option. I had to make you mine in body and name. But it was with regret, with self loathing that I never told you I was already--
She could read no more. The excuses, the apologies... she couldn’t stand to read another. She’d read all she needed to, understood all that she needed to. All this time, she’d thought he’d gone on that expedition and died. All this time, she’d felt guilt for moving on from him. All this time, she’d been his mistress.
What did he expect from her? Forgiveness? Some sort of award for telling her the truth far too late? Had she known, she wouldn’t have wasted her time.
She would not write back.
She would not even grace him by finishing the letter.
She would think no more of him.
The letter found its way into the flames of the hearth, and Okuni watched the paper curl up and crumble and puff into plumes of ash. Then when it was but embers in the fire, she took a dagger to her hair. The hair he had loved so much, the hair he’d twisted his filthy lying fingers into...
She cut furiously, hacked off hunks and hunks of that sleek black hair. When none of it touched her shoulders any longer, she threw it all into the flames as well. The acrid burning odor hardly mattered.
No, no tribute. No accolades, no acknowledgement. Nothing that would remind her of him. Perhaps one day she’d stop feeling so tainted, like she needed to follow the hair and letter into the inferno. One day, she’d have a head full of hair that he’d never touched.
She walked outside and began the trek to the Mists. Any praise or tribute she had was for him instead, the man who she’d come to love in the time since the letter’s sender. He’d never treated her like that, never built their relationship on a lie.
If there was any question in his mind that he was ‘worthy’ of her, she would banish it, slay it, crumble it to dust. He was a god compared to a snake.
