tell me about pearl’s feelings towards the good doctor benitoite. before or after the rebellion.
I hope this letter finds you in good health. This is what the humans say at the beginnings of their letters, and I feel that if I'm going to do this, I may as well do it to the letter.
("to the letter" means "to adhere to every detail." I said this as a pun on the word letter. "Puns" are annoying ways in which humans play with words. I said "I am writing a letter to the letter," but what I really meant was "I am writing a letter correctly." I just said it in a way that was very funny and not at all redundant. If you don't find this funny, and instead find yourself angry and confused, don't worry. That's normal.)
Letters are, as you may have already surmised, written methods of communication. One writes a message on a piece of paper, (which is a thin sheet manufactured from the pulp of wood,) and then neatly folds that paper, and it is then neatly placed inside of a different paper, which is then sent out to its intended recipient.
Now, I already know what you're thinking. Of course I know this letter will never reach you.
The human postal service does not extend to the stars, and probably, pathetically, thankfully won't for another hundred millennia. But I wanted to write you anyway, in hopes that my sentiment might travel a distance far enough to reach your world. Maybe if I imagine it hard enough, it will spread a great distance — like bands of quantum light. I only hope it won't take as long.
Anyway, I hope this letter finds you in good health. We do not have "health" in the way the organics do, but we certainly have a form of it, and I hope very much that yours is good. I am writing because I, in fact, find myself in poor "health," and I've never known anyone better suited to navigate that sort of problem than you. I don't think of you often, but when I do, it's because I have a profound ache that I know only you can cure. I remember, with a quiet nostalgia, all of the times you'd plucked me up to simply walk the labs with you. I remember the way we'd talk, and how you'd say scandalous things in a secret voice that felt straight out of my own heart.
I'm very tired. I carry a tiredness with me.
The humans have taken to some very bizarre architecture. Rose is absolutely tumbled by it. She looks at the strange, stone zigzags like she thinks they're the most wonderful things in the world. She asked me if I thought the style was interesting, and although I said yes, (because "interesting" can mean many things without connotation), I was really only thinking about the snide remark you'd make, and how you'd whisper it only to me, and how we'd revel together in a secret snideness all our own. What fun it would have been.
By an almost mystical intuition, you always seemed to know when I wanted to escape. I wonder now if you'd learned that kind of smartness, or were born with it against all reason.
I would be aching in a way I couldn't explain, and you would meet me with that smile of yours — the one which crinkled the intricate but dramatic lines you keep around your eyes — and would speak to me in that secret voice, and then I would stop aching. I would instead feel very full and very certain. And when I'd leave you, I'd leave knowing I'd be able to face the day. You always made the terrible, empty tedium seem bearable... even if only for a small while...
...Sometimes, I wonder what you would have said, had I had the chance to ask you. Ask you to join us, that is. Join me. Join the rebellion. Would you have smiled in that way that you did, only with a little fire in the back of your eye, and taken my hand and gone with me unabashedly into a great, colorful forever?
I suppose you would have died, if you had. The great, colorful forever went out in a burst of white. There hadn't even been a sound.
...You would have been corrupted. I would have skewered you in some awful way by now, like you were some terrible beast the terrible humans made up for their terrible stories, which are really just terrible ways to make sense of their terrible feelings.
But then again, maybe you'd have lived. Maybe you'd have been next to me when it all happened, and so you would have been saved. Or maybe you'd have saved yourself in some very impossible and clever way. Maybe you'd have been alright. Maybe we'd both have been alright. Then you'd have had a room in the temple, and it would have been a silo, because I know you and I know it would have been a silo, and I'd be sitting there in that silo with you right now, instead of alone under this big acer tree. How nice that would be.
Then the world would be solid, because you'd make it solid in your wise way, and I'd be at peace. I'd be sitting with you, shoulder to shoulder, and I'd be at peace. How nice that would be.
I miss you very much. I miss the way you made sense of things. I miss feeling awake with you. You never once looked past me when I was speaking. Never once.
It was nice talking to you as always, Ben.
Signed,the bird which sings at your window
