Apologies mister Adelier, If my letter finds you at a late hour But I find myself impelled by an odd and sudden urgency.
In times not far gone, we have seen some of the worst of people, many an eel and worst day and indeed the glimmering gold of brighter days. In the spirit of a gladder tomorrow, ! would ask, if it is not too much of an imposition or discourtesy, that you share some of the bright moments of your recollection, nothing grand per se, simply the people and incidental transient little sparks that bring a small smile or a brave push.
Mopahol Laemasa Llaemas e Mann. Ssael fhikemun rish! -Al
The Adelier household of my youth wanted little for love but there was some absence of coin, particularly after my mother went to the khert and we took in my grandfather, whose knees cut short his time in the constabulary yet strangely still could carry him to the gambling hall twice a week. It was a patron's shrewd generosity - an investment in our caste, some might call it - that saw me away to the magery, but that man's beneficence went towards tuition and books and little else.
I remember one evening towards the end of my first year I was feeling dreadfully low of spirits. All around me were boys from fine families and higher ghers, carrying patent leather satchels, wearing new boots and mufflers, showing off pymaric daggers and pocket watches that could track the time, the date, the cycles of the moon, the temperament of their sweethearts - or so it seemed. That evening they all had tickets to a review in town. They were bunched together at the carriage stop awaiting the hounds, breath steaming as they spoke of all the troupes that would be at the theatre: men who could fly, who could make it rain indoors, who could slice young ladies in twain then stitch them together again. I watched the carriages pull away with them inside, listened to their crowing and excitement grow fainter, until I stood alone at the side of the road.
The frozen wind cut through my thin coat. Miserable, I stamped my feet, pocketed my hands, and turned back to the light of the dormitories. There was a whisper in my ear, familiar as my own heartbeat. Then I saw her--
A staecantus. Tall as two of me, broad as a carthound. A nacreous horn broke from her frosted grey snout. The whitest down poured off her head, her shoulders and flanks. She was like an icy cataract in motion, huffing hot breaths against the searing pink dusk sky. Directly towards my own gaze she turned hers, the judgment plain as fire in her lightning-blue eyes. I thought she would charge me; that her great hooves would part the snowcrust and mow me down like the cart that had in life left me with such a limp.
But no. She huffed, chuffed, turned and gamboled away into the woods. I was struck still a long moment, then struggled through the snow to stand where she had stood, and stoop over the pocks in the white and feel the broken crispness of the grass she'd trampled. I laughed. The sound was huge in the night.
Whatever the boys saw at the theatre, it would not be so fine a show as the one Ssael had sent me.
Since then, I have tried to take pleasure in what I have, and think very little on what belongs to other men. There is happiness in this.