The Dead Still Speak || Draft 1 (Original Work)

Letter I

TO DIETRICH MYSCOUGH OF KREDETH'S ARCA

I write to you six months after I received news of your departure. My mother comforted my wails of your disappearance and urged me to write once you have settled in your home. Also, to allow time for me to recollect my thoughts. I apologize for not writing earlier, as those aforementioned thoughts took longer to be collected then I initially presumed.

I woke up one day and as I prepared for our daily forest explorations, our books on further readings about the stars and it's connections to myths regarding the Nexis in hand, when my mother held me aside. She said to wait and I did, occupied stragetically by a warm mug of milk, until my father came and sat me down.

Distraught would be too calm of a word to use to describe myself. I have to look through more books to find the perfect word to relay to someone how I felt when I realised I was now utterly alone. Many years still stand before us. Many years before Edway would be left long behind and I have no friends heres. My mother and father don't count, not in the way that would matter to the heart of a spirit as ourselves. 

It's okay, I finally decided, after long days in bed in melancholy. These years will be spend inside the old days, the old stories of war and magic. I will explore the depths of knowledge that are held on my fathers bookshelves and give our garden the best soil and water I can to hope the land will return to me the luck I need for my future. Our future. 

 It has been a lonely six months, but I have occupied myself with studying for when the Naesbry entrance exams begin. My parents have allowed me to be dramatic in my solitude. They encourage my laments worthy of the great poets I read of, but only to mock my sincerity. They don't understand how important this is. 

It isn't childs play. I now have more of a desire to attend the school we have dreamt about since you are already in Naesbry. Stolen away, but like an apprenctice to a wizard in our favourite books. A magic-folk tale of having a master old and wise to teach the ways of the arcane. 

My mother laughs and says all children are sad when their friends get busy with their new grown up lives. She still thinks I will sucumb to Edway's history of settlement. I will not submit to her beliefs. Bread and cakes are nice but the sweetness wears you down. I will soon not be a child anymore and more of the adult meals will satisfy me. 

I will not become a baker, I'm sorry to my mother but my brain becomes so distracted when I kneed the dough on the weekends that I assist her. I stare at the window and the distorted image it gives. The outside looks so different in the afternoon light through glass that has been melted together too many times. 

What eyes have laid their imagination through the glass and seen what wonders? I knock the water on my dough and make it too runny. My mother cannot scold me for that. If she didn't want my imagination to run she should've closed the curtains. 

I think she had enough. I think she thought once you had left my 'dellusions' would have subsided. I think I saw my father's face of amusement. He did not believe that. My dream is in my heart. In my core. I read once that passion is all that is needed to save the world. It may have been from a child's fable or a history book my father ordered was not yet for my eyes but that I snuck and read regardless. 

Is it all we ever imagined? If you'd have told our younger selves that the Dietrich from humble Edway Residence was a Rexis of all things! The most honorable position in all of Bryalshire. I will work hard to match you, even if my mother starts to ban the books my father lends me. Do you think the grass was greener where we stood in the forest because you were a Rexis? Why the birds flew around us and how the flowers smelled the freshest? 

I like to think so. The forest was always so beautiful, even when the others at Edway's Residence compained it howled and looked to dark to be pretty. Maybe it was just for us. Your magic gave us a home. At least I dream of it like that. My father asked me if such things happened around you when we heard of the news and I said yes. I thought it was our imagination that made things so lively in the forest but it must've been your magic!

My mother says we cannot see you until I arrive at Naesbry. That is in six years. That's almost the same as forever! I hope you won't forget me but don't hesitate to make lots of magic friends! I daydream about how it must be to be friends with all the wizards and witches in Bryalshire. I know we aren't supposed to call them that (that includes you too now) but all the tales from my father's library have ingrained in me the old talk from before. 

Wizards, witches, sorcerors...they sound so much more fun than the Rexis. I know that is like blasphemy to say but giving your magic to the land sounds much less exciting than weilding swords made from sunlight or blasts dangerous enough to take out armies. 

Remember our games where we would play as evil and good wizards, using sticks as magic staffs? I hope you've kept that to yourself at Naesbry as that sort of play and talk could be profane. That's a new word I learned. Also, don't show them this letter. 

Please write soon, studying has limited my time for making new friends, even though there is no one in Naesbry who's company I'd enjoy. I cannot wait to go to Naesbry and leave Edway's school. Fondly—

J. BELMONT OF EVERSON HOUSE