iTomato: For a community on LJ, "60damnprompts," I claimed Luke fon Fabre. The challenge is to write sixty days in his life. Eek.
disclaimer: Tales of the Abyss is not mine.


One // Mail

He was sitting, quite comfortably, in his bed when there was a tapping at his door. "Master Luke? May I enter?" The voice, shy and hesitant, belonged to a servant. "You have a visitor."

"Oh, you do not need to be so polite to him," twittered a familiar voice. The doorknob turned, and Natalia entered the room, clutching a handful of envelopes in her hand. "Are you still in bed, Luke? Honestly!"

"I could have been naked, Natalia," he grumbled, refusing to sit up for her sake. In the threshold, the maid bit her nails nervously. "It's all right," Luke called to her. "You can go. You're not in trouble or anything."

When the maid left, Natalia sat on the edge of his bed, narrowing her eyes at him. "I do not wish to look down at you when I'm speaking. Can you at the very least sit up for my sake?"

Luke made a show of hauling himself into a seated position, staring at her with half open eyes. "What do you want, Natalia?"

She waved the envelopes at him. "We have letters. Quite a few actually, for the both of us. I think it may be something rather big, as we never get this much correspondence at once. Do you want yours?"

He reached to grab them, but she pulled her hand away, and he whined, "C'mon. Give them to me."

"You will leave the vicinity of this room once I do. Sleeping till high noon nearly every day! Everyone is talking about you, Luke, and it is getting harder to defend you."

He grabbed the letters from her as she went off on her rant, tossing the ones not addressed to him back at her. Scanning the names, he noted half of them were from Anise, which meant he didn't have to read them right now. One was from Florian, and there were a few from both Kimlascan and Malkuth noblemen, probably asking if he wanted to marry their daughters. He'd been hounded with them since his engagement to Natalia had been called off, and he could only imagine how many marriage requests Natalia herself received, especially with the kingship at stake.

"Peony? Peony sent me a letter?"

"Oh, I've gotten one from him as well," she replied, looking over her own.

"He probably got Jade to write it…" Luke muttered, ripping open the envelope to reach the letter inside. Before he got past the introduction, Natalia scowled, ripping the paper to shreds. "What?" Luke asked.

"Don't even both reading the ones from Emperor Peony!" she seethed. Luke chuckled at her, his mind only scratching at what the man could have possibly written. While she moved on to her next letter, he sifted through his own.

"Ah!" he said suddenly, a smile on his face. "I've got a letter from Tear!" As he ripped the envelope open, Natalia's lips formed a secret smile, her eyes slyly watching her cousin's reaction. But as he began to read the letter, his face fell, and she looked at him with concern.

"What? What's wrong, Luke?"

"It's Teodoro…" he replied, holding out the letter. "He… Tear said… She's… He's passed on."

"Oh my!" she gasped, covering her mouth with one hand and taking the letter with the other. As her eyes skimmed the contents, Luke gazed out the window, very much wishing he could hyperresonate to Yulia City right now.


A/N: More to come soon! Reviews are lovely!