(My dearest Lehran: I hope this finds you well.)
He recalled a pictograph detailing a ritual particular to Zunanman funerals – of their dead, they would slash the stomachs and scoop out the entrails, weighing the bodies with precious stones and sinking them to the bottoms of lakebeds.
Lehran's gaze fell from the bookshelf Dheginsea had furnished him, to the knife (too dull to cut) accompanying his uneaten meal (tender sprigs in a gutted melon.) He turned the images over in his mind: a blade sinking into melonflesh, a gizzard bursting with stone ballast, and a burning wind beneath his wings, carrying him from his tower perch and casting him, irretrievably, into the sea. But the knife's edge left only the faintest impressions where he pushed the blade against his belly, and Dheginsea had long since ordered that steel bars be fastened over his window anyway, and that guards be posted at his chamber door through the cool Goldoan nights.
(Mishuha balks from swordplay, though she's since taken to tomes last I wrote you. Her bearing is gentle and dignified, and she's been sighted, on many occasions, sneaking the meat on her plate to the coalboy.)
He wrote of nothing of his captivity to Altina. In his letters he described the gleaming white heads of southern seabirds, peering down from their lofty roosts; the shoots of green that choked the sun-baked clay of the palace grounds; the subterranean chamber carved into the mountain and fashioned after the dome of the night sky, where it was said restless dragons went to dream. He spoke of all the wonders unknown to Begnion, hidden from the world, while picking a delicate path around the white-hot ache in his chest – the unbearable weight of absence.
(Each day that passes with her eases the burden on my heart, little by little. My once greatest regret has become my greatest pride.)
Depending on his fancy, he would sign his letters plainly or warmly. Something in the late summer air emboldened him this night, and he settled on Your beloved Lehran, before folding the sheet into an envelope and sealing it with wax the color of clotted blood.
(If I could but convey to you her song, or her smile, or her voice, perhaps you might be coaxed to return.)
The envelope shuddered in his hand as he drew it to his lips – and then set it to join the others, in his desk drawer. Atop the heap of unsealed envelopes, he returned Altina's letter, smeared and faded with a century's passing.
(Perhaps then we might both heal.)