-IS 544-
Lightweight-
Holy shit, you're a century old.
Enjoy the wine--just don't drink it all at once.
-F
-
Futch-
You just had to go and remind me, didn't you?
I have dreaded this day since my fiftieth, you realize. Nothing is different and nothing in my life is worth celebrating. I should never have been created.
But thank you for the wine. It made writing this letter a good deal easier.
-Sasarai
-
S-
You're just begging for me to abduct you and spend hours upon hours coming up with new ways to flatter you in five or six different languages.
-F
-
F-
I'll settle for four.
-S
-
S-
Spoiled brat.
-F
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-IS 545-
F-
Please forgive me. I would do well not to prey on your sensibilities in such a fashion, bacchi plenus or no. Take the sentiment of those letters with as much salt as warrants its dissolution and allow us to resume our discussion of the weather.
The humor of the earth and skies has been really eclectic this Turning season. One day, snow, the next it may as well be spring. The ground never truly thaws, and I strongly suspect there is snow from four months ago standing indomitable against whatever powers of the heavens would have it destroyed, but that sheet of ice is as the commander to his kerns, living as the new flakes shield him with their lives. Little by little, as the snow over it melts, the dense, encumbered snow closest to the ground is slathered in fresh tears, and those tears freeze, enhancing the earth's armor but further estranging it from that which it perhaps had been.
This is the same old song, is it not?
In truth, thank you for the wine. Perhaps my imbibement was overzealous and the resultant notes thoughtless, but the thanks was--is--heartfelt.
The demand--and I will consider it a demand, as threatening as the request must have come across--was not. I should not allow myself to consider requiring you, or impose on you to stop your life for me. What happened the night I took up the mask should remain the singular event it was, lest it be cheapened. You said as much years ago, that you would have our friendship remain a source of surprise and happiness, immune to the strain of time by virtue of transcending it. Therefore I rescind my implicit agenda for your time and attention, save in returning your kind gesture of congratulations on my hundredth name-day.
Please accept this apology, and I pray for your health and well-being.
-S
-
from Commander Futch Schvarzeleber of the Dragon Knights of Goya
to His Eminence the Bishop Orosi II of the Holy Harmonian Empire and Governor-in-Absentiam of Razril
Good day. Thanks for not torching this the instant you read the heading.
Look, I know you're a busy man, and you don't like me very much, and you have something in your possession that could make my life a living Hell. Now that that's out of the way, let's shove it under the table and kick it a few times.
We both love your father a great deal. You probably didn't know that about me. I'll give you the short version: Once upon a time we were enemies, and then Fate stuck us on the same side of a war for all of two major battles and an infiltration. Then my friends beat the crap out of a few bad guys and the war ended and, so your father and I went our separate ways. He wrote me a letter about fifty years ago--just before your were born--and I wrote back, and stuff happened, and now we can't bring ourselves to stop writing. To put it bluntly, he's become one of the best friends I could ever hope to have, and damned if he isn't my best friend still living. Except Bright--my dragon--but Bright doesn't really count.
That said, I want your father to stay living. I'm sure you do too. (If I didn't sense you did I would have killed you back in the Island wars, and believe me, I had the chance.) So we've got the same goal in mind--we should help each other help him, right?
Your mission, should you choose to believe me, is as follows:
Step one: Get Sasarai the Hell out of that mask you convinced him to put on. I'm sorry, but if you're trying to figure out how to thaw out Your Divine Grandpa's rhubarb plants, this is a step in the right direction.
Step two: Get Sasarai the Hell out of that palace. I'm sure you'll have a more creative idea about how to do it than sneaking up behind him and knocking him out with a crowbar, but even if you have to drag him by his girly little nose, do it. Get him, conscious or not, to the Coliseum for the Lost Regiment. Step two-B, you put on the mask he usually wears and double for him.
Step three: For an entire year. No, really. I don't care how you do it, but I imagine he's not been making an explicit presence of himself anyway, so if he misses a couple of holidays due to ostensible hangovers, seriously, who's gonna blink?
My boys will take it from there.
Now, before you make this out as the most backhanded and dastardly hostage situation to rear its ugly head since the Great White Turncoat had his own brother deported...well, it kind of is. My boys are going to fly him to this little island retreat with a really deep cave (he's been there before but you haven't) and this really, really old guy is going to keep him company. And Sasarai is going to spend a year communing with nature and not giving a shit about what's going on in the world outside his lightweight head.
So, once your role in this is over, for purposes of keeping his and my records intact, and so he can absolve you of hitting him upside the head with a crowbar, give him the letter. There's more of it for him to read, and thank you in advance. (Also, if you tell anyone about this--and I'll know if you tell anyone about this--I will consider it an act of war and my vengeance will be swift, direct and, as always, involve short-order cooking.)
...No, seriously. Thank you. I just want Sasarai to be around for another hundred years. You can understand that, right?
So, now that the letter has hopefully changed hands...Hey there, Lightweight, how's the weather?
-Futch
-
Futch-
You sent me to Eldest Living. You sent me, a foreigner, to Eldest Living. You sent me, a former adversary, to the Eldest Living Dragon's Island.
Words simply cannot express.
-Sasarai
-
S-
Cannot express what? Gratitude? Ire? Your concern for my apparent madness?
-F
-
F-
All that and so much more, Futch. The fortuitous, the portentous, the awe I am feeling for
it all. I can express none
Allow me to put you at ease first; your Knights have made me feel very welcome here, as I suspect was your intention, and I want for neither relaxation nor company (save yours, but that is another matter). I thank you from every cell in my heart for your generosity, confidence, and concern. And I can assure you that the weather is amicable, if hazy and a touch more fickle than I am used to. I have spent much of my time here so far in repose under the sprawling dark-leaved tree at the cave's mouth, staring out at the ocean and reading, or singing those ballads that Chaco taught me, back when we three were together—can it be so long ago? I have found a few promising voices among your Knights here, and as several are quite young they hunger for tales of the past, which I have indulged them in, with all due respect to those who feature in them. (That is to say that certain Great White Turncoats, as you call them, get very little respect.)
However, the concern you purport for me is returned in kind. You wrote of gratitude first and ire second, and yes, I do feel a measure of anger at your having brought me here. Not enough to leave, and certainly not enough to begrudge you your gift. I believe the anger is primarily at myself for having allowed wounds to my heart to fester for so long.
But there is also anger at you, Futch, for putting so much at political risk. I am not a trustworthy being, my dear friend. I have played the traitor in the past. I have hidden grave truths from you. I have proven myself incompetent at dictating my own actions, on occasion, and even when my intentions were purest and most distant from the transgressions wrought by these peremptory hands I have acted as the conduit for those with agendas counter to yours. In trusting me you have always been unwise.
To think, I feel wrath that you are the better man than I. Perhaps it is because you are, in fact, human.
I am then frightened, following that caravan of thought. I do not wish to give you reason to retract your kindness, and so I police myself rather effectively.
And then I feel rather silly, for monitoring my actions in such a fashion. Obviously you see something in this shell that allays whatever doubts you might have as to my sound mind and prowlessness with regard to ruining you.
And then I worry; why have you not joined me here? Are you otherwise engaged, or could you actually be as base and underhanded a creature as I, and acting in the duplicitous fashion to which I am no stranger? Granted, you would never do such a thing, which makes my paranoia all the more potent.
Perhaps I spent too much time in Albert's entourage.
But do not worry, friend. I am safe, and I am thankful, and I have no doubt that a year in such a retreat will put a dent in something akin to recovery from whatever malaise erodes my mind.
As I ought not write to Orosi from here, permit me to placate any apprehensions you may have had about his ability to emulate me. The only ones still living given to notice the difference are already aware of it, my 'pet vampire', as you call him, included. Orosi has no doubt devised some excuse to placate those who crave justification of my absence from court. None of them can know of this place, though, I assure you.
We pray for your understanding of Our frailty, and your own health.
-Sasarai
-
S-
I should probably be offended that you even considered that I would use this as a ruse to get at your country, but yeah, you have been hanging around the Great White Turncoat for long enough to try the patience of a saint--and since you're not dead, you're not a saint yet, so he was able to get to you. I don't mind--and it would really be an ingenious way to disrupt things in your country for long enough to start dissolving it--but one, that's a really bad idea, and two, I'm no genius.
As for why I'm not there with you...well, the reason you're going to prefer is that, unlike you, I don't have an Orosi to stand in for me and intimidate my enemies--and I've got lots of those now, active ones, ones that know what kind of losses we suffered in the Islands. Friends of yours. Certain pet vampires. So I've got to be the face on the home front and I'm the only one with my face. I might be able to steal away for a little, but frankly I'm just as paranoid as you are, just not at you.
The reason you're not going to like, but that I'll tell you anyway because I care, is that I finally figured out what you meant about wanting to not get...well, used to things. This should stay special, because if it stops being special then we're going to overstay our welcome on this earth and be bored. So, we should make sure we don't forget each other…but not become dependent on generations of plucky little Nasal. It was your idea first, and it worked until that last war ruined things...so we should try it again.
Like I said, I may visit, I may not. But who knows--maybe if you heal without me actually there, it'll last for longer. Just know that I'm always thinking of you.
See if you can't talk to Eldest Living himself. He might like some of Chaco's songs, now that I think about it.
-F
-
Futch-
Surely you can't be serious. Offend the sensibilities of a sacred being with lewd songs?
-Sasarai
-
S-
I can't imagine how long it's been since he had a good, raunchy laugh. Kick it off with something tame, though, like "Drunken Dragon". Mind the low notes, though.
-F
-
Futch-
He preferred "the Ballad of the Pig Killer". I am surprised to have remembered as much as I did; I recalled the verses for the "circlet-wearing child", "two-bit drunken brawler", "pretty boy in exile", "whiney little schoolgirl", "pack of puppy kobolds", "simple-minded squirrel", "common cattle-rustler", and "smart-mouthed seer's apprentice".
How many verses are there?
-Sasarai
-
S-
"Pig killer, pig killer, got a bark to match his bite,
But a circlet-wearing child made pork chops of Luca Blight."
Haven't thought of that one in a long, long time. I think I'll start a chorus up at dinner tonight, see who remembers what.
-F
-
Futch-
Apparently I have unintentionally begun a contest among your Knights to see who can uncover or add the most humorous verse to the song. One of them, a fourth-degree named Rolf, supplied this:
"'Twas a balmy summer evening and the breeze was soft and still
When the Beastly Prince of Jowston needed something cute to kill.
He was ready set and go to dine Harmonian instead,
But the earth rose up around him and came crashing on his head.
Pig killer, pig killer, in the pigpen for the night,
When a plucky priest made porridge from the bones of Luca Blight."
I laughed, and complimented his alliteration, but nonetheless was bound to inform him that I had been on Prince Luca's side of the war. He was quite surprised.
-Sasarai
-
Plucky Priest-
You'll appreciate this one:
"'Twas a sunny day in Jowston, and they'd all had too much wine,
So they sent a baby dragon and his Knight to the front line.
They speared the beast and served him up, and couldn't help agree;
There's nothing quite like madman when it's done rotisserie!
Pig killer, pig killer, claimed he had a dragon's might,
But a pint-sized punk from Goya made a roast of Luca Blight."
Apparently that one's been around a while. As in, decades. They just didn't have the guts to sing it to my face.
-Pint-sized Punk no longer
-
Pint-sized Punk-
Is there one for Chaco?
-Lightweight
-
Lightweight-
I asked around.
"It was cold and it was woodsy, in the forests near Two River,
And the crazy Prince of Jowston was a-running for his liver.
From the treetops came a-flying down a hatchling, it is true;
Pecked his eyes out, pecked his nose out, and then picked his pockets too!
Pig killer, pig killer, put up one Hell of a fight,
But a thieving little Winger made a worm of Luca Blight."
I really miss Chaco.
-Futch
-
-IS 546-
Futch-
As my respite on this Island draws to a close, I find, as usual, that I cannot thank you enough. Despite your never having joined me here over the course of this year, your love and concern for me has been gradually made obvious to even my paranoid heart, and warmed me each morning in the company of the sun. I will miss this place, but my memories of it, like the ones of years prior when I was your guest at someone else's momentous name-day, shall persist even through the cold of my home in Crystal Valley. I shall take up the mask again, but shall smile behind it, confusing Our Divine Father's hymns for Chaco's ballads once again. (I have had a lot of time here to forge parallels between the two song-forms. You will find the list rather amusing when I assemble it in full, perhaps in a later letter or, providence willing, in your company at some forthcoming date.
As I have learned is your custom, I left an offering of thanks to Eldest Living. Perhaps he will tell you of it when you next deign to grace this island. It was not terribly conventional. Perhaps you should worry about what it is.
(I grin as I write this, friend.)
Your loving abduction of my person shall persist as a beacon of light in my dreary existence. We pray for your continued prosperity and the well-being of those you hold dear, and for an opportunity to express Our thanks in a manner more indicative of its abundance.
-Sasarai
-
Sasarai-
Your happiness is thanks enough.
-Futch
-
-IS 547-
To Commander Futch Schvarzeleber of the Dragon Knights of Goya
From His Holiness the Archbishop Sasarai I of the Holy Harmonian Empire, Duke-in-Absentiam of Gaien, Governor-in-Absentiam of Middleport, and Chief Overseer of Caleria,
Good gracious, you are a century old.
Enjoy the wine, of course, but only after you've heard the minstrels.
-
Sasarai-
Roland and Nei had how many children?
(Thank you.)
-Futch
---