clubs: writing from someone close to me
jack: routine
4 on the die: this is somewhat safe (speaking in coded phrases, touching lightly).
[an except from a letter written by a companion of the unfavored, late in their exile.]
(content warning for descriptions of grieving practices, though the writer does not know that’s what they are.)
— now here is something I have not yet told you. We have a new traveling companion in our party. A somber fellow, with tired eyes and a face that has lost much of its color. Especially around their eyes. They speak little to us, and clip their sentences short, but their voice holds much warmth in it I find I long to hear it more. And, you will laugh at me when I tell you this, but I woke up early one morning to see if they might speak more when not in our large group. Well, I was waking up when I thought I heard singing and I thought I may yet be dreaming. You know how disoriented I am in the morning. I woke up further but the singing didn’t stop, and I opened my eyes and turned to see if it was some sort of mimicbird hiding in the trees, but… it wasn’t. It was our somber companion. They held a lit candle in their hands, tipping it this way and that to let the wax drip onto their fingers. I thought it would burn them, that hot wax, but they never faltered in their song. The sun had not yet risen, just edged red around the horizon, so the only light illuminating them was that one candle and the dying embers of our fire. And the song they sang… I couldn’t understand a lick of it but they had a lovely voice, soothing and warm. And even as I thought I wanted to hear that voice lull me to sleep every night I knew it never would. What I heard sounded such like a song of mourning, like you would sing at the funeral of your dearest lover. I do not know who they lost but I cannot imagine they would just get over that and take another lover.
I settled back down and let the song lull me back to sleep, and when I woke again there was no trace of the candle, the wax, or the song. There was merely the fellow, sitting and keeping watch, who gave me a nod as I sat up. I thought it may have been a fluke, but I woke up early again a few nights later thinking I heard a disturbance. But there was no disturbance. Just them, with the candle, and their song.
You know I don’t believe in most of that mumbo jumbo about the goddess of death and her realm, but I did hope, for just a moment, that our companion’s lover, wherever they were, could see how they were still loved and remembered even so many years later.
