3 - A Mother's Letter

My Dearest Son Kyrus,

I will send this letter to Viltaria, since there is somewhat regular posting happening over the border.  I am practicing my writing, as you can see.  You will be happy to know that the right honourable Yasna is teaching me.  I am still living with the Kivrush and they keep the curtains well dampened and the light dim and cool for us, poor, afflicted souls.

My lungs are very much better and I can once more walk without losing my breath, or coughing up a green waterfall.  I’m sorry. Yasna says that though that is very descriptive, it is perhaps a little bit disgusting.  He has never lived in the Basin in the Dry so I will be nice and not tell him about what it is really like.

I have been well enough that Yasna has taken me out to the white sands to sweep your brother’s and your sister’s graves, so you don’t need to worry about that. Rahagan and Kirin are not being forgotten.  If I am better next week we will go out to pour a drop of water there and remind them which star is home.

Yasna says that a drop of water might be enough to get a lace-veil vine to root and that will keep the stones more clear of sand.

I am talking about all this, because I am trying to not write you about how worried I am about you being in Milar.  I don’t want to lose you, to them, like your father.  If you find his grave, please lay a hand on it for me, would you?  Remember his zardukahr to his spirit.

Graves.  I should stop talking about graves, but what are our lives but our mothers’, our breathing and our graves?  Please the Light and the Dark that you be safe in that savage, wet, violent land.  I’m afraid you will drown there.  Look up and remind yourself which star is home, if you would, to please your mother.

Remember, be polite and keep any of your feelings behind your veil.  It is none of anybody else’s business.  And it will not get you killed.  Words unspoken cannot offend.

I’m sorry.  I’m in a mood.  The very first word I learned to write, my son, my Kyrus... perhaps Talain one day... was my own name. ‘Dagdohva’.  I write it down in the mornings to remind myself where to start.  I open my eyes and clean sleep off my skin like desert dust, drink bare flux-tea down to its bitter dregs... I had to ask Yasna how to say that properly... he is sitting here reading and helping me write this.  And then I pick up a pen and write my name.

Since His Radiance wrote it into law that Lainz must become more scholarly, around the time you were born in fact, I have hoped to find a teacher and now one of the sweetest, gentlest men... one of the healer monks in fact... has been generous enough with his time to bear my fumblings.

My hand, with a pen, is as clumsy as when I first began ‘lifting veils’, so to speak.  Also a topic I don’t really want to get into but the ink seems to like leaving such baits on the paper’s white sand... so one day, perhaps, I will follow it and unbury the carcass of the idea.  Someday, when we all go home to the correct star.

Have you found the Milar who murdered Kyrus?  Is he teaching you? Is he good to you? It was a crazy scheme Ky, and I have been terrified ever since you told me how you would learn to be a warrior like your father.  He probably won’t feel he owes you anything.  If that is the case, come home and I swear I will be well enough that you can take the funds you are paying the Kivrush and use them to pay a teacher here in Lainz instead.

I will be able to care for myself, even on the bad days, when the colours go wrong and I am unhooked from my proper time.  I do not like those days and they are getting fewer.  I am getting better.

I know.  He is one of the best warriors and bested your father... I understand.  You are as stubborn as your father and his father before him.  You are even as stubborn as your great-grandmother, even if the lot of them refuse to accept you as family.

I love you, my son.  I worry about you my son. They are surely not feeding you correctly, or enough. I hope and pray to Light and Dark both that you come home safe.

Your loving mother,

Dagdohva