Dear Ma,
I thought I should write you and
let you know how I am doing. If your eyes are bothering you and you have
trouble reading this letter I’m certain Yasna Kivrush will be able to read it
to you.
I have two warriors who are my main
teachers... my ‘Zon’ and they say I am doing well. The one’s name is the surdeniliarch Ilax and the other – mama
you’ll think it’s funny but his name is mine... he’s named after da too...
I am carefully tending da’s
grave, every day since I am here, and my one teacher insists that I continue
school other than war-school, so I am learning Nadumarian and Rumon both, on
top of better Milar.
Werfas is becoming my wing-brother...
sort of, because we’re truly not old enough to swear that oath but he’s already
stopped me doing a couple of rash things. There are some of the students at the
Sword Hall who are good to be with and when I have some time we have tea
together on the mountain.
Ma, you know how the world opens
up when you sit on the edge of the canyon? When you can look away down the
river so far below you feel like a bird and then away away down the valley? The
mountain is like that, but instead of white and red and black edged in sun,
it’s green and soft and full of water. Water everywhere instead of confined to
stone walls, with white plumes of dust blowing off the tops to sift down to its
brown and wrinkled surface.
The mountains are like a green
blanket, rucked up as if there were a whole family of giants sleeping under
them. You can almost see the outline of an arm, or a shoulder, where the
founders blasted the spikes of tsingy down and made these valleys. When the
light hits it just right it’s a woman.
You can see the sparkles of the water falling from the sky sometimes even in the daylight. Ilax says that one day we will have seas that stay in place all year instead of swap from north to south. Once we have enough water from the moon.
I finally believe it. In the desert it's hard to imagine. It seems impossible there. Here it's like the water and the green are spreading, slowly, burying the white sand, and locking it down away from where it can hurt people.
Sometimes I imagine the mountains as if
they were the sea. I’ve never seen the sea, at the pole. But I suppose we see it all as it heads south
in the rains and then north again in the fall. But people describe both that
place and the white desert like a sea.
I’m sitting on the Viltaria
ancestor stones to write this, and a ferret – an offering left here -- is
playing around my feet. No my knees. No, my shoulders... my head... my feet
again... you know how they move. Very funny.
Ma, I’m eating really well... not
to worry... there’s a place here with a cook by the name of Brakayus -- and
yes, he’s a Lainz/Milar citizen -- who cooks a lot of good Lainz food and and
I’ve grown a full handspan and not one with fingers closed, either! My one Zon
tells me I’m going to be as tall or taller than da was, if I keep growing like
this.
I’m probably going to be here in
Milar for at least another year, maybe two, before I can take my white-staff.
It’s not the end of warrior training, not really but it’s the most obvious mark
of mastery.
I hope you are well and happy,
Mama. Two years isn’t so long. I’ll be home and be able to apply to be a
‘feather-spitter’ and buy us a little loggia all our own. Maybe I’ll be able to
afford to marry soon and get started on making you a grandma. Haraklez, the surdeniliarch’s
daughter – a nice girl, ma, you’d like her – she says she thinks I will be
a ‘catch’ one day. These Milari, they are so blunt.
Oh, the Nadumar ambassador is
coming in to Viltaria... I can see the parade from here. Did you know they have
these feather monstrosities of birds that are even bigger than war-birds? But
they’re not meat eaters. Each one can carry two men, ma, a driver and a
passenger trying not to look like he’s about to slide off the bird’s bum.
Ma, I’m not explaining well, but
everything is going just perfectly. Better than I could’ve imagined or dreamed
before I left Lainz the city.
I cannot imagine anything
that could disturb my life and I’m really glad of it! When life is good it
should stay that way!
I need to go. All my love under
Light and Dark.
Your son,
Kyrus
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