Chapter Text
,To
The Lhant family
The Manorhouse
Lhant
Windor
Dear Asbel and Sophie,
I hope you're both well! So much has happened since I last wrote you both that I hardly know where to begin. After Chancellor Eigen pledged us his support we crossed the snowfields to Velanik, accompanied by a group of the Fendel militia. If only you could see the town now! Pascal's new heating system is working wonders for all of Fendel. I've been told it'll still be some years until the infrastructure is in place to supply hot water to Velanik, but the people are finally receiving the cryas rations they need. Asbel, Sophie, I wish you could be here! The children need no longer dig in the dirt for scraps of cryas. That awful, bleak feeling has given way to something much more hopeful.
The nova monsters continue to be a menace. They've been encroaching further and further on the town over the past few weeks. But today the militia pushed them out onto the snowfield and dispatched a good number of them. A few men were hurt but Alayne and I were able to get to them in time to treat their injuries. I believe we're finally turning the tide in our favour against the creatures, and—
Cigarette smoke hugs the ceiling of the Velanik Star in a tight embrace. Tonight, the dingy inn in Velanik is bright and loud and warm with bodies and laughter and music. The band on stage play a fast number on strings, and Cheria watches a man lift his daughter and swing her around and around. The girl throws her head back and laughs.
Her eyes glaze. A memory from earlier that day pulls her out of the haze of smoke, and she's on the snowfield once more. In the open, away from any shelter, the wind had cut like needles of ice. She'd knelt down in the snow as her healing light flooded through the injured soldier, the warmth at her fingertips a contrast to the icy cold leeching in through the material of her trousers, skin numb and tingling. The grizzled beard, flecked with either old age or snow, made his age hard to judge, but Cheria thought the man in his fifties. Clarity came back to his eyes as Sophie's light took hold, knitting together sinew and flesh and making him anew.
"You saved my life," he'd said, voice flat with shock, taking her hand and pushing himself up out of the snow. "You're no older than my daughter." There was a twinge of disbelief in there. Cheria had smiled patiently.
"I'm glad you're alright," she'd said.
He'd reached out to her, in what Cheria later realised was a clumsy attempt at some sort of affectionate hair rumple. "Good girl," he said.
The next tables over bursts into uproarious laughter. Good girl, he'd said. Why did it bother her so much?
"Could I possibly get a drink, Miss Barnes? Or something for your friend?" The innkeeper approached the table, smiling broadly. "On the house, of course. Our ale is some of the finest in Fendel. Or we have some special vintages we've been waiting for an occasion to crack open."
Cheria raises a hand, smiling uneasily. "Oh, thank you, but I don't drink."
"Then please let me get you something else. You and your group have done so much for Velanik."
"It's really nothing…" said Cheria. "We were happy to help. I only wish we could do more."
"Well, I'll take one of those ales," says Alayne, stretching her elbows on the table. Originally a researcher from Sable Izolle, she'd joined their group after a nova monster broke into the tower and destroyed all her research. Cheria's relief group had come to help, and after that Alayne had decided to turn her research to medicine. She was different from Cheria in too many ways to count, but during the months travelling together they'd struck up a tentative friendship.
"Of course. Please, let me know if you change your mind and need anything, Miss Barnes" the innkeep says.
"Ah, thank you." The woman means well, but in secret Cheria is relieved when she turns away.
All this attention is just plain embarrassing.
The inn is so noisy Cheria isn't aware of the bird's decent until Alayne exclaims, "What is that?"
"What is what?"
"That," says Alayne, stabbing a finger at the mechanical bird perched on the handle of Alayne's tankard, bleeping for attention.
"Oh! It's the communicator," Cheria says, opening her hands to allow the bird to hop into her palms.
"It's the what now?"
"Um. It's like a device used to send messages," Cheria explains. "What have you got for me, little guy?"
The bird responds with a beep, its beak clicking open to print a long thin slip of paper, curling up like a lizard's tongue. Cheria tears it off and reads, smiling broadly. The messaged contains just one word:
Fold.
"If I were your fiance, I'd send flowers, not a bird," Alayne says, poking the communicator suspiciously.
She flushes, folding the slip away to tuck it into her pocket. "It's from my friend Pascal."
"Huh. I just assumed from that big dorky smile your fiance had finally written to you." Alayne leans back, elbow slung over the back of her chair. Exchanges another look with the good-looking Fendel soldier she's been throwing glances to all night. "I guess he's a lord and all, but I don't know if I'd want to marry a guy who showed as little interest in me as your fellow does. It wouldn't kill him to write you."
"Asbel does write," Cheria protests, albeit weakly. The last time Asbel had written was months ago, and that was back when they were in Strahta. More often than not, it's Sophie who writes her, pressed sopherias following her all over the world ("so you don't forget about me," Sophie had said). Occasionally, Asbel tacks an addendum on the end. Or, more often than not: Asbel says he hopes you're okay. Also can you write to him and tell him to stop stepping on my flowers?
"It's just that… he's… not much of a letter writer," Cheria admits.
In all honesty, even Pascal writes her more.
"Uh-huh," says Alayne, chin balanced on the back of her hands, giving Cheria The Look.
"Can we please drop this?"
"Fine." Alayne nudges her head to the slip Cheria's tucked away in her pocket. "So for what reason did your friend send this thing winging its way through the snowstorm for?"
"Oh, we're playing a game."
"A game?"
"Yes, long distance poker."
"Long distance… poker?"
"I promised Sophie and Pascal I'd play poker with them again and it never happened. So Pascal figured a way around it," Cheria says, smiling to herself. She ignored the way Alayne shook her head. It wasn't entirely ideal, and true, their latest match had been going on for a month, but, all the same…
"So what you're saying is that your fiance's daughter writes you more than he does? To play… long distance poker. Huh."
So much for dropping it. Flushing fiercely, Cheria can't keep the annoyance out of her voice. "Oh, stop it. You've never even met him. Asbel is brave, and kind, and—"
"Shh!"
"Don't you shh me, Alayne. He's—"
"Cheria, shh! He's coming over." Alayne pushes herself to sit up straighter, smoothing down her hair. "How'd I look?"
"He's? Who is—" Cheria quickly shut herself up as the solider Alayne had been swapping glances with approached the table, removing his hat.
"Good evening ladies. I was wondering if you'd be kind enough to share a dance or two with us?"
Alayne leans over the table, all flirt and liquid honey as she pretends to hesitate, and says, "Oh… I don't know. Are you any good?"
"Well, Miss, I couldn't rightly say. Why don't we dance and then you can tell me."
"I suppose, then…" a simper, and she takes the hand the solider is offering. Cheria is sure her eyes will roll straight out of her head if this keeps up.
"How about your friend?" the man asks.
"Ah, that's okay. I'm not much of a dancer," Cheria says, raising both hands to protest.
(She's especially not much of a dancer when it comes to completely random men in Fendel.)
"Oh come on, Cheria," Alayne says, arm in arm with her solider. "You're allowed to have fun, you know."
"I'm having fun sat right here," Cheria says, and Alayne exchanges a look with the man that clearly says, she's hopeless.
"Suit yourself," says Alayne, as she joins the man and his friends on the dance floor.
It's fine. She wants to reply to Pascal's message anyway. Now she's out of the running, it's just Sophie she needs to take down.
And although she would never admit it out loud, there's a part of her that's glad Asbel hasn't written. Because she can't swallow down the worry that comes with every letter: that Asbel will get fed up with waiting and ask her to come home to Lhant.
The communicator bird hops up onto Cheria's wrist, and she heads up through the crowd to her room for the night.
"Goodnight, Miss Barnes," calls the innkeep from behind the bar. "Do you have everything you need?"
"I'm perfect, thank you. Goodnight," says Cheria.
She's not ready, yet, for all of this to end.
Dear Asbel and Sophie,
How are you both? You must tell me about the all flowers growing in the garden, Sophie. I imagine the night lilies must be coming in now that the season is changing.
This is our last day in Fendel. Chancellor Eigen threw a gala last night and invited our relief group to celebrate the monster eradication and the completion of the Pascal System in Zavhert. Probably the most dull thing I've been to in my life, though thankfully Captain Malik was there (though I do wish he wouldn't drink so much). Even Pascal managed to peel herself away from the valkines to come, even if it was in her grubby overalls. And that she ate so many banana pies she was sick again and I had to help her back to the inn. She's unbelievable. Did I mention the gala was being held in her honour?
We're heading to Strahta next. The President has requested our aid for the situation in the Sandshroud ruins. I'd hoped we might be able to stop in Lhant and see you both, but we're catching a direct ship.
Pascal found some strange seeds at the Amarcian Enclave I thought you might like to plant, Sophie. Fourier assures me they're flower seeds and not something weird (ever since she told me about that flesh eating plant in Pascal's room, I worry).
I hope you're both well.
With all my love,
Cheria.
It takes two years until the rest of the monsters are eradicated. Those years are some of the most stressful, tiring, and amazing of Cheria's life.
They can't save everybody. It's an inevitability, yet it doesn't make the pill any less bitter to swallow. It doesn't stop her from wanting to write to Asbel and tell him that she wants to come home, to tell him she can't take it any more. In those moments of weakness she misses him and Sophie fiercely. Wishes Asbel was there to put his arms around her, tell her everything will be okay. That he'll protect her.
And yet, the moments they do make it in time are enough for Cheria to put down her quill, to struggle on. Because what is her fear next to a mother's relief that the child she thought slated for death will now live to grow up? What is her weakness next to a wife's grateful tears that her husband will come home to her?
She sees so much more of the world than on their fraught journey after Richard and Lambda. Cheria has dinner at the presidential palace in Yu Liberte, looking at her own face reflected back in the magical fountains, hair put up high, face tan from their travels in the desert. Alayne's soldier boyfriend asks him to marry him. A few months later, she comes back. Says with a shrug: "Just didn't really work out."
There's an earthquake near Oul Ray, and Cheria sees firsthand the power of the earth, majestic and terrible in its destruction.
In the newly built village of Orlen, there's a resurgence of the monsters, and two men are killed. King Richard comes to visit, to offer his aid and condolences, his strong and warm presence bringing heart back the villagers. Yet, when the two of them eat together alone at the inn, Cheria has never seen such terrible grief in Richard's eyes.
He confesses to her, his voice low and trembling: "If dying to atone for my crimes would erase them, I'd willingly die. Yet I fear that would do nothing. Instead, I must do all I can."
Cheria can't stand to see Richard in such pain. She puts a hand on the King's back, and when she feels him trembling under her touch, changes her mind and pulls Richard in for a hug. Feeling him hesitating, she tells him, "It's all right, Richard."
Richard clings to her. For a minute, Cheria holds him, brushing her hand across his back until the trembling begins to slow and cease. He pulls himself away, eyes downcast, lips tight. "I'm sorry," he says, unable to meet her gaze in his shame.
"It's okay," she tells him again, laying a hand on top of his.
It redoubles her determination. She can't go home, not until all these terrible beasts are destroyed. Not until Richard doesn't have to suffer any longer.
Alayne, John and Lilly broach the idea to her.
"Healers without borders," says John, who's been with them for six months now, framing the idea with his hands. The campfire flickers, Lilly stirring tonight's dinner.
The monsters will soon be finished, but their group doesn't have to be. The natural crisis' in the world won't stop just because the nova monsters are gone.
Lilly wants to take it a step further.
"In a few years, we could even open clinics. For people who can't afford to see a doctor. I'm sure President Paradine will support us."
"And you're tight with King Richard, Cheria," says Alayne. "He'd be willing to grant us another donation, right?"
"Perhaps," says Cheria. It was Richard who'd helped fund the group in the first place. He'd given double the amount she'd asked for.
Healers without border. It sounds incredible. And they have the man power, now, to do it. More people join their group every day.
And yet, it's been more than two years since Cheria agreed to live with Asbel, and…
"C'mon Cheria, what do you say?" asks Alayne. All around the fire, everyone waits for her response. "I figured you'd be more up for this anyone."
Cheria promises she'll think about it.
A fortnight after their conversation, the letter finally arrives.
It chases them all the way from Fendel to Strahta, the parchment stained and weather beaten.
She and Alayne are sat in a cafe in Yu Liberte, drinking ice tea under the shade of a parasol. Cheria's fingers tremble as she slides a nail under the envelope and slips it open.
Asbel writes:
Mum thinks june would be a good date for the wedding. What do you think? Also Sophie's grown white roses in the garden.
Yours, Asbel.
Well, that's that, Cheria thinks.
Alayne reads the letter over her shoulder, her voice desert-dry. "Wow, what a romantic."
Cheria's ice tea runs empty, straw rasping against the bottom of the glass. Laughter cuts across the boulevard. She wipes the back of her hand against her brow.
The day is far too hot.