LETTER
Written on October 11, 2024 (♏︎)
Author's Notes: Written for Whumptober 2024 for prompt No. 11: Seeing Double ("Leave no trace behind, like you don’t even exist").
The Nanten were half a day’s march away from the capital, and Ruvelia Atkascha had set her son westward, hurtling towards the Larner and the unlikely allies who had taken up their cause. Whatever was to befall her then, her son’s fate was no longer threaded to her own.
She had time before they came–time to recollect and time to doubt. When she had set Orinus in Lord Beoulve’s arms, Ruvelia thought of things that might be said, of remembrances that might be made. She had sat in her chambers, taken a sheet of vellum, and sealed it after writing out what she imagined might be a mother's parting testimony.
It did not travel with Orinus to Romanda.
Ruvelia held it now, as the bustle of Lionsguard grew louder and Bestrald barked an order. As the words engraved on it grew more distant in her memory, a sudden chill passed through her blood. She turned the missive in her fingers.
When she placed it against the flame and watched it blacken, she told herself that it was best–that her sentiments were best saved for the day they should be reunited or else effaced before they could plague the boy's memory.
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