by Letters from the First Month of the New Directorate) (html)
Two things give me pause about the fate of our city. One, there was a great rumbling in the earth the first night we were away from it. I am suspicious that it might be the earthworkers. The Directorate has been attempting to bribe them with grandiose projects, but I think their patience may run short, and who knows what then. Who knows what now. Stelving and I have a symbolic code arranged in hopes that I will be able to do more with the water samples in a department with funding, so I hope that he can come to some kind of accommodation with the earthworkers. I really don’t know.
The other thing is: Vithroe pointed out to me the most curious illusionary labyrinths around what we realized were the entrances to the dams of rune beavers, and I realized that they are rodents too. Very, very big rodents on the river leading to our city, and... apparently some reason the ancients associated them with runes? Oh dear.
No, I have not managed to secure a rune beaver for you to study. It can be field research for us to do together once we’re settled in our home with its gaudy doctoral robe curtains.
Our home. I like the sound of that, even if it’s not where we first imagined it.
I’m coming to you, Pippa. It will be home where I’m with you, and the shrews and dormice will just have to learn to live with it. I love you. I love you.
Aranth
© Copyright 2020 Marissa Lingen