A neatly-folded letter in an unmarked envelope, quietly given to Ellinor Statler along with a squeeze of her hand at the end of a grueling day at the Red Anvil. The words are shaped well (if ocassionally misspelt,) but the strokes are thick and lacking in grace, as though the author wrote with unusually slow deliberation. Outside, it reads:
Tᴏ ᴍʏ ᴏɴᴇ ᴛʀᴜᴇ ʟᴏᴠᴇ
Dearest Ellie (my one true love),
I would have said this to you in person had Aunt Agnes not been dogging our steps all day, but alas I must give you my scattered words with the poor substitute of ink. I am sorry things have become the way they are now: our marriage denied, work doubled at your forge and most all of our life’s plans gone awry. I cannot help but feel this was my fault--well, “our fault,” I know you'll say, but securing our courtship was my responsibility and not yours. I regret that we had not done things properly the first time, all caught up in the stir of our hasty hearts and the pressure of a former friend we thought fast as the hills but proved to be as easily swept away as smoke in an autumn wind.
I would’ve won your hand proper had he not been around. I would’ve been the master your father wished me to be and I would’ve made you my proper wife, but I didn’t. I was a fool to rely on Ford’s strengths, and to fall laxer in our craft. A part of me fears that I have let your father down in his high hopes for me. I pray it is not so, wherever his soul finally rests. In times like these, I think on it.
Perhaps we would not be where we are now had I not been so damn daft. I have learned, I think, learned from the smarting of old wounds and this new sore one freshly bleeding. I thought much on it last night, and of course on you. I ached and laid awake in your absence, and it feels as though there is an empty pit in my chest that I cannot fill. I miss your head resting over my heart, my arm around you and your beautiful hair (a fairer crown than any Southron queen’s) splayed across my breast, and the quiet joy of stargazing in the warmth of your bed. (A sillier thing, Ellie, but I miss your mountain of pillows too.) I sit on the edge of my own old bed as I write this, feeling not quite at home despite being at home. It is colder without you.
We will fix this, Ellie. I swear it upon the stars above and upon our eternal love, we will fix this. I confess this turn of events has drained me of my ability to produce a fitting masterwork, but I believe it will return in time. We will heal, and the guild will deem me a master, and we will be finally and truly handfasted.
Ellinor Statler, I loved you at sixteen and shall love you still when I am sixty, even if it we are forever crossed by our stars and our foolish misdeeds. Ours is a love that will not die, and I know it more than I’ve known anything in all my years of life. We have weathered the years of loss after loss, and we will weather this still. Only when the sun is unmade and the moon is broken and the stars are snuffed out shall we be parted as all men will be, at the end.
Of course even then, I think there’s hope; your father always thought us two stubborn.
Forever yours (and with all of my love),
Hudde Forester
P.S. Come Highday at noon I will be at that favorite tree of ours we used to meet at for hide-and-go-seek when we were small. It is fitting, I think, that we should meet there to hide away for some time. I will have told you in person by the time you have read this, but knowing me, i will likely forget. I would enjoy it much if you will be able to come. Heaven knows I need it.
