Hello, Flora.
Hello, Flora. It's been only a week since we left, but I already miss you so.
I didn't think I'd mind the mornings without you, because I'd had twenty years of my life without them, hadn't I? But they are quite lonely, still. Milton is timid all over again, and Mythra is very closed in to herself. I do hope she still agrees to help us.
I don't know why I'm writing you, so soon. Perhaps I won't send this one. And yet, I like the feeling - rather, the idea, the concept - that I am talking to you, even from afar.
Oh, to hear your voice again...you always made such lovely conversation. Ah, but all conversations end, don't they? We've got to board our next transport, so that's goodbye for now!
.I miss you--
Hello, Flora! Oh, I'll make this brief - we can come visit you in just a week or two hence! Why, there's no point in sending this note either, it won't arrive any sooner than I will myself. Oh, I'm so happy, I hardly even feel like I've been away.
And I'm silly, too, I'm sure you would say, for what am I even so excited about, but oh, darling, it's you! I miss you so much - in fact, I've made up my mind, we'll move back in to Torna directly as soon as we can. Then I won't have to miss you, and you won't have to shake your head at your silly Armu of a husband, and maybe I'll come home for good soon enough. What do you say to that?
Oh, never mind that, you can't answer me. It's like I'm back in lessons, making sure to do these things full out. I should punctuate with some sort of closing, shouldn't I? Is that right? After all, you would know!
Why, you know everything, I'm sure. And you'll know this, too, but I'll add it anyway - perhaps I shall add it every time, hmm?
!I miss you - but not for long
Hello, Flora. Are you well? I certainly hope so. I can't imagine you being in anything but the most perfect health, but that may just be my foolish heart thinking for my head again.
I will admit, I've not been in the highest of spirits myself, recently. It appears Mythra, as the Aegis, has quite a many talents, but palatable cooking is very far from being one. The stories of Blades attempting assassination upon their Drivers to get free are few and far between - do you think she's heard them, somehow?
Oh, but I shouldn't joke about it. Indeed, I'm not joking about it. My soul is just as ill as my stomach, for we work every day, tirelessly, to establish better communication and control, and every night I find that it hasn't worked.
I'm afraid. So afraid. And sometimes I wonder if that, itself, is the deadly, deadly crux of it.
But Milton is fine (as fine as he can be, when he and I are in comparable states of gastronomical [no, gastrointestinal, wouldn't it be? or perhaps both] distress), and Mythra is...really, she's fine, and as long as you are fine too, then we cannot count ourselves too depressed, all in all.
.I miss you
Hello, Flora. We're set to pass into Aletta soon, as we were just in Gormott and just in Lasaria before that, so I'm just writing this to myself, really. But if writing to you and writing to myself are the same thing, then I should count myself quite a lucky man. I truly believe I do - and I am!
But enough about me. While in Lasaria, we had a run-in with a real whippersnapper Driver from mercenary bands that move in those regions. You'll be as surprised as I was, I'm sure, to learn that the Blade she travels with is none other than the Paragon of Torna - the lost treasure, from seventeen years ago.
Why, I didn't even consider that you might have existed seventeen years ago. I knew so little, back then. But now, as we've joined up with Hugo, and Lora's other Blade, and all, I really have a good feeling about it all. Oh, and to see you again...!!!
.I am but a simple man, and I miss you
Hello, Flora. I'll be handing this off to a militia member, so you should in fact receive this one - perhaps it'll be the first you actually read! And that's rather funny, because I must tell you about the first of something else, as well.
Minoth is with us now, and believe it or not these have been the first times we've actually fought together, in all the years we've known each other - that's longer than I've known you, in fact. He is a strong man, and a kind man, and exceedingly genuine and brave, and he confides in me things that I know he would confide in no other soul on this world, save for you. No, he has not told me that much in plain words (as plain of words as he ever speaks), but I know it.
I know him. I have never been gladder to know another soul on this world, again, save for you.
It is my hope that when we return he can belong with us just as naturally as he belongs with me now. He does not know that I am asking this of you, to consider it, but--
Ah. No, he knows now. He's smiling. I love his smile so much. Did you know that? There's so much I'd like to tell you about him. So much I'd like him to tell you about himself - and about me, really. Oh, he's reaching down to take the pen from me, and he always has used it so much better, you know...
~We miss you
Hello, Flora. It seems my last note got mislaid, and never made it back to you. We've been in the capital for some days now, helping everyone here with the aftermath of Malos's attack.
Marena is here - you must remember her, and little Freya? She seems to have been ailling even before the attack, and we've not been able to think of a single thing to help her, whether in the royal libraries or in Brighid's and Jin's journals. Apparently all the townsfolk have been sending her Energy Pickles, to no avail. I always think that you might like some, and then I remember that that's just the old stereotype, and then I remember that no, you really would.
You're so lovely, do you know that? The light, pretty way you do things, and the way you're so calm whenever anyone brings you a concern, and even the darling little face you make when you eat all those sour things you like. It's not that I'm tired of everyone here, but-- Oh, well, there's Minoth, who puts as much spice as he can handle on every dish and proceeds never to make a single flinch. It's almost uncanny!
But to my point...I miss just seeing you, so animated and alive. I miss knowing you. Oh, how I used to know you.
.Oh, how I miss you
I'm not sure how many days it's been. We've lost track. Minoth and I, that is. We...we're still together. Not in that way, I don't mean. But it's true. I'm not sure what I would do, if my heart were to break again, like that. So, we just...
I'm not sure he wants me to do this, either. He is no more composed than I, when we look at the stack of letters I never sent.
But, to compose, as he's always told me, one must have something to say.
And I...I don't, anymore. Knowing that you'll never...
...
Goodbye, Flora.
.I'll miss you