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Dearest Too-Ticky,
I haven't had time to come visit, but I found a moment to write you a letter. The children are asleep. Or, rather, many of them are pretending to sleep as the rest sneak about. They like to act as if I don't notice.
Mymble Momma likes to say that for all the children she has, she has none with a scrap of brains. I am loathe to say something so cruel about my dear sisters, but after today, I fear Momma may be right. I simply don't understand how they believed sending their sister downstream in a sewing-basket would end well. In related news, Lilla My is headed your way! I trust she will end up with friends, she has a way of always ending up in the right place. I only wish the same was true of me!
As much as I love spending time in Moominvalley, and of course spending my time with you, I worry that leaving my Momma alone with all these children would make her old heart give out. You can't imagine how much my heart aches for you. I can't begin to explain, even. My siblings mock me for my tendency for falling lovestruck. They have seen how my heart swells so easily. I've found that loving you only makes this condition worse. I see you in everything around me, all the flowers, all the mushrooms, the apples, and the moon. Everything beautiful reminds me of you. I really am as hopeless a romantic as my siblings say.
Would you be able to visit me soon? The children love your company (As do I, of course). I spend much of my time remembering your last visit. I hope we can bake more berry pies, I know I'm not so good at it, but you have such a way around everything! My darling jack of all trades. (Your friend Snufkin taught me that phrase! He says the two of you are alike in that regard, both jacks of many trades.) You can cook, and you can whittle, and you can fix nearly anything. You fixed all the cupboard doors, and ended an argument between two little mymbles that had been going on for weeks. And all before our pie was done baking!
When we were young, I used to muse to myself how you turned down suitors so quickly. All sorts of lovely creatures would try to sweep you off your feet, knowing how talented you are, but you never paid them any mind. You would just continue braiding my hair, telling stories of all the places you had gone to learn this and that. I loved it when you would come back with little gifts, flowers for my hair that never wilted, or feathers you found on remote hiking trails, or that hairbow, though I still don't know where you got it.
I still have the box you gave me. The one with the lever and the little tray, that pops out sweets when I push it down. I hid it from the young ones, you and I both know they love to break my things. I have no idea how it works, though I don't want to treat it like the goose who lay the golden eggs! Do you know that story? A farmer and his wife found their goose laying golden eggs, one a day, for weeks and weeks and months. They got tired of only getting one a day, so they cut open the goose to find where the gold came from. All they found, of course, was goose innards. I don't remember what I was talking about, with the box. Though the story is quite sad, it does make me daydream about being a farmer with you, with a goose that lays normal eggs.
There is something that has been on my mind. I haven't told you,for fear of sounding like a loon. My heart just yearns to be withyou, be close to you, as much as possible, as long as possible. Would you run away with me? Just the two of us? We don't have to be wed, I know you swore you would never do that to yourself. I would help you build a little cottage and we can go fishing and plant a garden, and my little mymbles could come visit, and your darling Moomins could, too. I know you love the valley, but I think we need to leave. both us us. Would you do it? Run off with me?
I anxiously await your reply, my darling Too-Ticky.
I want to spend the rest of my life with you.
All my love,
Mymlan Daughter