Chapter Text
[Excerpt from an unsent letter found on Robert “Hob” Gadling’s shelf in the Library of the Dreaming]
Dear Stranger,
Funny.
You know, you’d think with all my years of writing letters and sending letters and burning letters I’d be better at writing them. Maybe I’m just too talkative for my own good. All these words get jumbled up in my head and stop just before they leak out of my pen; it’s easier to talk it out. Stream of consciousness and whatnot. I shall endeavor to do my best, but I’m no James Joyce.
Anyway, letters. I didn’t exchange letters with Eleanor, though I learnt them some twenty-odd years before we met. Ironic, nowadays, for a printer to be illiterate, but you know how it was in those days. I’m sure you’re well-read, you seem the type to love stories. Grand ones, probably. Myths and folksongs, and those crappy paperbacks that Summer lends me.
(We met in Lucerne. Cloud topped mountains, clear waters. Lots of cows and cats everywhere you look. There’s this lion relief that’s there, looks straight from those C.S. Lewis books. Anyway, we saw the lion, walked the bridge and ended up having a drink. She was on break and was working on her thesis on Gender Communication in Germany during the 1400’s and I was drinking my way through the rest of Europe. So it goes. She’s a good friend.)
Eleanor had wide handwriting. Probably wasted more coin on journals for her than I could afford, but it was worth it to watch her smile and worth it more to glimpse her doodling in the margins. I started copying her O’s, I think. A reminder.
Elspeth and I exchanged letters like currency. A last-ditch effort to resist the novel of the telephone on her part. She loved old things. (ha) But was so excited when we sat for a daguerreotype the very first time. As always, she was late to the trend, but I remember the moment afterwards, when everything had cured and the photographer had tilted the copper plate to catch the light and I could see us standing there, clear as a reflection in glass, all miniature and solemn. I kept it until I couldn’t anymore. Lost it on a sailing ship out from Bombay in 1912, I think. I remember it though. She had spidery print, like she was always pressed for time. She filled both sides and more every time she wrote me. Tried to learn shorthand to save time but she would get it all mixed in with her cursive instead. I swear it was like I was deciphering code at times! Her long spiking Y’s still follow my hand. It gets messy and I tend to smudge, as you no doubt can tell.
I don’t know if you know any of this already. You know everyone so… I suppose you probably know this all too.
Well.
Enough stalling I suppose.
I waited for you. Into the wee hours, until Martin, the bartender, clicked on the lights and told me to go home. Smoked a whole pack and then some out back afterwards, loitering by my car like some bloody dolt. I kept thinking, “Maybe this’ll be him.” Stupid, I know. I feel like a sucker. Some great idiot. Like this is all one cosmic joke. I know you’re not human, I’m no fool. You’re long-lived like me, that is certain. You were interested once. In my experience. In me. I wonder how long you can hold a grudge. Two hundred years? Three? I’ll wait for you. Of course I will. I shouldn’t have said what I did back then. I should’ve thought it through. But, here I am, talkative, stream of consciousness. All fancy words for someone who doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up. When not to push.
I should’ve just said it outright. That I’m lonely too. It gets hard and then it gets better. But it’s easier when we’re not alone. People need people. And who knows? Maybe you’re not people. But you’re my friend Maybe I’m not either, not anymore. And us not-people need to stick together. I would weather the loneliness with you if you’d have me.
I wish I could see you. I wish it wasn’t like this. Me, waiting and wanting. I want to see you. I want to know you. I want more of you, in every way.
I’ll be here, in 2089.
I promise.
I promise.
[Torn and crumbled, here, the letter ends]