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it is my hope that when this letter finds you, you know exactly how in which i address you. i am terribly disappointed, and am afraid there is no way in ghezen’s right ass that i’d ever let you on another of my jobs. that is strictly business, and would be quite the correct play on my part.
my disappointment stems from, what zenik has called, my delusions. she says that i have every right to write you, which makes this letter incredibly begrudging in being written. she also says it may even help dull the burning rage i have accumulated after everything you have put me, and the rest of us through.
i don’t know what business zenik has in my life, or my letters, but for some reason i keep writing to her. and now, by extension, i will finally finish a letter to you. begrudgingly, might i add.
its also convenient that I have nowhere to properly address this letter or send it other than the not-so-cozy fireplace of the slat. that's where your others have gone. don’t bother feeling sad for yourself because of it, either. it wasn't ever like I was going to bury them at the foot of an ash tree like your treasured snow spirits demanded.
my only offering to you is more like an embarrassment. it is why I am so enraged with you, because you are the second idiot in my life that desperately tried to teach me the path to a kinder sense of self, and then to go and fuck everything up and die. like a fucking outright moron asshole, too stubborn to run or to save yourself, but to worry for the underdog. you worried for the kid, and just like jordie, you left.
I thought fjerdans were coined for their smarts beneath all of their wool and furs, but you must have had rocks in that huge head of yours. how would you expect a boy to change? No one was like you and no one will ever be. in your wake we’re all forced to reevaluate, and you have given me no reason to be a better man.
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dear helvar,
i held a door for a woman today. i hate you and that is your fault.
i’m sick about you.
brekker
helvar ,
the six Is up and running. i would love to call it a brilliant success - because it is exactly that.
it is also a reminder. this was obviously expected, but after months upon months of letters with zenik, i managed to astound myself with the hope that this would dull that thing inside of me. that thing called grief.
don’t. we spoke about ghosts a lot, but i have not believed in ghosts in a very long time, so you must keep your distance. i might hear that sly shit eating grin with how loud it was. i am not yet ready to admit more than this, so that’s it.
brekker
helvar
today there was a fight at the silver six. it’s the establishment that zenik oversees when she is not frolicking lost in a field somewhere or in a pocket deep beneath the earths surface.
two men - burly and brooding - were at it for the likes of a lady. a lady staying and residing at the six, because we home them until they’ve a save place to go. from men just as these men were.
zenik called me from the parlor to survey and the next thing you know, they knocked over a vase. it wasn’t just any vase. it was the one holding red tulips from the very garden we took them from the day that you died. we keep a fresh dozen when we can, and the vase is meant to be yours.
the men were dealt with swiftly, but ghezen, helvar. i have never seen her so beside herself.
i, as you know very well, am no expert with the emotional ranges of those who can properly express. especially not when they cry, and she was, for a long time. you would be proud to know that i managed to hold her through her tears - even when they wet my shirt. you would be prouder to know that she spoke to me about the hurt, and we spoke of you together.
the day was a gloom, and walking zenik home with her tight fistful of red tulips was no bonus to it, but we made it through. another day fighting.
i really, really dislike you. for putting any kind of lump in my throat that i have to fight. i really wish you were still around, too, and despise that you have convinced me to feel it at all.
k.b .
helvar
i hate you a bit more than ever today. i hate the progress that i am making and the way that people stare at me when i manage a handful of time without my gloves or branching out about something uncomfortable. i hate the stress of everyone around me struggling to put off the praise they wish to give and trying to carry on without shattering my newfound confidence in some purely accidental way. i hate that those pesky red tulips keep blooming in the same spot as last year. i hate that they seem to be everywhere now, in the clubs and at the six, in the cracks of stones where seeds found their way and took root.
mostly i hate that i know you would be proud of me, because that, for whatever stupid reason, makes this all even realer. as if you bleeding out on those cobblestones wasn’t real enough. i despise how i can’t even at this point fall back on my pride for myself and drink the pain away, because i know there’s a fjerdan who wouldn’t have let me get away with it. who would have made me sober up for my friends, for inej. who probably would have stayed in this barrel shithole even if he didn’t like it, and saw this process i’m in, all of the way through.
i hate that i am losing the way you looked and the fjerdan accent of your words more every day. i hate that even now i can picture you less.
even the memory of you is refusing to associate with mine. well, good riddance. i’ll have to find someone else to berate on my bad days.
it’s a really bad day, today.
brekker
helvar,
you never did hesitate with the things you felt sure of, and for that, i will begrudgingly try to appreciate you a little more. for being true to yourself and for being just what we needed to save inej when she had been captured.
now, with where i am in life, that feels necessary to say. i have started to read to her, and to write useless letters i cannot send to her, too. you understood the meaning of hair and its growth in your culture, so you’ll know the symbolism when i share that i have learned to braid hers. though, now that i have written it down, i have a strong compulsion to stop here because you’d probably say something frustrating, or gooey.
you helped bring her home to me, and that is a debt i cannot repay. the most precise business deserved more than a ‘gratitude letter,’ but it’s the best you’ll ever get from me.
k.b.
matthias
i had a brother. his name was jordie. i found the letters you wrote to your family today. i’m sorry that i never told you about mine.
kaz
dear matthias,
my daughter brought me a red tulip today. I told her about you. she wants to be a hero when he grows up now, too.
you were always a terrible influence.
rietveld
fjerdan
it has been a very long time - longer than you have lived and died, and longer than that two times over. it is hard to put into words what i feel about you after all of this time, because i met you at a time where it was hard to get the words out at all.
i have two very beautiful daughters. they light my way and my world day to day. they have taught me such love and patience beyond what inej and i learned together in healing. they have taught me the ritual of the most intricate protection braids, that religion has no boundaries to who your parents are, and that empathy is most powerful. i’m afraid those are all things you already knew, which was maybe why the world took you so soon and left someone like me here to do more of the actual learning.
i still keep in contact with all of the people we associated with. jes oversees my clubs on the months that i am fully away, and the business keeps him spry as he will undoubtedly be for many moons to come. wy oversees jes, and the family. they have two sons and a daughter that are all grown up now, too. she gives the men a run for her money, though, much like zenik. nina is also heavily overseeing the six as well as her tied up foreign assets in fjerda ( ???) as crazy as that might sound. she is married. i thought you’d really admire her for doing so, but she waited for a very long time to ever move on from you, and when she did it was no easy task. you were, undeniably the smartest of us all when you moved your furs and insolence out of the way. you were a gentleman, too, so be pleased to know she’s settled down with a nice person and has a son and a daughter of her own.
we all visit for yearly dinners, if we’re in one place. and some years there are a lot more dinners in between when the times are right. we associate in hopes that you’d join us if you could.
i want you to sit down for this next part if your ghost is still associating with mine, but i went home. to a little place called lij, if you could believe that, after all of my incessant assuring that i simply crawled in from the harbor. whilst part of me did, a part so deep and hidden in my mind wished for this. the little boy who missed his father and yearned for a mother. it is only right that i start this years harvest as i always do. as a father i can be proud of, and to watch the mother of my lights and the woman of my heart frolick in her fields after her daily prayer, and be even prouder. she is truly the most precious business a man can ever invest in. the greatest of them all.
it may be the last time we write to one another, but i will bury this at the foot of whatever tree i find. it’s what you may have wanted, and it brings me more peace than the flames would have brought us.
thank you, for all of the times i was not strong enough to say it. for your wisdom at such a ripe age, and for giving me a path to drive onward, for never letting me give up. i won’t ever quite pray to the sky or the roots crawling beneath the earth, but i’d like to believe you’ll be listening either way.
and if not, i think i will speak to you anyway. i get to say that is okay, because you’re long gone.
until next time, my utmost gratitude
kaz rietveld