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June 6, 3075
Scythe,
It’s June the sixth today, and the desert’s only fixing to get hotter. I suspect this season will be a blistering one. Happy Spawnday. It’s your eighteenth now, though you been gone close on two years. Strange thing, me sitting here writing to you still. I don’t send these letters off anywhere. They just pile up, tucked in a box underneath my bed. I can’t rightly tell if I’m writing for you or for myself anymore. Maybe both. I am twenty-two now, though I don’t feel it. The years have stacked on me, but nothing about me feels older, save the ache of your absence.
These days I’ve been spending most of my hours helping Tara out on her new farmstead. She’s taken to it with a fire I ain’t seen in her in years. She’s got her animals and her little plots scratched into the desert. She’s acting like she’s found herself a whole new reason to breathe. She’s exciting herself silly over every sprout that comes up, and I reckon I get some quiet satisfaction from lending her my hands. Still, every time I’m walking the rows or fixing fence posts, I think how much better it’d be if you were there beside us.
I’ve been toying with an idea too. Calling ourselves the Redcliff Wranglers. Nothing grand, just a band of folk tied together with a common purpose. It feels foolish to speak it out loud, but I catch myself imagining you as part of it, laughing, stomping around like you used to. Then reality sets back in, and I remember you ain’t here.
I can’t quit wondering what it was made you leave us for them True Eye preachers. I recall clear as day when the first acolyte came round and you hardly gave him a glance. Then he showed up again, only this time he brought someone with him. An inphernal I figure was his brother. He weren’t like the first at all. Stoic, near awkward, all stiff in the way he stood. Socially clumsy, he didn’t know how to shape his words. Not your kind of company at all, or so I thought. Couldn’t’ve been more than two years older than you. And Lords, he was impossibly tall, far taller than Tara herself.
From the first time your eyes lit on him, I knew you were gone. Mesmerized, snared. Doomed, maybe. If I had any sense, I would’ve stepped in then or said or done something, but I held my tongue. Now when I look back, I see how foolish that was. I ought to have intervened more. Maybe things would’ve gone differently.
I never did trust those True Eye acolytes, not from the first minute they stepped foot out here. And I can’t for the life of me understand why you did trust ‘em. You were sharp, quicker than most, never one to fall for sweet talk. Yet somehow, their words got their hooks in you. Because of them, you and me began to butt horns.
After a while, I just stopped pushing back so much. It wasn’t that I suddenly agreed with you—it’s that I came to realize once your mind was set, not even a storm could move it.
Every time that missionary rolled through, somehow you and that brother of his would manage to slip away. Truth be told, I doubt it was accident. More likely it was your own planning. Tara noticed it too. She was one of your closest friends and she grew wounded when you stopped giving her the time of day, though she would not say so, and instead turned to me. Fool that I am, I told her not to fret. I let it slide, thinking you’d come back to us when novelty passed.
It didn’t take long before it happened to me too. You started drifting from me same as you had from Tara. Conversations with you grew narrow. If it weren’t about him, or about that so-called church, you’d shut yourself down. Not even the churchboy had so much of an interest in True Eye as you did. More and more it became apparent that you had no interest left in the life we were building. The quiet work, the simple rhythm of days, the little joys that made this desert bearable. None of it seemed enough for you anymore.
I remember the day I finally had enough of the way you were carrying on. I’d been holdin my tongue for weeks, telling myself you’d tire of it soon, but it just kept building till I couldn’t stand it no more. We clashed harder than we ever had before that day. Voices raised, words spoke with more anger than I care to recall, and when talk gave way to action I near wish I could cut the memory clean from my mind. I regret it more than anything else I’ve ever done. Afterward I kept my distance, told myself you needed space to cool down, but in truth I was ashamed of what I’d allowed ourselves to become in that moment.
When you finally came to me that evening, I’ll never forget the look on your face. You apologized, and I couldn’t believe it. It near broke me, seeing you like that, because you were never one to admit fault easy. I thought perhaps that was the turning point, that maybe I’d gotten you back. Fool’s hope, I know now.
The very next day I set out into town to fetch you a treat, wanting to surprise you with something sweet. I came back with it in hand, only to hear muffled voices spilling out from your room. I crept quiet as I could, pressed myself to the wall, and listened. My heart damn near stopped when I realized what you were saying—you weren’t just flirting with the idea of True Eye, you were pleading with him, near begging for him to take you away. All the doubts I had about losing you hardened into certainty in that moment. I couldn’t bear it, so I pushed the door open, and there you two were, leaning into each other.
I couldn’t think. I slammed the door wide, cursed, and stormed out before I did somethin worse. You came right after me, but I couldn’t face you. I knew I ought to tell someone, tell Tara, brung this shameful truth into the light, but I didn’t.
The last words I ever heard from you are carved in me still. All of that proud strength was gone. You were a mess like I’d never seen you before. You were crying so hard you could hardly breathe, begging me to forgive you. And I did forgive you. I pulled you close and held you. But then, all at once, you went still. After a moment you drew back from me and, without a word, you turned and walked away. You glanced back once, just once, before keeping on.
I should’ve known right then what you meant to do. I should’ve followed. Instead I let my own pride and hurt steer me wrong.
When I came back, the house looked just the same as when I’d left it. Your things were scattered where you’d always left them. For a minute I fooled myself into thinking you were only hiding in your room, letting your temper cool. But as the minutes ticked on and the rooms stayed quiet, dread set in. I started searching frantically, pulling open doors, checking corners, calling your name though I knew in my gut I’d get no answer. That’s when I saw it—the drawer where we kept our savings, yanked wide open, and every last bill and coin gone. You’d taken the money, every cent, and left near everything else behind. Clothes, trinkets, even that scarf you loved so much.
Months dragged by, but the image of you never left me. Then, not long ago, I thought I saw you. Couldn’t be sure at first, but there you were, standing at a distance, dressed in teal. I stayed back watching you, afraid that if I moved too close you’d vanish. When you turned, I saw it clear as day. That glass eye glinting where once there was nothing but your own. It chilled me to my very marrow. You are still beautiful, Scythe, but it is not the same beauty I remembered. You looked almost unrecognizable, and yet I knew without doubt it was you.
I keep turning it over in my mind, trying to puzzle what pushed you so far. Was it greed, plain and simple, a hunger for more than the humble dust-and-sun life we were spawned into? Or was it that preacher boy himself? Or, Gods help me, was it me? Was it our fights, my failure to stand in your way, my silence when I should’ve spoken? Did I drive you to it? Or did you truly take their words into your heart?
If it’s belief that drives you, if your heart has bound itself to their cause in earnest, then I can only pray you’re safe. Folks are whispering of dark days ahead. Things are comin undone, the government’s tottering and the land itself is bracing for somethin terrible on account of True Eye’s growing hold. I reckon the ground is splitting under our feet, though no one wants to name it outright. If you still stand with that church when the storm breaks, then heaven help you, for it will not be gentle.
I won’t lie, Scythe. I hate that church. I hate it for the way it reached into our lives and pulled you out of mine. Yet hatred cannot fill the empty place you left. I miss you more than I hate them, and if Illumina or fate brought you back through that door, I would take you in. Still, if you bring the church’s hand down upon, I will not flinch from raising my hand in turn. I am not afraid to fight you if it must come to that, though the thought near kills me to write. I don’t want it to come to that. More than anything, I want you to turn back.
I’ll end this the way I’ve ended all the letters before it, though none have found their way to your hands:
Come home child.
Always,
Grappling Hook