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To the Archduchess Vedero Drazhin, greetings.
As I am well aware of thy worrying and fretting, my friend, and I am sure thou must be scanning this letter for news about my health and continued well-being, let me assure you first that I am fine and as happy as I was when I left Court and we last talked.
The journey was long and bothersome, a right drudge all around. I spent it wondering about the future, but fortunately the only bumps we encountered on our way were those of the road itself. The carriage arrived to Edonomee on the day it had been planned, if a bit late and past the sunset. I was almost grateful to see my new home appear in the marshes.
As for those imaginings I spoke about earlier… suffice it to say most of what I had dreaded didn't bear any weight in reality. The truth is both much better and worse than what gossip had lead us to believe; for thy brother, Vedero, is a sweetheart and a good man. He is not stupid, or mad, or monstruous, as the worst of rumours depict him; he is, even, better than what can be found at Court both in looks and in character. He is also very much living in what I would hesitate to call "genteel poverty" and rather describe as "misery" or "privation of the highest degree".
But let me lay the scene and not get ahead of myself. The state as I found it at the end of our long journey was thus: a ruinous building, old and dark and drab, on the very edge of the marsh, fit maybe for a week or fortnight-long hunting expedition and no more, obviously left to rot since the last of one such trips more than a century past. Scraggly, twisted trees with their long branches eternally bare of leaves had been the only note-worthy vegetation during the last miles, and even them had disappeared at that point; only some bushes dot the landscape in the vicinity of Edonomee. As for its closeness to any neighboring town, there is but one, Calestho, which lays an hour away by carriage and consists of scarcely more than two docen houses and the ill-mantained road that bisects it.
A terrible place to live, I thought, and have not changed my opinion since that first impression.
What I have changed our mind about is the main subject of this letter, and whom I are certain thou must be very curious about. Thy brother Maia, as I told you before, has proven himself to be a well-mannered, shy young man, taken entirely by surprise by this marriage, and more than reluctant of… overstepping any boundaries. (I may have tried to partake with him in some of the marital bliss the both of us can now enjoy - before he himself was comfortable with the idea. And what a change of pace, a young man that doesn't want to bed his wife as soon as he can!). He is tall, thin as a pole and unfailingly kind. His eyes are Drazhadeise grey and his face is that of your father, but the shade of his skin and hair could be easily mistaken for those of a full-blooded goblin. An thou think thy brother Ciris is handsome, my friend, and I have heard you complain that at least he seems to think himself so, know that he is still not the most fetching male member of your house.
As for his character, he is exceedingly polite, to me and everyone in the house, to the point it borders on the absurd. On that first night, he brought me to his room, since there was nowhere else to sleep, and then promptly left me the bed and took to the floor with only a coat as protection against the hard floorboards. Since then, he has made sure to prepare (not have prepared; there are not enough servants in this house to do all the work that needs to be done) a different room for me and left me entirely on my own.
During the day, he has shown me around the building and the grounds. Not farther, as he says the terrain is unstable and bound to swallow up any traveller that is not careful enough. The groundskeeper keeps a close watch over us every time we step foot more than ten yards away from the house, and the expression of dread he wears is similar to that of my father when he caught me sneaking that one time to practice fencing with the guards. Still, Maia spends more time outside than in, and I cannot blame him: that is where Osmer Setheris Nelar, his guardian, prefers to be most of the day.
I have not had any long conversation with the Osmer, nor do I wish to. On that first night when I arrived, he referred to me as a "whore" and to my husband, the Archduke and son of the Emperor, as "boy" and "hobgoblin". I have no idea of how far he usually takes his insults, but Maia was certainly not surprised about them. They were unexpected enough to me that I didn't manage a reply on time (and the only appropriate one would have been to run him with my sword, but alas, I had left it in the carriage), but he has, wisely, kept his opinion about me to himself since then. An he has spoken to Maia in the meantime, I do not know. I hope not; in his presence, he seems to shrink, and though he defended me that night, he did not do likewise for himself. I cannot imagine any person in the Court letting those words fly unchallenged; but then, I cannot imagine spending an entire decade in this place, with this man, since the moment I lost my beloved mother all the way until this day, with no hope of ever getting rid of him in the horizon. I am not quite sure, right now, whether Osmer Nelar even is his guardian any more: surely not, since Maia is a grown adult and a member of the ruling house; and yet when asked he admitted he never received any of the tokens of adulthood he ought to, nor has any letter about expenses ever been directed at him. What is this man, then, to me?
Too, I cannot help but think about the scar that mars Maia's left arm, winding large and pale across his forearm. It must have been a deep cut, thought I cannot imagine how he could have gained it in this house. I may one day decide to ask Osmer Nelar, and even introduce him to some of my pastimes, though Maia asked me not to. For now, I will listen to him. In any case, Osmer Nelar must be aware by now of my sportsmanship, for there is very little to do in this house which is not drinking oneself to sleep or hiding from such practices; and I have taken to doing my exercises in the small area around the house where the marshes don't reach. It is, coincidentally, on the same side as Osmer Nelar's room; an he has seen me, he never did say.
As I was saying, there is very few ways to pass the time. No stables mean no horses; no towns near mean no contact with anyone not living or working here (and that number rises to barely eight, including me in that count, half of which do the daily trek to and from Calestho in order to live with their families: us three nobles, a groundskeeper, a manservant of some kind, a cook, and her two daughters, who help clean around some times). Osmer Nelar, Maia informed me, is the only tutor he ever saw; erratic though his teachings are, Maia has a good grasp of law, geography and history, and little else. I am by turns astounded by the knowledge he has acquired about the political landscape of previous emperors and gobsmacked for his lack of familiarity with some of the most relevant literary classics, artistic movements or philosophical schools. He is, as I said, not stupid; merely very, very badly educated. Osmer Nelar seems not to have cared for those topics and, therefore, never taught Maia about them. I am, currently, lending him some of our favorite chivalric books, which he seems to be enjoying immensely.
This is where I must break my current description of the situation and beg thee to please send me some book on astronomy, on poetry or mathematics or anatomy; anything that may interest an open mind entirely uneducated on these areas. There is, too, something else I would ask of thee, though I am certain that will be a much harder thing to achieve.
My husband has a mane of very pretty, very long and thick hair, which he now can pin with some of the tashin sticks I gifted him on our arrival. Before, he tells us, he used to wear it in a child's braid. This doesn't seem to please him, which is the reason for the gifts. Our problem, however, lays in the fact that his untamed hair is too thick and curly to be easily supported by the sticks. When asked about this, he admitted his mother used to braid it tightly in many tiny braids before attempting to hold it up; but he was eight when he last saw or wore any such hairstyle and I admit to never taking any interest in goblin braids before. I have tried to recreate this style anyway -as I said, there is plenty of time and nothing to do to speed its passage- but the results have been lacking. Therefore, I ask again of thee, my friend, to find any kind of information on these braids or any other hairstyles popular among the goblins in the Untheileneise Court. I am afraid we will end up tearing out all of Maia's hair an we continue our attempts without guidance. The poor lad hasn't even complained about my lack of tact and deserves better than what I could poorly manage.
Thus, this is all I have to say: unexpectedly, my new husband is the only irreprochable fact of my new life in the marshes. I task you, Vedero, with finding a more pleasurable way to spend both our days in this dreary place, for an there ever was someone who deserved our kindness, it would be him; and I have found myself more than willing to take on this heavy duty, to make his life even the tiniest bit more joyful.
With great love and ever rising hopes of happiness,
Thy friend, Csethiro Drazharan