(2022-08-20) Bertrand

Details

Author:	Luridel
Summary:	Bertrand Aspenwood receives a letter from his fiancée.
Rating:	T for Teen

[ In late February, Year 26… ]

It's a rather large mail delivery today, and Bertrand doesn't stick around to hear why, because Scilla wrote to him again. He recognizes her large, loopy handwriting on the envelope and lets his feet carry him away from the rest of the crowd. He's probably grinning like an idiot and he doesn't care.

Bertrand goes up to the wall, tucks himself between the crenellations, and presses the envelope against his heart. A few seconds of pure daydreaming later, he flicks a knife into his hand and opens the envelope in one clean cut. Bertrand slides the knife back into its sheath and pulls out a single folded sheet of stationery. Scilla's written him a very short letter this time.

Dear Birdie,

I'll tell you the next time I see you in person. Which should be very soon. I'll be hiring an armed escort to get me to the flight path safely, and before you know it, I'll be able to visit whenever I want. I'll be there by Friday at the latest.

Love,
Scilla

Bertrand immediately forgets what day of the week it is. He had that information in his mind just a moment ago and now it's gone. She's coming here. Scilla's coming here to see him. The Blasted Lands isn't exactly the most hospitable of places, and the swamp isn't exactly safe, but…

Just in case, Bertrand brings the letter up to his face and inhales. It doesn't really smell like her, and he's a tiny bit disappointed, but that doesn't matter. She's coming to visit. In less than a week.

"Major Aspenwood," says a quiet voice, and Bertrand's head snaps to the side. In a blur of movement, he goes from wedged into a notch on the wall to standing on his feet, knives in hand.

Standing in the doorway that leads off the wall and into a tower is a stick of a man in blue priest robes with a mess of curly red hair. Harbrooke. Cress's boy. Alliance, for sure. Not a threat.

What is Bertrand coming to, that he nearly put a knife in this poor man's throat? And he dropped the letter—Scilla's letter. He stows the knives and bends down to collect it. "Hey, Harb." That sounds terrible and Bertrand regrets it the moment it comes out of his mouth. "Sorry, uh, Chaplain Harbrooke. What can I do for you?" He straightens, tucking Scilla's letter and the envelope inside his Alliance tabard.

Chaplain Harbrooke shrinks back in the doorway. Shoot, Bertrand didn't mean to spook him, that just sort of happened. He's holding something in both hands—a letter of his own.

"Sir. I, I just thought I should let-let you know…" Harbrooke looks like he's regretting coming up here at all. "There's apparently a-a way to get mail back from, from the other side of the Dark Portal. Now."

Two halves of a thought click neatly together in Bertrand's mind as he fills in the gaps from earlier—the crowd by the mailbox, of course. "Oh, that's incredible! I hope that means proper two-way transportation's going to be possible next. Did you hear from Cress?" He gestures elegantly towards Harbrooke's letter.

Harbrooke shakes his head no, dropping his eyes to his feet. Bertrand's pretty sure he can see the priest blushing. "No," Harbrooke mumbles. "Colson wrote to me. Um." He raises his voice to a more normal volume, although he doesn't look at Bertrand at all as he says, "Your siblings are both alive, sir."

"That's great," Bertrand says, but he stops talking because Harbrooke has suddenly opened the letter and is frantically scanning it, looking for something. Bertrand waits, outwardly the very image of patience, but his thoughts have immediately gone elsewhere.

It takes Harbrooke what feels like a small eternity to read the letter at least twice, during which time Bertrand mentally composes his response to Scilla, considers getting his hair cut, and struggles to remember what day of the week it is.

"Well, technically," Harbrooke says, and his ears have gone red. "He didn't actually. Say Cressidha was alive. But I assume… it's probably safe to, um, assume. That she is. Or I think he would have said. If she weren't. Sir."

Bertrand laughs out loud. "That's what you were looking for? Of course they're fine. Cole and Cress are unstoppable. Wait, wait, so Cole wrote you that letter? And he didn't even tell you how Cress was doing?" Now that's just weird. It's definitely more than a page long, which means Cole had time to sit down and write a proper letter rather than dashing off a quick note.

Harbrooke says to his shoes, "That's right, sir. I'm sorry. I should… go. Excuse me."

"Sure, of course. You're dismissed," Bertrand says, mostly because it looks like Harbrooke would rather jump off the wall than spend another minute trapped in this conversation, and he pointedly turns his back to the other man, looking out at the Blasted Lands.

A moment later, when the sound of Harbrooke's shoes descending the tower stairs has vanished, Bertrand goes, "Huh." Something is definitely odd, there, but he can't exactly put his finger on it without reading Harbrooke's mail, and it's probably none of his business. He's sure Cress and Cole are fine. They've got each other out there.

Bertrand reads Scilla's letter a few more times, imagining her sitting at her desk, ankles crossed, twirling her hair around her finger as she writes. The mental image is thankfully fairly recent. He'll see her soon enough; he can update it when he does.