To Marianne:

I can only hope you get this letter somehow. By Thunter’s Gunter, I hope so. I’m not in a good way here. Might kick off before I make it out. Hopefully I’ll think of something.

I’m just writing to let you know . . . well, to let you know that I’m sorry. For everything. It stinking reeks, and it’s all my fault. I let you down. I’m sorry. And for what it’s worth . . . I do love you.

But let me back up. When you found me all those years ago, lying wounded on the fields of Demross, I knew my past had caught up to me. I was young and foolish, raiding the humes on the east coast, had been for years. The life of a sea grem. You know all about that; I told you when I was in recovery. The greatest gift you ever gave me was not my life, but your listening ears. That and the knowledge you passed on to me from the humes, like how to speak your language, how to write these words. How to be something more.

I remember it so clearly to this very day, no matter if it’s been . . . what, forty years? You’re probably a grandmother now, with your own little brood of humes and their broods . . . it’s all right, it’s a happy thought. Where was I? Oh yes, your sparkly blue eyes. Your hair, just the color of pure Flourian amber. Delicious looking hair, I always thought. And I thought . . . well, I think you knew how I thought of you, however ridiculous it seems. But you never made fun of me. A hume girl, so strong and so kind, you utterly mystified me.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

I recall your thirst for research, your quest for knowledge. How you carried around bundles of scrolls in your pack and kept them in the driest part of that cave. I tried to eat one, and that was the closest I ever came to making you angry. I asked, in my very best humespeak, “But then whats else do ya keep ‘em around for?” We grems judge the value of hume treasures mostly by how they taste, after all. Like amber, or gold . . . oh, gold is the best. It’s been years. Did I ever tell you it’s the secret to us living so long? That’s why we’ve always done whatever we could to get at hume gold stores. Never meant anything by it. Not much, anyway.

What am I saying? We eat you guys.

Speaking of, I might should be getting to the main point of this letter . . . I really didn’t want to have to tell you about any of this, but as I said, it’s getting down to the bone here and I don’t think I have long. I don’t want to kick off with regrets like these, not if I could get them off my chest and somehow, some way, into your hands. You deserve the truth.

----------------------------------------