[I-0]

A dusty letter, stuffed into a bottle, and set adrift in the ocean.

Nothing more, nothing less.

It's addressed to nobody, and carries no signature.

---

---

It's been a very long time coming, but I think I'm ready to meet you. I'm not confident how my mother made contact with you - I only know that once she had, you gave her the path to that wasteland through her dreams. I've had plenty of visions, plenty of hallucinations. I've heard your laugh, I've seen your eyes, I've seen your ⬛⬛⬛. For a while, I thought that you were showing me them as a sign that you were proud of me, proud of whatever it was I was doing.

I hated it. I hated any indication that my path resembled yours, that I was anything like you. Whenever I wanted to push people away from me, whenever I wanted to be alone to feed the crawling at the edges of my mind, I imitated what little I knew of you.

I called people rats. I treated them like disposable little trinkets I could mine fun out of, and then throw away when they got boring. It was all just... theater.

An imitation of someone I'd only heard of through a single, secondhand story, in which you presented yourself however you wanted. How meaningless is that? It certainly isn't valid evidence. It doesn't tell me much about what kind of person you are - only what kind of person you wanted her to see you as.

And maybe, just maybe, you were imitating someone else you'd known to look cool and scary, just like I was...?

Or, maybe, it was exactly accurate - and you're every bit the monster I imagined when I was a kid.



I don't expect this bottle to reach you. Not physically, anyway. But if my suspicions are correct, it won't have to.
You read it as I wrote it.

I have your eyes, don't I?

[I-0]

Another letter in another bottle, written several years after the first.

As with the original, it carries no signature.

Its handwriting is much thinner, though.

Written in a rush?

---

Please answer me.

I know you've read this, I know you read my last message. I've been told to abandon this trail, to forget about you. I've thought that you might've died - or been sealed away, whatever exactly is done with your kind. But no, I know better. I can feel it - you're still around, still watching somehow, someway.

In a life spent untangling mysteries, you're my greatest lingering albatross. Something that I don't understand, that refuses to be understood. You crawl and slither away from every single opportunity I have to shine light on you. Who made you? What do you believe? Why did you

Please

.

I saw her again. I went to my old home in Theria, in the dead of night. I don't think anyone saw me, I don't think anyone recognized me. Parrish was asleep. She is just the same way that you left her. A puppet with those vacant, dead eyes. She still breathes, but she's not truly living. I tried to speak to her, tried to get her to react or acknowledge me in any way. Nothing worked.

I just want to understand what drives you.

please answer me, ⬛⬛⬛

[I-0]

The gap between bottles two and three is much shorter than the gap between bottles one and two.

No signature, and scratchy, thin handwriting.

The pace is almost manic, bordering on incoherent.

---

I'm not lying. I'm not lying about you. I'm not crazy, I know I'm not crazy, I know dad wasn't crazy, I know mom wasn't crazy, I know I know I know

Please answer me. Please give me a sign. Please give them a sign. He said you weren't real. You had to have heard that, right? You saw that, right? Doesn't that make you angry? Doesn't that make you want to prove that you exist?

Please, even if you don't care about me. You want people to know you exist, right?

I'm not lying. I'm not delusional. I know the truth, I know what you are, I know what I am.

I'm not a liar.

They need to understand that.

Is this what she felt?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Please

---

The author, seemingly, ran out of ink before finishing the final lines.

Even still, it is set to shore, just as the rest were.

[I-0]

A fourth, final bottle, set to the ocean many years after the third - and from a foreign shore.

Barsburg's, rather than Esshar's.

Its handwriting is neat and proper, very formal.

Unlike the others, it's even signed at the bottom.

---

I'm not waiting any longer. I will find you.

I have the resources to be capable of it, now. The peak of human development is more than enough to track down one feathery mad scientist. No matter how much you wish to remain hidden.

And when I reach you - not if, when - I will find the answers I want. I am very, very good at collecting information.

Some of my questions are as follows -

Who made you? Do you know what your initial purpose was? What do you believe? How often were you watching me? Were what I'd perceived as messages in my youth truly messages, or merely early ripples of madness? What of my mother? How much of my path was yours?

What is your true will?

That is all. Consider this a calling card, a statement of intent.

I'll be seeing you shortly, Kazfiel.

Rella pyr Aertas