Messages in a Bottle

[fishfry]

Cast aloft into the waves, a simple bottle holds a letter to no one.

Dear Stranger,


Is it foolish of me to write a letter to no one? Maybe this is pointless, or maybe a part of me wants someone to find this letter. To read it. Stranger, would you read my letters and would you care about me, if only for a little?

Would you read my words and sympathize with me? Would I be real to you, just for the time that you're reading my thoughts? Can I trust you with my innermost thoughts, if only for a little while? It feels like I have few people to give them to, these days.

I'm going to trust you with them, even if the ocean will probably take this as offering. That's a fitting graveyard for my heart, I think. Maybe one day, a siren will find this, and my heartache will be their treasure.

How do you know you're doing the right thing? I want to believe that I'm making the best choices, but in the moment, how do you tell? Is the right thing the hard thing to do? Is it the selfish thing to do? The selfless? Does the fact that this hurts mean I'm making the right choice? Does the fact I'm hurting others mean it's the wrong one?

I don't know what I'm doing. I don't think I've ever known. And I can't tell anyone. They all need me. There's someone who need me, needs me more than anyone ever has in my life. I care about them deeply.

Enough to do horrible things. To have done such cruelties that I couldn't have imagined them before.

How do you justify breaking a heart? How do you justify breaking a home? How can I justify taking my home and turning it into a prison? How do I live with making my arms chains? How can I be forgiven for making my love a weight?

How do I live with the choices that I've made? I know, I know to the depths of my heart that making different choices would have been worse. I would have abandoned someone who needed me so deeply. And I cannot allow that to happen.

But why does it hurt so much? Why is it so confusing?

Maybe I'm just not made to be strong. Not in this way. Maybe I'll break trying to do so. Is that better than not trying? Isn't it worse to try to protect myself at the expense of others?

Even in my letters to no one I do nothing but ask for questions. You can't answer me. And I can't ask anyone else.

But at least I can get my thoughts in order. You'll keep my secrets, won't you?

Not yours, but perhaps you might pretend I was, for a little while,

[fishfry]

Another letter, abandoned, ink-flecked to the waves.

Dear Stranger,

I find again that I have no one else to write to. Maybe you can forgive me for writing to you again. It helps to get things written down on paper. They don't make sense in my head sometimes. Or worse--they make more sense than I would like. A dangerous sort of sense.

I was cursed, apparently. It was changing the way I thought. I hadn't noticed it at all. Sometimes I wonder how much of what others saw as a 'curse' was just me? How much is the awfulness that I never knew was inside of me? It chokes me sometimes. Chokes me that I don't know. That there's no way to know.

The curse is cut off now. I can't hear the whispers anymore. But it's like lacking them, I do it to myself. Now it's just my thoughts tempting me with terrible things. I'm doing the right thing--I know I am. There's no other option, no other way forward.

Other choices are just tempting shortcuts. But oh, how -tempting- they are sometimes. The easy choice. The shortcut. How much have I changed, that I would have never thought that I would be tempted by it. But that was before I knew what temptation tasted like. Before I felt this way.

You know, Stranger, I feel like I can confess this to you, at least, if no one else. Things used to affect me so much more. I thought I knew what happiness was like, I thought I knew was sadness was like. Anger, fear--all of these, I thought I had felt. But now? Now I've come to realize that everything that I thought I knew was a paltry echo of what it could be.

I've felt delirium now. I've felt despair. I've felt rage. Terror.

I've felt so much, so strongly, that it felt like everything else was swept away by it, even myself. So deeply and so wholly that I am certain that my spirit, perhaps even my soul has been stained by it.

For a long time I fought it. Or tried to. I held back. Duty was a comfortable collar. Obligation was an unkind reminder. That I needed to be strong. I needed to be a good example. That I needed to be restrained always.

So much that I choked on it. That it lived behind my teeth, aching with the need to strike out. But somehow now it's gotten twisted up.

And now that I've let go once, I don't know how to put the chains back on. I'm not sure that I -want- to. It feels good, to be selfish for once. It feels good to let something other than duty rule me.

Ruin me.

Now that I've felt the worst parts of me come alive, can the best parts of me stay true?

I'm still asking you questions you can't answer.

Not yours, and you aren't mine,

[fishfry]

A letter to a lost friend, wine and tear-stained, abandoned to the waves.

Anessa,


Anessa. Anessa. Anessa. I wish that I'd written this while you were still here. I wish that I'd written more at all. I'd always taken it for granted. That you'd be here. That you'd always be here.

Did you know how much I cared about you? How important you were to me? I didn't do a good job of showing it, did I? And now it's too late to really matter. My oldest friend. I'll write out this last letter to you, and the sea will take it. Maybe, if I'm lucky, it will wash up somewhere in Uraheim, and somehow, someway, you'll find it.

You were my oldest friend. I don't think you realized how important to me those visits that you made to the Traverse were. How much they meant to me. So, so many people passed through my island home, and so few of them actually came back. So few of them stayed. When my world was shrinking down to a few people and a few walls, you were always a breath of change.

Like a landmark in an otherwise shifting sea. A reminder that though things may be changing, they also, in the most important ways, stayed the same.

Back then it was all simpler wasn't it? I often look back on being a child with a wistful jealousy. I wanted nothing than to be seen as an adult. Setbacks were worldshattering. I'm sure you felt the same. I remember every time you showed up, injured from losing a battle. Frustrated at how the hunt was going. Perhaps even lonely, because back when we first met, I remember you so casually saying that you simply lived in the woods. That you had no home, anymore.

My heart went out to you then. It still does ache, for that young girl who had lived through so much. Back when we were younger, I looked up to you so much. How strong you were, how confident, how--unstoppable.

Now I look back and I wish I had done more to soothe the pain that I know lived underneath of the easy smiles.

And even despite that. Look at what you accomplished.

Your pack, your clan, you brought it back from the edge of destruction. You resurrected a people. And they'll continue on the legacy that you started. Are you proud of them, Nessa? Are you proud of what you've built?

Were you as happy as I was when I found out that my home was going to be your home? It was, and remains, one of the better days. A memory to hold against the darkness and uncertainty of the future.

I miss you. I miss you more than you could imagine, probably, given how rarely we really crossed paths. There was always tomorrow. Always another day. 'We'll talk soon'.

We never had that last sit down. It was a promise that I held in my heart, but it will have to wait until I can find you again.

So I'll put my last thoughts into this letter for you.

I hope that my home made you feel welcome, even for a little while. I hope that the future that you were building will come to pass. I promise to you, I'll do everything that I can to make sure that it stays. That your clan settles in, puts down roots and grows.

I'll try to be there for your family. For your children. It breaks my heart to know that you never got to introduce me. That I'll never get to introduce you to mine.

When my time comes, and I've finished waiting with Yama by the coral gates, maybe I'll be able to find you again. Say everything that I've written here.

My oldest friend.

I hope you find your rest. You deserve it.

I miss you. I don't think I'll stop missing you. But I'll try to make sure that I carry on your memory, and the future that you never got to have.

Yours,

[fishfry]

Rambled writings, consigned to the sea, but for once, writing does not clear the mind. There is no clearing this mind.

Dear Stranger,

It's been years since I wrote. I thought I didn't need this, comfort in words written to someone who doesn't exist. Having a shoulder to turn to helped, I thought? I thought? Didn't it? Doesn't it?

Why does it make it worse? Why does talking to someone else make it worse? They don't listen, they don't hear, they can't see it how I see it! Why won't anyone listen to me. The problem is me. It always has been.

I was so stupid. To think that I could justify anything. To think I knew what was right or wrong. I haven't CARED in so long. Where is that boy who wrote desperately to the ocean to beg what the right answer was? Where did he go? Why am I here instead? When did I kill him?

I used to care so much, I used to feel bad about it. Bad about the choice that I made, GUILTY for hurting someone else. I didn't see how much it hurt me. It hurts. Gods, spirits, it hurts. I hurt.

When I actually feel something, it's always too much. Too high, dizzy, delirious, reckless. Too low, empty, aching, guilty. I can't think anymore.

The last thing that I held to that I told myself--as long as I kept this sacred, nothing else mattered. Every slip and mistake, every willful harm, every lie, every bad thing I did, it was okay. As long as I kept to the most important thing.

I can't even lie and say that I've only had a single person as my most sacred, because--haven't I ruined him? Haven't I taken everything? I looked at him and I called it saving and I tore out every part that didn't fit my plan, and when I looked and found more out of place I tore and I tore and I tore.

There's something broken in me, something poison. I didn't used to be like this. Did I? Did I? Was I always tainted?

What was it for? Why did I do this? Everything I've given up. Everyone I've hurt. All for him. I broke him and he broke me and I thought everything was fine, that I could fix anything. But I can't, I can't fix this. Maybe I could fix him but I'd never fix me afterwards.

Why does a tender touch feel like rotten meat. When did savagery become preferable. Why does he hold me like I matter when I've done this to him? Why won't he see that I'm just as bad as everything that I 'saved' him from. Why won't he punish me for what I've stolen.

Maybe I'm worse. Because no one can tell. No one looks at me and sees a monster. They should. I've changed to look more like it. And they still see me. Why do they see me. I haven't existed in a long time.

When did I die? When did I kill who I used to be? When did every moral wither up.

I want to care again. I want to feel again.

The last moral I held, I broke. Should I give up? Would it be so bad to give in to the worst part of me?

Maybe I need to tear the rest out. Finish the job.

But I'm scared. Someone asked me once. How much do you change before the person you cared about is gone. I said the answer didn't matter. I meant it.

Maybe that was the wrong answer.