A Letter from Port Cos

Dear Castor,

It’s been well over a hand since last I saw you, touched you and smelled the leather on your skin. I miss you so badly I can sometimes feel your breath on my neck and hear your voice whispering into my ear. It makes me wish we didn’t argue so, too much time wasted between us.

Charm misses her father and she asks about you every night, but not to worry, I’m sure to always give her a special kiss just from you.

Port Cos is a noisy place and there always seems to be something going on. Charm and I have been spending most of our time since coming here in the Library, where she has found a friend in the librarian’s four year old son, while I study.

There is something I want, no, need to tell you, but I’m not quite sure how to broach the subject. I know you’re going to be angry with me, and I now realize you have every right to be. I only hope that you can understand.. why I have done the things I have done. Why I have made the decisions that may unravel the thread of our relationship.

I’m going to begin by telling you things you already know, even though I know how maddening that is for you. For as far back as my family can remember, only females have been born to our line. It’s a curse we have endured for generations, with no knowledge of how to break it, with never a male heir to carry on the family name. Though they may love their daughters, fathers want sons, sons we of my lineage can never give them.. until now.

The night of the storm, we conceived a child, a child that will be the first male to be born into my family. So you see, I was barely pregnant when you took me into that room and past the black curtain. But something happened in there, within the walls of calming blue, something both wonderful.. and terrifying. I heard my mother’s voice, so sweet and soft and soothing, and she predicted the coming of our son. But all I told you was that I was pregnant. I didn’t tell you everything.

She also told me that for the curse to be broken and for our son to live, there would have to be another life in forfeit. She prophesied that only a few ehns after having giving birth, that life in forfeit will be mine, a small price to pay for the future of our children.

But she also gave me a ray of hope, a fable; the legend of an amulet that would trap my consciousness from fleeing my body after our son is born. It is the myth of this amulet that I have come to Port Cos in search of, trying to gather every morsel of information on it I can find. I know I should have told you but I did not wish to give you false hope.

I hold within me the decision to keep searching, or come home and spend what days I have left with you.

I am afraid, for either decision I make, I lose.

Forgive me.

Lover of mine,

Astraea