Springvley, 28th Autumn 227
My dear Khami,
I am happy to hear from you, although that joy is tempered by hearing about Mother’s ailment. I certainly hope her health will improve soon. Is running the house on your own not too tiring in the meantime? Or perhaps Outher is helping?
Here, things are… mixed. Though the town is smaller than home, life here is faster-paced, and every major event is quickly masked by the following one. Sometimes, I am feeling as if everything is happening in a haze. Where would I even start?
There. To begin with, I am starting to strongly suspect there is something actually wrong with the apartment. Something that goes deeper than me being out of my depth in a building that is not my birth home. I suppose, should my difficulty to adapt be normal, I would slowly get less unsettled there, not more so. I should find myself more at home in here by now, should I not?
You see, the overall layout of the structure really seems to be changing. I cannot put it otherwise. For instance, I know I climbed to the second floor to get in today, yet I could swear I had lived in the first floor for the past dozen days. Besides, the design of some things is really hard to pinpoint. Sometimes, I notice the cupboard has little carvings that are meant to represent figures, yet they are really… uncanny. It is hard to properly describe. They do not look like bad carvings: everything a person is supposed to have is there, and precisely detailed. Yet the relative location of the parts, the general silhouettes… something still feels wrong.
Do you remember how Outher offered me a small pendant before I left? I cannot forgive myself about that, but it seems I recently lost it. It is quite the mystery, really. Last I remember, I stored it in a drawer next to my bed one night, and it being gone the following day. In fact, I first thought someone broke in and robbed me while I was asleep, but quickly discarded the idea: some other jewellery, money that I had left on the table was still there. Besides, not just the pendent but the whole bedside cabinet was gone. In its stead was a small shelf pinned on the wall standing as if it had always been there.
On the brighter side, even if my home is playing tricks on me, work is going swimmingly. I am really feeling valued and appreciated here. A lot of paperwork had accumulated in the time period between my predecessor’s departure and my arrival, that I mostly caught up with in the last few days. I am feeling like the mayor likes my way of sorting things out.
You’ll be even more pleased to hear that I met some interesting people here. In particular, I got to interact with someone called Clouds, who works at the administration of the city’s logistics service. We had a few talks about Brivayan law, river transport, landscapes, before they invited me over for some tea. They are incredibly well-read, I have rarely seen someone other than you with such an extensive knowledge of law books!
I wish you well, sister. I look forward to hearing from you.
With love,
Plume
