Enole ‘ni Mari,
Seta vere ner. We made it. Anything that was not rock— the beautiful red rock— enferranti nisevia sim ci ne! as brilliant and jeweled a red as ever— was scattered about and touched by flame. I collected one of your looking glasses, one you kept on a string of your mother’s hair. I presume it to be a lock of Persi’s as the fire only seems to temper it and turn it a bolder shimmering brunette, if that’s even possible. I gathered everything from behind the mantel: the brassy red compass we’d always take with us high up into our Seeing Tree to help us find our stars, and one of Earsy’s pipes— but only one, I left the rest there because I didn’t want him to be even more disheartened if he returned to the cabin, such as it is, and wished to have a smoke and a thought as he would do when he went out front to watch the suns set, or out back during the risings and settings of the moons on those darkening indigo evenings, if he should return there— which I imagine we all will one beautiful reddening day with a fire and a story ready at the hearth— I left his cache and a note where I know he’ll look. I also gathered a few of our rocks and what unburnt papers I could, though I found no trace of the book, the book with the red cover, except for this one page that Earsy tore out so long ago and hid from us high above the book cases when we were rowdy children and he didn’t want to hear us going around cussin’ in dragon-tongue, especially when your magick was becoming so strong as it was. I looked everywhere. Se neste ti nora! The lid to its stone box was on the floor. Was someone looking for it? And what would anyone want with Earsy’s stories? His— Our!— storybook is gone, the very one with which we’d share Earsy’s lap and a warm fire on all those long childhood days and nights. Why would someone be after that? Children’s stories, fairy fables, his tales from the trails and woods and mountains, mulies and mythocats and— Oh my! Good thing we’ve heard them all so many times before! Now, if the book, Easy’s Book, is missing, and the book with the red cover, I suppose we should set to writing it all down again so it will not be lost. I’m sending this leaf to you for safe keeping. Serre na correste. I know it must not look the same in the heavy air and in the half-light of this world, where you are now <<How could it?>>, but rest assured it is of the book, the book with the red cover. The ink turned muddy and a funny color, it’s not that rediblack or sedgecol or even silvertine with that sheen it had on Earsy’s world that made the ink look as though it were coursing in the colors of aeneri wings through gossamer pages. The ink looks so dead in this other world, the words just won’t dance like they do in the dragons’ ink.
I’m hoping perhaps you can do something about that. Se te nive tori korrinevenn! Treni viste si te, Mari, treni!?! Send word if you discover anything in your seeking and tracing. Please, Mari, don’t get lost. I will be listening and watching the horizons as usual. And remember, SAFE KEEPING. Symwynn knows nothing of this venture, for now. Nor do Nahdrea-düsym, Kreh-Ceri, or Cailínwynn. But if you now know then we can be reasonably certain that Marriwynn knows! This leaf bears her mark. SAFE KEEPING. I’ll be searching for the rest of the book, the book with the red cover. And you can bet all the rustling leaves upon your midnight breezes that I will recover Earsy’s Storybook if it’s the last thing I do.
Iteare i rata vi nive,
Rafe