Letters From Armin: Wood and Light

Selected Letters of Armin R. Tolor, No. 6

This is Selected Letters of Armin R. Tolor, a serial which will release every three weeks. To catch up on past letters, see The Index. For information on the illustrations, see the footnote¹

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Dear Mary,

Your new home sounds simply magical. Sometimes I find myself taking long walks in the gardens and imagining running away into the woods and living as a hermit. How that would infuriate Father! I wish I felt as strong a call as you felt to the cloister. I am confused, frankly. I don’t know where my life is going. Father has some plan, I go through the motions of courtly life, but the whole thing feels empty. Vanity, thy name is Armin? I wish I had a clearer idea of what the future holds. The cloud that obscures the future scares me.

More so now, following the news from Jason. Apparently a detachment of the King’s Navy has mutinied. One Vice-Admiral Ketto, himself a Maristo, has separated from the Royal Navy along with three frigates and declared himself the Maristo Navy, bent on liberating the province from the Duke’s martial law. Suddenly this drama has ascended to the scale of the whole system. The King’s attention has been drawn across the gulf of space to our Viceroy’s humble planet, our Duke’s humble continent, and I wonder if the King’s grasp on the situation will be better than these lesser two.

Father, of course, is salivating. What is bad for the Duke is good for him, I don’t think he will be happy until he has a planet under his dominion. I don’t even think he cares which one—it’s all titles and honors for him.

Father’s avarice has made me doubt my future. Are titles and honors all there is? You have proven that it is not. Virtue, detachment, these also exist, and are also valuable. I wonder if I can escape the black-hole that is power-hunger, that seems to draw all involved deeper towards it. I don’t want to become Father. I look at him and I see a caricature of my future, and it fills me with dread.

In happier news, do you remember the woman from your farewell party? She caught my eye and I was skeptical whether I caught hers. I resolved to put her out of my mind, since I was wooden and she was all light and joy. Providence conspired to have us meet again. I was walking through town, delivering a reply to Jason—a good excuse to get out of Nordhaus and into town, to try to hide from any honors and just be a normal human being. Anyway, I saw her. She was on some errand of her own—I saw her from a long ways off, she hadn’t seen me. I resolved to ignore her, afraid to indulge my fantasy that she in any way noticed me. Yet while I was delivering my letter, who should enter but this woman.

She recognized me immediately, and approached and introduced herself. Her name is Catherine. She asked if I was the same fellow from the party at Nordhaus, I told her I was. She asked how you were getting on at the monastery, I told her you were well. My heart was in my throat and my brain had vacated all sense, so words did not come easily to me. The clerk gave me the receipt for the letter, and I wished her good day and left hastily to return to Nordhaus. I cursed my wooden brain! I cursed the foolish fantasy that she thought anything of me other than, well, nothing. I may never see her again, and she is probably giggling away that the second son of the Count of Weyand is a wooden puppet without sense or dignity.

And yet—despite my anxious mental turmoil, I can’t deny that she brightened a wintry day, and I was pleased to both see her and learn her name. I am very conflicted. How can I be so happy to encounter someone whose name I only just learned, and about whom I know nothing?

Mary, you must think me very trivial and foolish. I know the reading and writing of letters is a precious resource, and I regret that I have wasted so much of this one on so foolish a topic.

We miss you every day, and think of you often.

Your loving brother,

-Armin

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To read the previous letter, click HERE.
To read the next letter, click HERE.

1. Illustrations were created on commission by

The Chronicler

. If you are interested in commissioning The Chronicler to create artwork for your own project, see this page HERE.