[IRP] The Letter

[Aida]

She wrote the letter late one afternoon, tucked away in a rennovated corner of Grimstad House, with rain pattering on the windowsill outside. The entire day had been an alternation of sunshine and showers, and now there was a rainbow forming against the grey of the sky, causing travellers struggling against the muddy road in the distance to pause and point up. She smiled, although the difficulty in travel would mean other ways of delivering her precious missive would have to be found.

The records had been found late one night, delivered from Montesta overseas by a grumpy sailor who made her wait three hours before the rest of his cargo had been unloaded before handing them over. Family trees, birth certificates, heraldic armorials. As precious to Aida as any gold or silver, and perused with the greatest of care.

One in particular had caught her attention. A letter, sent from Aida and Casimir's mother, Linnea Grimstad to her sister, Aislin Ballintyne, who was also Nikola's mother. It was hastily written, yet appeared only to be about mundane things, a ball she had attended. Roses blooming in the garden.

A code.

Aida stayed up through the night unraveling the symbols, the messages. Guessing at what private keys the sisters must have kept between themselves, and came up in the early hours with a letter that painted quite a different story.

Two girls, born out of wedlock a year or so apart, sent away to Fenia to be safe when Linnea was forcibly brought back to her Grimstad husband. Their locations carefully coded, and a devoted aunt to see that they were well kept.

Except all of Linnea's children had ended up seperated by the war, in the end. Still, there was an address that Aida recognised, her heart leaping. A small manse outside of Fenia listed in the records. Later, frantically searching through Linnea and Aislin's correspondence, she found the two certificates Casimir must have discovered. Aida Ballintyne she was listed. And another. Alexa Ballintyne. So she wrote, and prayed that there was still someone to receive her letter.

	Dear Alexa, You may not know me, and may not believe me, and so I enclose copies of the documents that provide proof of what I am to write. I am known now as Lady Redmoor, but that has not always been my name. I took it because I did not know my parentage, and until recently only discovered the identity and location of siblings I never thought I had. Much still remains a mystery, but here is what I know. I was born Ballintyne, having been given my noble mother Linnea's family name, after she ran away with a mysterious poet to start a new life. In that time, there was another girl born before I, you. Our family was not to remain together. Linnea Grimstad was taken back to her husband to do her duty, whilst we were to stay in Fenia and be brought up well as illegitimate aristocracy. It never came to pass, as I'm sure you are aware. Linnea had two further children after us, and a third before us, even. Warrick Grimstad and the twins Casimir and Camelia, who sadly are recently deceased. I do not know if this letter will ever reach you. My men will search the area mentioned for word of you, and if you are to be found I pray you will join me in Fenia City, to meet with me and perhaps build together what we were once denied. Regards, Countess Redmoor

==========

"I am an idiot," Aida declared, suddenly and loudly, to the alarm of several members of the record-keepers in the Cathedral. One of them, the young acolyte who had saved her life, raised his eyebrows and looked over from his desk.

"Something I can help you with, Madam?"

"No," the Vicereine stood, slamming the old records together and putting her face in her hands, "What kind of idiot sends a letter to a potential sibling and doesn't include their first name? Me, apparently! Right, I have to go. I KNOW WHO SHE IS!"

Racing out of the front door, she held her billowing black skirts around her and ran down the temple steps towards the row of cottages where her new neighbour lived.

[Lexi]

Sitting on the stoop of her modest home Lexi clutched the parchment, her hands trembling. She had read the letter twice already, and was verging on doing so again. Dear Alexa... That was not a name she had heard in a very long time, not since her early childhood, which was as hazy to her as the mists on the horizon on an early spring morning. She cast her eyes once more over the words, obviously penned by a female hand. A frown creased her brow.

Lexi knew little of her birth parents, having been raised from a toddler by an older couple in Fenia who had not be blessed with children of their own. During her teenage years, she had persistently questioned the ones who raised her, demanding to know where she had come from. All they would ever tell her was that, though her birth parents had loved her dearly, they had been unable to raise her. She could gleen no more from them than that. After a while she had ceased asking, choosing instead to embrace the life she had been given and disregard the one she was never meant to have.

Lady Redmoor. She repeated the name several times in her head, as though such an action would somehow reveal the identity of the mystery woman who was claiming to be her younger sister. If what was written was the truth, it made the story she had been told as a child make more sense than it had until now. Siblings, and more than one it seemed, even though some were said to be deceased. She could not feel sadness at that, for they were as strangers to her.

Should she go and meet this Lady Redmoor? She could find no logical reason why this woman would want to lie to her, yet how could she live through 25 summers and not have had the slightest clue of her heritage? She crumpled the parchment and put her head in her hands. The information was overwhelming, yet it was clear she had an important decision to make.

[Aida]

She made her way down the lane with increasing anticipation, wringing her hands nervously. A woman come to Fenia City, with a similar look and similar age, whose motives for moving were unknown? With a name that could only be-

Aida stopped suddenly, pausing to consider her actions. She could not simply run up to someone who, although had been kind and become a fast friend, was almost still a stranger to her. Would it not be embarassing for the both of them if she were mistaken? And what if she were correct? Whilst her letter had not been as crystal clear as it might have been, it was no secret she was the Countess of Redmoor. Indeed, the silver Stag was emblazoned all over the livery of her household, who were seen all over the city. But for someone just arriving from the relative solitude of the countryside? Aida tried to rack her brains.

She stood in the dust of the lane, frowning. All around her were signs of people living their lives. There were families everywhere it seemed, working the land, travelling mechant families rattling down one of the busier roads in the distance. A flock of birds flew over the lake, forming pretty patterns, and a young lad tugged at his mother's sleeve to watch.

She decided to take the risk.

Aida walked up towards the house, nervously twisting her wedding ring around her fingers. She stopped the other woman immediately, her face serious and her hands clutching at something. Aida cleared her throat, "Lexi..."

"I don't suppose you've received a rather strange letter, recently?"

[Lexi]

The sound of her name brought Lexi out of her reverie. She looked up to see Aida standing at the foot of the stoop, nervously playing with a ring on her wedding finger and an expression on her face that Lexi could only surmise meant she was the bearer of bad news. People always wore than look when the were coming to tell you something bad. She sighed, preparing herself for whatever unpleasantness she was about to hear, and was about to set aside the document she held, when Aida's next words left her momentarily confounded. How could she possibly know about the letter? Unless...

She looked from the parchment to the woman standing before her. A sinapse fired in her brain, a hint of recognition . For all Aida was practically a stranger to her, something about her was familiar, almost like looking at part of herself, and the more she considered it, the more she identified some of her own mannerisms in Aida. Coincidence, it had to be. Didn't it? "This... is you?" she asked, her voice quite and shakey. "But... I don't understand," she went on. "How, how could we not know, never have been told something so important?"

She ran her hands over her face and rubbed her eyes absently mindedly. She knew in her heart it was all the truth. It would appear Aida was her sister. "It seems we have much to talk about," she said finally, offering Aida a small, tired smile.

[Aida]

She flopped onto the step next to her as she finished, sighing and still playing with her wedding ring, twisting it around and around.

"How could we not know, indeed? There was a war, in the Kingdom where our mother and her family lived. Our mother and her husband were apparently killed and all her children split up. I had been taken to visit her at the time when the unrest began - that's how she saw us, apparently - a nursemaid would sneak us over to Grimstad House for visits. I was whisked away back to you and our surrogate parents, but I never made it back. There was a fire at the cottage we had stopped in for the night, and believing me to be dead, the nursemaid disappeared.

The witches of the moor needed a new apprentice and so when a squealing baby orphan was handed to them, they accepted readily. And that's how I lived, for most of my life, tied to them. I didn't know anything about you, or our mother, or our half siblings. I can still find nothing on our father, aside he was a handsome poet whom our mother loved to leave her first son and run away with."

Aida sighed again, suddenly realising something.

"I realise I've given you no proof, but I have the documents, I promise. But I hope you'll take me at face value, for now. Whatever the whole truth of what happened all those years ago, I do believe that perhaps... well. We have a lot of lost time to make up for."

She smiled suddenly, a flicker of hope in her eyes. The years behind them were a closed door, forever lost, but there was still time to be had. Still many memories they could make in the future, however fleeting their lives might be.

"I do have a locket, actually, that Casimir gave me before he died. Our mother." She held out a silver locket, clicking it open. "She was very beautiful. I wish we could have known her, but alas. At least now we can get to know one another."

[Lexi]

It troubled Lexi that, even though according to Aida the pair had at one time resided together with the very couple who had been Lexi's parents, she could not recall such a time. Having said that, there was clearly barely a year or 2 between them in age, so if Aida had been naught but a babe as she described, Lexi herself would have been too young to remember her. "Our mother must have truly loved our father, to leave her husband and son," she said, "and it must have been a terrible time for her to be taken away from him...and us." Affairs of the heart were all but alien to Lexi. She had never been in love before, but she knew a little of what it was like to be drawn to someone. She could not, however, quite understand how one could be so enamoured with another that one would forsake all propriety and risk reputation to be with that person. She shook her head slightly, casting away the notion.

"Do you suppose he is still alive then, our..father?" she asked. If Aida had been unable find any trace of him, there was a good chance he was dead, and not knowing what sort of man her mother's husband had been, she could not pass judgement on whether he would be the sort to have a hand in such an act as consequence and punishment for laying with his wife.

She took the locket from Aida and laid it flat in the palm of her hand, looking intently at the woman's image shown in the grainy picture. "You have her eyes," she said softly. "As, it seems, do I". She looked over at Aida. She did trust her, and while she did not doubt the sincerity and truth of her words, she suspected seeing the documents of which she spoke would help to make it her reality. "I believe you, it's just so much to take in," she said honestly, but smiled at the woman she could now call sister. "We have new foundations, and plenty of time to build on them".

[Aida]

Aida nodded at Lexi's assessment of their mother, her mind pulling apart theories she had once talked about only with her brother.

"I had wondered if perhaps she was planning to whisk our elder half-brother away, somehow, onsidering all of the people she had at her disposal. I suppose we'll never know, now. I do know that she loved her children very much, including us, having spoken to one of her close servants. What a terrible thing, to be torn between two families like that."

She took the locket, closing it with a quiet snap, "I know almost nothing about our father, only that he was dark haired and handsome. There was quite a scandal when they ran away together, as you might imagine, rumours that he was a powerful sorcerer that enchanted and stole her away. Nonsense, of course, although the nursemaid did mention him having a particular talent for magic. As for whether he is alive or not, I cannot say. With most of the people present at the time dispersed or killed in the war, it's so hard to find out what really happened."

Aida was silent for a moment, regarding Lexi and seeing her own features reflected back. A thousand questions ran through her head, about her upbringing, about her talents. About an affinity for magic, but she held back. There would be time for such questions in the future, but she hoped her upbringing had not had been as lonely and unfortunate as her own. What she would have given for a sister back when she was a child in that godsforsaken hut in the woods!

She forced a smile, feeling tears prick at those grey eyes.

"Yes," she said, smiling. "New foundations indeed."

[Lexi]

Her gaze was trained on 2 small children playing in the dirt a little way up the road, and she felt an odd ache in her chest. Their laughter and giggles carried on the breeze, and the sound was like music in the air. In her mind, the children became she and Aida. Two girls, blue/grey eyes sparkling with mischief, raven hair falling in waves around their shoulders as they played, grazed knees, dirty faces, chasing each other back and forth through the grassy fields that surrounded the village.

As the image faded and reality filted back into her senses, she sighed. How different their lives could have been. Fate had played them a difficult hand as children, but that same fate had brought them back together now as women. She reached out and took Aida's hand in hers, smiling softly at her younger sibling. "Thank you, for finding me....sister," she said.

Suddenly, and for no real reason, giggles began to bubble in her throat. The situation she had found herself was surreal and all she inexplicably wanted to do was laugh. She put a hand to her mouth, but try as she might she could not suppress them, and sound burst forth from between her full lips, developing into laughter than came from deep within her soul.

[Aida]

They sat in silence for a moment, reflecting upon their own thoughts. Aida glanced at her sibling as she stared off into the distance, watching some little ones play in the lane. It was telling, how much they looked alike. The same black-as-night hair, the same grey eyes. She fancied she saw their mother in those eyes and her half siblings, although Casimir and Camelia had been a little bluer and a little blonder. Aida smiled at the memory of them, studying Lexi in the same fashion as once their mother must have done for them.

She was shocked out of her reverie by the taking of her hand, and she returned the gesture with a gentle squeeze, smiling.

"Thankyou for coming. I know it must have been a curious and difficult thing and one that caused the risk of heartache, should it have been a prank or some kind of trick."

The laugh surprised her, as her sister suddenly doubled over. But soon she was joining in, snorting delicately - and not-so-delicately - as they sat with their hands entertwined. At the absurdity of it all, and the unlikeliness. But the happiness, too, as she tightened her grip and vowed in her mind to always be there in the way their mother and half-siblings could no longer be. There was no getting back lost time, for certain, but this she could do. And so she made the promise silently in her head, and carried on laughing with her sister until she was out of breath.

[Lexi]

Her sides ached from laughing so hard, and as their laughter slowly subsided, an easy quite fell between them. "If someone had told me when I woke up this morning, that I would be sat on the stoop of my ramshackle cottage beside the Countess Redmoor, discussing our shared hertitage, I would have called them out for speaking falsehoods" she said, a chuckle in her tone. Where, upon receipt of the letter earlier that day, Lexi had been overwhelmed and confused, she now felt inexplicably whole. A part of her that had been missing, that she had always known was missing but could not explain why, had been found.

"Where do we go from here?" she asked, knowing they had a long road ahead of them, but one she anticipated would prove exciting to explore.