[Sunsets over Moonlight]

. . .
At Grimhjall's peak sits two letters near the depictions of titanic figures, mentor and student. They're joined by a set of flowers, peredegrine, azilaena, saniskriti and marignolia. So neat, delicate, tender, they're woven in wait as if who sits in stone would pick it up and give it a read:
. . .

Dear Jokul,
 
I watched you die again after not accepting it the first time. Plain now, your absence. Some may think it a blessing and I don't know where it is I stand.
 
It's been fourteen autumns.
 
With a gun to my head, I would not be able to tell. How the years start to blend together that the melting snow and blossoming flowers and blaring sun and changing leaves and raining snow happens in an instant. You are dead and so is your student, so you've died twice before my eyes. It makes five lives lost, each harder than the last. Magi do not die like the elderly in my clinic whose hands I hold. They do not die like the soldiers whose breaths I watch stop. We die so loudly and my ears still ring. Fourteen autumns later and they ring and bleed.

---

 
Dear Bartholomew,
 
My first time writing a letter to you was in response to one you sent me. I remember what it was. You tried to redeem that old sin of yours which could have cost [      ] something he treasures dearly. Had anything happened, maybe I would not write you now. I cannot tell. I don't know if my heart is capable of holding hate- and if it did, not for any long stretch of time. I am regretful for my delayed responses to your requests. Now, I can say that I agree to join you on your venture to cleanse Mount Grimjhall. Only due to [     ] joining you was I so hesitant to agree. 
 
Why then?
 
Like a self-made martyr, you killed yourself. Your mind in shreds before my eyes and all I can see is [     ]. Your daughter much like [    ] and it eats me up inside. I am only has troubled as what our meetings could allow. I wish I were more torn, more beat up and crying snot and unable to wake or get out of bed. 
 
I woke the next morning as always.
 
Am I a bad person? Perhaps you've always hated me. I will never know. But I know I did not hate you even if you could be pushy or if you saw what I did not see. I respected you and to see you fall breaks my heart. To see you dead breaks my heart even if I woke up without issue the next morning, cooked breakfast for my family, saw to my duties, wrote in my study. 
 
I feel disingenuous writing how I wish we spoke more. If I did, I would not need to say it. Perhaps in some ways, I was fearful of getting too close to you. Fearful of something like this happening. Hindsight makes it easier. Hindsight makes it easier to want to keep distance. I do not know. I do not know why I am writing, but I am. I feel compelled to, compelled to apologize for my distance. A friendship with me would not have kept you alive... but I will do right by your daughter. Your... maddened... action... was the catalyst for people's earned hatred. I could have stopped it. I could have... I could have protected her and I failed.
 
I will do right by Prosphene. That is my promise to you.
 
Sincerely,
Sunsets over Moonlight