My Dear Sister—I am glad to report I am in much better spirits.
Still in need on some remedy for my temperament and some thing I could focus my mind on, and finding the Alchemist otherwise occupied, I decided to embark on one of those excursions abroad, which are so frequent and which I have of late avoided.
As Providence would have it, this enterprise saw me joined by a physician, newly arrived from a land with a harsh sun and harsher people. He insisted on a familiar form of address which I will omit and will instead reveal a thing more intimate: he is as we are. If I do not seem over surprised it is because I have come to expect all manner of creatures in this place-between-places; but to discover such a kinship here of all places is indeed most exceptional.
The rest of our party I had seen before, in passing. One is a man-at-arms whose imposing figure contrasts with the blooming flowers he adorns himself with, and who is often attended by a young lad of few words, like a squire to a knight; the other is at all times so fully clad in metal I begin to doubt he has a body underneath his plating, and whose sight brings to my mind the stories we read as children—do you recall the Paladins in La Chanson des Rois?. This one had long been away to the South at the keep I mentioned some time ago—it is restored and houses a small army under his command. A day before yesterday I knew not what war they might be preparing for, but I have now the idea of it.
We did not venture very far, only half a day or so to an ancient fort in the forested North, though our excursion was lengthened by our dallying and, to be quite plain, our poor navigation. We passed by an old graveyard ravaged at some point by a mudslide, or a particularly strong downpour, which left old caskets exposed and empty bases for headstones. There were not quite as many remains as there ought to have been, and our Knight of Flowers spoke of the Jinxwode Witch’s habit of stealing bones for her foul craft and of a bridge fashioned from headstones repurposed as common masonry. The witch is no more, as I have said, but the bridge (presumably) remains.
Recall now what I said to you about the wildlife in our local countryside—for no creature is that assessment more true than for spiders, I have learned. To avoid travelling the wode by night, we rested in a makeshift camp and were overcome by one upsettingly overgrown shortly before dawn, then by an infestation when we came to our destination. They were not venomous, which is a detail quite significant. In a particularly frenzied moment, my better judgement lessened by these unpalatable last weeks, I sank my teeth into one and drained it so thoroughly it shrivelled under my grasp. It was doubtless a savage sight, and I would regret it if not for how much it restored me to myself. The Doctor joined me gleefully in the savagery, and we were both of us better for it.
It turns out then that the cure for my affliction was a small dose of violent excitement, and a larger one of ichor.
There is more I should like to tell you of these last days, but this will require a few more lines and I find myself unable to be long at my writing desk. There is much I must do. Be assured I am excellent well, as well as I have been in some time, and I hope the same is true of you. My next letter shall follow very shortly.
Yours sincerely,
Tristan
