hellonspectacles | Dear Mr. Postman...

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Dear Mr. Postman...

It’s not that Palamedes means to ignore the messages from Marianne. The day following Harrow’s arrival, his head feels fit to split open, and when he glances at his phone periodically to make sure that Gideon hasn’t sent him a frantic messages, he notes the usual texts from Marianne with a smile, and vows, quite sensibly, to write her back when he can see straight. But he ends up spending most of the next day with the Ninth, arguing with Harrow over this theory and that, only realizing when it has gotten quite late that he has again forgotten.

And then Camilla appears in Darrow, an event that had seemed so astronomically unlikely that he had tried with every fiber of his being not to hope for it, and he is swept up in the miracle of it. The pair talk into the night until their throats are hoarse, they spend days poring over all the evidence Pal has collected about Darrow, sometimes with Harrow and Gideon, sometimes on their own. His promise to return Marianne’s missives becomes more and more distant.

It’s Thursday, and Palamedes is alone while Cam goes for a run—still half-terrified to let her out of his sight, he’d offered to go with her, and she had just looked at him—when his phone buzzes. It’s only a reminder that he has books due at the library, but it makes him realize, to his horror, that he had never replied to Marianne. Without quite knowing why, his stomach twists at the thought that she might be angry at him.

He opens their text chain and writes,

Marianne,

I hope you will accept my most sincere apology. I fear that, in my unconscionable silence, I have revealed something that I have attempted to keep from you: necromantic powers alone are not enough to keep me from being a complete jackass from time to time. My week has been unexpectedly eventful—please understand that this is an explanation, not an excuse.

In answer to your earlier messages: I like the first sunglasses best, I wasn’t free for coffee on Friday (explanation forthcoming), and Orlando was really quite remarkable.

Are you free for lunch this weekend? I would like to apologize in person.

Palamedes Sextus, Master Warden of Dunces, etc.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There is still something strange, even downright unsettling, about leaving Cam alone. Back home, even during the times in their life when they were most inseparable, they had spent plenty of hours apart, each with their own trainings and duties. But now moments spent away from one another feel weighty, dangerous. Palamedes is too rational to think that being by her side could stop Cam from falling victim to the randomness with which Darrow can make people disappear, but he hates the idea that he might accidentally waste time he could have had with her.

But he knows he owes it to Marianne, too, to explain why he’d briefly vanished. Pal hadn’t quite realized how close they had gotten until it had hit him that they had messaged each other nearly every day since his arrival. How strange, then, it must have seemed, for him to go silent. He wants to apologize—and more than that, he wants to tell Marianne the miracle of the last few days, of Harrow, and Cam, and everything that has happened. He wants her to be as delighted as he is.

She looks beautiful, waiting in the grayish light of the cloudy day outside the restaurant. Palamedes runs a hand though his hair self-consciously, and then raises it in greeting.

When she looks his way and sees him, hand raised, she smiles and raises her own hand.

"Hi," she says, feeling suddenly awkward, like it's been more than a week since they last spoke. She touches his arm, feeling the fabric of his shirt. "You look nice."

"Do I?" says Pal, his smile a little puzzled. The day is a little chillier than it's been, with wind coming off the sea in sharp gusts. At the last second, he'd thrown on a sweater instead of his usual gray t-shirt. "Thanks. So do you." A beat. "Just to be clear, I'm not just saying that because you said it. You do look nice."

Ducking his head sheepishly for a moment, he then turns to open the door, holding it for her after he's stepped inside.

"I accept the compliment," says Marianne, smiling as she steps past him into the restaurant. "Just to be clear."

Once inside, she shrugs out of her jacket. She'd deliberated over the top before she'd put it on, aware that it's leaving a lot of skin bare, but she also likes the way that it makes her shoulders and her collarbones look, and she thinks (hopes) that Pal might like it too.

"I appreciate your clarity," Palamedes says with a tiny grin, something about the way she gently teases him breaking the tension. Inside, the cafe is cheerful and inviting, and they end up seated near a window just as the rain begins to patter outside.

"It seems like ages since we've seen each other," he says. "But I think that's just because so much has happened."

"It's been about a week and a half, I think," says Marianne, reaching for a menu and flipping it open. "I was beginning to think you'd realised that I wasn't worth talking to..."

Palamedes had also just opened his menu, but when Marianne speaks, he looks up in surprise. “Goodness. Why would I ever think such a thing?”

She rolls a bare shoulder in a shrug, eyes on her menu.

"I'm used to that kind of thing," she says, trying to make her voice light and almost managing. "And a week and a half is a long time to go radio silent when we text as much as we do."

Palamedes isn't sure what to make of this. She isn't wrong, exactly--that is why he had apologized in the first place--but something about the way she answers makes him wonder if there is some additional nuance he's missed. "It is interesting how quickly one can get a message to someone here. Back home it could take days." He fiddles with the edge of his menu. "But I have always prided myself on being someone who responds promptly. I am sorry."

"You don't have to be sorry," says Marianne, lifting her eyes from her menu and giving him her full attention for a moment. "I'm just ..pretty glad that I was wrong this time."

“Well, I am. But... Good. Good.” Pal clears his throat, still quite certain that he missed something, and left unsettled by the whole exchange. Pressing his lips together, he sets down his menu and asks, “Do people often stop speaking to their friends out of the blue where you’re from?”

If the word friend stings, a little, then it doesn't show on Marianne's face. She just smiles at him.

"It's happened to me a few times," she says. "I'll be texting someone for a while, think it's going really well and then...poof!" She makes a gesture with one hand. "They just stop replaying. It happens enough that there's a name for it. You call it being ghosted."

“Really?” The name is silly enough that he unexpectedly grins. “Well, whoever named the phenomenon has never had to handle a ghost before. They rarely go poof when you want them to.” That isn’t the point, obviously, but it amuses him.

Pal shakes his head. “Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of people I’d prefer to avoid corresponding with, but I’ve never seen the point of playing an elaborate game about it.”

"People are weird," she says, rolling one shoulder in a shrug. "Usually, when it's happened to me, I think it's because they've...you know. Got what they were after." She blushes. "Anyway. I'm glad that you didn't ghost me."

Palamedes might be inexperienced, but he isn't naive. "Oh, well," he rolls his eyes. "Sex makes everyone act weird, as far as I can tell. Not that that's an excuse for being a jackass."

"But no, I employed no ghosts." He grins a little, using the term incorrectly on purpose. "Only..." Pal shakes his head, in awe of everything that has happened recently, "Emperor's bones, Marianne. Camilla is in Darrow. I didn't even dare hope I would see her again." His face lights up in that indescribable way it does from time to time. "And that's not only the half of it."

He's talked to her about Camilla before but, this time, when he says her name, his face lights up in such a way that Marianne feels like she's finally realising something. That's why he went quiet on her; it explains something, at least. She manages to keep it off her face, at least. "That's amazing," she says, smiling. "I'm so happy for you."

She wonders how she'd feel if Connell turned up? He's really the only one who might even slightly make her face look that way.

This time, Palamedes does not even notice the slight shift in the tension between them. It doesn’t even occur to him how his enthusiasm might be construed. “I don’t think we’ve been apart for quite so long since we were children. She’s had quite a time of it, too.” He exhales and runs a hand through his hair, his concern for Cam flickering in his eyes. “Which is my fault, a bit. I left her in a rather…complex situation, and she’s been dealing with the repercussions for months. She’s far too good of a cavalier to complain, but I’ve been doing what I can to make it up to her.”

He fiddles with the corner of his menu and smiles sheepishly. “And that has, in turn, led to my unfortunately ghost-like behavior.”

"It sounds like you've had a lot going on," she says. "You must be so glad to have her back, though?" Once again, that stab of something that feels almost like jealousy. She works on letter that go; it's not like he owes her anything, is it?

The waiter chooses that moment to come over to the table and Marianne orders a pasta dish with clams, a glass of white wine to go with it.

"Oh, I couldn't be more relieved," Palamedes agrees, remaining oblivious to whatever turmoil Marianne is experiencing. "The two of you should meet, of course. I really think you'd get on."

When the server comes, Palamedes orders a vegetable sandwich and tea, and then returns to his tale. "I had another friend from home appear even before Cam did, if you believe it."

"I'd like that," says Marianne, smiling, though, honestly, in that moment, she can't imagine anything worse. She's going to need a least a day or two to reorder the way that she feels about Palamedes in the wake of this new news. It's not the first time that it's happened -- she'd done it with Connell enough times. She'd figure it out.

"Now I feel bad for ordering wine," she says, brushing her hair back as the waiter leaves. Her eyes widen, though. "Two? Like buses, huh?" It occurs to her that that reference won't mean anything to Pal. "You wait ages and then two come along at once."

"Oh, don't be," he assures her in response to her comment about the wine. With a crooked smile he confesses, "I'm a lightweight. Before I got here, I'd tried very little alcohol at all, and most of it was the result of failed experiments from the historical recreation department. You don't need me making a fool of myself in the middle of the day."

Palamedes looks puzzled for a moment, but as soon as Marianne explains what she means, his eyes light up with mirth. "I'm going to have to remember that," he chuckles. "Harrow is the Ninth House heir. Her arrival was, ah, a bit more complex." He purses his lips thoughtfully, considering how best to explain the (literally!) gory details in a setting such as thing one.

"Complex how?" asks Marianne, leaning her chin into his hand and giving him her full attention. She lets herself relax, lets herself enjoy his company as a friend, nothing else.

"Where to begin?" Palamedes laughs a little and runs a hand over his face. "Since I last saw her, Harrow has become...Well, to put it quite straightforwardly, she has become an incredibly powerful sort of necromancer. But there was a cost to it, and in an effort to avoid paying that cost she inflicted a certain amount of damage on her brain." He winces, remembering again the absolute wreck he had found under Harrow's skull. Furious as he is with her for it, he can't help but be awed by the strength of will it must have taken her to go through with. And he can't help but wonder what he might have done in her place.

Marianne's dark eyebrows draw together in a frown, her mouth hanging open a little. The waiter comes with their drinks and she picks up her wine glass.

"How bad does it have to be for her to give herself brain damage? Do I even want to know?"

Palamedes presses his lips together, frowning as he tries to find the simplest way to explain the terrible sacrifice that had been made on Harrow’s behalf—and the almost equally terrible thing Harrow had done in an effort to stop that sacrifice from wholly taking effect. “Harrow’s new powers had required the death of someone very close to her.” Marianne has heard him talk about Gideon, but it feels invasive, somehow, to now mention that his friend is technically dead, so he avoids naming her specifically. “In order to halt that death—in order to retain the possibility of life, you could say—she removed certain memories from her temporal lobe and shaped her skull in a way that would cause cranial hemorrhages if any of those memories were triggered.”

Almost unthinkingly, he picks up his spoon and absently stirs his tea. “For the record, I sincerely doubt that such an extreme intervention was necessary. I’m certain there was another way. Hell, if only I’d been there.”

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