There is a thought I carry into battle with me. A place I intend to return to. It is not marked on any map, nor defended by walls. It is simply…where I am most myself.
Know that I am unharmed. Know that I am careful, even when I do not appear so. I have kept my promise to you.
And know that every night I measure the distance between where I stand and where I wish to be.
Yours,
Val-Theris
Dearest Val-Theris,
The refugee quarter is restless in your absence, but not unkind. There are fewer arguments at the ration lines when your name is spoken aloud. It seems even those who do not know you understand that you are trying. I think that matters more than you realize.
I walk the same paths as before. I tend the same hands, soothe the same fevers, listen to the same griefs spoken only when no one else is near. Life continues because it must.
Still, I miss you most when the work is done and there is no one left to be brave for. I find myself listening for footsteps that do not come.
You spoke of returning to a place not marked on any map. I think I know it. I think it is the same place I go to when I need sanctuary.
Be careful with yourself, Val-Theris. I will not ask you to hurry back. I know better than to bargain with war. But my heart wishes for it all the same.
And when you return, I will be here.
Always,
Jesenia
My Jesenia,
Today was not kind to us.
We lost too many before the sun reached its height. Good men—some young enough that they had barely tasted what life could offer. My men are tired. They fight because they must, because I ask it of them, because they believe in our nation and in me. But belief frays when the cost lies dead in front of them.
Tonight they look at me differently. They ask silently: Was this worth it?
I stood among them after dusk, listening to the wind move through our camp, and I realized something unsettling. I know how to command them. I know how to lead them into battle. But I do not always know how to carry them through the aftermath.
I find myself wishing you were here, because you understand grief without turning it into spectacle.
Tell me something, Jesenia. Something I can give them when duty feels like too much to ask.
With all my weary heart has to give,
Val-Theris
Dearest Val-Theris,
Grief and suffering is not a failure of their strength. It is proof that what they loved mattered. Tell them that the dead do not measure that love by how loudly we suffer, but by how we choose to live afterward.
You carry them farther than you know, Val-Theris, and I believe that is because they look to you and see you standing among them. You don’t ask of them what you are not willing to give yourself, and that makes you a soldier worth dying beside, not a king that demands they still stand while broken.
Always,
Jesenia
My Jesenia,
I told the men what you said, and perhaps one day I can admit to them that it is your words that gave them strength that night.
