- Pronoun
- they or she
Shortly before the latest trip to the Congress, Odette receives a hand-penned letter by airborne courier.
It reads:
To my dear Odette,
I write to you now in a state of mind I have not felt for some time now. My conviction, which I held to for so long, and by which I was subsequently abandoned, has at last returned to me. In truth, I have taken your words to heart, and find I no longer have the stomach to continue in my present role as I have done for these many long years hence. With each passing lunar phase, I am drawn ever further, inexorably, to this simple, singular conclusion — I have been ill-used. Well, no longer. I shall rectify my course. In a word, I quit. I quit!
No longer shall I be an agent of the Sable Office, to carry out my precise and sharp-edged tasks without due awareness of why I should undertake them. I shall henceforth set my own goals, and carry them out according to my own code. What exactly I shall do next is a matter on which I continue to deliberate... but until I know for certain what is right, I shall have to trust in the direction my own feelings take me, giving the greater weight to those I find most clear and natural, in the balance of my spirit.
Do not mistake me — my soul lives in a cold and unlit night of late, and in this way my present state is much like the rest of my life, such as it has been — but there are small warmths nonetheless, will-o-wisps though they may prove to be. Therefore, I will follow them, though they may lead me to unsafe roads. I shall find my way through, as surely as a bullet finds its mark.
Should our next meeting fail to materialise, please know that you have altered my future, and I shall never regret my drifting into this new and unfamiliar distributary of fate. I wish only to give my thanks, and my encouragement to do for others as you have done for me, and to believe in your own best self, insomuch as you perceived one in me.
Yours in lantern-light,
It reads:
To my dear Odette,
I write to you now in a state of mind I have not felt for some time now. My conviction, which I held to for so long, and by which I was subsequently abandoned, has at last returned to me. In truth, I have taken your words to heart, and find I no longer have the stomach to continue in my present role as I have done for these many long years hence. With each passing lunar phase, I am drawn ever further, inexorably, to this simple, singular conclusion — I have been ill-used. Well, no longer. I shall rectify my course. In a word, I quit. I quit!
No longer shall I be an agent of the Sable Office, to carry out my precise and sharp-edged tasks without due awareness of why I should undertake them. I shall henceforth set my own goals, and carry them out according to my own code. What exactly I shall do next is a matter on which I continue to deliberate... but until I know for certain what is right, I shall have to trust in the direction my own feelings take me, giving the greater weight to those I find most clear and natural, in the balance of my spirit.
Do not mistake me — my soul lives in a cold and unlit night of late, and in this way my present state is much like the rest of my life, such as it has been — but there are small warmths nonetheless, will-o-wisps though they may prove to be. Therefore, I will follow them, though they may lead me to unsafe roads. I shall find my way through, as surely as a bullet finds its mark.
Should our next meeting fail to materialise, please know that you have altered my future, and I shall never regret my drifting into this new and unfamiliar distributary of fate. I wish only to give my thanks, and my encouragement to do for others as you have done for me, and to believe in your own best self, insomuch as you perceived one in me.
Yours in lantern-light,
Nolan Reed