Where do llamas go

Dear Sigyn,

You will likely roll your eyes when you see this—perhaps even laugh, that quiet little huff I’ve come to associate with amusement kept on a leash. A letter, when you are not even away. When your absence has lasted no longer than a shared watch and a hallway between quarters. I’m sure I deserve whatever teasing remark you choose in reply.

But still, I write.

Perhaps because there are things I cannot say aloud. Not with the others around. Not with you looking at me the way you do, patient and unreadable, like you’ve already braced for my silence.

That’s the trouble, I think. I see you too often.

Not in the literal sense—though that alone would be enough to unravel me—but in all the smaller ways. You’re always there. In the way you offer comfort so freely to the others. In the way your voice sharpens when someone underestimates you. In the way you looked at Manfred yesterday when he tried to copy your braiding technique and ended up snarled in his own string. You didn’t laugh at him. You helped him untangle it.

You are kindness incarnate. Even when you think no one notices. Especially then.

And yet I suspect you’d wave off the compliment. That if I were to say aloud how gentle you are—how the world seems softer near you—you’d find some way to change the subject. You do that often. I’ve seen it. You give yourself so readily to everyone else, but offer yourself to yourself like a ration.

It is infuriating. And deeply familiar.

There’s a reason I find your company so easy, Sigyn. We are both creatures trained to endure. We have walked the same halls, offered the same rites, whispered to the same dead. I have known many in the Mourn Watch—some fondly, some not—but you are the only one who makes me feel like I have not entirely left it behind.

You make it easier to breathe.

Maker, what a ridiculous thing to write. I’ll blame the late hour. Or the wine I didn’t drink.

There is something else I want to say—something I have wanted to say for weeks now, though it feels longer.

I do not know what this is. Between us.

Or rather—I know what I feel. But I cannot be sure what you do. And to ask would be to split the skin of it. To risk bleeding out on the floor between us.

There are moments—small ones—when I think you might feel it too. When you look at me too long, or when your hand lingers a second past polite. But then you retreat, or I do, and the moment seals itself shut again. And I’m left wondering if I imagined it. If I’ve been reading poetry into ink blots. If I have foolishly mistaken kindness for invitation.

If I am wrong, Sigyn—truly wrong—it would not simply sting. It would wreck something I am not ready to lose.

And yet here I am, writing this.

Because I think you know.

And because I would rather you have these words than spend another week swallowing them whole.

If nothing else, keep this letter as proof: I can be honest, when the room is empty and no one is watching me pace the floor like a man haunted by his own restraint.

Say nothing, if you’d prefer. Or say everything. Or say only that I am not imagining it—that there is, in fact, a thread between us, however fine. However frayed.

I will not tug on it.

But I will wait for your hand on the other end.

Only in the aetherial seas shall they reunite…

💀E M M E R I C H💀

V O L K A R I N

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