Greetings my friend,

Sorry for these long months of silence. I left you with unnecessary worry, so I will respond soon to the predictions in your letter.

No, nothing bad happened to the baby. Honerva's pregnancy continues without problems. Well, no problem just for this baby.

I had thought to end the letter here. Maybe you would be intrigued by that last phrase “no problems just for this baby”, but you would imagine silly annoyances like those little misadventures you told when Melenor was pregnant. So this letter would serve the original purpose of reassuring you.

But I changed my plans, and here you will find words that will cause you anguish, perplexity, sadness and even contempt for me. Because these are the exact feelings I've been nurturing since I got the news that I was going to be a father. So forgive me for all the discomfort I will cause, but I need to try to get rid of these feelings. Who knows, if I honestly express my shameful thoughts and feelings here, they might come out of me and get stuck on paper.

Honerva is not well. I believe she is sick. Very sick. It's not a disease you can see or explain. The doctors here don't even consider it a disease! But I know it can only be that. That's the only explanation for such a sudden change in her behavior.

Her feelings cascade. She gets angry for reasons that have never bothered her before, she is saddened by nothing. Sometimes she has sudden panic attacks, as if she's been falling forever, but then everything turns to fury when I or someone else tries to calm her down. Then, at the end, comes a torrent of tears and apologies. She doesn't know what is happening to her. Nobody knows. And the next day the whole cycle starts again.

I tried, I swear I tried, to find the source of the problem in a reasonable direction: some substance that was affecting her mood or the threat of some enemy. I tried to investigate what was the big event that upset her whole emotional balance. I did this without any intention of coming to the conclusion that I will tell you, and I was very reluctant to even think about it. But this whole situation drained my energy and left me alone with this dark thought.

It's his fault, Alfor. Ever since Honerva realized she was pregnant, everything started to go wrong! There is no other explanation. I wish it had, but it doesn't! What was supposed to be a blessing became a curse.