Remembering the era, she invokes local fertility deities, frames inventive methods for their copulation.

She rips the envelope open with her thumb and reads, and by the second line, her cheeks hurt from the fierceness of her smile.

You, though, Red—

The stars alone listen.

later I will translate these words into feathers.

I like writing you. I like reading you.

Mannered as a novel, filthy only where story requires it, all meat pies and monarchy—this is a place Blue loves, and hates herself for loving.

You say my letter found you in a moment of hunger. How to say what it means to me, that I might have taught you this—shared it, somehow, infected you with it.

I feel almost invincible in our battles’ wake: a kind of Achilles, fleet footed and light of touch.

Red breaks them quickly and quietly. She has no time for the less violent approach.

She sees London built and burning, upthread and down.

Please find my gratitude all around you.

She is, briefly, Blue, alone with Red, and together.

The horizon blinks, and morning yawns above it.

It amuses Blue to no end that, in disabling their temple, in mounting this attack, she has, herself, performed an act of devotion to their god.

Red clutches them to her for a long time before she reads.

Mannered as a novel, filthy only where story requires it, all meat pies and monarchy—this is a place Blue loves, and hates herself for loving.

To be soft, for me, is so often pretense, and pretense does not come easily while writing to you.