Letters

He stared at the stack. His heart hurt. His thoughts raced, painfully. . He wanted to do it.  He needed to. It wasn’t healthy- he knew.  How could such an indulging activity be considered healthy?

He wasn’t the only one to do such things- he knew.  He wasn’t the only one forced to cope, in such painful, odd fashions.

Count Bleck saw it in his minions; each one had their own ways of coping with the past. Nastasia- she threw herself into her work, into staying on schedule, because it was one thing that she could control.

Mimi, although she was near O’Chunks age, wrote her innermost thoughts into a diary, and dressed in colorful dresses, trying to cling to her simplistic childhood.

And O’Chunks, forcing himself to his limits in training, trying to grow strong so no one would dare betray him again.

Everyone had their own ways of coping. He recognized that. This - this enormous stack, marked with black ink and bundled together with twist red string that always balanced on the corner of his desk- was his way, healthy, or unhealthy.

Count Bleck suddenly leaned forward from his slumped position in the leather office chair, pulled open the top drawer of his desk and slid a sheet of paper out; thick, expensive paper, almost parchment. He laid it carefully on the unmarked wood of the desk.

He forgoed the inkpot and quill today, instead plucked a black pen from the cup. Slowly, he scrawled the first two words across the top.

Dear Timpani

The count stopped from a moment, staring at the salutation, a feeling constricting his throat.  He swallowed, and began to write again.

I miss you like the stars would miss the sky, if they had been torn away from it as you have been torn from me. I can feel it in my heart, a longing that makes me want to find you, where ever you could be, in any dimension that lies across the universe, in any world. I want to search them all again, just for the chance that   I could see your face, and feel your hand against mine.
Grambi, Timpani, I just miss you so much.  It’s an awful thing to be apart from the one you love if even for only a moment, and it has been so long I cannot even tell anymore. It is simply too painful to count the days that I must spend away from you.
I can’t help but count the letters you have not replied to, however. The number seems to be engraved into my mind- Seventy-two letters, love. Seventy-two letters, and I still haven’t seen your wonderful script greeting me, assuring me that you’re there. I know you are.
I love you, my darling. It will all be over soon.

He stopped, then signed the bottom with an old name, a dead name-but the only one she knew him by-before reaching into the top drawer, and pulling out an envelope.

He didn’t care to even read over the writing; he simply didn’t dare read his weakness.

 Carefully folding the paper at two points, he slid it into the envelope, tucked the flap inside, and turned it back around so the blank white side was face up. With slightly shaking hands- he wouldn’t have noticed if they weren’t his own-Count Bleck slid it under the red string, into the stack.

He collapsed back in the chair, exhaling in relief, his mouth dry as sand. 

“Count Bleck sir?”

He jumped at the suddenness of the question, his skin crawling.

“Yes Nastasia?” He answered calmly.

“I’ve got a few operations you need to sign off, and um, I need to know if I should brief Mimi on her mission, or you’ll be doing it yourself.”

He exhaled, quickly making a decision.

“I trust your judgment Nastasia, do whichever you know I would approve.  I will inform Mimi of her task myself; attend to other things, if you would.”

The count looked over his shoulder, and saw her nod. She walked out the door, softly closing it behind her.

Count Bleck stood, stretched, and tiredly gazed at the stack of letters for a moment.

Maybe tomorrow, he would put them in the mail and send them to each and every dimension, and just maybe-

He shouldn’t think like that.

Tearing his gaze away, the destroyer of all worlds strode out of his office, his eyes unusually wet.