{"id":175,"date":"2010-01-22T13:30:42","date_gmt":"2010-01-22T20:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/atfmb.com\/Evermist\/?p=175"},"modified":"2010-02-11T21:34:26","modified_gmt":"2010-02-12T04:34:26","slug":"chapter-eighteen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/atfmb.com\/Evermist\/2010\/01\/chapter-eighteen\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter Eighteen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a9 2010, Patrick Hester.\u00a0 All Rights Reserved<\/p>\n

Chapter Eighteen<\/h1>\n

“Dear Millie…”<\/em><\/p>\n

Eli stared at the small piece of parchment.\u00a0 He’d bought several sheets just in case.\u00a0 Narut was right, Adia had agreed to carry the letter herself and without hesitation when they asked.\u00a0 She even offered to carry others as her duties brought her back to Evermist.\u00a0 But he still had to write them and that was where the difficulty began.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

He didn’t know what to write.\u00a0 Telling Millie that someone had just tried to kill him seemed strange.\u00a0 How do you start that off?\u00a0 What do you say?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

“I miss you,”<\/em> he wrote instead.\u00a0 Simple enough and he meant it.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

He thought about Millie for a moment, about her fair hair, the way it framed her face and fell across her shoulders, about her smile and how it melted him because she rarely smiled for anyone the way she did for him.\u00a0 For just a moment, he could still feel the warmth of her body next to his, bringing a smile to his face.\u00a0 Then there was her scent, that mixture of fresh herbs and sea air that quickened his pulse.\u00a0 One of his shirts still had a hint of that scent on it.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

He’d refused to launder it.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Millie wouldn’t want him to lie to her, to hold anything back.\u00a0 She’d demand that he tell her everything on his mind, so that’s what he did, laying out the trip North as concisely as he could manage until he had to flip the page and start on the back.\u00a0 He told her about the crew member who’d been watching him, and how he and some others had tried to kill him and his friends before they even reached Evermist.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Then he detailed the coin they’d been paid and his suspicions about where it must have come from.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

He also cautioned her to be careful.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

“…if anything happened to you, I wouldn’t know what to do.”<\/em><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Surprised at himself, he stared at the words on the page.\u00a0 How had she done it?\u00a0 How had she settled herself so firmly in his heart when he’d been so prepared to push everyone away before going to Evermist?\u00a0 He tried to think back, to see if there were any one moment that stood out.\u00a0 To his surprise, they all stood out, brightly.<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

He almost shook his head, then stopped himself.\u00a0 Aware that he still saw stars now and again if he moved too quickly.\u00a0 The medics told him he was healing well but not to overdo anything.\u00a0 Behind him, Narut snored.\u00a0 He’d come in late again, spending the greater part of the evening with Adia.<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Checking the letter over several times before he decided it was ready, Eli folded it onto itself, then folded another sheet around it.\u00a0 Finally he sealed it with a spot of wax from a candle he was burning.\u00a0 Without a seal, he used the flat of his knife to press the melted wax down, then turned it over and wrote Millie’s name on the front.<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

He would give it to Adia first chance.<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Blowing out the candle, he crawled back into his bunk and closed his eyes.\u00a0 It was done.\u00a0 Even if it did take months to reach her, Millie would have word of him and she would know everything that had happened.\u00a0 He felt as if a weight had been lifted and realized that every time he’d seen Millie, a similar feeling had come over him; a calm.<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

How did she manage that even when she was so far away?<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Tell your friends:<\/em>
\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a9 2010, Patrick Hester.\u00a0 All Rights Reserved Chapter Eighteen “Dear Millie…” Eli stared at the small piece of parchment.\u00a0 He’d bought several sheets just in case.\u00a0 Narut was right, Adia had agreed to carry the letter herself and without hesitation when they asked.\u00a0 She even offered to carry others as her duties brought her back […]<\/p>\n

Tell your friends:<\/em>
\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a>\"Add<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18,9,12,10,11,8,7,13,14,6],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/atfmb.com\/Evermist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/atfmb.com\/Evermist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/atfmb.com\/Evermist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/atfmb.com\/Evermist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/atfmb.com\/Evermist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/atfmb.com\/Evermist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209,"href":"http:\/\/atfmb.com\/Evermist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions\/209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/atfmb.com\/Evermist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/atfmb.com\/Evermist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/atfmb.com\/Evermist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}