Four days later…
Elua er Goltbred sat cross-legged with her obsidian mirror floating over her lap. Her latest letter to her deeply missed spouse was crumpled up in her fist, for the second time. The words had *started* normally enough again.
Updates on the wagon project's success - it took longer to pretend she was working than to work. Mentions of the fort's preparations for moving inward toward the nearest superfort. And of course, careful inquiries about the strike force's current activities.
Then they'd devolved into unconcealed desperation.
/ Have you encountered any situations that really tested your new formation? Are you eating properly? Sleeping fine even without me? That Empath on your team… does she maintain all the appropriate boundaries or do I have to- /
Each question revealed more of her spiraling anxiety than the last. She'd torn up and set on fire another previous attempt that had been even worse.
"This is pathetic."
