I received a letter from my sister Lettie this past week. She wrote of our summer together a few years ago when we discovered the grove of glowing mushrooms and met Flame for the first time. She asked how my new adventures were unfolding, with the baron’s son and “that nice gentleman that Auntie Ember keeps mentioning” as my companions. But mostly my sweet sister just wanted to make sure my feelings were not getting the better of me, as it seemed to her that rather a lot had been going on around Greenwood and she wanted to make sure her sister, who is “so prone to shy nervousness”, was doing well.
I am well, dear reader, but when I sat down to pen a reply, I could not put into words all my thoughts and emotions. Lately I’ve been feeling rather odd… giddy and dreamy and perhaps a bit nervous, though not in my usual way. It’s hard to describe. It’s not unpleasant; I just don’t recognize it, nor can I think what may be the cause.
Goodness, like my shaky hands the other day when I was at the Well of the Green Sister with Alexander and Lorenz. You see, we have set ourselves the task of studying the magical water’s abilities, and so had gone down to gather more for our coming experiments. How beautifully the colors swirled and glowed! Then Lorenz mentioned that it reminded him of the legend of the unicorn. As he drew out the water he told us of the wild unicorn’s great powers, how it was only ever seen by a lucky few, and that if it dipped its horn into a pool, the water drawn from it would have the ability to restore health. Oh, his descriptions of it all were so vivid and with words so eloquent that… when he passed me one of the filled bottles I found my hands were shaking. He asked if I was feeling well, which made me blush terribly. Goodness, yes; I managed to awkwardly explain that I was fine, that I was just moved by his tale. He said he had read it as a boy and that it had always stuck with him, especially the fanciful illustration of the creature that adorned the cover.
My heart seemed to beat a bit quicker for some time after that, so before we left I sat down in the room with the alcoves and mural of the white-leaved oak to rest for a moment. Seeing the strange stone we found earlier in the fall, I picked it up and held it for a while, drawing comfort from its warmth and letting the emotions it held wash over me. So many feelings…it was like a complex mix of Impressions, just in solid form. I tried to untangle them in my mind: melancholy, wistfulness, hope.
It gave me an idea: though my strange feelings are quite different from those of the stone, I think I shall use my magic to draw them out. Perhaps if I gather them as Impressions in my bottles I’ll be able to see them and understand them more clearly. Today, I collected the feelings I had about Lorenz’s story, and seeing them now they are rather rosy. And they seem restless too, all the time shimmering and swirling around the bottle without end. There’s a nervous energy to them, though they don’t feel unhappy. Actually they make me sort of dizzy in a funny way. Oh, even now as I look at my face in the magic mirror I can see that I’m flushed again. Goodness, I will try to set them aside for now.
As to writing back to Lettie, I think I will have to wait to find my words another day, before the end of summer. Perhaps then I can tell her about how our experiments with the magical water go, and hopefully by that time I’ll have sorted out my feelings… my strange, new, fascinating feelings.