17 November, 1998
Padma,
I admit, I am relieved to hear that you know me to be separate from my family, but not severed. It seems that for those who advocate keeping magic within magical bloodlines, families become something whole, a tapestry with one name, not separate people woven with a common thread. For all that I appreciate the traditions and values of my heritage, and dont want to watch the richness of my culture morph and fade into something that no longer acknowledges the rarity of our gifts, I cannot bring myself to judge the value of a person based wholly on their parentage.
By this time, I will be showing you Andromeda, chained bare to her rock for Cetus to have, and Perseus, her rescuer. Orion, the Hunter, sent to the heavens by Artemis pleading. Gemini - twins even more separate than yourself and Parvati, though brothers even in death. We still might spot Vega, depending on how long you choose to look for her, but I think the dawn might best you, as Lyras seen most easily in the latest months of summer, and early fall. Robinswood is a comfortable host, Im sure youll be able to look as long as you can keep your eyes open. Ive been scorning the house since it gave me up to Dumbledores Order, and kept me from writing you, that morning. Now, it seems only fitting that it should serve to let me see you again.
How is Berlin? Do you drink steins of beer bigger than your arm, and eat lots of sausages? Better, I think, than my most recent meal, which included goat. I consider myself smart to not have asked what parts.
Theodore( . )
19 November 1998
Theodore,
I began a letter for you on the train, though I promised to write first from Berlin. I have settled in as much as I can before I must give in to my wanting to finish the letter, and respond to yours. So I give you what I have composed, and a bit more.
I go by train in a very cozy sleeper car. I remember the wars waged between Parvati and I over who should have which bunk, though their only desirable element lay in depriving each other of whichever bunk the other should lay claim to first. Sometimes I think Parvati draws out the very worst in me, or perhaps that which is twinned most between our personalities and must naturally war. I remember in fondness, however, so it cannot be so very bad.
I want to ask you what is the little blue pinprick in the night sky, faintly shining above the mountains as I travel West, but it will not lie in the same place for you, and I cannot better describe it so as to find it when I am stationary once more. I shall try still in looking over a minutely detailed star chart when I reach Berlin, and hope to recognize it. It seems to me a very fine speck of space indeed, and were I to travel up instead of out, I should go there first.
I will tell you what I imagine: others neither so alike nor unalike live there and have lived there long before any fathoming of Wizard kind, and their voices sound like the splashing of water against a shore. They do not breath as we do, and the air on their planet is drawn in with the feeling of the fizzing prick of butterbeer over hot, a tickle in the nose. They do not have names for themselves or any other thing, and prefer to learn by touch. We will compete with our desires for English modesty and the bureaucratic drive to categorize all that we see and understand. I should like to think we will persevere against the confines of our own glaring human natures.
Each of their hours is twice over as long as what it is on Earth, but we do not grow tired until they do, and sleep hard, restful sleeps. We dream about other worlds among which our own is now counted.
I think I may give up sleep alltogether to have such days as these in Scotland. The dawn shall not best me. There is always coffee.
As for Berlin, I have no taste for beer, but am pressed at meals to take a wheat ale or a stout lager, and I cannot decline without seeming rude. I take it in sips and endeavor not to seem a foolish, dainty English woman, for all I may in truth be very foolish and moderately dainty.
Zelma has the spirit of a woman perhaps a quarter of her age, and she curses more than a pack of Gryffindors on the Quidditch pitch. It makes me blush, and she curses then over my blushing, and I am resolved to wear a mask or a hood to accomplish anything in the course of an afternoon. Two days, only, have I had to adjust, and am bound to adapt eventually. I like my situation very much despite, and am tucked away in a little garret which has great charm. You would, I think, have to stoop partway through as the ceiling is angled, but it is quite perfect for me. In the mornings I sit at a low desk before the only window, eyes roaming from the pages I am editing to the bustle on the streets below. Zelma lives in a lovely little district that has been fortunate to remain mostly untouched by the Muggle wars that have stricken this city, and what changes the years have wrought have been undone again by an effort to reclaim the original charm of the place.
I will save writing of my work for the next letter, as I have gone on already long enough.
Padma
( . )
20 November
Dear Padma,
I dont know what this tiny blue spot is, but in a month, if we can see it from Scotland, I will do my best to figure it out. It sounds like an interesting place, with interesting not-people. With air that fizzes in my lungs, I cant imagine a long stay. Well have to invent some charmwork to help our lungs - there is no human failing in the need of oxygen, I think. Our bodies were not of our own design, and keeping them alive is something that we cannot be fairly faulted for, the same as our modesties or want for language. What do they speak about, in their seashore tongues, if there are not names for anything at all?
If you give up sleep entirely, youll be saddled with a head overfull with dreams of the other worlds youve been imagining in the night skies. Coffee is well and good, but in Portugal, I found breakfasting at lunchtime to be the answer.
I have always found any foolishness in you to be charming, your blush to be well worth the cursing, and moderate daintiness in a woman is always endearing, surely at least when drinking is the question. Then again, I also am fond of Morag when shes boozy. What this says about me, you, or Morag, Im not entirely sure, but clearly shell have to join us for an evening with the stars as well. Once Ive returned to Scotland Ill work on securing a weekend holiday for us all in Paris.
Perhaps I am too ungrateful for the opportunities made open to me here, but this line of work - and lifestyle - is not for me. I spent yesterday in hospital after brushing away a bit of dirt from an inscription with my hand rather than a brush. Youll have to guess which arm has been regrown, and which is the original.
Germany, Im sure, wont have the same difficulties for you, and Im looking forward to news about what you and Zelma discover, in your turret and the streets.
Yours,
Theodore( . )
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