InsaneJournal

My darling,

If you're reading this, I'm already dead--

Oh come on, it's a little funny.

Anywho.

I wanted to write this, because it's so much easier to write things than to say them, particularly when you've got those eyes that insist upon giving me expressions and I've got to stay the course and keep talking despite whatever emotions you're projecting toward me. Do you know you do that? It's awful. It's a new year here (apparently? Apparently), and I've been hearing a lot of chatter about new habits, and changing for the better, and people striving to be a more responsible, happier person. Good luck to them (sarcasm). I'm still trying to catch up on two-hundred years having passed me by while under Cazador's thumb; time really only means anything when it takes someone away from you, or--

--or gives you someone new. As it did me you, on that ruined beach amidst the nautiloid crash, when I threatened your life and you threatened mine right back, or something like that (so romantic!). I'd no idea what you'd come to mean to me, and how you'd change my life, and-- not just my life, darling, but-- me. I thought I knew every little horror the gods could throw at me, and perhaps I did. But I didn't know the good things that could happen. The good that you would make happen. By force of your will, by your grace, by your kindness, by that stubborn, annoying unbreakable spirit of yours.

I never used to count my years, because what could they possibly matter? But this one - I think I'm keen to acknowledge the retirement of the old one. The rising of the new one. Because I've you here with me to mark it, it merits being marked.

All my love,

Astarion

PS: I've embroidered a new shawl for you for the party you'd mentioned - your old one is hideous, it smells like hag, and the only reason I haven't burned it is because of my love for you. You're welcome.