Our days together were spent in sunlight until your passing, and since that day storms have clouded my vision. I see only death at times, and at others nothing at all. For a while life lost it's meaning completely and if it were not for the friendship of the dear Professor, I would have perished with you. I will never know completely why you took your own life, although your letter was an explanation of sorts, every time I read it, it withers a little in my mind. Were you just a dream? Were you sent by Naderi, the drowned lady herself to place me in her service? I was lost before I met you and in the brief time where we found true happiness, life felt complete. But do not dispair my dear, for though you are dead and I am not, life has taken new turns and placed me on roads inconceivable during your short and beautiful life. Although your death took away the little happiness I had found in life, it taught me that joy, mirth, laughter, and yes, happiness are not the things of which life is made. Life is made of all emotions with the unending promise of death at it's end. Through your own untimely end I found Naderi and learned that we live to serve purposes greater than our own and that your own death and life was part of the gods's great plan.
While I still live, I am now in Ravengro; the most joyless place in all of Golarion, and faced with purpose. Here there is life, but there is also death, suicide and murder. The dead themselves rise from the grave to torment the living. You do not need to do so my dear, your memory is torment enough for me. There is also beauty, the daughter of dear Lorrimir. Perhaps it is time for me to cast your memory into a grave of it's own, but then I would loose the only happiness I have ever known. While I desire to forsake the emotion, I cannot help but cling to hope that I am wrong. I wish we were all meant to be, that evil did not prevail and love cured all wounds. But if that were so, the water would have expelled from your lungs like air. You were no mermaid, no fish, and no immortal. You took my heart into the river with you, and that is why when I shot it, I did not die.
Your love forever,
Seraphin
He bent over and placed the letter on the alter of Pharasma and looked up at the great guardian of the underworld. He was a cleric, he knew at times the will of the goddesses who he served, but he had never sought Lucina's fate. He had never prayed to the goddesses once for the woman who he loved, he only hoped that when he died he would see her again. His heart ached as he thought of her and tears welled up in his eyes. He had learned to understand and accept suicide, but he would never understand hers. Against his chest he felt the presence of the letter she had written him. She only existed in words and memory now, but even those faded with time. When he died, would she be gone forever? Life was so fragile, it was empowering to take it, but equally so to save. Seraphin withdrew the holy symbol he wore, both of them, the spiral and the dagger and kissed them like two cold lips, as cold as Lucina's the day she died.
Mandrake crouched silently in the shadows, watching intently, popping grapes into his mouth he had found in the Lorramirs cellar. He was confused at the reaction in his loins, but it was a sensation he was no stranger to, so he simply ignored it and watched, popping the sweet orbs between his stonelike teeth.
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