━━━━━━ ༻ 013 ༺ ━━━━━━
" His Stampless Letter "

HELLO DARLING,

          It is strange to be writing to you despite knowing very little of you whereabouts, too little to even hope that this letter will ever be sent through post to wherever life has taken you. It is night for me and I confess I have just awakened from a dream, which is the subject of my current restlessness that I hope, by learning something from you, I will cure through writing this.

Months have passed since your last letter and I cannot even say that I blame you for not writing to me anymore. I could go ahead and blame every single formality that has delayed your letters, but at the end of the day, I have failed to answer when you called for me, and that is a guilt I shall carry to my grave. It is a guilt that I have carried to this anniversary of a year and a half since you've left Birmingham; most my nights since your departure have been spent too drunk on various substances to have a knowledge of myself or too awake to rise up in the morning not detesting the world you've abandoned me into.

But tonight was different. Tonight, I had a beautiful dream. And I'll tell you all about it, because you were part of it.

Since you left, my dreams have been horrendous reminders that I might have taken you for granted while you were near. All sorts of regrets I never had before haunted me: I did not memorize the exact shade of your hair, nor the color of your eyes. I recalled very faintly the details about you that have charmed me since the Cheltenham Races into falling in love, but tonight, I remembered everything in such detail that I could have sworn it wasn't a dream at all.

You smelled of lilac, because now I know how lilacs smell, or perhaps because I imagine you've kept the gift from you Japanese friend and you now wear it as often as possible so that you always feel at home. A selfish part of me wished for a while that I had been the one to gift you that perfume, but now I find peace at least in knowing you have it, regardless of who gave it to you.

There's so much I want to tell you, that even on paper, writing slowly and as tidy as I ever had, I am bound to the weakness of thoughts derailing themselves like branches off of a tree's trunk.

I digress, we were speaking of the dream.

When I opened my eyes to this dream, blue skies and a bright sun blinded me entirely. Your laughter was somewhere close to my heart and I grew aware gradually that we were laying in the grass together. A gentle breeze tickled the hairs of grass onto my left earlobe and it was then that you sighed away into a giggle whatever had brought you joy and you raised up, blocking the great luminescence above. The wind travelled through your hair and you let it loose for the day, so the sun behind you fooled me to believe a blanket of fire had been cast above me, one underneath which I would happily be burned alive.

Your little upturned nose, the softness of your smile, the pure green of your eyes, it all embraced me into a warmth I oftentimes reassemble only to the first bite from bread fresh out of the oven, stolen by my own hands during the brightest days of boyhood, where worry was sparse and everything was easier to take as it comes. I swear I could feel your touch, caressing the side of my face, down to my jaw and then grabbing my chin. I knew you wanted to say something, but neither of us could speak, so we just allowed the wind to murmur around us for a while.

That's how dreams go, they are blurs of sequences that only a waking mind can make sense out of, but this time, everything was slow and natural, a mirror to how it would have gone in real life; save for our silence, I suppose.

After leaving the bed of grass behind, we walked hand in hand, with one of our horses with us — Black Rose. You've asked me of the names our horses have been given and I will admit now that I haven't given them their names personally. Since their arrival, I've left them in the care of Curly at the new stables of my company. Though I haven't had the chance to introduce you to him while you were here, I can reassure you they are in safe hands with him; he has a special gift in taking care of horses — communicates with them in a way I oftentimes consider miraculous. He's the one who's named all twelve of them and since your inquiry of their names, I've felt it part of my duty to finally learn those names too. Apart from Black Rose who visited my dream, there's Captain, Moonstep, Roscoe, Caesar, Fastheart, Dutchess, Tango, Margo, Noel, Dally and Soho.

So it was Black Rose with us on our sunny day. She carried our coats, but you refused to part ways with my hat, so you wrote it instead of posting on the saddle with everything else. Now you must understand why I felt the dream to be real; so much of what was happening held with itself a veracity that I can't even attribute to some of the dealings of my waking life.

We've walked for a while, in no hurry whatsoever, until a big house came into our view, up on its own little hill. A big house, my love. Like I've always wanted, like I wish I could offer you. Before our last night spent together, Polly told me some things... The words that angered me most were does I knew could hide a fragment of truth: how could you be expected to settle for me when you have been raised into a rich family? I do not wish for your late father to raise from the dead and haunt me into an early grave because I tarnished his beloved daughter to a small room with mold on a humid street most of the time clean, but usually just filled with the thickness of smoke.

But this house that I saw in the dream, it was the sort of house befitting of your ethereal beauty, the sort of house I would have liked to build for you, where we could fit all our family and still have room for privacy, for clean breaths away from the tiresome and loud city. It was the sort of house where we could find peace after a long day of work, where we could live the perfect winter nights by the fire, on a lavished couch, or in our bed, embraced beneath the blankets. I had all these memories we never made flash before my eyes and...

          TOMMY LIFTED THE QUILL off the paper and sighed back in his chair. He felt it would have been improper to tell Jackie, even in a letter he had very little chance of ever sending her way, that his most serene dream involved the two of them having a family of their own. Their daughter with black of hair and eyes as green as her mother's, and their son, with auburn hair and freckles all over his face.

He's never had the chance nor the time to truly think about having a family of his own, not while rising the Shelby name on peaks of wealth and fame, but Jackie Alloways did the impossible, seeding into him a desire other than the climb on a ladder in society.

The hour was late and though he lit himself a cigarette to return stillness to his mind, it was rather soon that Thomas returned to writing his letter, at peace with knowing he'll have to greet the sunrise wide awake.

          My memory goes a little further through the dream, however I do not wish to fill entire pages with nothing but hopefulness. You've made a writer out of me, sometimes even a mad poet, but I am not quite ready to renounce my nature and fantasise of sending you a short book to read of my thoughts. I would much rather whisper to you in bed about my dreams, so you could also tell me of yours. The luckiest man alive would be my self-granted label if our dreams happened to overlap.

Nonetheless, it goes without saying that I miss you terribly. The world is obnoxiously quiet without you by side. Not a day goes by without being told I must move on, but truth is, there is no moving on from you and that's what everyone fails to see and understand. I shouldn't expect anything less from them, one would argue. They cannot see, per say, how your name in my mind is what a fire is to a home in winter. But still, I shall have the whole world know at the very least that I wear the rings that would have sealed our marriage, because I will never need anyone else like I needed and still need you.

These are things that, had everything gone the way it should have went, I would have told you whilst holding your hand, after you've taken my name legally. Instead, I have been punished to talk to paper, where no names are allowed.

I wish I had better news to write here for you, regardless of whether or not these words reach you. I wish I had more than wishful thinking to cling to while waiting for the sun to rise again and for another day of work to commence — there is one thing my money cannot buy right now, the single need I have and cannot fulfill with them. Wishes change nothing and by turning me into a dreamer, you've ruined me, my love. Should you return, I'd let you ruin me some more.

YOURS ETERNALLY,
YOUR HUSBAND

          SETTING HIS WRITING INSTRUMENT aside, Tommy gathered the pages of his letter. He had no envelope to fold them into, not even for the formality of it, but since he wasn't exactly planning on keeping what he has written locked in some drawer, he did not bother to actually get up and seek that envelope further than his desk. Frankly, his search ended as soon as his right hand grasped his box of matches.

With slow motions he returned the folded papers to his desk and lit himself a match from the box. Fire reflected in the coldness of his eyes, awaiting something to burn. To its consumption, he lifted the corner of his letter with no stamp, nor address or envelope. Though his numbness would have normally kept him silent as he watched the corner's beige paper catch a shade of brown then a rust of fire to it under the influence of the match, Tommy let a few words slip his lips, "In the bleak mid-winter..."

Distant knocking responded to his sound of acceptance of loss: someone was knocking on the door downstairs without a single break, meaning that they were no prankster in the night, but someone who genuinely wished to be knocking on that door at such un uncivilised hour.

With nowhere to leave the letter to burn, Tommy put out the fire and blew out the match, leaving both on the table. Given how little of the letter burned, he knew he'd have to resume that cleansing process once he handled the disturber of peace knocking continously while he rushed to dress himself semi-properly for meeting with a stranger. Beltless pants and a buttoned up shirt slightly wrinkled will have to do for a late night visitor's eyes.

Before opening the door, Tommy loaded his pistol, ready to defend himself, however, fate had different plans for him.

"Mr. Shelby sir," Balthasar's face lit up, presenting him with a letter with a stamp with pyramids on it. "It's M'lady Alloways. The letter just arrived and I thought it should not wait 'till morning."