This letter will reach you after the day of the All Saviors’ Day feast, but rest assured that I am counting you in my prayers to receive the Gifts of the Spirit from Saint Nicholas.  It is a bittersweet kind of joy, celebrating this holiday, as it marks the last day before Ophiuchus, which in turn is the last time we’ll have together before we take up with our respective patrons.  Although I suppose we’ll be taking the same boat—apologies, I will finish this letter, but I should point that out to Vaterin.


    The meal hall, serving as the expo hall, was once again a wide room of tables and benches.  Rather than serving the meager fare of the everyday, it was food “fit for the patrons of our great and noble College.”  Personally, I’m more familiar with what we’ve been eating, but these are hoity-toity nobles.  They have profitable estates they won’t miss the production of for a few years until the next remission.  The feast was without question sumptuous, though it lacked the ridiculous heights which might be traced to the sin of gluttony.  There were no uncommon grains native to the heights of the Crown Range, no dearly traded-for lobe of dragon liver, but there were turkeys and ox roasts in abundance, hothouse fruits which had to be grown with wood-fired greenhouses—for whatever reason, they just don’t thrive with rune flames—although these were largely sugared or otherwise preserved against the ocean voyage to Tourmaline Isle.


    We’ve worked through the worst of the weepies, we’re on to acceptance, I think.  They sat at a table, near the edge of the hall, working through respectably loaded plates, calf to calf under the table and drawing comfort from just that touch.  By now out of habit, Vaterin sat to the left and Marble to the right, so they didn’t impede one anothers’ dominant arms.  It’s all so comfortable.  Familiar.  Especially for me, I’ve been through how many All Saviors’ Day feasts at the College?  But Vaterin already feels like an extra hand.  As if to drive the point home, Vaterin passed a spiced condiment to Marble who was just starting on her preserved peaches.  I can identify cinnamon but I bet Vaterin could tell me what the other spices a—ooh, hot!  A hot chutney on peaches?  It tastes good but I wouldn’t have thought of it.  She definitely knows what the spices are.


    Vaterin got less generous terms from her patron, so it’ll be a bit uneven for letter turnaround.  Not even the four day ‘Loon trip, she’ll have to send it by land post.  But no, we agreed we wouldn’t talk about this until we were on the ship.  She said she’ll already be miserable from the seasickness, so what’s a little depressing subject matter.  Not how I would think of it, but I agree that I’d just as soon avoid the topic entirely.  We’ve worked out the practical elements.  No sense tormenting ourselves.  “The chutney on peaches is good.  Thank you.”


    “Thought you’d like it.  Being used to bland fare doesn’t mean it’s preferable.”  There are those who prefer bland fare, though.  I’m watching Felspar pick biscuits and white meat chicken almost exclusively.  I wonder if he’s autistic; he said he never meant to be a prick.  He’s definitely devoted to his studies of calculus.  And to his geometer boyfriend.  He showed me a letter and I do swear I never saw so many numbers in a love letter.


    It is a beautiful celebration though.  A commemoration of the approximate date that the Savior was born, one planet at a time, to redeem the souls of all of humanity.  For the One God so loved Orth that He sent His one and only Son to die for the sins of every branch of humanity, on each planet… well, we know He was crucified on Orth.  I don’t know about the other planets.  Nobody does, anymore, since the Age of Loss.  But prophets brought the Word and told us that once He had saved the souls of one planet, the Lord would reform Him and send Him through the Spirit to save the next.  And, of course, Orth was blessed to be the first planet saved by Him.  And Saint Nicholas, who brings to every virtuous person the fruit of the Spirit.  Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Of course, one could argue that the people who most need that fruit are the ones who aren’t so virtuous.  I never understood why it was that a virtuous person would receive help from the Spirit, when the prayer beads have a prayer that the Savior grant His mercy to those most in need of it.  Different roles for the trinity of the One God, I suppose.


    It was then that Vaterin spoke up again.  Marble didn’t suppose it was unease over the silence, we’ve grown rather fond of our companionable silences.  I wonder what we’ll even write about once we can’t talk.  Or because we’re less secure, we’ll babble.  Say, I bet that’s why when we have each other we—“Marble, you’re woolgathering.  I was just saying, isn’t it odd that the fruits left by Saint Nicholas are left for those who least need them?”


    Marble laughed.  “We’re a hive mind.  One of those abomination insect species granted sentience by linking all the bugs into one large mind.”


    “We were talking about fruit.  It follows at All Saviors’ Day we’d think of the fruits of the Spirit from there.”  We were hardly talking, but that’s normal these days.  Rather than reply, Marble simply laughed and tousled Vaterin’s hair, which in patently unfair butch fashion simply fell back into place.  It’s grown out to be a mullet.  Does she even know how to trim her own hair?  I suppose when it bothers her, her patron will have a barber.  But that’s not a thought for now.  That’s a thought for later.  While she’s being seasick.


    After a few hours of eating, talking, and even some dancing—I wonder if Vaterin knew the Mother Superior could play the horn, Vaterin shortly made a comment to the negative—the feast began winding down.  While it was the end of one more day, it was not the end of the day for Vaterin and Marble.  Vaterin slept in flannel pajamas, while Marble wore a simple cotton nightgown, but it was clothes enough for decency’s sake should they do as they were doing this night and laying in bed holding one another.  Vaterin dutifully took the role of the big spoon, nose pressed against the cuddle bumper of Marble’s hair.  “It was a nice party.”


    “It was.  If anything, more decadent than most years.”


    “Ah.  Well, it’s a good send off for you, then.”  It’s going to be something new, taking a patron.  I’ve been at the College for years.  I suppose I’m as good an artist as I need to be, my brass candlelight study was a success and that was far more complex than your typical landscape.  Before they grew too sleepy and slept in the same bed, Marble slipped out of Vaterin’s arms—before I grow too sleepy, I guess.  I think Vaterin is out cold—and padded over to her bunk.  There will always be improvement to achieve.  I could try a different style.  Paint a field in shades of red and yellow, so it looks like flame.  I think the Countess Fowlflush has grasslands around her personal estate at the very least.  But I don’t know what she’ll want me to paint for her.  My time will no longer be my own.  She didn’t seem like an unduly harsh woman, we did consider that.  I imagine I will, at the least, have time to write to Vaterin.  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Thinking thoughts about things that she and Vaterin had agreed not to think about, Marble drifted off.  Or thought she had.  Her dreams were a disorderly mixture of tender moments, separation, and a vague, shadowy mansion where she walked by paintings that were not her own.  Then came booming male laughter, out of place in both the dream and, as she sat up, the womens’ dormitory.  She looked and saw a man in a red coat walking down the rows of bunks.  As she was about to call for a clergyman, rouse her fellow students, or even just demand what he was doing in here, he continued his walk straight through the wall, vanishing like a ghost.  That can’t have been Saint Nicholas.  He’s departed for the heavenly realms, having informed the world of the Savior’s sacrifice on this and every world.  She looked around blearily and saw something on her nightstand.  It was… a fruit?  A single large strawberry?  The fruit of the Spirit is metaphorical, surely if that was Saint Nicholas, he wouldn’t so malign the fruit of the Spirit by relegating it to mere fruit of a bush.


    A sleepy Vaterin padded over holding a peach.  “Is this a College of the Art of the Divine tradition?  Wake the students with a cheerful Saint Nicholas leaving decidedly non-metaphorical fruit?”


    Marble shook her head.  “I think it might have been the actual Saint Nicholas.  Or I am still dreaming.”  She shook her head again.  “But then, usually when you realize it’s a dream, you wake up.”


    “Nothing for it but to eat the fruit, then, eh?”  Without answering in words, Marble took a bite of the simply massive strawberry.  It was sweet and rich, but what struck Marble was an overwhelming sense of peace.  It will be okay.  I’m an excellent artist.  I’ll win the freedom to be with Vaterin, even if it’s not in this life.  We must be separate, but only for a little while.  The lifetime of a human is but a blink of the eye to the One Go—Marble’s thoughts were interrupted by Vaterin pressing her lips to hers, hand on the back of her head to make the kiss one which was long, slow, and sensual.  With a final teasing nip at Marble’s lower lip, Vaterin drew back and gave her a cocky, moony grin.  “I love you, Marble Bitumen.”  Patience.  And love.  Literal and metaphorical fruit.


    “I love you too, Vaterin Lime.  It’s going to be okay.”


    “It is, isn’t it.”  She was still smiling as though starstruck by Marble.  “You know, isn’t your Baroness—”


    “Countess.”


    Vaterin waved her hand dismissively.  “Title.  Isn’t she the one who bought your candlelight study?”


    “She is.  I imagine she’ll let me experiment a great deal.  You were going to offer that as consolation?  I thought we weren’t talking about it until you were already miserable.”


    “Yeah, but… it’s going to be okay.”


    “It is.  If it’s not better, it’s not over.”


    Vaterin thwumped down on Marble’s cot and laid her hand over Marble’s.  “An All Saviors’ Day miracle.”


    “I suppose it is.”


    “How do we want to do letters?”


    “I was thinking about that before I fell asleep.  You know, I wasn’t sure I had but I must have, they say Saint Nicholas only comes after you’re asleep.  I’ll have a generous allowance, I can write you every day.  But our letters will cross each other, so I was thinking we’d send love notes, diary type entries, and then every four days when our letters reach each other actually carry on a conversation.”  Okay, so I’m nervous, but this isn’t so heart-wrenching as I expected.  Maybe because I feel comfortable being patient.  I wonder how long the fruit of the Spirit… well, if you pray and keep your heart in the Savior, the Spirit will always be there.  But I wonder how long Saint Nicholas’ fruit will last.  This delightful sense of peace, from a sweet and tender strawberry.  Vaterin cut off her words and her train of thought with another kiss which Marble would have sworn ate an entire sandglass.


    “You want to commit that much time to writing letters that amount to sweet nothings?  We barely talk now, aren’t you worried we’ll run out of things to say?”  We haven’t run out of things to say, we’ve run out of the need to say them with words.  But that’s nuance, and she’s being ridiculous.


    “Vaterin Lime, if I run out of things to say to you I will put a drop of tulip water on a piece of parchment, draw a heart around it, seal it with wax, and send it off.  It would scarcely be different than spending the night with you burying your face in my hair.”


    Vaterin laughed and scratched the back of her head.  “Fair enough.  I’ve got a less-generous allowance, but I could do the same with a… you recommended a peppery scent for me?  I was thinking more a wood of some kind.”


    “The first time I can visit you, we’ll take you to a perfumer.  Perhaps she’ll surprise us both and suggest something else, like nutmeg or something.”


    “So I’ll be being patronized by two nobles.  I can live with that.”


    Marble kissed Vaterin’s cheek.  “I thought you could, somehow, carry on in the face of your femme fussing over a suitable fragrance for you.”


    Vaterin flushed all the way to her ears.  “I suppose I can.  But when do I get to fuss over you?”


    “When it’s time to be gallant and charming.  For instance, when I need a kiss because I’m thinking too much.”


    “And writing love letters.  That’s my responsibility, too.  One every day.”


    “Responsibility?  Do you mind?”  Marble arched a single brow at Vaterin, who laughed.


    “If I had a cat I’d be responsible for it, I wouldn’t mind that I had a cat.  It will be—well, honestly, I’m not the best poet—”


    ”Vaterin, if you suggest spending your stipend on a Muse of Poetry, I will… kiss you, just to shut you up.”  Marble laughed.  “Isn’t it strange that we’ve been talking all this time and nobody has woken up?”


    “Neither of us lit a candle either, and yet I didn’t run into a single trunk on my way to your bunk.”


    “What makes us so special, do you think, that we merited a personal blessing of a prophet?”


    Vaterin nuzzled Mable’s cheek with her nose.  “You.  Undoubtedly you.  You make us so special.”


    “How do you figure?”  Marble’s tone was humorous, but her face very serious.


    “The divine intercessors, predecessors to the Savior, have wronged you more than once.  It’s the One God redressing a divine wrong.”


    “Isn’t there Scripture about that?  Face adversity with virtue and the One God will reward you?”


    “If not in this life, then in the next.” I mean, it’s a truism more than a fact, but yes, there is.  There’s even an entire story of a man who was unjustly torn from all he knew… there are a number of those.  Yet it’s the stories where women are pulled from what they know that end with anything more than a return to the status quo.


    “Vaterin?”


    “Mmmm?”


    “I’m glad we had this moment.  I treasure our communication without words, but something… is right about this moment.  I love you.”


    “I love you too.”  They sat there, holding hands, occasionally kissing, for angels only knew how long, but it was still dark when Vaterin stole back to her bunk and they slept.


    When morning came, the fruit was gone.