SeaHeart

Dear Lottie,

I love you. I am not your god, and you are not my creation...I'm more your mother than anything, really. A year ago, I found you on the edges of a river, in my mind's eye, and I knew I had to tell your story. You were so afraid and cold and lonely...and you didn't know who you were. I empathized with that, my heart broke for you, and I took you under my wing, entered your world--I told the story.

I put you through hell. It was hard to do that to you, writing what I did...the terror and the horror and those moments where you wanted--more than anything--to commit a Sleeper form of suicide to escape it. But you didn't. You found strength, you kept going, and in the end you saved those you loved the most. A fitting epitaph, if you had a grave.

Now, I am not testing our love. I am not checking the links, one by one, to see if they will survive, because I know they will already. I love you, I love your story, and I love your novel with all my heart. I'm proud of you...and I'm not afraid to admit it. You are the most beautiful thing I have ever written, and in your sadness, there is loveliness, and in your horror, there is redemption. No...now, you are metal, hard and shining, but what I must do is smooth it, shape it, take hammer and forge and hot, dancing fire and work in the secret cover of darkness as shadows move along the walls. Now, I do right by you.

All of those who have come before you, darling...that is an element I failed to accomplish. But in my failings, in my own inadequacies, I found a path that ran straight and true...if I dared to take it. Until you, I have not. Until you, I've known of it, I've hidden it, I've ignored it. But not this time.

What I do now is for your good, as well as my own. Your story, of all others, will ring truest, because I told the truth. I stayed the course, I'm finishing what I started. You don't know the girl of fifteen...the one I once was. You never met her. She was a sweet girl, and she was a storyteller as much as I am now, yes...but when she lost her way, she lost it completely. I look back at her, wish with all my heart and soul I could have comforted her when no one would. But it doesn't matter anymore.

Lottie, you might not be the one. I wanted to tell you that. It might not be you, your story, your book that gets published. But it won't have mattered, sweetheart. For the first time in my life, I will be proud of you, I will love you anyway. To be a published novellist...it still rings as my truest dream, but that's not what stories are for. If I've told your story, if I have done my absolute best by it, if I am proud of it completely and without question...that will be completion enough for me.

Tonight, we meet again, under cover of darkness. I'll do my best to work through your sad moments and your bright ones, give you the best words I possess, shine you up until you glow. I look forward to it, as I always do.

All of this, until April, darling. Come...let us tell stories.

Fondly,
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