Weighted Diamond, pt. 2

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Morning is happy to see you,
So be happy to see the day,
Wipe the night from your eyes,
Let your voice echo in the day,

The birds are happy to hear you,
So be chirping right along,
Put away the clothes of night,
Put on the new day bright-ly,

Oats in the pot and man the door,
The kettle whistles watch the sky,
Break the egg, daddy's on his way,
Make the breakfast and begin your day,
`````

You woke up sometime later, you didn't know when. Peering out of your bedroom, you noticed it was still dark.

"Go back to bed, Bellflower," said the Lord Regent, his voice carrying from the hallway.

"Yes sir," you said, getting back into bed, shifting your position in the big bed until finally you just lay there for a while before drifting back to sleep.

Somehow the sun enters your room despite any windows. It's only a few shafts of light, one across your bed and one on the floor.

You change out of your night clothes and then put on the blouse and skirt from last night. You don't know if you need work clothes for the day or how life is going to go for you.

Lord Regent was gone already, and Lady Miesha was in her den, already in letter mode.

"Breakfast is at the table. Clean up after you're done."

Breakfast was cold, but you had slept in. It was a new concept. At the Children's center you were woken up by the matrons. By the time the staff of the Center were ready for the children it was a bit later in the morning anyway. You had to get used to waking up a bit earlier.

You picked up the Lord and Lady's plates and washed them all up. After that you went into the den.

"Today sweetie, I'm going to show you some simple things that you can help out with. And then we'll work together on something a bit bigger that you can work towards doing."

Lady Miesha was seated in her rocking chair reading another letter.

You sat in the straight backed chair and looked around.

After finishing reading the letter, she looked to you. "You can start by hauling in today's letters. There's a big metal bin full of them outside the door. Bring them over to your chair, and then you can work on them this morning."

You didn't know what to do with them, so you were about to ask.

"I'll tell you what to do once you get them inside," she responded to your unasked question.

The bin was solid iron on the bottom and the lower part of the side, but like a grid of metal bars on top, just wide enough to push another letter in. The top section tilted open as well, but you didn't dare play with the open and closing, while the bin was full.

You could barely push, pull or drag the bin along, fiercely pulling it up the little ledge from the walkway into the house's entryway, and you took a break then for a few seconds before summoning your strength to lift it up and bring it into the Den. You tried to set it down next to your chair gently. It landed with a thud.

You went back to close the front door, because to not do that would be foolish.

Lady Miesha continued with your instruction after that, "Your goal is to get all of the bad letters out of the bin, and all of the good ones back into it, without making a big mess."

"How do I tell what's a good and bad letter?" you asked.

She walked over and took a letter from the bin.

"Bad, horrible spelling," she said throwing one into the fire, and "Bad, the town says Wolfsburg, but the postal stamp says Outer Gall."

A lot of places were bad and not good, you had learned at school. Outer Gall, you didn't remember it exactly, but the tone of Lady Miesha's voice made it sound appalling.

"This one, this one -- it's not a good letter, but it sure looks like it. When you read the actual letter, you find horrible disjointed writing, This was printed, not handwritten. But the Envelope was hand addressed, and the stamp was forged."

"If you aren't sure, throw it in the fire. I'll check a few before we actually light it tonight. Just to make sure you didn't throw anyone important away," she continued.

Without any further guidance, you tried to do this. You decided to pile up the good letters right next to the bin, but you didn't find any good ones for a while.

You could have missed some of the ones involving implausible countries, or postal stamps, you didn't know all of the places these were coming from, but suspiciously, they were written in perfect cursive, except every other word was badly misspelled.

Some of them were not letters at all, but postcards.

You asked the Lady about those, "Toss them," she said. She was the lady of Letters, not postcards or cute pictures with a little writing.

There was one larger envelope, which you were about to open.

"Stop!" Lady Miesha said insistently.

"That shouldn't even be in the bin. Carefully put it the fire."

She strode up to the fireplace after you gently placed it inside.

You couldn't throw a letter with any skill so you had been getting up after each bad letter and standing half the time.

Lady Miesha reviewed your rejections briefly sifting through the fireplace.

"This one," she said, pulling a purple envelope with blue paper out of the mound, "This is legit. Remember, Outer Kingston is still a place, unlike all of the other Outer places. Except Outer Hereford, that's another safe Outer name."

"It had misspellings," you protested, and then stopped.

"These are good person misspellings. You'll learn quickly."

Once she'd gone through the letters in the fireplace, she drew the chain link barrier closed, removing the papers from view. Brushing her fingers against the mantle, you heard the roaring of the fire, and when the lady opened the fireplace up again, only coals were left.

"Guess it wasn't anything harmful," Lady Miesha said. "But one can never know."

You handled the sorting of good and bad letters much more slowly than the Lady, finishing what she did in an hour in four.

"I wanted to get your writing practice started today, but we'll wait on that. Before your God-father gets home, I'd like to make a small step towards finding your specialty. What did you learn about in school that you really liked and wanted to get interested in, in a bigger adult way?"

You thought about it. Everything at school had been little kid stuff. What interesting thing could be of worth for this family.

"I'm not sure," you said, your eyes downcast. You really didn't have any ideas that you didn't reject right away.

"Just a moment sweetie," Lady Miesha said, disappearing into the hallway. You waited, trying to think of something useful. You had learned the basics of writing and the merchants' numbers. Your Safe class had covered the key information about staying safe, and a hint of where men and women could learn to protect their homes from the attackers in the night.

There were a few trifling things you liked from school, but they seemed to not match the serious tone of your God-parents. You doubted learning to read and write poetry and playing the recorder would be thought serious.

But you were wrong, as Lady Miesha came back with a letter written on plain paper.

"I thought I had a letter from the Administrator of your Children Center. Let's see: She spends hours pouring over the poems in our old mythbooks. When no one is looking, she writes little poems of her own. She tried the recorder in Music class, but I didn't sense any great potential in that area."

"I guess I didn't think it was useful or helpful," you offered. "I like poems though."

The Lady looked at you with a peculiar intensity. "My mentor thought that, back in the old days, when the day was no safer than the night. Every person, coiled up in fear in the bounds of their own home. But when my mentor began to write, and brave souls took up the cap of Post-man, the power of the letter to unite us was stronger than anyone dared to think."

"The mythbooks then?" you asked, your thoughts swirling around the hope that the Lady offered.

 "Written by those of a generation or two before. The pen and sword together, are mightier than either separate."

"How do I get serious about poetry? I don't want to just continue my childish approach. I know you and Lord-Regent are trying to help me grow up and understand adult things," you asked.

"Sometimes people write poems in their letters. How about you bring out a new stack of writing paper, and I'll give you any of the letters with poems. You can read a poem, and write a poem back. Practice on an extra page of paper until you can make your handwriting neat and appropriate."

 Lady Miesha continued to going through more stacks of letters while you waited for one letter with a poem in it. You decided to practice your handwriting, slowly tracing the cursive forms, correcting yourself after your lines dipped into the next line, or rose up into the line before.

You made sure to completely exhaust each page with writing, even filling up the back of the page, before placing it in the fireplace.

Finally, near the end of the day, when the Lord-Regent of Flowers would surely be returning home soon, the Lady gave you a letter with a poem in it. To understand the poem, you read the whole letter.

Dear Lady of Letters,

Since last I wrote, East Hampton's grain mill has been attacked, and the silos haven't been able to accept any more grain until the mill can resume running, or another arrangement made for the silo's processing. This could set back bakers across our region, certainly Nan will be affected.

I've been calming down, however. So I will spare you from all of the aches and pains and troubles we all experience.

It was great to hear from you that your Lord husband has found new cultivars for his garden. To hear of so many beautiful and protective flowers safeguarded for our future is truly heartening. I especially loved your mention of the white flowers. I have always found white flowers especially calming and safe, and I love baby's breath. Some think it is merely an accessory for floral arrangements, but I love the flower on it's own terms.

You must be anticipating being a god-parent again, after your god-son became 2nd lieutenant. The uncertainty must be galling, though.

With all that's going on, and knowing you love the art of short letters, I'll finish here with a poem I wrote after consoling Nan.


The wind blows cold from the north,
Across the bay a droplet holds to it,
Not knowing where the wind is going,
It slips away, falling over the land,

The droplet weeps leaving the wind,
Arriving, seeping into the land,

The seed laid dead in dryness,
Finding no moisture to comfort it,
Until the drop parted from wind,
Arrived at it's burial creche,

Alive again the seed rejoices,
It becomes a sprout rising,

The wind which releases,
The land which reclaims,
The hour that takes away,
Is the hour seed may sprout.

Written by my hand,
Sir Thomas Majera - Lord-Regent of Schools

The letter was almost as interesting as the poem. The poem reminded you of one in the mythbooks called "He Gives and Takes Away".

 You assumed your poem would come after the Lady's writing, so you decided to just write the poem without any prose. But what could it be about? The man was like your Lord of Schools, whom you had only met once. You pondered the thought of school, now that you had left it.

We sing the same morning song,
We have the same breakfast,
But we each found our buried gold,
A teacher's honey revealing the comb,

Safe class and farm-craft and writing class,
One kid follows the safest Man in school,
One kid that doesn't run from the bull,
Our lovely teacher holds gold in his hands,

No bully snatch the gold,
No student forget where it's from,
No mocker pushing us away,
Safe Keeper help us from these,

We still walk in dimness,
We handle our gold in careful steps,
We love the walkers of our way,
We never know when's our last day,

Teacher this student hopes you remember,
For every student who turns away,
Its another day for your good students,
They will walk and love your wise ways,

To build a whole school,
Full of gold and gold-smiths,
To make students gather,
And the gathered to be students.

The chest maker worked to make,
He made a gold chest of drawers,
He hired goldsmith and woodworker,
Brought candles for the night's work,

He has made a good work's foundation,
Is he forgotten among the goldsmiths?
Is he forgotten among the seekers?
Let them all say thank you Safe Keeper!

Remember sweetly the Safe Keeper of a school,
Because he keeps safe that which is gold to me,
The Teacher who writes, he held out his gold for me,
But I've seen in every teacher gold for the seeker,

You had been writing and pondering the poem for so long that the Lord-Regent was sitting in the den with his lady, and yet they had not interrupted you.

 You handed the paper (two pages) to Lady Miesha.

After a long pause (but too quickly to have read it all), she said, "This will be special to the Lord of Schools. Thank you sweetie. Now go ahead and wash up for dinner."

...

Thankful we are as we toast,
Let this food strengthen the house,
Let it make firmness in our bones,
Lest overrun we fall on our cups,

...

The beef stew was pretty good, with carrots and celery, and just a little salt.

"I couldn't take you to the pharmacy today, I got stuck with a new variety of daisy. A blessing really. But I will take you tomorrow. We also need to stop at the Farm store. Tomorrow night is the Vigil, which I'm sure the Childcare center did differently than a home. This is another opportunity for you to learn about being an adult," the Lord-Regent was saying.

"Yes Lord-Regent, I'm excited, even if we can't have ice cream floats," you said, interested in seeing what was at the farm store. Did they have potatoes or those other root vegetables?

 Dinner passed and cleanup seemed to go by in a flash. Tomorrow night would be your first time staying up. At the children's center, kids staying up would just cause more problems and work for the caretakers who had to keep the place safe.