Dearest Zann,

Ellewen and I stood at the bottom of an ugly hill in a strange, pink-skied realm. Dark green clouds scuttled to block the brown sun, and we stared at a spiky fortress across the plains. Unholy, garlic-like fragrances rose from the ground about us. Ellewen stood patiently, and if he had been a human instead of an unearthly laur–I mean, instead of a greenfolk–he would have been looking at me expectantly.

I figured that I wasn’t going to get any idea of what to do from him, so I had to take the lead myself. I thought about investigating the fortress in the distance, and then I thought it would be even better to not investigate the fortress, so I started off in the opposite direction, around the hill. Ellewen followed.

“Do we have a way of going home?” I asked him, as we stepped around the rocks. “When we want to?”

“Oh yes,” he answered. “It would actually be much more difficult to remain for too long. We aren’t wanted here.”

We had a choice of paths between different withered, rocky hills. The pass to the left looked a little easier, so I took that one. Ellewen’s shadow fell beside me. It was an ugly purple colour. It looked like there had been a structure here. The rocks were tumbled blocks and walls and timbers. One of the timbers had fallen to create a narrow bridge through the area. I could see sparkles from debris in the rubble, and… a familiar smell?

A sound from up ahead: boots on the rocks. Ellewen sighed.

“Who’s there?” I called.

The most beautiful man in the world bounded up onto a scarred boulder. He had long copper hair flowing down past immaculate cheekbones to equally emphatic shoulders. His skin was the green of a stagnant pond and his eyes the grey of burned corpses. It felt like I had never wanted anyone more. “Still here, flower-grower?” he said, ignoring me and addressing Ellewen. He was carrying some kind of… I don’t know what it was. It was made of metal and wood, and he pointed it at Ellewen like a weapon.

“As you see,” he answered.

“Can you help us?” I asked the stranger. “We don’t really know why we’re here, and–” and he knocked me down.

I don’t know how he did it; he wasn’t anywhere near us. He just acted, and the air struck a sharp impact all along my left side, and I fell backward. I lay there in both pain and pleasure, trying feebly to get up.

Something was under my hand, something strange-shaped. I put it in my pocket.

“It’s nothing for me to kill you and your pet,” he said to Ellewen, “but if you go now I may not bother to try.”

“I think we’re just going,” Ellewen said. “If we–” and he looked at me. “Oh.”

“Whaf?” I said. “Elleven?”

“Ybel,” he said, kneeling beside me, concerned. The lovely man grunted in impatience and made his weapon make a noise.

I tried to push up with my hands, but it didn’t work; my hands didn’t seem to be able to make any force against the ground. I looked down. Where my lower arms used to be, there was only ash. It didn’t hurt. Some more of my right arm crumbled as I watched it. “Heff me,” I said, and ashes puffed out of my mouth. “I’m sared!” I said, and laughed. I don’t know why I laughed.

“It will something something,” Ellewen said. All the sounds went quiet. The sights were turning grey. The last I saw was a flash from the man’s weapon as the ash completed my body.

All my love,

Ybel