Lavenders Blue ❦

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟChapter Six; Letter Exchange

Days later, Lance wakes up to his door nearly being beaten in. "Lance!"

That hag voice, dear friends, would belong to the infamously hag-voiced Haggar. It must be inhumanly early if she was up before him. After jumping out of sleep with a fear of being flat-Stanley'd by a flying door, he replies:

"Yes?" An instant response, cultivated from years of remembering to never tell Haggar the word "no" (unless you happen to be informing her that you, in fact, didn't do something utterly stupid as she might think. Only then is it alright to say the opposite-of-yes-word.)
Lance gravels the word out through his crusty morning throat after jumping out of his sheets with a great leap and stumbling toward the poor, abused door. A livid woman stands behind it, fuming as Lance blinks his eyes open. In her long and witchy fingers, she grips an unopened package the same way that an eagle's talon clutches around a rodent.

Her nails stab lightly into neat, familiar brown paper wrapped around another lumpy delivery, drawn up in white string. That package, dressed in Earthy tones just like the one that came yesterday, came from Keith. No doubt about it - he had a flair for the simple and beautiful.

"Why exactly did I wake up to a royal teller at my door with a package? For you?" Haggar fumes, interrupting. Lance freezes, yet his mind stumbles around with excuses, lies, actions.

"I-" he can barely get one of those responses out before he is cut off, Haggar's voice like sheers to his words.

"Then allow me to read the card for you then, shall I? Such pretty penmanship, I wonder who thought you deserved it." Haggar traces the top fold of the white envelope with a sharp nail before jabbing it in, gutting the paper like a fish. Lance wants to rip that out of her hands. It isn't hers to open at her own pleasure. And, at that, Lance isn't hers to manipulate and invade just because he has a chance with a man and she does not.

But he pours his emotions into his large, emotion-holder bottle and corks it. Though, lately, it seems to be getting closer and closer to building enough pressure that it shatters and blows his raging smoke right in someone's face. Probably Haggar's, and probably soon. But not today.

Her long, twig-like fingers tear open the envelope's center, ripping through his name written in the same pretty sapphire ink as yesterday, destroying it just as fast as she had done with his name in real life.

"Dear Lance," It read.

"I hope I didn't frighten you last night, what with my sudden romantic gesture. I've become rather infatuated with you. It hasn't even fallen on a fourth moon since you and I have met, but I find you consuming my thoughts at least every other minute. My next request might be just as bold if not all the more, but I find myself only now, in a midnight haze of courage and whimsy, to have the bravery to ask this if you;
Would you be interested in attending a ball with me in upcoming weeks? I have no doubt that if you accept my pleads born of my obsession, I will be able to pull enough strings to bring you with me. Consider me please. I await your answer, and the next time I'll see your face. My nerves are danced. My coworkers tease that I've been acting like a child on Christmas Eve, and smiling like the sap that I never have been. Well, not until now. You being out weird things in me, Lance. It is not that I don't enjoy this - it's all just so new to me. My life has been needing this kind of splendid change.
Coran, your teller, will take letters to me at the castle gates from sunrise to sundown if you choose to communicate as so. Although, if writing back will further the condition of your hand, take a day to heal. I apologize another thousand times for that.
The ball is eighteen days out, and I look forward to any words you may answer me with.

Truly yours,
Keith

P.S. I hope you don't mind, but I've brought you a gift from the palace gardening sheds. They are the best of their kind."