bluebird, redbird

1

Waking to the cold, Louise instinctively rubbed her feet, which were wrapped in the sheets, together. The third daughter of a viscount, she continued to lay in bed even as she heard the footsteps of the servants who began working before the skies had lightened. Before long, a young maid came up to her with a blanket in hand and gently draped it over her.

      "Thank you." she mumbled, still half-asleep.

      "Please sleep a while longer." said the young maid who had only joined their household a year ago. She bowed and left.

      Yesterday, it wasn't this cold all through the night to dawn. Winter will arrive before we know it, Louise thought. Though it couldn't possibly compare to the northern borders here in her father's warm southern lands.

      There, her fiancé was assigned to border security. They had no armed conflicts with their northern neighbor, but with its terrible public order bandit types often came raiding, or so it was written in the paper her father read. As a sheltered young lady, Louise couldn't imagine such danger on top of the suffering cold.

      Famed for their beauty, her two older sisters fell in love with young men of higher ranks, who had asked for their hands in marriage.

      Without a doubt, at least for the young men he had hoped would become his elder daughters' bridegrooms, the viscount had been all smiles as he blessed their marriages. He decided, however, to find a fiancé for Louise before she entered high society. With all of his daughters married outside, from the elder two to their younger sister separated by several years, his House would have no more children.

    Enlisting the help of his two married daughters, her father enthusiastically began searching for a young and promising man who seemed like he would earnestly protect his lands, which were in the sticks far from the capitol.

   The search for a bridegroom was difficult due to the modest lifestyle the viscounts have led for generations, with the people their top priority. Life in the viscount's lands were a far cry from the extravagance of high society, but in the end he finally found a young man named Huey who met all of the requirements, and who had in turn agreed to marry into his bride's family as soon as she became of marriageable age.

      Back then, Louise was still only twelve years old. Huey was a soldier, and he received orders to protect the border after the fact. In this fashion, the two parted without having met once, and so the years went by.

      "What in the world was he like? Did his job keep him busy over there?" she wondered. Even though hope and worry intermingled, Louise had never been the assertive type, so up until now she had never once made a move to initiate contact.

      If she settled into her norm, she would've wrapped herself snug in the blanket until it was time to rise. For today only, however, she let out a puff of white breath in the cold and got up while rubbing her eyes.

      Come next spring, she would turn sixteen and therefore of marriageable age, and Huey would also be returning from the border. A fiancé whose face she didn't even know. Although he was the party chosen by her father, she wanted to learn more about this person who would become her partner for the rest of her life, no matter how little.

      Maybe she would try writing a letter one day, was the deeply held plan always in her heart. Louise decided to put it into practice, and without delay she lit up her bedside lamp with a flame, wrapped in her blanket the entire time. She took out parchment and her pen from the drawer, but then she discovered another problem.

      What in the world were you supposed to write?

      Maybe she should ask him if he was well? If he was hurt?

      She could express some concern It's not cold over there, is it? Might that not be interpreted as the idle speculation of someone far off in a safe place?

      Should she ask him what colored flowers he liked? But he was on the battlefield as a soldier. He probably wouldn't care for such things.

     "Hmmnn." She thought, she agonized.

     She rewrote it several times. She wondered if it might be better to not send a letter at all. Then her stomach growled, and she realized she was hungry.

      A little more collected, she reached a hand under the bed.

Once the sky began to brighten, she secretly slipped out of her room. Oddly shaped and lumpy, the plain letter was addressed to someone she had never met.

      "Please..."

      It was something her older sister had left behind before she married, a mysterious letter set sold in the capital. From a window on the third floor, she lifted her arm into the air, and the letter fluttered as if it was a flag in the wind.

      Was he still living there at the border where the flag of the kingdom was raised? The letter in her hand suddenly stilled and flared into the same blue fire color of Louise's eyes.

      And then, the small bird that appeared in her hand adorably tilted its head to the side before letting out a tiny chirp. It flitted through the air, circling the tower once before flying north.

      "...reach him."

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