Masquerade

Coming Home

  This is part of a trilogy, but each story can stand alone. The other parts are The Day of Heart Dance, and Birthday Kisses. Rated for explicit sexual scenes in later chapters.

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You're really coming home Cassie?

Honestly? I didn't just read it wrong? My eyes aren't playing me tricks and showing me the words I've been wanting to read for so long?

Do not worry about going to the masquerade before coming to see me, I can wait till the morning after. I know how much Rapunzel wants you there and it'll be enough for me just to know that you are finally close. Enjoy yourself Cassandra, enjoy being with Rapunzel and Eugene again, they have missed you as much as I have.

As for the work, the hot water has been installed throughout the land, and we have sold the technology to Equus, which has given a huge boast to the kingdom treasury, not least to mention that I received a quarter of the payment. Rapunzel says that now father spends every other year in the Dark Kingdom I should have my own house; I'm think of buying up a nice three-story town house by the Southgate - do you know the one? It used to belong to Lord Gunther. Though first I must rebuild Dad's farm, it's had so many explosions here I don't think the building is structurally sound anymore.

I hope its plain sailing for you from now on. I don't want you to get waylaid and miss the party. I'm sorry to have heard about your experience in the Bay of Bisborn. Just how did you manage to take out all those pirates at once? Or, as usual, are the rumours about your acts of heroism exaggerated? However many times you tell me they are, I still don't believe you. I think you're just being modest.

Seven years, I can't believe I finally get to see you after seven years. You're wrong to say that I will be disappointed, I could never be disappointed by you. What I want most is to hear your voice again, so that when I read your letters I can imagine the words being said how you would say them, and to know the ways your lips move when talking so I can imagine you in the room with me. I'm going to take in every singular movement, and gesture and habit, so it will be as if I have you there with me every time I open a letter.

In a few weeks we will see each other face to face. We will share our stories with each other, we will drink, and talk through the night. and we will get to know each other once again. Though from our letters I feel an intimacy with you beyond that I feel with the people around me every day - do you feel the same? I share so much with you, and you tell me your inner thoughts as if I was your most treasured confidant. Will it be as easy when we are actually together? Will we recognise each other as close friends, or will it be as if we're strangers who haven't seen each other in many years. I hope that our hearts will recognize each other, that we will know that the person in front of us is our close friend, words finally made flesh.

I hope that I hear your laugh, and it is everything I remember it to be. I hope that you will stay the entire summer and we will ride out together, have adventures and create new memories that we can treasure when we have to once again separated.

Am I saying too much? It's not all the things I wish I could say to you. But I will see you soon, and maybe that will make me bold enough to say the things that I dare not write.

I remain, as always your most loyal friend.

Varian

Cassandra folded the letter and gathered up the small bundle of papers she had been looking at. They were her most prized possessions, she looked down at the little sketches that Rapunzel had sent her. There were the familiar faces of her friends, her father, and some unknown faces, the new princesses. There in the corner of a colourful page, rendered in immaculate detail was Varian, familiar, but not familiar. Goofy smile, blue eyes, floppy hair, broad shoulders, and thin waist. He was drawn from the side, kneeling on the floor, hand still too large for his body, holding a little doll out to the delighted chubby toddler in a blue dress. The way they looked at each other, with such trust and delight, the picture was beautiful, she ran her fingers over the lines that made up his face wondering how close to life it was. It was just not the relationship on display that made the picture beautiful, the man himself reminded her of the pristine ancient statues of forgotten gods she'd seen on her travels. Fine featured, lean muscles, near perfect proportions.

Would their hearts know each other?

For two years now, every time she found a place to settle down she hungrily grabbed up her pen, writing her address down and sending it to Varian. Whenever she was on the road and not able to receive letters she longed for news, longed to know what he was doing, and his perspective on the world around him. His letters, at first the ramblings of a teenager whose head was full of projects she didn't understand, had over time become full of interesting things, so detailed and wise, and as time had gone by, she wrote back in kind, sharing her views and inner thoughts until those letters were the thing that sustained her when she felt lonely. As their words had grown in emotional intimacy something else had happened to their letters as well, they had started to be filled with a half hidden longing, a passion, nothing was said outright, they were always skirting around the edges of it.

Would he be everything she saw in his letters?

Would she be what he expected?

If she were honest with herself, she had come back for him.

She folded the pictures and put them in the leather satchel, along with the ring her father had given her and the purple gens that had belonged to a necklace broken long ago.

"Just a few more miles Fidella. Are you ready to go home?"