### Aurel Bălan --- The Bălan clade

> systime 232 (2356)  
>
> Lagrange---Pollux transmission delay:  
> 45 days, 10 hours, 7 minutes
>
> Lagrange---Castor transmission delay:  
> 48 days, 3 hours, 52 minutes
>
> Lagrange---Artemis transmission delay:  
> 50 days, 5 hours, 40 minutes

All,

You'll have to forgive a rather rambly sort of letter, as it's currently being co-written by two Bălans and two skunks. Aurel was just forked,[^justforked] and the four of us are sitting out in Douglas's field along with him, E.W., Debarre, and a few other friends after having a small potluck of sorts. There wasn't any real reason for the get-together other than it's snowy at our sim, the skunks were whining, and it's always nice here. What started as a plan for Ioan, May, Sasha, and Douglas to have a picnic blossomed on a whim to something of a party.

As parties go, it's been a very laid back one. We all brought some food along with us --- the Bălans brought *musaca*, May Then My Name made a cake, Sasha brought a few roast hares, and so on --- and set up some tables out back of Douglas's house to eat.

Not to be outdone, A Finger Pointing and Vos, one of the other techs from the theatre, set up a small bar where they started making outlandish cocktails based on what they thought each of us wanted, rather than anything we asked for. They've had about 70% hits, 30% misses, so far, which is pretty good, all told.[^rambly] May currently has a drink that seems to be something between melted chocolate ice cream and brandy. It's quite good, but so rich that we can all only handle small sips of it at a time. Ioan got stuck with vodka and soda water. One of those "why bother?" drinks. Are the Bălans really so boring as to suggest vodka sodas?

A Finger Pointing's up-tree instance, Where It Watches The Slow Hours Progress, played a baffling...I guess party trick on us earlier that I think some are still recovering from. She suggested we play "two truths and a lie with a twist" and, after May explained what "two truths and a lie" was, we all agreed.

Unfortunately, the twist was that she went around and, for each of us, told us two things that will probably happen to us in the near future and one thing that definitely wouldn't, then set us to discussing which of ours we thought was the lie. None of the things she said were all that big or consequential, and certainly none were cruel or sad, but while the conversation that ensued was quite lively, it wasn't exactly fun, either.

She looked quite proud of herself for that. It was all very Odist.

Marsh, Vos's partner, broke the tension by singing a song while Douglas played along on flute. It was achingly beautiful and I think all of us have made a point to hunt them down for more music in the future. They also embody a lot of vague gender thoughts that Ioan and Aurel have been talking about of late, so they'll have some thinking to do.

Debarre has promised us firework. He only really needs one to impress, so we're all looking forward to it.

Mostly, though, we've just been doing that sort of talking about the past where one of us will name the subject of a memory as though reading off the label on a file folder, and we will all smile and sigh, or groan and laugh, or roll our eyes. It was one of those discussions that didn't need a whole lot of words, since it was all just a flow of shared memories passing back and forth among the lot of us.

Partway through, Ioan suggested that we share these with the clade, which then turned into sharing just the little things, too, not just relying on grand events to spur a letter. More stuff like this, really. It's a good day, today! Not special, just good. We should be able to share our everyday weal as well as our occasional woe.

And, after all that the last decade has held for us, we really have wound up in a comfortable sort of happiness. It's not perfect. We still run into crossed boundaries and areas of friction, we have our bad days and misunderstandings. There aren't any aliens, though, and no one's life is at risk if they enter a public sim --- not for the time being, at least. It's nice to collect these quotidian happinesses, too, to enjoy them while they last. 

It's getting dark now, and the singular firework is coming, so we should probably set this self-indulgent exercise aside for the time being. We're going to write our own segments when we get home to attach to the end of this letter, but for now, we're going to get another drink --- this time of our choosing --- and enjoy the rest of the night with friends.

We hope that you all also have the chance to enjoy your everyday happinesses, that you can have picnics that get out of hand, and that you can surround yourself with some really, truly strange friends.

With all the love in the world,

Ioan, Aurel, May, and Sasha

#### May's addendum:

I do not know if it is strange of me to say "I am happy that we are fading into obscurity" or not.

A part of me hopes that it *is* strange. That part hopes that we always find some small amount of wonder at the things that we did in this world, and that we were still somehow able to return to comfortable unimportance. It has been centuries since we were nobody.

Us being what we are, this move towards irrelevance is an intentional one. It is not simply that we are done with our tasks, nor that we are no longer able to keep up with the world around us, though there is some truth to both of those. We are pushing ourselves back towards this nobodyness as both a way to finally take full and complete ownership of our lives and to relinquish the death-grip that we held on the past.

Such grand statements! We will remain ourselves even into obscurity, I suppose.

Imagine, though, the freedom that comes with being a nobody! What wonders boredom holds! If Ioan and I have a particularly good dessert, that is something that we can think about for *weeks.* It will be the biggest thing to happen to us in a month. We can talk about that cheesecake that we had years later, remembering just how perfect it was, how it was not simply cheesecake, but **cheesecake**. We can think back on that, sigh, and then, as we did tonight, simply label that memory aloud and share a moment of happiness.

The large becomes incomprehensible in such a life, and the small becomes important. Given that there is no shortage of small events worth remembering, well...a boring life is no bad thing.

May your lives be occasionally boring in the best possible way. I love you all.

#### Aurel's addendum:

I've just said goodnight to Ioan and May and closed the door between our places. Every time I rejoin Sasha, we take a week to ourselves. Just us. No shared dinners or going out together. It gives me a way to switch contexts from what I remember as Ioan into how I know to act around Sasha, and it gives her a week of slow reentry after however long alone (this last spell was about six months, which is on the long side for her, but you'll see why in her message).

We wrote about the very everydayness that we were finding enjoyable, such as the ability to just decide on a picnic on a whim and have it turn into a party. Well, one of the things that I enjoy about this time most of all is that Sasha and I spend this first week just focusing on domesticity. We cook every meal. We clean by hand. We go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time, go for a walk at the same time every day. Settling into a routine with her feels like a clutch engaging, a mechanical clicking-into-place of realities in some precise mechanism such that, by the end of the week, I find myself sitting back and marveling that it could ever have been any different.

It's still so interesting to me to see the ways in which this sort of happiness differs from the happiness that I have with May as Ioan. Ioan and May move in a comfortable, complementary almost-lockstep. Their life is a dance. It has its rhythm and its steps, and yet it still has the creativity of the music of their temperaments lying beneath.

Sasha and I have a life that is that mechanism with the clutch. It isn't an impersonal machine; more like a pipe organ, perhaps, or a loom than an engine. It's a framework for beauty. We move together in the ways that we must and with a sense of purpose that adds to our lives. On her end, I imagine that it comes from the memories from her life as True Name, but on my end, I think it comes from the fact that, knowing we'll part again after however many months, my purpose *is* our time together. There's no point in staving off the day when I wake up alone; it will come when it comes. The purpose is to be present.

You'll have to forgive me for being a bit mawkish. I always get like this when our relationship starts back up again. Add on the lingering alcohol, and, well, I'm not *not* crying.

There is little else to add other than she finally talked her way into going back to striped skunk again. I think even Jonas and the rest of the eighth stanza was tired of her whining about her species. She still has a few limitations on how she should look, but I don't think she wants to look like True Name anymore, anyway.

I'm going to do as I promised and make hot cocoa while she finishes up her note. I miss you all dearly. Write soon. 

#### Sasha's addendum:

I am going to lead with business.

I have attached two versions of the manuscript for *Ode*. One of these is for you all except for Dear, and one is for Dear alone. I have set visibility exceptions accordingly.

*Ode* is my attempt at telling the story of the Ode clade parallel to the Bălans' *History*. I could not tell that story without telling the beginning, however, and telling the beginning of that story means naming someone who hasn't been publicly named in almost two and a half centuries.

The two manuscripts are identical except that the version for Dear has all instances of the poet's name replaced with 'the poet'. I do not know what re-learning the Name would do to it, if it would do anything, but I would rather that be its choice that it can approach intentionally instead of having it forced upon it by my inattentiveness.

This project will not be released until systime 242 --- is it odd that my first project is something that I will not publish for years? Perhaps --- in order to provide the Ode clade sufficient time to prepare for the publication of the Name, as well as to give Jonas any time he needs to prepare for any political consequences. I have done my best to tell the story straight and have held back things that I know he would object to seeing in print. I do not want any more assassins after me.

I am not worried, though. True Name#Castor is firmly on my side and is slowly convincing True Name#Pollux and the rest of the eighth stanza here. They are working on a solution to getting this into both In Dreams and Hammered Silver's hands; I will not be the one to cross that particular boundary.

Business: done.

Every time I return, I feel like I have to do so deliberately, as though slowly releasing the tension on an elastic band lest it snap toward one's face. I do not know what me snapping would look like --- nothing violent, I am sure, though I do not pretend to be incapable of hurting others emotionally.

Aurel handles this beautifully. Ey is kind and patient, and we spend these first few days focusing on routine as the wild leaves my blood and I can settle back down into the type of person who can live with another, love another, and not feel hemmed in. May is lucky to have Ioan and Dear to have Codrin, but I am thrice-blessed to have Aurel.

I have gone and made myself cry. Ah well. I am not sorry. Aurel has made hot cocoa and there is a quilt on the beanbag and I am home.

Goodnight. I love you all.

#### Ioan's addendum:

From the author biography for the third edition of *Seven Hearts Turned*: 

> Rareș Bălan was born in 2215 in a small village in Cristești, Botoșani County, Western Moldavia, and often said that his own heart never left the village. His writing has been praised for its clear-eyed treatment of Eastern European lower-class life, and has garnered accolades from literary journals around the world, including *The Baltic*, *The Steel Nib Review*, and *Craft*. He died in 2268 and is buried in Cristești so that, true to his words, his heart will remain there.

I found this on a library trawl not too long ago. I don't know why I never thought to simply look him up by his name as an author. I guess I always thought that was my thing, and that maybe he wouldn't be interested. I'm kicking myself for such an assumption, now. Of course he can like writing. We were so alike, weren't we? I feel ashamed for believing otherwise. Perhaps I was just worried that I'd find him there, just as I have.

I was such a mess when I found it. I had to step home and just spend some time letting out a whole lot of overwhelming emotions all at once. It scared the shit out of May, but once she saw the book I'd dropped on the table, she understood and spent the rest of the day letting talk when I was able and cry when I wasn't.

I didn't even open the book --- I just read that right off the back cover and fell apart --- so you can imagine just how much of a mess I was when I finally managed to open it a few days later and came across the dedication *"For Ioan"* in the beginning.

Reading it has been slow-going for obvious reasons.

All of that talk about everyday happiness earlier, and all those words May wrote about living a boring life, and there's little I can add other than, yes, life does as it will, and a boring life is no bad thing. People are born and then, 53 years later, they die and are buried near where they grew up. Older brothers upload and the money that brings sends younger brothers to school, just as it was meant to. People see themselves in the pages of a book decades or centuries later and stop having so many unsettling dreams about those they left behind.

There's little that I can add here, knowing what May wrote, what Aurel will likely write, and what Sasha's sending along, so I guess all I can do is say, as always, all my love to you and yours. Be well.

[^justforked]: Five minutes ago. *Just* forked.

[^rambly]: Another reason for the rambly, overly-sentimental letter: none of us are exactly sober.
