Arri and Keish

October 10, 2003
Dear Arri,

This will have to be quick as Father has taken ill and I can only be away from him for a few minutes.

I wish you could leave before the 13th, but that will be fine. If Treany comes… well, we’ll figure something out, I guess. It would be best if she weren’t hanging around a lot, though.

That is an interesting story and I’m going to search through all of mother’s things to see if she has anything similar. After all, she wrote a lot of stories down. Perhaps if we have two versions of the story it will be more clear. Obviously it’s not meant to be exactly what happened, but I think your mother was trying to leave clues. I may have heard Mother’s version of the story, but you know my memory for fairy tales is dreadful. (Which never made sense to me, I memorize other things so easily…)

Do any of the other stories in the book have similar themes? Or the same characters? Or even that cave? Are the things in the picture with the lioness like the things in your dream of the cave? Wouldn’t that be an interesting connection.

You don’t suppose… well this might just be a wild thought, but do you think Pricille could be our other aunt? I mean, we were too young to figure it out if our mothers didn’t want us to know… I can’t even remember what she looked like. There was something about her that always made me think of fairy tales though. Wouldn’t that be an interesting twist? And it would make her son our cousin-- another Brio child. And, as you pointed out, the only child missing in our generation. I don’t know… and I certainly can’t bother Father with something like what Pricille looked like now, not while he’s ill.

I’d really better go to him, I think. I’m sorry this is so short.

Oh, have you heard anything from Tulson?
Love Always,