a wrinkle in time | kelsier van dam oneshot

My Dear Boy,

I am sorry for the late response and I hope that I have not kept you waiting for very long. It is and always shall be a joy for me to receive letters from those who have chosen to read my stories but I often tend to struggle with the appropriate words to send back. I am better at the words that come unbidden from the stem of myself, rather than the ones needed for a reply.

I am flattered that you found my book suitable enough to relieve you of your boredom for at least a few moments. I am further mollified that you would take the time to write me as well. Though my sarcasm is strong, it also holds a nugget of truth. (You are inflating my head with your kind words.)

I am sorry to hear of your broken leg and hope that it has not been too much of a discomfort to you. It is morbidly funny to me that you identify yourself with the boy in the story, rather than the sparrow with a broken wing who has lost it's ability to fly and therefore it's freedom- much like yourself.

However, it is a very large thing to understand that you are not what you think you are to your parents. Like the boy in this story, I was also at a very young age when I came to grasp this myself, which is where the inspiration came for it I suspect. I am happy that you picked up on the general theme of the story; a lot of the time I put my words out there for people to understand as they will, my hopes that they might get the meaning often shattered.

The boy in this particular story is not myself. I do not write memoir pieces, but I do stretch the memories I have into pieces of fiction. You are correct in assuming that this is a piece based on the boy's loss of innocence. It is a story about a boy realizing that his God is nothing more than a human being and that sometimes those that you idolize are not the people you should be looking up to at all. You were correct about many things and one day I should like to read more about what you have analyzed, do feel free to write again.

Yours,
K.V.D.

My Dear Sparrow,

I apologize, my last letter to you must have become lost in the mail. It happens every now and then and I wonder just how many letters I do not receive as a result. I wonder if there are people out there, waiting to hear back from me who never will. Here I am, working diligently at my typewriter, writing letters upon letters that may very well never reach their destination. It seems rather futile but I soldier on I suppose. In the end, I'd rather try then do nothing at all.

A birthday! I offer you my early or late congratulations depending on when this letter reaches you before or after the occasion, or if it even reaches you at all. Suppose I'm sending words out into the void right now? How depressing.

It matters not to me what your gender is. If you identify with the boy, then to me that is who you are. Today if you are a Sparrow, than I will refer to you as such. I understand the feeling of not wanting to be who you are. I wish I could tell you that it goes away but it would be a lie.

You are wrong, by the way. The story does not have a happy ending. Perhaps for everyone else it does, but not for the man with the basket or the woman with the dim light in the fog. I assume at this point that you understand that the man with the basket is the sun and his wife the moon. For the rest of his life, the man will chase his wife through the sky and he will never reach her. She will be deaf to his shouting and forever run on ahead in the hopes of reaching home again and the embrace of the man who chases her tirelessly.

The boy in the story is selfish. He is the one that made it so. If it were not for him, perhaps the man would have found his wife and they could have been reunited. The child tore them apart and ruined their love. He should never have interfered in their lives.

I am sorry if I sound harsh. I've never done well with words that were meant to console.

I look forward to your next letter.

Sincerely Yours,
K.V.D.

Sparrow,,

I must say that I've been enjoying this back and forth. It is not often that I manage an entire conversation with a reader through letters. As I'm sure must be common knowledge, many believe that I am rather shy due to the fact that I have never shown my face and I tend to keep to myself. As a result, I don't tend to hold many conversations and I do not have many acquaintances friends much regular correspondence. It's been a refreshing change.

Truthfully I am nervous about The Foretold. It's my first attempt a novel and I didn't think that I had the skill to write one. It doesn't matter how many letters I get or how often I'm told that I have talent. Confidence is key when it comes to writing and I don't really have much. I wanted to write a story that could comment on the social and political dangers in this time that we live in, but subtly. I wonder of you might spot the parallels. Please do share with me what you find.

Ah. It was less a scandal than a break for freedom. I decided that I was finished with living under the thumb of a woman who could barely pretend to love me. It was only a scandal because she spread the story of my betrayal like wildfire for the attention that it would gain her. I live without her now. I am happier for it. I don't mind you knowing this, the formality of these letters make things strangely informal. I have received hundreds of letters asking about what happened with my mother and I always burn them. I don't like to think about it because you are right. The past is the past. It does no good to dwell on it.

I won't burn your letter though.

Yours,
K.V.D.

Sparrow,

I was in a very dark spot when I wrote that story. Things are better for me now. I live on my own with a woman named Eva who cares for me and somehow I feel safer with her than I ever did with my mother. I know that this is rich coming from me, and I might be crossing a line here but it's important to make sure that your personal safety comes first in all things. In the end, no one is going to look out for you but yourself. In the end, you are the only person that you can trust. It took me a while to understand that but when I did, the desire to freeze to death left me very fast. the feelings that led me to write that piece went away.

I don't know what your situation is, but maybe you should find your own freedom too. It is lonely here but it is less painful.

I've been working on a new set of short stories lately in between working on the sequel to my novel. These ones are less angry, less resentful. I wrote one with you in mind actually, the girl with the broken leg who thinks she is a Sparrow. I hope that you'll like it and that you won't be angry that I wrote about you.

I hope that The Foretold helps your mood. Elend and Simon are one of my favourite topics to write about. I really cannot wait to find out what you think. Your opinion has come to matter a great deal to me.

Yours,
K.V.D.

P.S. It's alright about the water spots.

His hands shook.

It had come in a plastic sleeve, just like each letter always had. That was how it was done, in order to remain anonymous and safe from anyone finding him, each fan letter was sent to his publisher rather than straight to him. Before Kelsier read the letter, they had to be decontaminated, put into plastic sleeves and sealed by the office staff in order to ensure that he could not pick up any illness from them. They came from unknown people and millions of other letters could have touched them in the mail and that could mean millions of different contagions in the air. A piece of paper could be deadly for him and so it had to be done this way.

He had been excited when the familiar grey paper had shown up in the stack delivered to him. It had been nearly a month and a half since his Sparrow had written to him and he was beginning to wonder if she had given up on any and all correspondence. Before Eso had arrived in his life, Kel considered her his only friend, despite the fact that he was still working up the courage to call her that.

Perhaps it was rude of him but in his excitement he skipped the first few letters that were on top of the one from The Sparrow in order to read it first. Out of all of the letters he got weekly, he always looked forwards to hers the most. She was one of the only people out there who truly seemed to understand his stories and he'd been waiting on her thoughts about his first novel for weeks now.

He scanned the letter, a little disappointed in how short it was, eyes barely picking up the words.

Then he read it again, this time slower.

His hands shook, violently.

Despite himself, he tore the seal open on the letter and pulled the thin sheet out, as if maybe he could banish the written words, could dispel an illusion but the letters formed the same words and the words formed the same sentences and the letter reached the same end as it had before.

He couldn't believe it.

Nora.

Her name was Nora Winters.

Sending the letter to him had been his final wish.

He pushed the back of his hand against his mouth to keep from crying out as his eyes welled up with tears.

The idea that she was dead did not seem real. He knew that it took a week or two for mail to get sorted and handed out and that meant that she was dead already, he was reading the words of a dead girl and he couldn't quite believe it. He didn't want to believe it.

Carefully, he read each word again. Teardrop marks from last time's letter marked the page again and with horror he traced one.

"....I’m being executed tomorrow for attempting to flee The Capitol...."

He could not fathom why she would attempt such a thing. Everyone knew that life was good for Capitolites, that it was bad for those in the Districts, the children of those that had betrayed the ancestors of the Capitolites. Everyone knew that. Kel wouldn't recall read about anyone ever fleeing the Capitol before. It was a bad idea. He couldn't understand why she ha-

"I don't know what your situation is, but maybe you should find your own freedom too."

No.

He clutched the letter to his chest and bent forwards over it, as if keeping it safe and held near to him could save the girl from the letters, could save the life of Nora Winters.

People had told him that words could change lives, that things he had written would one day do the same. He'd been reading a memoir about a man from before Panem, who'd said that the pen was mightier than the sword. He'd thought long and hard about it but he couldn't see what a pen might do against an army, what a pen might do about anything. He couldn't see how anything that he could say could change anything so drastically.

Had he helped send a girl to her death?

Had he given her the resolve to try for escape, like he had?

No.

No.

That wasn't what he had meant.

"Nora, that's not what I meant," he whispered in an anguished voice to the carpet in front of him. His head couldn't wrap itself around the idea. Kel knew that people died everyday, someone was always dying but never anyone Kel knew. Granted, that was because he barely knew anyone. He was too afraid of people to know anyone well. He'd thought he'd known Nora though, at least a little.

Now she was dead.

Just as she had promised him, she had become what she'd said she was.

She'd become the Sparrow and for the second time in his life, Kelsier Van Dam could nothing as someone took her away and threw her out.

All she'd had was a broken wing.

His Sparrow.