(no subject)

Dear Samael,

I'm sorry I had to leave so abruptly last night. It was a discussion that deserved better than that, but I had already stayed so much later than I intended...but still I am sorry.

I love you. I'm not leaving you. It occurred to me somewhere in the night that you might think that was what I meant. That if we couldn't move forward, I would go. I'm not going anywhere, not emotionally.

Physically, I just don't know where I'm going. Where I should be.

It is not that I begrudge you your relationships. I accepted you, knowing of them, allowing myself to fall in love with you anyway. And there is a gnawing fear in me that if I turn down your offer, you will just make it to someone more accepting.

Perhaps you should. Perhaps...

I know that I cannot truly apply the rules of my world to yours. That's not fair. In truth, the world I grew up in makes yours seem tame, save for the power you wield only slightly checked by your Lady. They would have done to you what they did to Daemon, or killed you outright in Terreille. But the sexual politics. I do not come from a monogamous society, not truly. Women choose the beds they please. Some men do as well, being taken by more than one woman. Others are bound to one but get their darker urges out in a Red Moon House. It is deceit and betrayal all 'round.

But since coming to Kaeleer, I've seen something different. I've seen men and women working as partners, truly as mates, building homes, territories, families. Both of them swearing fealty and faithfulness, though even here it is the woman's right to choose otherwise.

I had a dream when I was younger. I told you some of it. Of escaping that life to somewhere quiet, where no one made demands on me. Where, perhaps, I had a lover and things to amuse me. Perhaps one day a husband. Children. I was very young when the dream was shattered. When I realized that's not how things were and not what my life would be. Then I just dreamed that maybe, someday, I'd be able to rest in the arms of the man I loved. If not rest--at least have a respite in the lives we were forced to lead.

Then that dream was shattered as well.

It was only when I met Falonar that I started to dream again. To look around and think that maybe, just maybe I could belong. I could matter to someone in that way. And then there was Nurien, and I wasn't what he wanted, and I had to go.

You know all of this, just as I know you have been hurt and left and had others chosen over you. To offer me this place in your life must have taken a great deal of faith, hope and courage. I have said neither yes, nor no, out of respect for that. Out of a desire to truly know what it is you want from me, for us.

I still don't know. We have had things working as they are, it seems. You have your loves. We see each other when we please. We celebrate holidays together. We go and do things. I don't know when you are with someone else you love, and I am able to imagine instead that you are missing me.

And I have the same freedom.

But now it seems that you want more, without...And this is where it hurts. You want me to change everything. To move. To potentially break my contract with my Queen to move to another Realm. To leave the only family I have known. My friends. And yes, I could visit them, I realize this, and it would be no different were I to move into town. But it would be at the same time. You're asking me to leave my people. My mother. My culture. The world that I'm finally beginning to understand. My dearest friend. I can't even bring Graysfang, for how could I ask him to leave his pack?

Were I to come to you, everything would change. I would not feel I could...it would be wrong of me to go home, to carry on a relationship there, when trying to build something with you. It would undermine us. Neither should I use you to run from the problems there, but were I to come to you, I would be making a promise. I would be putting you first in my life. Dedicating myself to learning your way of life. Trying to understand this family you have that are so quick to accept me, but don't understand me any more than I understand them.

Everything for me would change.

You would have a constant companion should you wish her, but nothing else would. Think for a moment what you would have to give up if I asked you to come live in the Hall with me, or even Amdarh. While I haven't the dominion here that you have at your home, can you see...to fit in the things you would have to do. The constant scrutiny by my family, out of protection and love for me. Knowing if I was not in your bed, if I had not told you of some mission I had for Jaenelle or Lucivar, knowing where I was. Perhaps it would not bother you.

Perhaps, it is just a fundamental difference in our make-up.

I would never ask you to give them up. They were in your life before me. They have precedence, and I have never disputed that, or asked for more than you were willing to give to me. I would never condition our relationship on the abandonment of those you love. Never. The very thought is abhorrent to me.

But at the same time, I do not understand how we can move forward, build, change, when I am the only one changing. When I am sacrificing everything, and you nothing. It creates an inequity in the relationship that I am not willing to enter into again. It leaves me without employment. Without a purpose. Without my family. Without my friends. And it gives you everything.

I would give you everything, if I could, and perhaps a more loving heart than mine wouldn't even think these things. But I cannot help it. My life has made me what I am, and terror now...

It would be a risk, either way. Such things always carry a risk. A fear. Commitment is a terrifying thing for those such as us. But when you add inequity. When one party is the one giving up their entire life for the other...

Maybe I am a coward. Maybe I am selfish. Maybe I think in equities too much like a whore, feeling there should be some form of recompense. But I am what I am, and if I accept you as you are, then you must do me the same courtesy.

And if I am going to step out and away from everything I know and love for the sake of love for you...you should do the same for me. At least some token of a promise you will try and keep.

I cannot be the only one making sacrifices. I know myself. I will come to resent it. Resent you. Be angry and lash out and any such experiment is doomed to fail unless the playing field is equal.

It's equal as it stands. And if it is limbo and neither of us can move forward, then so be it. It is equal. We love. We see each other. And I am not leaving you. I am content to carry on as we are. Or if not content, then...willing. I will not leave because you will not consider things. I will be here for you, loving you, whenever you should want me.

But ... I cannot take such a step unless you can take it with me. Move out into the unknown with me. Know what you want. From me. From Luella. From Wesley. From whomever else you have dangling in your sphere. Be willing to meet me halfway, and I can consider moving forward. But I can't do it alone.

I won't.

I'm not that girl, love.

I love you. I will try and be free to speak with you sometime this week, but if I am not, I wish you a Blessed Christmas, and I will see you when I return.

Yours,
Surreal