Coydog's Room, Red Dragon Inn
Dawn had come, and while the divot Tigan's body had left in the mattress remained, it held no warmth, giving no indicator of how long ago she had departed. Her earrings remained on the end table, next to a battery-operated teddy bear lamp and an old orange bake-lite radio. Sticking out from the flap of the Courier's satchel was a letter, written in a hand prone to flourishes and inconsistencies between letter sizes, unused to the ball-point pens found in the office supply box on the desk. It read as follows:
Dearest Coydog,
We simply must stop meeting like this!
Please, take that in jest. The delight you seem to take in me and the delights I most definitely take in you do wonders for my spirit, in ways that I can only hope to articulate through this correspondence. I set out with the wish to share the intimacies of my soul with you, yet the wishes of our skin have such a tendency to drown that out once we're left to our own devices. With your sleep-shallowed breath on my shoulder and hand on my breast I write, hoping to offer you a hint of clarity to the parts of my state of being that give rise to your fears, torn between a wish to quell them and a grave knowledge that those fears are quite founded.
I think on your discussions of the ghouls of your lands, souls transformed by an alchemical union whose parts find root in the greatest pits of human darkness. While the particulars may differ, we are not unlike they, as you have observed before. In both, I do believe the physical transformation allays some of piece of spiritual corruption, yet both ghouls and we still arise from human stock, with all of its quirks and cruelties represented. We too fear the day that our minds may calcify, yet our hearts face the greatest challenge, feeding as we do as parasites off of our former kinsmen. I feel that may be a contributing factor in the intensity of these menage-a-deux. "Make hay while the sun shines," to turn a phrase ironically.
A further irony is my thinking on your husband during these scant hours of solitude after our trysts. I feel no guilt on it, as I've kept company with Bart enough to know how deep and far his heart extends through those in his life. To me, he was introduced as a very different sort of ghoul. I knew him as young, strong and bitter to the pit of his heart. He remembers little from that time, and such is a blessing. Our blood does strange things to the human body. It does horrible things to the human spirit. Dare I say it, he is lucky to count you as his wife.
I can hear the wrens and robins begin their songs, which means that I must unfortunately leave your company. I hope that this sheds a bit of light on my world, and Bart's. I leave you with these ruby earrings for your barter. I find them too heavy for mine delicate ears, and hope they find a pleasant home.
Yours,
Tigan
PS: Do excuse the handwriting; though a mere hundred years sets to pass since my transformation this autumn, these fingers are a bit more suited to the typewriter than the pen.