Marie's Letter

Description
Though not explicitly authored by Madame Marie, Sam finds this letter when clearing out her desk. It's in an unmarked envelope and shows clear signs of age, and simply has a small ink mark on the front instead of an address. Given that it was sealed, Sam debates reading the letter, but eventually chooses to open it. It seems to be address to Marie's grandmother, whose footsteps Marie is attempting to follow.

The letter offers several unclear implications about Marie, and is the first instance of her not being shown as the 'most renowned psychic in in the Northern Hemisphere'.

The letter reads as follows:

"I have thought long and hard about whether to write this letter. What it might constitute if I do. I work hard; I know I work hard. I am trying to follow your footsteps, grandma, but I will never be the witch you once were. The shop is dying around me, I can feel it. The friendly miasma of good energy you manifested here over your long, long years is lifting, and leaving behind dusty shelves and herbs that crumble to dust when I touch them. I’m at a loss. I’m aching. I don’t know what to do.

''I can tell you almost anything you could want to know about the arcane. How it can manifest in good faith in the right conditions but under the wrong ones it infests, infects, corrupts, like mould between tiles. It blooms and spreads, without moral virtue or malice. It simply is, as it always was, and has, and always will. In this sense it’s like water. Necessary for life. Refreshing and beautiful and utterly divine. But you can still drown in it, and it can be used to torture, and over time, it will wear even the biggest rock down to sand.''

''I know there is arcane energy everywhere. I know it is a part of me and I am a part of it and I am part of an infinite spool of infinite threads, or an impossible weave of so many threads its impossible to understand the connections. I know I am a part of this world and its a part of me and there is a place for me in it, and that place is here, as I am. Present but functionally useless. Able to advise but never able to practice. Doomed to be inches away from the thing I want the most, within spitting distance, but bound implicitly to never get even slightly closer.''

''I want what you had, what I saw you had when you danced at the edge of the solstice fire, bare and beautiful in the orange glow in the depths of the moonless night. I want to feel the power move through me the way I saw it move through you. But it never comes.''

And so I hope you will forgive me.

''You taught me to listen and be still. You taught me to hear the creatures thrumming invisibly all around us, how to see things that are only very slightly there, how to let the arcane come far enough into the real to be glimpsed, even touched. So I know you will not understand what I have to do. But I have to save this place you loved so much because you are gone now and its all you have left''

''If I just sit here and know my place, my home – your home – it will die around me. I can feel it. I can feel it drawing the final shuddery breath that will make the rattle of death. And I can’t let it be. I cannot. I know I am supposed to. I know it’s what you’d have wanted me to do. And I know in bigger, cosmic ways you are not gone, and you are simply all around, like the arcane always is, returned to it, as you should be. But. I am not as great or good as you. I never was. And for all your lessons you could never teach me enough to make me your true successor and I think for all the love you poured on me you knew that, because you really could listen, and you must have seen who I really am and what I would do if it came to this. And you must have known that it would come to this. You always did know.''

''So I have to think you will forgive me for what I am going to do. Not because it’s right or I am entitled to your grace or anything like that but just because I have to believe that in some way you knew I would do this.''

''Otherwise why would you give me the Little Book of Big Magic at all? Couldn’t you see how it’s a guide to greatness?''

''Isn’t arcanism about give and take, anyway? Isn’t it about learning there is always a price for power? So you must have known I’d be willing to pay whatever charge to let me be worthy of your legacy, grandma. Or you wouldn’t have given me the book.''

Would you?

''I am sorry, grandma. I love you."''

History
Though the dates are approximated, we can assume that this letter was written in the early 90's as it would be before Marie's rise to fame. That happened when Anna and Kitty were still infants according to Nagisa's letter, and therefore would be about 30 years ago.

Appearances

 * SBR 1.24: Indolence