He laughed. "I wouldn't care if El wrote every day to tell me what clothes she'd laundered as long as she wrote. It's silence that's scary. I'd be afraid she'd forgotten me." He observed her flush, then added, "But I don't think saying you're worried about something between you is quite the same thing. It's no good trying not to remind him you're a lot younger than him if he knows it already."

"I don't want to act young, is all," Goneril replied, straightening up a little, as if that would make her seem older. "I have an inwkell here, that Fiona lent me. I can...anything I write, it will go directly to him. But then I have to wait for him to send mail the usual way. So it's...frustrating, a little bit," she admitted. "That he won't ever have to wait to hear from me, and I will."

"That doesn't seem quite fair," he said. "But it would take double the time if you were writing to him the usual way. You'd have to wait for your letter to reach him, and then again for his to reach you, so at least it isn't quite so long."

"I know," Goneril replied, nodding. "And he'll have to wait for his letters to get to me, even if he does reply right away. So it is fair, after the first batch of letters that I just sent to him. But he did say he's going to wait till he opens a few and reply all at once."

"This letter-writing thing is complicated," he said. "By the time he answers one question, you might have already sent three others."

She bit her lip. "Yes," she answered. "And I'm not sure what the protocol is. If I should wait for him to write before writing again, or if it's all right to just keep writing. Or if that would bother him."

"I would wait. I imagine it would be like someone askin' so many questions that you don't have time to answer. Plus if you're already worried about the letters you've sent up to know, you're only going to worry yourself more wondering what he thinks of these next ones." He was fumbling around for the right word. "Like how you can talk to someone for a while and get an idea of the things you can talk about and the things you should avoid."

Goneril sighed. "I'm terrible at that," she said. "I never know what to avoid. I don't understand why people should have to avoid things."

"I don't know either but you do, sometimes. When you get to know someone better you can talk about anything. Or if you don't particularly care what anyone thinks of you. But most people do care about that, at least a little."

"I do care," Goneril replied. "I'm just bad at it. Figuring it out," she explained. "Why people wouldn't like you for just saying what you're thinking, especially if it's right."