A Letter to the Luminous Deep (The Sunken Archive, #1)

by Sylvie Cathrall

Yet, dear Henerey, my Brain is such a terrible force – picture it as your awful Chancellor Rawsel, if you will – that I can only keep its anxieties in check when I have precise control over my surroundings. When faced with the unexpected, I flail and lose my way, and find the trifles that once did not trouble me – such as whether I remembered to check the airlock or the details of troublesome conversations I had ten years ago – have suddenly become the most unfortunate calamities.

perhaps you understand how a lively mind can be as much of a burden as it is a gift. Mine tends to fixate on scenarios – memories – difficulties – and then embellish them with such detail that I feel as though calamities have actually happened, and I the cause of them. Even stopping in briefly for a mandatory appearance at the dinner parties our parents used to host when I was a young woman in my early twenties made me sick to my stomach, and I would spend days afterwards replaying and rewriting each word in my head until I was certain that I behaved abominably to everyone I encountered and that they would soon shame my name throughout all of Society.

In my estimation, I am wholly and inescapably in love with a woman whom I have met only once. What a charming surprise!

CRUMPLED DRAFT OF A LETTER WRITTEN BY HENEREY CLEL, 1002 My dear E., I have thought of nothing else but you and your letter over the past day or so, and I do not intend to start thinking of anything else anytime soon

As I descended the staircase and consulted a map of the Campus Tunnels, my Brain cut in once more: “You are not supposed to be here. You are not a Scholar. If they find you here without authorisation, you will be reproached beyond your wildest imaginings and perhaps even Sophy’s career will be ruined, thanks to you. Also, someone may kill you, I suspect.”