The Reaper's Almanac

Eden: Third Letter

My Dearest Friend,

I have written this letter bearing grave news. For as long as we have been writing letters to each other telling the stories of the lives surrounding our charges, I seem to have never been able to get accustomed to life getting unfairly taken. I find myself thinking constantly about what could have been, and about if only we have the ability to help. I cannot fathom how we were gifted with long lives, only to continue witnessing the loss of somebody else's.

My charge has been with the King family for over 3 generations, and it would suffice to say that I had been quite glad it actually lasted that long. With the last person to possess my charge, I had been quite devastated. I hate the fact that it had been used, yet failing to yield the desired outcome.

Isabella Avery neé King was in an abusive marriage. I have watched how her husband beat and torment her, how he continued to manipulate her using words of love and broken promises. One fateful night, she had decided she has had enough, asked her ancestors for strength while she held onto the bullet as if she was holding on to the only thing that keeps her alive—and she was. She loaded the gun and waited for her husband to come home. She made him a feast and treated him with utmost care. Her husband was none the wiser as to what she had been planning to do. She took the gun, pointed it at him, and shot. But before she did, her husband had done something she thought he would never do again: a special romantic gesture that she had the pleasure of experiencing only when they were still courting. She redirected the gun before she fired. Unfortunately, it had only been another lie, another broken promise. Her hopes and dreams of the love she thought she once had become her undoing and caused a series of unfortunate events. The bullet she fired shot the horse of a carriage passing through their home. It killed a family of what could have been four together with their coachman, and quite possibly, another poor soul.

If only there had been a way to help poor Isabella out of her miserable state of affairs. If only there was a way to redirect the line of fire. If only we could help. But we can't. And we never could. I suppose that is life: unfair to all. Isn't that what makes it fair?

Yours evermore,
Eden