According to History

My mother used to say that the truest fairy tales are found in the margins of diaries and in the spaces between ordinary days, where love learns to endure quietly. When she departed this world for another, she left me her journal — a record of a love that transcended realms, seasons, and even fate itself. Born of this love, it is my duty as daughter, scholar, and witness to carry their words into the Eternal Library.

My name is Penn Edgewood, First Order Historian of the Elemental Realm. As the daughter of the couple who united our worlds, I am honoured and duty-bound to record their story where it will remain accessible to all. Following the merging of the realms, love is no longer regulated by fate-binding. It is now free to anyone brave enough to open their heart — a daunting prospect, yet one our history proves possible. This archive exists to reassure those still searching that true love can be found.

Reader, this is the story of two individuals who searched for, found, and held true love. Let us begin…

Dear Historian,

We hereby offer you the beginning of our love story.

Elle and Alder Edgewood

I’m unsure where to start or whom to address. I know these stories serve as records, preserved for remembrance, but you must understand how strange it feels to be seen in such an intimate moment. It is a beauty that begs to be shared, yet one you wish to keep close, safe from the world’s harsher edges.

My name is Elle. I am a Fae of the Ember Realm, a second-order herbalist and the fated mate of Alder, a medic of the Winter Realm. This is where it all began — with a letter to an old friend…

Dear Alder,

I tried to find you in the laboratories, but you must have already left. Runa told me your news — congratulations on your appointment as First Order Medic. The Winter Realm will be better with you there, though I cannot deny we will miss you dearly… especially me.

I will miss our summer afternoons in my garden, talking about pharmaceutical botany — a subject we were both far too passionate about. The Academy will not be the same without you, and you should know there will always be a place for you here in Ember.

My fate-binding approaches, and it consumes me like one of my beloved flytraps. You once mentioned your own experience beneath the autumn sun; I hope I am not reopening old wounds by asking… do you have any reassuring words?

With best wishes,

Elle

Dear Elle,

Thank you for your letter. I regret not saying goodbye properly. It is an honour to join the First Medics — work I intend to give my full attention.

I will miss the academy more than I expected. Ember suited you — the light always seemed to follow where you stood.

Regarding your fate-binding: I understand the uncertainty. I remained unmatched after mine, yet you have always stood apart from the rest of us. If anyone is meant to find their match, it is you.

Write whenever you wish — about botany or matters closer to the heart.

With respect,

Alder

Dear Alder,

It’s been two weeks since I received your last letter, and I’ve rewritten this reply more times than I care to admit. I told myself I would wait until my fate-binding was over, but patience has never been one of my strongest virtues. Plants grow slowly; I do not.

This morning, while I was trimming peppermint leaves for Rosa’s tea, the sweetest gardenia scent drifted into the kitchen. Along with it came the memory of your voice — so certain and passionate — as you explained its antioxidant benefits and all the ways I could incorporate it into my own brews. I found myself smiling at nothing and realised how quiet the room felt without you, turning every plant into a new discovery. More than anything else, it made me want to write to you.

So, back to Rosa. She’s expecting a daughter in early spring, and the academy is already speculating whether the little girl will follow in her mother’s footsteps as a medic or her father’s as a herbalist. I’m rooting for the herbalist — call it botanical intuition. However, I’m worried that the pressure is getting to Rosa, and I was wondering if you knew of any remedies to ease her worries.

My tea helps a little, but anxiety clings to her like stubborn ivy. I find myself wishing for your steady hands and annoyingly sensible advice. If worry were a weed, Rosa would have an entire field by now, and I suspect you would already have drafted a treatment plan while I am still writing this letter. Some things never change.

Runa still refuses to laugh at my jokes, which proves that she has no appreciation for my botanical genius. She says I get my sense of humour from my mother, a fact that I will proudly accept. Have I ever told you much about her? Although she was a medic, she was the one who introduced me to botany and the quiet comfort of a well-brewed cup of tea. I visited Winter with her once when I was younger — she served under Queen Luca at the time. I remember the light dancing on the snow like frost on glass; it was bright even in the quietest hours. There was a kind of peace in it that I didn’t fully understand at the time.

Has Winter changed since I last saw it? Tell me honestly: does it feel that way to you?

With warmth (and peppermint-stained fingers),

Elle

Dear Elle,

It is Snowfall here. I’m unsure whether you had time to experience it during your visit to Winter, but it is truly beautiful… and freezing. Even after a year, I find myself unprepared for the cold. Still, I have begun to understand what keeps people here — the brightness of the snow, the quiet that settles over everything, and a curious cream made from honey, sage, and strong coffee. I suspect you would approve of it.

Please give Rosa my best wishes. I remember the unrelenting pressure at the academy all too well. Your instinct to help her is a good one. Peppermint is a powerful herb, and I have found myself noticing its delicate, sharp scent more often since you mentioned it.

Enclosed in the satchel attached to this letter is a small concoction we use here in Winter — peppermint, lemon balm, and crushed rose hip berries. Three drops in a steaming cup of water each day should help ease anxious thoughts. Let me know if it proves useful, and if there are other ways I might assist. The academy remains close to my thoughts.

And Elle — though you have not mentioned it yet, I suspect your fate-binding will occur before this letter reaches you. I wish you steadiness and clarity when that moment comes. You will be in my thoughts.

With warmth,

Alder

Dear Alder,

I never witnessed Snowfall myself, though I’ve read countless accounts from our historians. They describe it as something just shy of a fairytale — quiet, bright, and impossibly still. And yes, Alder, when you next visit you are required to bring me several cups of that honey-sage drink. I am beginning to suspect it was the true reason Winter claimed you, simply to tempt me with stories of its comforts.

Your letter arrived three days ago, on the very morning of my fate-binding, can you believe the timing? Before I say anything else, thank you for the tincture. It worked wonders on Rosa’s nerves, and she is expected to welcome her daughter by the end of Ember Heating Season. Perhaps you might come and meet the little sprout when she arrives. The Academy would be brighter for it… and I think I would be too.

As for my own fating — it went well, I think. I believed my nerves would settle once the bloodletting and matching were complete, but instead they seem to have taken root somewhere deeper. Now I wait for the results, and I suspect the waiting is far worse than the ceremony itself. Perhaps I should borrow a dose of Rosa’s tincture — though I doubt it would quiet my thoughts for long.

I find myself missing the calm way you explain things when I begin to spiral into possibilities. You always had a way of grounding me — gently, without making me feel foolish. I imagine you would tell me, in that maddeningly steady voice of yours, that the numbers are in my favour and that I should simply breathe.

In the meantime, I have consumed an unreasonable amount of ice cream and cannot decide whether the fluttering in my chest belongs to nerves or sugar. Likely both.

With warmth — and far too much nervous energy,

Elle

Dear Elle,

It may seem indulgent, but I invested in the new sending powder so our letters may travel between realms in only a few days. With your fate-binding results approaching, the distance felt… unnecessary. I hope you do not mind that I made the decision on your behalf.

If the timing holds, this letter may reach you on the very day your results arrive. Though I cannot stand beside you in that moment, know that I am only a few days’ ink away.

I wish you steadiness — and perhaps a reasonable amount of ice cream.

Alder

Dear Alder,

I love the idea of the sending powder. I feel closer to you already.

Your letter arrived in the same delivery as my fate-binding envelope, but I opened yours first. I knew your words would steady me — and they did. Thank you.

I thought it might feel less frightening if I opened the results while writing to you. Perhaps it makes me feel less alone.

The envelope is thick — heavier than I expected. Beige, sealed with the infinity stamp of the Department of Fates. Was yours like this? Does it mean they found my match, or is it simply a letter of consolation? I realise I’m rambling. My hands are shaking a little.

All right. I’m opening it now.

…

Alder, I’m not sure how to continue this letter. Perhaps I should wait until you receive your own, but by now you must be wondering what I mean.

No — I cannot wait.

You may already have a letter on its way explaining everything.

Alder… I have been matched with my mate.

Elle

Dear Elle,

I—

I began this letter three times and found no words equal to the moment. Forgive the unfinished line you may have received before this one. I needed time to understand what your letter meant… and what it allowed me to finally say.

Your message reached me only minutes before the official notice arrived by Fae post. I read your words first. I am grateful that I did.

I do not know how to write this gently, so I will write it honestly: I felt relief. Not because fate has decided for us — but because it has given me permission to speak without fear of losing you.

From the first day I met you at the academy, your hair untamed by the wind, your smile offered without hesitation, you crossed the distance between us as though it had never existed. You embraced a stranger as if I had always belonged there, and I have carried that warmth with me ever since.

I told myself for years that friendship was enough. It was safer to stand beside you quietly than to risk stepping beyond what we were. I would rather have been your friend forever than lose you to a truth spoken too soon.

But I can no longer pretend that what I feel is only friendship.

Elle… I have loved you in silence.

I do not know how this revelation will sit with you, and I will not ask for more than you are ready to give. Fate may name me your match, but your heart remains your own. If you choose to walk this path slowly — as friends first, as something more in time — it would be my greatest honour to discover what we might become together.

With hope,

Alder

Dear Alder,

I remember that day.

You stood there in your familiar black, arms full of books as though the weight of the world belonged to you alone. The colour sharpened the green of your eyes, though I did not understand then why I noticed something so small. I told myself it was your strength that drew me closer, but it was never that. It was the way you looked at me, as if you recognised something I had not yet discovered in myself.

When I embraced you, you were still a stranger. And yet you felt like an old memory, a story I had known long before I heard it spoken aloud.

I think I have always carried that moment with me.

I dream of it sometimes — your first words, steady and warm, like a promise waiting patiently to be understood. Every letter we have written since feels like an echo of that beginning, a path that led us quietly here.

I wrote to you again after the academy because I missed more than our conversations, I missed the way you made the world feel steadier, clearer, kinder. I did not know then that I was searching for you.

But I know now.

I love you, Alder. I think some part of me always has. I only needed time to recognise the shape of it.

With hope,

Elle

Dear Elle,

I am on my way to you.

With love,

Alder

Reader, this is where the record ends — and where their story truly began.

Years of love followed, shaped not by fate alone, but by friendship, patience, and the quiet courage to choose one another again and again. When my parents came to the Eternal Library in the final season of their lives, they placed these letters into my hands with smiles that carried the warmth of every year they had shared. They did not speak of destiny as something given — only of love as something tended, like a garden that grows stronger with care.

I have lived my life beneath the shelter of that love. It shaped the way I see the world, the way I believe in softness, in kindness, in the gentle power of choosing another soul.

So I place their story here not only as a historian, but as a daughter, with gratitude for every quiet moment that came before me, and with a love that will always reach toward them.

If their words have found their way to you, reader, may they remind you of what my parents taught me without ever needing to say it aloud:

be brave enough to choose love, always.

— Penn Edgewood

First Order Historian

and proud daughter