Chapter Text
H'ella never would have thought to describe anything Estinien did as tentative, and yet there were really very few ways to describe the way he wrote his letters—hesitant, awkward, strangely uncertain, as if he'd never had to write idle notes before. And maybe he hadn't? Or at least, not nearly often enough? When Elan had handed him the first one when he woke up after the Ghimlyt Dark, Ella hadn't been sure what to make of it—he was just glad, powerfully glad, to know that Estinien was doing well. He expected as much, but it was one thing to hear vague rumors and another to have something tangible to hold, even if the man himself was as scarce as ever.
When Aymeric had spoken of his rescuer, Mimi had gotten a funny sort of look about him, while Elan's gaze had snapped to Ella, intent on whatever he saw there. Ella was a little wary of asking, though he knew he probably should, sooner or later—Ella had been aware, all at once, of the smile on his face, ha. He had a pretty good guess as to what they were thinking, and mercifully, they seemed inclined to let things lie for now. Ella wasn't sure what he could say to them!
He'd started writing to Estinien on a whim and kept at it because—why not, really? Estinien up and left without saying much, and Ella would be a liar if he said that didn’t bother him at all, but Estinien was still a friend and writing to him, even if he didn’t reply—it helped organize his thoughts, the same way writing to G’raha did. At least with Estinien, there was a chance (and the vague, real threat!) he might see what Ella had written while Ella was still around to be self-conscious about it. Although—Estinien and Ella had seen each other do some truly hare-brained things, so! What was left to be self-conscious about?
Still, when he’d realized that, oh, huh, someone had given Estinien all his mail, it sure was…a feeling! Well, if he didn’t want Estinien to read any of it, he shouldn’t have given anything to Aymeric to begin with—and he did want to share things with Estinien, the same way he liked sharing with his other friends and family.
Anyway, the important bit was that Estinien was trying to reach out, even if sporadically, and largely via particularly intrepid mail moogles. Given how he’d reacted to the residents of Moghome, Ella could only imagine how well he liked that.
Getting his responses back to Estinien took a little more doing—the man was still basically in the wind, and so their correspondence was comically staggered; less a coherent, orderly conversation and more a jumble of thoughts tossed back and forth across the firmament as they each replied to something entirely different. If Ella didn’t hoard all his papers, it would have been a sight harder to keep track of things, that much was certain.
It meant that Ella could really only hope that Estinien got the letter or two about the Syrcus Trench expedition, and not just this or that about his latest mishaps. He wasn't entirely sure what to expect, but given that their mystery man had told him he would be heading to the First—Ella didn't want to just disappear if it could be helped.
Well. He could always leave something with Tataru and Aymeric, he supposed.