Dear Momma,

I died today. That was weird.

We were in the weird place with all the dead friends and Kepler was getting sicker so we had to find a way to leave even though everyone was nice and Poe made lotsa friends.

Kepler and Resa talked to a bunch of nice people who said there was a bad man who wouldn’t let people leave but we could go talk to him so we went to talk to him.

He said we’d have to fight him to leave and said only one of us could fight him. We kinda argued about it but then we did a vote and agreed I should do it. Which is good cause I was protecting my friends like you taught me. So my friends cast good magic on me and then me and the bad man fought a lot. He hit me real hard and stopped lots of my paladin stuff.

I lost the fight, Momma. It was real sad and scary because I didn’t want to lose and I didn’t want him to hurt anyone and I wanted Kepler to not be sick. And the man asked me to choose being his, um, servant or something, or sending my friends home. He said I could be powerful. He sounded real sure about it.

But I thought about when I was in paladin class and they said “there’s no greater strength than protecting good people from harm.” And my friends are real good people, Momma! So I told him to send them home. He was gonna kill me but I wanted them to be okay.

He got real mad and started doing something weird to me that definitely wasn’t going to send them home and that was the scariest part.

But then guess what! Grandfather showed up and stopped him! He yelled at the bad guy for not following the rules and threw him into a dark place, and then he healed me back to life and took us to talk to some gods.

When Grandfather first got there he looked like you and Papa and it made me miss you lots. I’m gonna make some ocean rolls for my friends soon cause they remind me of you.

Tell Ceri and Zuri I learned about a whole bunch of new spices so we gotta do another shellfish party!

Love you Momma,

Turquoise