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‘Don’t beat yourself up too much,’ said Garovel privately. ‘And most importantly, don’t let this experience dissuade you from doing things like this in the future. It’s impossible to know how someone is going to react, but that doesn’t mean you should stop trying to do nice things for them.’

He supposed the reaper had a point. And it was still true that the rest of the Blackburns seemed to like it. He just hoped he hadn’t made things worse, somehow.

He’d have to check in on them later.

In the meantime, there were more things to see to. He could’ve started showing off the shrine to the other Houses, but after that disaster, he wasn’t much in the mood for it. Maybe he’d ask Ms. Rogers to do it for him. Or just wait until the rest of the Rainlords got back from Vantalay.

He had a mountain of mail to go through. That was one thing that Ms. Rogers had indeed been helping him with, but he wanted to handle some of it himself, at least. If nothing else, it was interesting to see all the random things people were sending.

There was food. Lots and lots of food. Cakes and pies and bread and cookies. Oh, and a big, insulated box full of frozen meats from a family farm out in Lorent. Apparently, they wanted him to pay them a visit and give him a tour. That was a new one.

Then there were the letters, of course. So many letters. But it was usually the handwritten ones that caught his eye. There was something about those that just seemed that much more important. Because the others often turned out to be veiled--or even not-so-veiled--solicitations from businesses or lords. They always wanted to set up some meeting or another to talk about some “opportunity” or another.

While it did feel a bit rude to ignore all of them, he just didn’t have the time or inclination to think about such things, right now.

But yeah. The handwritten ones. Those always felt a bit more special, even though they occasionally turned out to be no different by the time he got halfway through the first paragraph. All the good ones made up for that nuisance, though.

A little boy had written to him. Age of seven, according to the kid’s own declaration in the very first line. Apparently, he wanted to know how Hector had gotten so brave. And he wanted advice on how he could become braver himself.

Talk about hard questions.