Dear Alphys,

Here's the letter I promised in my note! I hope you'll read this and forgive me for rushing off without another word (and Mom and Dad aren't plotting to literally chain me down the second I get back). Not sure if the post mark will be clear enough, but I'm in Bone Village at the moment! I'll include the address if you feel like writing back – I'd like that. I should be back in at most one week. I miss you. I know I probably seem like the worst person in the world running off like this, but I'm begging your forgiveness. It's kinda hard to explain why I did it. And this is going to sound so bad, but it's because of a girl who came to the village last week.

I haven't eloped! I still love you and I will still come home, but I wanted to help her. Her name is Aeris Gainsborough. She wanted someone to take her North and asked if I could. Obviously I said no, but turns out I could and should have just said yes. I mean, I like to think I've proven I'm perfectly capable of sailing - I made it here! Aeris wanted to get moving and wasn't prepared to wait. I told her she'd need to pay and she said money wasn't a factor.

Weirdly she outright asked which boat was mine and offered to buy it. As if I could sell. I told her it was more than she could afford. Alphys; she had a bag full of materia. Must have been enough to buy the whole town twice over. Greens and reds- Oh I was tempted. I could do so much with all of that. We could do so much with all that money. But I'd lose my boat.

I told her no and she accepted that. So I asked her where she was going. Weirdest answer: The Sleeping Forest. I can tell you straight off, she was like no archaeologist I've ever seen. Not even like one off TV or anything. But then, she didn't say Bone Village; she said the Sleeping Forest. That place people have to be dragged out of. Except she didn't- Getting ahead of myself!

I asked if Aeris had much experience on boats – nope. Short trip on a cargo ferry doesn't count for much. And somehow she figured she could pick up sailing as she went. I figured I had a few choices here. Sell her the boat and let whatever happens happen. Or leave her to be preyed upon by some unscrupulous types. Or I could go with her. I took some of the materia and struck a bargain. Get her North. I know I'm going to be in so much trouble for that, but I hope the gil we earn back will make up for it.

Aeris is weird. She spent so long distracted and she kept looking North. Sometimes I could swear she was listening to something I couldn't hear. And she talked a lot. Wanted to know everything. About you, the village, the boat, my parents. The odd points where I could ask her anything she said a lot but she always steered the conversation back to me. Best I could make out, she'd been travelling with some friends and left them behind to go North. She had lived in Midgar until something made her leave. And she'd walked from Gongaga. I don't want to speculate, but I think she left Midgar right around the time President Shinra was murdered. Don't think she did it though.

We made good time along the coast, venturing out into deeper waters where necessary and skirting around the scattered island chains that offered us the best and safest passage to the North. At Aeris's request, I taught her various aspects of sailing; another hand on the boat's always helpful! Something was making Aeris agitated and impatient to reach her destination. The further North we went, the more Aeris's attention wandered, the more she seemed to listen to something else.

There were other oddities too; I never felt tired while sailing with her, no matter how the weather affected us and seemed to keep us awake for hours. Food lasted longer than expected. And there was the weird night. Never really believed all those stories about the monsters in the Northern waters, but it was hard not to think about them while out there. Didn't sleep much and kept my spear to hand.

But Aeris was another matter; so easily distracted, unfamiliar with life at sea and without any kind of weapon. Did not want to sleep but had to – and did not sleep well. Bad dreams- And I don't know if the next part happened? There was a light that faded when I opened my eyes. And the sea was calm, the night clear, Aeris helming the tiller. No monsters. Still couldn't sleep but nothing ever came near the boat.

The moment we docked at Bone Village, Aeris headed right for the Sleeping Forest. All the workers stared at her as she walked through the excavation, though no one was concerned or panicked. They had seen this moment or one like it many times before. And not sure I've seen people as shocked and worried as they would be not even an hour later.

I asked Aeris if she was really going into the forest. She said she had to and gave me all the materia she had. The bag weighed a tonne! I tried to refuse it but she insisted. And I felt guilty. So I asked about after the forest. That... confused her. Like she'd never considered what she was going to do after. I figured (seemingly incorrectly) that she was going to meditate or the forest had some special significance for her. I wondered about her friends.

And she just relaxed. She asked me to wait a week for her. If she didn't meet me by then, I could come home and that would be it. If she made it back I'd bring her back from the North and she could go her own way again.

And then she went into the forest.

The other workers had been watching; as soon as Aeris walked away from me they put down their tools and started getting out harnesses and ropes. This was the rescue team. They'd done this so many times – I asked one (Sans) how many times and he said they'd lost count! People always reckoned they could make it through. What normally happened was that someone would go in, the rescue team would give them about thirty minutes and head in after. Usually the person would be right next to the first marker – about five minutes inside. Occasionally someone would turn up who sprinted or could just tolerate it a bit longer and they'd make it to the second marker.

There is a third and a fourth marker but it's been twenty years since anyone got that far.

So. First guy gets roped up and heads into the woods. Five minutes past and there's no tug on the rope. Aeris seems hardier. Ten minutes and still no tug. Another five and people are worried. So another guy is roped up and heads in. He tugs on the rope after five minutes. He comes sprinting out of the woods and joins in pulling the rope. And he's worried now. The first man was slumped over beside the first marker and no sign of Aeris. She might have made it to the second.

Once the first guy was out, they reset and sent in another guy. They waited twenty minutes to pull him back – he was someone who routinely could make it fifteen minutes deep – all the way to the third marker. Problem is, it takes about an hour for someone to wake up. So we were still waiting on what the first guy even saw. But based on the second and third people to go in... Aeris made it further than anyone else.

Or at least that was the optimistic assumption. When the other two came to, they were less enthusiastic. Aeris might have veered off the path in which case she could be anywhere. Or she could tolerate the place a little more than anyone else and be only a little past the fourth marker – the furthest any had made it and beyond the capability of anyone in the village.

Everyone was quiet after. A few more attempts saw no one make it anything close to the maximum distances. And no sign of Aeris. They gave up eventually and left the entrance to the woods. Real quiet; first failure in years. I waited a bit longer and then used some of the materia to rent a room and wrote this letter.

By the time you read this, hopefully I'll be on my way home whether Aeris walks out of those woods or not.

If she does come back, I hope she'll tell me why she went in there. Or how she made it past the markers. I know there's some stuff to the North; Gaea's cliffs and Icicle Inn. But if she wanted to go there, there are easier ways than trying to cut through the woods. So maybe there's something in between? Never heard of anything past the forest, but I hope she made it there if there is.

So. That's what I've been doing. Please write back if you can – I'd love to hear how things are doing there. And I miss you so, so much. I know it looks bad, but I promise there's nothing between me and Aeris. I want to come home to you as soon as I can.

Yours forever,

Undyne.