The turns come and go in a complete haze. Up is down and down is up and I have no idea which way I'm going. How many turns this has gone on, I don't even know. The restlessness keeps me up for all the nights and by the day I wander or rest in a dazed state without any real sleep. Certainly nothing restful or restorative. How long can a person go on this way, wandering within a fog with a mind that just feels like it is deteriorating while at the same time overly complicating things. Trust is fleeting and my temper is so easily triggered it is scary. This body doesn't even feel like my own. Something has to change. Pray to the gods and they will listen. Have faith, I've always said. Faith. Some call it belief without evidence. It's not as easy as it once was for me to turn to my faith.

I've been reminded that a person who has never made a mistake never made anything. Just learn from the mistake and move on, remembering to pick our battles carefully and be prepared to lose some small, meaningless ones. Hold out for big ones that really test us.

It's pretty sound advice when I think about it.

I should to talk with the rogue. He always knows what to do.

It seems as we got closer to the days things changed for us a Sunrifter cycle ago, I've gone further inside my self. Become more quiet and withdrawn; more tense and very tired. From all the over thinking I'm known to do. The nightmares come at night and I wake up either fighting off these demons in my sleep or just sitting alone somewhere I have sleep wandered off to at some point, quietly in the dark before finding my way back to where we sleep. And I think I'm alone in this, and that would break his heart, but I'm scared of how things have affected me. I need him more now than ever, and yet I'm just pulling further and further away into myself because I don't want to bring it up. Things are so wonderful and I have not been so happy in longer then I can remember.

As we know bad things happen and sometimes the one supposed to love you the most hurts you the most. The first time I ever felt deep heart hurting grief was when Mother was killed. It made me understand that bad things can happen so very fast but we must live through them so very slow. I fell apart for a long time after. She was gone in a flash. Just like Fen and just like Tam eventually would be. And Just like Wolf. Pallas is the only one who has never truly or fully left my life -- his declarations of love and honor and respect to me were real and not snuffed out by Father, not full of lies and false promises.

So why am I having such a hard time now when I truly am so blessed and happy? Perhaps it is just the memories I hold onto. How easy I fell in love with him so very, very long ago and how awful it felt thinking we had fallen out of love with eachother. But never. I love Pallas, around the world and back again. Always him. And when I look up into those deep brown eyes I know he is what I want. And he knows it. He always knew it -- even before I knew, the first time we met. Love is a fire for sure and is thrilling, fun and scary. And when thrilled or scared is when we feel the most alive. Whether love will warm your heart and soul or burn you into a pile of ash and smoke is hard to say, but worth the risk almost every time.

My heart has never known such love.

Death, death, death comes creeping down. Amort. A filthy dissolution. Leering lifeless eyes. Condemned to a bitter end. Nevermore. Absolute. Dead is dead. Still it speaks ...

I'm sitting in that dirty, dark, damaged place with the yellowed bones -- the crown that speaks to me, often in riddles, And just like Father. His voice scolding 'I told you so', 'No ones loves you', 'You are still nothing. Worthless. Mine'-- and many other terrible things. The darkness here has always weighed me down, it feeds off my light, my love, my gentle nature; it draws me here and then it drains me of what's good in me. Yet still I come, as far back as I can remember and often times without realizing I'm even heading here. I had no energy to go home last turn and neither did I care because what is here twists me, holds onto me, traps me. And though I usually do try and fight those urges, Ive always been particularly drawn here like a moth to flame in times of pain, upset, anger, doubt or troubled thought. And I just needed to be alone to think or maybe I enjoy torturing myself sometimes. This Stormy Weather certainly packs a painful punch. It feels like someone has kicked me in the stomach each sip I take and yet still I drink it. Besides, no ones comes here. No one with any sense anyways.

I'm always thinking, always my mind is moving, racing, turning, but why. Why is it that it can't let me rest peacefully. I can't sleep most nights. So what good is all the thinking doing me when no matter what I can't actually go back to past, but inside my head. And I don't want to go back only something wants me to go back. I can change nothing and I know that only the future should be ahead and should be my focus. But I keep trying to go back. I have to go back. Because of what could still be. And also the regret. Yes, I've learned something in my thinking. It's not the pain or Father and Myoakka or even the tower that keeps me going back in the past. It is those things to a degree, but it is not what really keeps me here. It is regret. There is so much -- too much regret and that is what keeps me stuck, stunted at times in my mental and emotional growth, in that awful timeless place.

I had a difficult childhood but I was not a really difficult child. Not according to my Mother, bless her heart. Stubborn, yes. As stubborn as they come , and that seemed to ignite something wicked in Father, so she thought. Although Father would have something very different to say about the person I am and his ways concerning me. And maybe he is right on some level. Whatever I am he made me that way. And I can't help but wonder who would I be had he not been my Father and had my whole life been different. A tune plays in my aching head as I wipe some blood from my nose. A dirge in my mind. A lament to what was lost. What could have been. To the non-me.

Tam once asked me why I push people away and I don't really know why, I didn't have an answer then and I still don't. But he was always there for me no matter how many times I pushed him away. Until I finally did push him away, or rather Father forced us apart by locking me away. Father would have me believe it was all my own fault, my own doing but he knows that I know that he was the one to push Tam away. Everyone away from me. The cycles of the 'Rifter in isolation with no one but Him or Myoakka -- that was all his doing. He made me this way. Made it so I'll never be without him, never be normal. Never be worth a damn. Never be as loved by anyone but him. Never fully believe that all I have worked for and cherish is real.

I don't want to push people away. I don't want to be alone like that again, even if I admittedly do like to be alone as a result of so much being alone I don't want to fully be alone. At least I don't want to be alone from one person, the one who is my heart and soul. Sometimes when we go through our own stuff we don't see other peoples. Even so I dont blame him if he is upset with me for not coming home last night. However there is still the chance he hasn't even noticed and if I can pull myself away from the drowning darkness that holds me down here, shake this blinding blackness from my head then I'll be home soon, slip into bed and he will be none the wiser to my failure to return. The Rogue can sleep through anything however he is very perceptive. I'm probably going to get scolded.

Sometimes the sadness and pain we feel is so great it briefly twists a person into someone unrecognizable. At times I feel like life is punishing me for some sin I didn't commit, and maybe it is. No one ever said life is fair. How do you take a life of pain, lies and abuse and just let it go like nothing happened. You don't. You can't. You can only try and move on and up from it. One has to know true loss and despair before they are willing to risk everything and make a change. Sometimes I feel I'll be confined in mine until I draw my last breath. I had fought and hoped that wouldn't be the way. Fighting is really hard when you think no one has your back, even when they do. But is it true we can only count on ourselves. It just hurts when you think things are one way only to find out they are not what you thought. I watch the skull I despise yet can't stay away from and I wonder why Father always has to be right. I hate him. I hate him. I HATE him.

The stars seem to be falling. Maybe the moon really is next. Like in my dream. All the beautiful special things fade so fast and they don't come back. No matter how hard you try or how much you want them too. Even if it seems like they do, it's not real, it's just an illusion -- a trap. One moment everything seems right and the next is the crushing reality. But writing let's me feel free for a moment of the illusions. It brings me solace, no matter what I write about. It can be anything. A person, a good or bad memory, a happy or sad though, a place, a hope. I wanted things to be different this time. I wanted to believe they were different.

I wish it would rain and cleanse away all that makes me feel dirty, used and worthless.

I had a disturbing dream that has left me uneasy and I need to write it down before the details fade from memory, if they fade the way many dream details often do shortly after waking. In this dream I watched the moon burst into flames of fire and fall from the skies, crashing down and causing a huge quake, and a whirlwind of bedrock and water that silenced the world as we know it. Right before this, the stars had dimmed and one by one they began to fall, their failing light leaving strange patterns across the night sky. It almost looked like some kind of language, symbols I didn't recognize.

I remember that I had been walking along the beach looking at seashells and watching the night sky when all of a sudden out of no where the waves surged in a way I had never seen and there was a deafening bang that knocked me off my feet and shook me through my core. I looked up as the stars began to fall and the moon was full -- huge and dark red in color, and then it burst into flames. My eyes and ears hurt -- and I could feel the blood pouring from my eyes and ears. My skin was scorching, blistering. I got up from the ground and ran to escape the monster waves that threatened to crush me into the sand and I hid somewhere, under something. I can't remember where. I just watched through fading, blood soaked eyes in quiet shock. The pain I had been in was already numb.

The moon was on fire as it slowly fell towards the ground in a ferocious flaming sphere of orange, yellow and red. My eyes were melting but I couldn't look away. Marcs, turns, cycles -- I don't know how long I watched. How long it took for the incredible impact that ended everything. The Stars were bright and the moon was full and clear just before it happened. Before the bang. Before the sky fell apart and our world silenced into nothing.

Just before the moon crashed into the ocean it turned black and there was a loud sizzling that sent smoke into the air. I felt the temperate rise even higher, boiling my blood. Then demonic peels of laughter filled my near deaf ears as the black silhouette of an indescribably large beast rose from the depths of the boiling, angry ocean . The water flickered with fire and flame as the world passed away. I woke up sweating and gasping for air. I don't think I disturbed the rogue sleeping beside me.

Random manifestation or direct meaning, dreams are usually specific to the person having them. Could it have to do with the seals and what trials we are facing? What does this dream mean to me? I don't know yet, and I may never know, but I won't soon forget.

The turns have been moving quickly for me, seemingly as one very long turn due to lack of any restful sleep. From playing carefree games in the meadow, to intense meetings of the upmost importance, to expanding the family, farming and training for marc after marc to waking up in a pile of yellow flowers in the garden with the rogue comforting me. I know that the days ahead will not be easy but with the rogue by my side they will be bearable and we will give it our all, come what may -- even if death itself sweeps down to claim us. It has, after all, been called a suicide mission.

Suicide mission, savior mission - whatever you want to call it changes nothing. We the people - adventures, explorers, fighters, together will probably once again be going into the heart of darkness and with faith and hope in our unity and with the Gods behind us, we will have a chance to prevail into the light of life. It won’t be the first time we have prevailed through seemingly impossible tasks. And if we are to stand the slightest chance of succeeding where the hero’s of old failed then we need to find a way, as Shamson said, to change the odds. We can not just rush in without any clue or thought out plan. But first things first…we need the Sword. So we wait anxiously on word for the next step.

I may not be in the Order but I have been within these lands for a very long time and proudly call them my home. My vow to Cordelia is from the heart and just as meaningful as any Order members vow. I have always done and will do whatever I can to protect the lands and my Queen. For I love my home and its people - and I have much care, respect and adoration for Cordelia. I hope she knows I will do what is needed to honor and protect her and keep our lands safe despite the risks and endless dangers.

And in the midst of it all, I have agreed to sponsor, rare as it is, a new friend that I truly admire for her will, determination and tender heart. She will indeed make a very lovely cleric. I only hope she will be satisfied with the sponsorship, our trip to the temple and all that will be explored beyond.

I must admit to one more thing. My dreams are troubled by the image of one young man who does not make it out alive through our quest to restore the seals. I truly hope it is nothing more then a bad dream. I will pray for him.