The last few days have been peaceful in a way and very tiring as well. I have farmed a lot and there was a wave of raids we did manage to keep under control that wore me out and I have also been working on something, among all the other some things, that is not quite turning out as I would like it, but I will keep on trying. I want it to work out, but we will see. Usually what I see in my head, as I have said so many times, is so vibrant and beautiful and brilliant and big and I just can not make it the same way on parchment or canvas or what I choose as my creative outlet. It is so very frustrating!! But it is something I am passionate about and have fun with so I will not give up yet! And though it IS frustrating at times I really am way having too much fun.

Emmy sent me a note today asking to meet and so we did. She surprised me when she gifted me with some doorway crystals for me and Pallas to get away for a nice time together (she also thinks I work too hard) and then even more of a surprise came to me when she handed me something I found very special. It was something that she made for me to thank me for the work I did for her on her journal. It was two lock picks that had been entwined together in the form of the letters "E" and "L" on a piece of bos hide. It is really very lovely! As soon as I saw it I knew right away it was to go on the front of my pack I carry about with me so I set right off to get some thread and stitched it to the front. It looks so neat, too. Of course I told her not to do anything, and that I really enjoyed working on her journal for her, and needed nothing in return, but I knew better. I knew Emmy would not be able to help herself - that is just the kind of sweet girl that she is. A gift like that, from the heart, is so special too. I was touched by her gift and it really means a lot to me that she took the time to make it for me. I hope we get to spend more time together. She really is a great girl.

I think I will take some rest now. It is strange but I notice that my fingers feel slightly tingly, my head hurts and I feel a little weak. I am over tired, and I know it. I do not get to relax enough, although the other night was great. For a very short time me and Pallas, Kel, Lucy, Skylark and Skydor we all had a drink around the forest Sanctuary and we just relaxed and talked for a time. It was quite an interesting conversation as well, about how our different professions are sometimes viewd and the strange expectations and image sets people sometimes have of them. It was after the raids and it felt so nice to just … sit and talk. Sitting, something I rarely get to do. I have to say though that Skyelark did not really seem much like herself. I worry about her - which reminds me when next I see her to try and speak with her and make sure she is doing alright. Perhaps later I will seek her out but for now I must put my plume down and try and find some sleep.

Well we some how did it, again! All four of us advanced… and twice this time! We worked so hard for so many moons, training over a long period of time and just in recent days did we finish with that training to where we thought we would need to be to achieve the advances. We were right on, too. I must say it felt wonderful to all be together for it since during much training we were together at some time or another so we all know how hard we worked. Poor John! He does not have to worry about seeing any of us for quite a time, of that I did assure him! I know I sent out so many notes of thanks, and the cramp in my hand reminds me again now as I write here in my journal, but I hope I did remember to thank everyone who sent their congrats and well wishes to me these past nights after I stepped away from the trainer. So very kind and appreciated indeed, so my messenger-birds best have all arrived to their destinations!

I also must say I really love ing my new shield and gauntlets. The shield of the Kings is just truly beautiful to look upon and it feels great in my hand. However I will miss my Cory shield; dinged and scratched up from battle as it has become over all this time, it feels a part of me and I will keep it close at hand. Safe to say, I do not share close to the same sentimental attachment to those horrid looking and feeling magma ash gauntlets. I could not wait to tear them from my arms and replace them with the much stronger, flexible and comfortable, steel articulated gauntlets. And I love how they give their owners a subtle, mystique look as they glow faintly from the hands.

Now to find the best place to continue my farming and to just keep up with the needs of the guild, those dearest to me, the people of the lands, my mentoring, my meditations, and all of the ideas and projects that I have going on inside this scattered head of mine. No more training for a while! Oh, and I plan to fully enjoy the Fall Festival when it begins - should it begin! I am so excited for that to start! So whirling on I go! But that is okay, I am happy and I just love to keep on keeping on!

I have not really slept in days. In fact, I am still wide awake. I was working on some artsy sort of things today for marc after marc, in between lots of other things - like blessings and testing the cannon and trying to get some things straight and also inducting Xa and Skydor into the guild! So quite a few things going on today but what I am doing right now I do not even really know. I am just sort of awake but slightly hazy and yet unable to shut my mind down and go to sleep. So I doing nothing thinking and pacing a bit, sketching and staring at some other things I want to start and trying to think over some plans but my mind is all muddled and I really am so sleepy. I mean for a moment I thought I had lost my plume but it was right there in my hand as I was writing in this journal. I said to Pallas earlier today that I would lose my head were it not fastened to my neck. It is true, too. I'd very much like to sleep right now, but it is not to be, try as I might, so I guess I will shuffle around the lair again some more.

The crier just called out a few moments ago that there are sparse reports of trouble. I glanced about Milltown and saw nothing odd so I am thinking that he meant that to be good, considering all the odd things that had been going on these last few days. I truly hope that is what he meant, anyways. Maybe I will take a look around some more before heading to the lair. I wonder if I am starting to resemble a zombie yet? Sleeeeeeep. Sleeeeeeeeeep .....

The days have been so busy, whirling by almost in a blur of mingled and blended visions and voices as I have been working and moving steadily. Plans for the hall, keepig an eye and ear on HoL happenings, digging around for the plants I need for something I am working on, questioning some friends and applicants, working on some other new designs for a friends request, and now for a new contest and all the while trying to keep up with some farming, training and my daily duties to the people of these great lands - and of course trying to spend some time with my friends and beloved Pallas. I must admit, I have spent little quality time with him, and I do miss him, but I have been so sore from training and so tired these past days and still there are many other things I have to work on and many other ideas in my head to sort. And today I wake refreshed and now Pallas is gone; gone to visit Denion it seems though for what reasons I am not really sure. He started to tell me but things get a bit hazy and I can not remember what he said to me. I do have his note still stating he has a smaller errand and I will find out in due course, so until then I guess I will go about things as usual and wait for him to return to me. He said that his path is a safe one, and I trust that, so I will try not to worry too much and I will keep the Sunrifter shard lit for him anyways, to guide him, keep him safe and to comfort me as well.

I saw what he wrote me, perhaps a bit later then when he wrote it and it is just so beautiful. Funny thing is that I have been trying for days now to write something very much like it, but the words just will not come this time for me as I wanted them to be, and there he goes and says them all to me in such a lovely way. Love knows love and love strengthens love. Something this cleric has learned through her time in these lands and looking back I know my Mother and Tam loved me greatly as Pallas loves me and they showed me this through their sacrafices. Despite the harshness, cruelty and dangers of my past, and though it was so hard to see at the time being young and fragile in mind, there was always love with me in some way, though not the same whay there is now. I thank my Gods for that because without it I would have had no burning inside to keep on going, no desire to become someone of my own free will, the very opposite of my father ... to prove I was nothing like him at all - there would have been no hope for me. I would have just become faded and lost into the darkness.

I did not know what drove me then, I thought it was my fear and even hate - but I know now that it was love.

My friends gifted me with something extraordinarily beautiful. A small rounded violet crystal that is like the twilight at dusk on the inside. It was Lucys idea, and she has one herself now, only her own is made of a blue crystal and is like twilight at dawn when you peer inside, and Rictus helpful handwork made them happen and together they just created something so stunning and touching that they had given to me. Rictus then even helped make bigger slivery versions from dull crystals to place on the tables for our guildhall for the Emerald Mooon when we are finally able to build. The process to get the crystals to appear as they now do (after chipping then into rounded shapes and major polishing) was done by heating and then quenching. The process formed a little cloud in the center of the crystals. I am told clerics had even blessed these crystals. To touch them and to look into them just bring on a feeling a comfort and peace. They are most unique just like my dear friends themselves. I find myself rubbing the crystal much already; usually when I am off thinking and I do not even realize that Ive removed it from its little black silk bag with the silver and violet ribbons, which I keep safely tucked away in my robe pocket, until some time later.

As I write I realize my body cries and aches. I trained the other day like I had not trained in many, many moons. Marc after marc after marc down in those tombs. For many of them with Pallas and Lucy and then many of them alone, something I had not done in quite a time, and there were a few times I needed help but mostly I just hacked and slashed away - and not just physically either. I closed my mind off to what tried to get inside and poke and pry and root itself there inside me and my mind and I shook it away, fought it away, squshed it dead, silenced it away ... and willed it away. Whatever I had to do, I somehow found I was able to do it. Lucy, Pallas and Kel have been waiting so long for me to catch up in my training that I could not make them wait any more - could not fail them any longer.

It was like I entered some kind of deeply distorted and determined dream where everything felt so unreal to me yet perfectly right down in those dark tombs. It was not until I finally stopped;disheveled, completely out of breath, and having to snap back to reality that I realized all I had really done down there and I just collapsed at the sanctuary after we made our way back, unable to stand anymore, my legs feeling like water and unable to support me. Now today, every muscle screams at me Dear Gods lady what have you done to us! and my bad shoulder moans and aches in protest whenever it moves but I feel so happy and invigorated and totally delighted with myself in my progress! We are very close and I have achieved so much more then just close to nearly two advances of training in those deep, dark nrolav tombs.

I believe that for now, once more, I have somehow quieted, or squashed, those pesky evil things that like to sometimes crawl around in the corners of our minds, trying to infest and darken them.

Well the contest Miranda was holding is finally over and she has made her choices and what fine choices they were. Urkki and Islanders art were just great and well deserved - as was Korbas design, and they were all given amazing prizes for their efforts. I am happy for them all, Urkkis just made me laugh from the moment I saw it. I know how much work went into what they have done and now Miranda will look ever-so-impressive, more so then before, when she leaves messages for us mortals on the notice boards. And a grand time was had by all who participated. Ah, so frustrating at times yes but fun indeed it is to try and create something pleasing for her. At least I thought so.

I have taken on a new craft and I am having fun with it and it requires much experimentation. I have not told anyone yet, either, and the reason I have not told anyone is because I do not really know exactly what I am doing yet, but I am having fun with figuring all that out and once I finally make something turn out just right (which we all know how hard that can be with how critical I am about everything I do) I plan to gift a few to friends and then hopefully use them in other aspects of my life as well. After that then maybe others will like them and want to have some, too. It is nothing really new but just a bit of a pretty spin on something I know that I use a lot in my prayers offerings and for other daily and random decorative things and that we all use often and sometimes even have need for. Who knows and only time will see where this goes, but I am enjoying myself and it could make people happy and that is what counts for me.

I hope to see Pallas later and spend some time with him as we have no particularly had the chance for some good quality time the last few moons. My moods and mind have been all over and I am exhausted by the time I see him walk the lands. His own business in which he deals with and how busy I spend my days in these lands keep us apart for good amounts of time but so long as we know the love is always there then I have no doubts things will always be alright for us. And I do know the love is there, always there and always strong but mayhaps tonight we can take some time for just us for a while and try and relax for a while and find some balance to these ever busy days.

I try and live my life as peacefully as I can and I embrace my faith and always honor my Gods. I try to live as well and honestly as I can. I try to heal and help whenever I am needed and always I wish to lift the spirits of our brethren. It is just a desire that has always been within me - despite my past, despite my troubles and despite the bad blood which flows inside my veins that is my father, the exact opposite of who I am. My purpose, the purpose of a cleric, I feel is always to serve the Gods and to protect our lands and our people and we must never forget that. To be willing and wanting to make sacrifices on our own needs, for those others in need, it comes with being a cleric and I feel these are all very important for any cleric to know and to feel inside of them when they come to me or to anyone questioning the path of the cleric - a faithful path of duty and honor. It is just something you know inside of you, something you wish to do and something of yourself you wish to selflessly give. I have said these words before, I have said them recently when I was asked a question about attributes of a cleric, and I will say them a thousand times again without hesitation for they are what feel true in my heart.

So much have I learned and so much I am grateful for but I admit that I sometimes find that the most difficult thing I have ever had to do is follow that guidance that I had so dearly cried and prayed for. But in those very darkest of times, I was never truly alone, especially when I thought that I was, was sure that I was. Tam was still with me. My mother was with me. And as messed up and distroted as this sounds ... they, in their own ways from their own places, helped me find these lands. And then arriving here – lost and scared and confused and as broken as I was, I knew deep inside what I wanted I just had no idea where to start. It is impossible to really know the power of a kind and uplifting word, but I know just that power now and what it can do for a person later in their lives. To all of those I love … not one of us alone is as good all of us together. Take that to heart.

Regarding my personal business, I feel I have really learned to stay much more positive during my times of darkness, which I know will continue to haunt me. Now, I certainly would not stand around singing a merry tune while my best friend burns to ash proclaiming “well she did want to drop a few pounds” but I mean I do try more and more to focus on the good points rather then just the bad ones, which I still do focus on as it is my nature to analyze everything, BUT I try and focus on both sides much more equally now – balance. Not just the blurry, disdain, distorted and morbid side and how everything that can go wrong will … but the parts that I love and want to see go right. The happiness, the joy the love the hope - even if I am taken over by a strange sense of inevitable doom I try and maintain those more peaceful and happy thoughts. I am not sure why on a personal level it is so hard for me and I still have my moments, believe you me. It is strange that it is so hard because when it comes to others or the lands as a whole, during troubled and darker times - I jump right into my faith and my hope and without hesitation I am there ready and willing to do what ever it takes and to help and to encourage anyone to feel that all is not lost when things seem so bleak and dim.

And so just as the sky is blue and the grass is green - bad things happen. Suffering and joy are both an equal part of our lives and I’ve always accepted this however bitter sweetly. I just tend to always brace myself in my personal life for the worst and hope for the best so that way I am not as disappointed. Maybe those who understand what I lived through totally can relate and understand and anyone who knows of Myoakka and my father and Brighttree and the conditions there - can you blame me? Maybe I am more different then I realize sometimes … but you know I think everyone should accept diversity to some degree for we are all different. And handle it with grace while at it, but not too much grace for you do not want to topple over.

I’ve also come to realize more and accept as of recent that difficult and unpleasant personalities are a part of life. Accept them, be glad that you are not them, live happy and well - wish them good fortune … and forget them for nothing destroys a good man quicker then caving into offensive remarks, backstabbing moves or just flat out disgraceful behavior. Bright eyes and a clean spirit! Nice and serene for me.

And even more beautiful - right now the stars are shining and they look so perfect to me for some more sketching. Any more sketches I do not soon turn into paintings for the guild and Pallas may not be able to find me under them.

Things have been relatively quite the last few days. I have farmed a little bit, roamed a bit blessing and healing those in need, offering advice to those who’ve asked it of me. Done up some more plans, finished a few ideas, made a few more designs, shopped here and there, spent a little time with Pallas, chatted with some friends and the guild though not nearly as much as I would like and I have tried to rest some and all in all I feel a bit better then I had been lately but I am still feeling as if I am still … off, for lack of better way to describe things and that is a feeling in which I truly dislike. I feel as if I have been in a haze for a long while now and I can not really wake myself properly from it. Since the incident in the tombs things have not been right for me and I can not seem to shake the whole ordeal. It has seeped into my head, my body, my soul and worked its way through my blood like a sickness, invaded my body like a parasite, infiltrated my mind like an unwanted spirit and all these little things as of late are ways I let it affect me - affect us. Gods, I miss Pallas … I miss me. I thank the Gods for all I have. For him, for my friends and for all the strength and the love I have within him and my friends … and within myself.

I know that the way I have become these days has affected Pallas and I know that he is different, and hurting, and unsure of what to do for me and that upsets me because then I feel to blame … and I do not want that burden on him or for him to feel hurt that way. I will deal with this. I love him and just want him to be with me, there for me, as he always is but at the same time I do not want to drag him into my darkness and my dark feelings again. I just want him to be happy, he deserves to be happy. It is all very hard to explain for there is nothing really wrong, just some things that are not … right, but by no ones fault, just some things within me, things that are always within me that he well knows by now that are some times brought to surface from one way or another and when they are I need to work out - and I am sure in time I will, I always do in some way but they take time and are delicate and I just do not understand sometimes. Actually I do not understand some things quite a lot of the time and though it drives me crazy I do accept more and more that there are many things we are not meant to really understand.

And worst of all and what makes me feel guilty as well is that no matter the kindness and the love in which I am graced, the peace and happiness within my life which I give and receive, it seems that it is during these darker moments that I begin to feel the most alone, though I know that I am far from alone - and I feel the most dismal, the most haunted, the most dispirited and I really start to doubt myself. And I really dislike who I am in these silent self-loathing moments where I am the most reminded of who I really am … and where I do come from. I look into the shard of glass in my hand and I see … him - distorted and looking back at me. He smiles a twisted smile and reaches a burnt hand right out from the glass towards me …

I close my eyes and I breathe deeply. The image is visibly gone for now … but never will it be gone from where it has been burnt into my mind. Some will tell you that the bad memories end in time just like the rain - but I can promise you that in my case that regrettably does not hold true. And so I continue to soul search for that inner peace and tranquility that I so desire and need in order to move past what troubles my being.