A message - thank you gods, thank you blessed godesses. They said they had wanted me to know they are well. There was something that did not quite ring true, but I would not say so. I was so overcome I hardly knew what to say.

Yet tonight, as I keep my fire, I will believe the words and cling to them to dream.

And I have made my peace - though that os not the right word - not peace, for there was no war, but I have said what I needed to say to my brother and feel the better for it. Never again will another suffer just because I feel low, or testy, or frustrated, or despair. That is my problem, not theirs or anyone elses, and it was quite wrong of me to not get to know them properly. I hope he knows the sisterly love I feel in my soul for him, as for all my brethren.

These small chances have made this the most blessed day I have felt in some three months.

Dawn will come, and my fire will greet it.

Thank goodness I found these pages. I am sure Knight Azure (and probably others) would not approve, but this book, the record of the life held in it, are precious to me. These pages record names now lost. They record deeds now forgotten. They record the things that knitted together make me who I am. And, of course, they hold mistakes to learn from. I have spent so much time away I had almost forgotten I had been back there; yet there it was, kicked under a bench, that I rediscovered it. It seems so ling since I wrote here I hardly know what is worth saying.

I am tantalised and teased with the tiniest scraps of news of them. I had heard nothing for so long I had begun to feel a hollow absence of feeling. But flooding back it came at the news they were at least seen or heard from ocassionally. Yet this news is tinged with a fear and sudden desperate longing to know they are safe. What wound can it be that is no wound, and yet causes pain? What can cause such damage as can pass through no armour and yet cause hurt?

Mixed messages and confusion flow all around. And that familiar dull ache seems to be coming back too.