There is such beauty in the world: Such warmth and grace; such wonder to behold. Yet I can see none of it. I feel such a sense of loss. I feel empty and hollow - as though if I were to tap my chest the sound would reverberate around all this nothingness. I do not know what to think or how to react. I am not falling apart - I do not even know how to do that. The only thing to interrupt all this nothing is a feeling of dread that grows inside me like a tumour. So sure have I been of myself and my place here: So sure of my comfort and solace. So sure in all the promises people have made to me. So trusting…. All their voices seem so distant now. Indeed they are distant. They are like echoing memories that ring in my ears. ‘I will not leave you’ says one. ‘I will not abandon you’ says another. ‘I could never leave’….. torturing me day and night so I can get no rest. When I dream I dream of hands outstretched to me - only they are not stretching out to me - they are gradually moving away until there is no way I could reach them.

The sun is warm here and bright. All is clean and as I remember - so beautiful as to be almost unreal. Yet I feel in shadow and cold to the bone. Nothing worse than light winking out and that is what has happened. Yes, even his warm light - the light that would never leave - gone.

How deep are my failings. How pointless my being. I could give them no comfort and now they have left. And how more cutting those failings when it has been so easy to find another place that can give them what I, what we, could not.

And that dearest of ones. What comfort could I possibly give them? What words? What useless gesture that could even think about penetrating the shell of grief and pain I know they will be feeling. I never knew one so good as them. I never knew one with such capacity for generous love. It will break them if they do not remember what they still have. No - better to remove myself for a time. Go where all my inadequacies cannot mock me so mercilessly. Go where I am not adding to the burdens of any. Cowardly act I suppose yet I cannot apologise for it. I need to be strong - I am not strong, but I need to be. I need to not be weak in front of people. There are no tears or tremblings. No weeping or falling down in desperate prayer. No desire to hurl myself into the oceans here….well… not without a ship to bear me away. There is just nothing. An absence of emotion.

To not be able to help those you love must surely be the worst despair there could be in life. Without Purazon and Azure I do not know what or where I would be. I love the guild dearly but I am beyond helping them just now.