Long did I wander, away from the slow-healing of lingering aches, flinching from the memories that might have made them fresh again. When I stood again upon the streets of Dundee, it was as though my feet had wandered there of their own accord, like old habits learned in the days of my blindness. Quiet pangs of familiarity hung over everything, and yet the old wounds hurt far less than I expected when allowed my examination.

This old journal was one of them, tucked under the blankets back-stage, gathering dust amid everything else in a place that once made my heart sing sweet as a fledgling sparrow's readiness for flight.

I do not remember the ease of mind of my last journal entry. All memories of the before are of how Sunrifter dipped the horizon one evening, and when it next rose the world had changed in ways that I didn't know how to find the path of. And so the path led away. Away from the quiet pain, away from the inconsolable change, away from a facade of fineness that I had neither desire nor maturity to assume.

My path brought me back midst Summerfaire. In many ways, a soft-sung reprise of days long gone is what followed. Quiet stories in the shadows of Altitan. Bustling laughter and joy in the shadow of a guildhall. The strum of zither strings, for once in rare accompaniment. In some ways, I am sorry that my oldest and dearest audience weren't in attendance to that. Maybe I could have sung for them again, like I did so long ago, when I watched their eyes widen with surprise and delight, even as I surprised myself in ways. I can almost hear an utterance from the old days, a sure statement of unrepentant greed for 'Cennysong', as she sometimes called it.

I visited the tower where Viviyana and I went so long ago, green adventurers, when I still stalked guildhalls with voracious curiosity and flipped coins over professions. Those near-inseparable early moments are almost the clearest of memories to me. Gods, but if I could go back to the beginning, where the beauty of the soul of the world unfolded before me from the moment I stepped out of Jolan's and was whisked away on some adventure. Before the Gates of the Many. Before the Seige. Before Scooter, and Myna, and whispers in shadow, and the rallying cry upon Balthazar himself. All is a song fallen from lips that shan't ever speak them again, and any shallow telling would feel like a disservice.

In the end, I can't stay here. Not because it hurts too much, but because it doesn't hurt enough.

Better to keep the song. I shall not shun it anymore, but instead keep it in a hidden, private, quiet echoing cave deep within my heart, where I might chase it down with a rogue's nose for treasure hidden away when silent marcs grow too deafening.

I am sorry to those who I leave behind. I learned long ago, though, that bending too much in the winds of others wishes is a path that leaves one bereft, naked, and broody. Besides that, I think they will be okay, even if they do not yet know it. I have faith in them. I never lost that, amid everything I mourned.

I'll leave this journal here, I think. Take care of them, my blue friend, if it is you that finds it. You always had a fierceness and certainty in you that left me breathless. These young ones might need that, now. People who drift to such places as this never did do well alone.

I think I hear voices and laughter on the stage outside.

But perhaps that is only an echo.

The land forever changes and doesn't. This is the lesson of my return. Not a statement to the negative, nor to the positive.

It simply is.

Were my world made of wishes, the land would be ageless. There was a time when the quiet of my home would have torn a hole within my soul. But that time is not now. I've made many goodbyes, some in song and some less so. Goodbyes are not unfamiliar. And time has taught me that to wait upon a balm of reunion is to wallow in that world of wishes, that may as well be a world made of stone.

I do not know what the future may be. I do not know my place in it.

My family will always be with me in my heart, wherever they wander.

When I sing, and I will sing, I will remember.

When I play, and I will play, I will remember.

When I drink of mead, I will remember the mead of Branishor that I bought not because I believed him, but because I wanted to laugh for it.

When I wander dark places, I will hide and seek with the shadows, imagining some feline eyes seeking after.

When I walk through Dundee, I will put my hood up and blush red to my brow. Well played a dare, brother mine.

When I see the cloth of red flash at the tailor's stalls, I will hum of the storming sunset.

When I pick up this journal, I'll briefly think back and have a chuckle, imagining it some mock demon lord diary. It's only just.

Here's to our fears, to sing our sorrows away. Everything that I love is in not only the words I pour to the page, but the ones that I keep secret and quiet and dear. I walked from Jolan's one day, a boy. I met a woman who would become my dear friend and mentor. I met a man whose facade would fall away twice. I roamed every hall and every corner until I memorized them through, and learned to love even the strangest corners. I watched the gates rise against the storm on the horizon.

My friend swathed me in a gift of a cloak when I found my family, and I never laid it aside. I love that cloak, for it reminds me every time I look at it that we are far more than the quiet gatherings and the far-off places. It reminds me that we are not just rogues and enchanters and clerics and warriors. It reminds me that we are not just serious folk and merry folk and brooding folk and curious folk. It reminds me that we are all of the little things that fall over us and pour through us and make us more than anything we could have ever been alone. It reminds me that we are all clay, molding in the touch of the people whom we choose to take the time of a turn to say hello to.

There is no one at all that I regret saying hello to.

There are no secrets. There is no hiding. There is nothing but to walk forward in hope. If I'd known then what I know now, maybe things might have been different, but in no way I would leap to change. May we be changeful and changeless at once.

The land is lit rosy golden by the 'Rifter this morning. I think I'll take a walk in it.

The Caer is safe, in a manner almost surreal. The door is gone as though never having existed in the first place. Will it someday be forgotten? Multiple adventurers now have passed through the land who never knew the broken temple, never knew the puppy at Dundee's heart, never knew... many things I still don't know. Yet the door was a long struggle. Years ago, the search for the seals, chronicled lengthily by Topaz. These past years, the search for its resolution. The suddenness of our success has yet to settle in my mind. Eight dead. Quarrus, who some seemed to all but anticipate wouldn't return. Kathryan. It doesn't seem real yet. Another, whose name I neglect remembrance of. Rubert? Rupert? I'll need to seek the name. Five guards, whose names I know nothing of.

When I saw so many faces beloved heading for the throne room, I feared the worst. When they rejoined our battle, exhilaration. Relief. Relief soon soured by realization. And yet.. our days go on. They must. Balthazar still lives. And during the battle. The color of the light coming from the fortress shown damning, it would seem.

Light. Zanaan's too-bright, clicking.... something.

Should anything have returned from behind that door?

Just as there is fell-dark, is there fell-light?

I need to learn of what happened there.

No longer shall doors of mystery be accepted by me. It... has been a long while since I have written. Journaled. There is so much needs be said. But foremost, having said my piece of the door...

It is time. I am ready to be a rogue again. The fear, the taint, the revulsion... these are gone. Clericy has healed me with every blessing offered. My dreams sing with tunnels, treasures, triumphs. My lifeblood thrums with the thought of a coming turn when I will be what I feel. Thank you.

Though my debt is so great that those giving things away turn their eyes... The pertinence of being so indebted as I seek roguedom a second time does not escape me.

I feel rich beyond all compare. There are songs in it, somewhere.

Home. Home never changes.

It is everywhere.

I sought to see the truth, but the truth e'er seemed too near. I sought out its reflection, but in that mirror found fear. An exile for man's capriciousness, upon reflection, for capriciousness an exile. A song too light-hearted to sing, upon reflection, light-hearted making every reason to sing. A power grown small, upon reflection, the small grown in power.

It isn't a truth of everything, I doubt. But I ponder the possibilities of rejecting certainties - and uncertainties. A path traveled down becomes lost in thorns and thickets, and the need to persevere overcomes the need to ponder if this is truly the only path. Even when there's one just out of waking sight.

Freedom of understanding.

Freedom of consideration.

Freedom to consider the impossible, or improbable, or unpleasant. Or make light of all three.

This is what it is to be a crow, to me.

A few turns sorrow. Silent promises to oneself. And, as ever of late, training. A student shown to the temple. A wondrous reunion despite its brevity.

Of late, these have been the milestones that marked my turns. Wonderful ones, for the most part. I couldn't but help the ache of learning my oldest and dearest friend was to go home, I know not for how long. For cycles now, I have known that people come and go in the adventurer's trade. This, perhaps, was a step for me into the reality of that.

Followed by a step as soothing as any I could imagine. A reassurance that though people come, go, some maybe return. Jael was one of the first and few I met in the early steps of my time as an adventurer, though before recent I had not seen her since before last Summerfaire. Though our prior acquaintance was brief, my joy at seeing a fondly remembered old friend was insurmountable.

Change may be a fact of the lands. But ever so is hope.
Presently, my hope is that blue guardians are not erroneously named.

Beyond that, I hope only to someday find answers to questions of cycles past.

In all the cycles long, there has never been a song for my own self. Many gifts, offerings, promises, and whimsies.

Just once, for my own.

Someday, maybe, it will be sung.

The rest of the page is torn away.

We are our stories. We are the people of them, walk the places of them, sing the songs of them, and fight the battles of them. And in the end, we are the lingering of them, a ghost in a world that may or may not retain a place for it. Our stories are passed on, and their life becomes like that of a child - growing, adapting for the ear of the crowd. As they mature, certain truths become evident to them, certain truths that permeate any retelling of a life become ghost become memory.
Myth, when even the truths are shadowed by doubt.

In ancient depths rest mysteries tombed in stone... / May be one luck-blessed wandered there alone...
Perchance a myth buried in ancient tomes...
What did you see...? / Just silent halls...?
What did you hear...? / In darkness calm...?
Pitch shadows trembling...?

In darkened depths a heat into stone night... / As rumbling grows a hush of fire light...
Flightful colors waking in the quiet...
Was it not time...? / How did you sooth...?
Was it a sight...? / How without proof...?
Myth lost lullaby...

Come from the world above... / To sing of sky...
Of 'Rifter dawn-dance bright... / As scales shine...
How winds and mortals sing... / For dreams of flight...
Aspiring forge as one... / Myths shan't die...

I promised I would find a song of dragons, and I did. I still have so many promises to keep that they are almost as myth to me - the shape of them evident, if not the details. It is my own stories that remain stark in my mind.

I hesitated to choose to train another. How could I, after the experience of last time, well as it turned out? I still wonder at being drawn from the tunnels, just as my fear had reached its zenith. I digress - I have chosen an apprentice, this time to be taught as a cleric. I know what to do, better, this time. Mentoring is not a leashing. Merely a guiding, for the student to do with as they will in the end.

I grow lengthy in this. My story is of blindness. My story is of sight.
But where the question lies between those, I know only uncertainty. Whispers in the dark, echoed by whispers of gods and demons.

My first Summerfaire as an adventurer. My first Fallfest. Many firsts, come and gone, and not a moment of where I've come from forgotten. Though Lyc has long since gone his own way, and Gale gone beyond life itself, I recall in vivid pondering the moments of our strange, wondrous sort of family.

I remember trying to find my own family, when I wandered the lands.

Then finally understanding: I'd found them without even realizing.

Stories are passed around often, of things that once were. Even the recent past is dipped in shadow of lore for me, though I do so attempt to learn of it.

Sometimes my pondering stretches beyond the recent past, to that so distant time has started to forget it. The Golden Age. Surely so different from our own. What trials beset them in their last days; What golden resolve? Do we know even half of them? What resounding echoes of that time beset us even now? Are our new foes old? Ancient?

Or new?

Somehow I doubt the latter.

We gather to arms, friends... / In an eve not yet o'er...
Restless 'til daybreak... / Golden skies breached by storms...
Sword and stave rise in war-cries soon to break free...
Someday to know this... / As eve of vict'ry...

Billow your heart's fervor... / For soon comes the marc...
To hold fast to the courage burned bright from the start...

For we were torn in battle... / And we were forged anew...
We were razed by windswept seas... / And when the seas fled pulled through...

Gather at ready, kin... / The wait draws soon closed...
Breathless in waiting... / And brief in repose...
Flightful host at our backs... / When rest ends for deciding...
Sands of Gold to the wind as an era dawns defining...

Fall Fest has come and gone - my first, as an adventurer. Days, turns of rushed excitement for treats and things. Moreso than Summerfaire ever did, things spun from one day to the next in a dreamlike fashion, no signs of normality or of slowing.

That is, I think perhaps I'm glad Fall Fest only comes once a year, for all its delights. My mind is tuckered by it all.

In the last wake of the festival, I finally came to a decision. A choice of robes made, after cycles of considering. Robes of a Warbringer. Of Kane. But...only partly in name of faith, whatever weight it may have had. Robes of shadow, a contrast to robes of milk-white. And an echo of my own mind, shadow-cast in midst of all the uncertainties of our age.

Many shades, between light and dark. And no cast of surety to either.

As I write these journal entries, I feel as though the present echoes the past. In resounding and dreamlike ways, things stir now in my heart similar to the moments of song-spinning. Even ale-stricken spinning with my beloved soused house.

Never so much as now.

It was a choice I contemplated for more than a cycle beforehand. Perhaps from the moment I first took up the rogue profession. A long while pondered. And its final steps taken in a heat of...well, ale, actually. But I do not regret it.

I would have asked Jael to sponsor me. Kind, good-hearted, brave Jael. She has been wandered from the lands now nearly long as I have journeyed them, but I remember in those days, I knew that that would be the kind of cleric I wished to be. The kind of rogue I wished to be, even. In part I wanted to be wily. Strong. Agile. Clever. All the things I thought I saw in a rogue. More and more, the differences in professions lessened, and the differences in people all the more.

I am not blind. Not anymore.


Now here is a song for both staid and soused! / Simple celebration for the night-lively house...
Pass 'round the brewskies and blasters and ale... / Drink deep the settings of this lively tale...
There once lived a fellow dubiously named Unlucky! / Got lost in the swamps with an apt name so funny...
And here came upon the darkling walls of the knavish... / Gazed anxious upon snapping jaws of the gators...
Yet he wandered in, so worn was he... / Had he'd heard the rumors then surely he'd flee...
For a treacherous bunch lurked in shadow within... / Or so'd say the townsfolk - oh, the tales they spin!
Now he the Unlucky crept where shadows creep... / Unknowing, his fear grew as sounds and smells seeped...mostly smells.
He rounded a corner and gave the daintiest shriek! / Horrors abounding and muffled scratches and squeaks...
These were no bother to the Unlucky friend... / Rather, excited by a find soon condemned...
Took no notice of tutting and laughs in the dim... / Unlucky no more, a familiar guest then...
Just best to beware of cat eyes and green dreams... / Keep Nubb'lin a place for yourself by all means...


For my part, I would offer what I can to who I can. I call many friend, because I would have all be friend, were it possible.
I still feel the cool of the stone under my hand, when I think on it. Wonder, if I made the right choice in that murmur of 'friend'.
And in present, wonder of worthiness.

No, not worthiness. Steadiness. I've put to a few of late the question of why they don robes. When they ask whys of my why in return, I feel the cool of the stone once more. Worthiness. Steadiness. Loyalty.

I would offer friendship to many. Near any.

But what if I choose wrong?