Shrugging, I carry all three items to the table and settle them beside my spread, cracking the diary open, brimming with the strangest urge to … write.
I’ve never felt inclined to journal before. But this place does weird, unexplainable things to me, and for the most part, I’ve been going with it. Exploring these odd urges in this quiet place where there are no eyes. No ears.
No commands.
In the beginning, I called it an experiment. Now I see it a little differently.
I think I’m learning how to exist without shackles and expectations. Without the hurt and the crippling fear of loss that hacks my head from my heart.
I think I’m learning what it means to live.
Fallon would be proud.
Mostly.
I ink my quill, pausing to pop a bogsberry in my mouth, the burst of tart sweetness exploding over my taste buds as I scratch my thoughts on the parchment, the words flowing easier than I expected them to …
I’ve tried to leave.
（Creators, I’ve tried.）
But every time I’ve packed up my stuff and set out with the intention of catching a Moltenmaw across the plains so I can snap Rekk Zharos’s neck, I’ve instead returned with new towels.
Sheets.
A sewing kit to repair the ruined pallet.
An iron ring so I don’t cry with the rain.
With lengths of material and shears to craft new curtains, and then a roll of colk hide I used to patch up the chairs and seaters because apparently I’m crafty now.
Essi would be proud. I’m just … baffled. Haunted. Maybe a little crazy.
Maybe a lot crazy?
I’m not sure how to handle this strange part of me that seems determined to sing new life into this small forgotten home. The same part that seems unable to dislodge from this sense of belonging I’ve never felt before.
Not once.
Here, I’m more alone than I’ve ever been, completely cut off from the rest of the world. Yet somehow the opposite.
It’s been hard to turn my back on the me that thrived within these walls, like studying a slow-moving tragedy that slugs along at such a languid pace you never reach the painful part.
I’m living in the in-between. In the bubble of lust and buoyant hopes, drunk on the giddy feeling that flutters through my belly every time I see a flash of something so very … him and her.
Elluin and Kaan.
As the cycles flip by, I’ve come to the slow, uncomfortable realization that Kaan fell in love with a distant, bygone version of me that was probably softer.
Kinder.
A version of me that was brave enough （or perhaps stupid enough） to love.
I know this is dangerous. That I’ve spent my life trapped and starving, and now I’m a gluttonous escapee gorging on the ancient scraps of a happiness that belonged to somebody else. Because it was somebody else.
It certainly wasn’t me.
Call it morbid curiosity, but a pinch of me is desperate to know what pried me from this place, while every other part is certain I never want the answer to that poisonous question. Not even my lust for Rekk Zharos’s blood on my hands can pull me from this pocket of happiness right now, yet somehow I left. Somehow, I lost him.
Lost myself.
Lost a dragon who apparently loved me enough to sail me into the sky with her and calcify around me like a tombstone built for the both of us.
It’s hard to grapple that into a shape that doesn’t make me choke. Every angle I inspect, I feel like I’m only seeing the small rounded peak of something too big and heavy to bear.
Intuition tells me I don’t have the capacity to swallow all that sadness, which is why I’ve come to a decision. Now I just have to build up the courage to do it.
To let this go. For good.
But not now …
I’m not done imagining yet.
Icharge down the hall, using the back of my arm to swipe the sweat from my eyes, plowing around a corner to see Pyrok jogging toward me—shirtless, looking like he just rolled off his pallet at the sound of the lookout’s horns hailing my arrival.
“You look sober.”
Ish.
“The cycle is young,” he says, falling into step beside me. “Welcome home.”
“Take it Veya isn’t back yet?”
I’d hoped that, when I landed, she’d run out to greet me like she usually does. Feels weird without her dashing out with a thousand questions on her tongue, ready to sling them at me.
Feels …
Hollow.
“No. Last lark I received, she was almost at the wall but anticipated a few stops were going to slow her down. I’m guessing she’s almost at Arithia by now. Maybe even on her way back.”