I've been carrying a journal bound in crimson leather for years now, and a pen and pot of ink. Tricky things to carry sometimes in the places I have to go. I have to protect them against being broken, or lost, or caught in the damp, not that there's that much damp in the Lone Lands. But worth it, for my work as a scout of the Eglain. I can write, in cipher, all the things I do, the places I go, the things I see, the tasks before me, to keep it all straight. Also, if one day I fall to a goblin's spear or a wolf's claws, another scout might find it, and my work can be continued. And I can tear out a page with something scribbled in code on it, and leave it where my fellow scouts will know what must be known, and no one else even realizes there is a message to be read. All well worth the effort of learning to read and write, and the challenges of carrying such fragile things through lands more suited to the shining edge of an axe, and the tang of blood.
When Hana gave me another journal, this one with a cover more rust-gold, the color of gorse-flowers, I told her I didn't need it; there were plenty of pages left in my real journal. "No, this one is for you, not the Eglain scout, just you." I thought she was joking. Then of course I realized she wasn't, because, as dearly as I love the Eglain, my family, my people, they do not do much joking. Nor dancing, nor laughing, nor smiling, nor any other merriment. Much like the land they live in, they are dry, hard, drab, and serious. Mirth is for the Soft Folk that live west, in the Soft Lands, luxuriating in their greenswards and abundance, the ease of a life blissfully unaware of the dangers that they're protected from.
I have carried this gorse journal for a turning of the moon with no idea what to write in it, though every day I have things to write in my real journal. For that's how I think of it. This journal, with a crimson cover, is the real journal; this one, with the gorse cover, is a fake journal I have to carry because Hana said it was a gift. But every time my fingers, rummaging through my satchel, found it instead of the real journal, I wondered why she gave it to me. And if she'd given one to all the other scouts.
But of course she hadn't. They had their reasons to become scouts, and I had mine, and they probably weren't that similar. We'd all talk about the importance of our work in protecting our people, ensuring our survival in a hard land. We're all capable folk, who can put an axe into goblin-flesh, pass unseen and unheard through valleys and ruins, scratch water out of the dry soil, and run unwearied through the length of a moonless night. But amongst a grim, hard, serious people, the other scouts were the most grim, the most hard, the most serious. When someone had to go amongst the Soft Folk, most of them dreaded that far more than the most treacherous creep through goblin-camps. But I was the one who volunteered for it. For having to endure a night of merriment, dancing, and laughter. And when I got back, I'd be the one telling jokes that most of the Eglain didn't even realize were jokes.
Maybe that's why I became a scout, in fact, just for a chance to get away from everyone. I could just as easily have chosen the life of a tailor, or cook, or healer, or weaponsmith. If I'd wanted to spend all my time amongst the solemnity of my kin. Hana must have realized, and thus, the gorse journal, to help with the side of me that laughs, as much as the crimson journal helps the side of me that works.
So that's what I'm going to use the gorse journal for. Not for meticulous records of the movements of goblin packs, or counts of supplies delivered to ready our people for the winter, or of my incursions into the dangerously shadowed folds of my beautifully terrible homeland. No, this journal will record the merriment, the laughs, the joys. The things that make all that other stuff worth it, for me at least.
So now that I've filled the first page with all this nonsense about what kind of nonsense will be on the rest of the pages, I guess I'd better get out there and make some nonsense so there'll be something to go on the second page!
