Does anyone write a diary entry with a purpose in mind? I don't. I never have. You're just supposed to write your own thoughts, aye? Nobody sits around planning what they'll be thinking in ten minutes or an hour. I just put the pencil on the paper and go.
...and then those ten minutes go by and I'm stuck because I'm thinking too much already and can't sort my mind into words that make sense on parchment.
Start somewhere, Narys. Anywhere.
I haven't seen Dag again.
...don't write what you should, Narys, write what's true and honest.
I'm sad that I haven't seen him. I guess I had hoped to. I don't know what I hoped would happen, but I still feel this pesky, vulnerable hurt when I think of him and how things went between us. My chest aches and I feel like crying as if I'm a little girl. What that means, I couldn't say. Only that I don't like it. Something is unhealed there. We did apologize, didn't we? Why wasn't that enough? Hearts are bothersome things.
Spring is bountiful this year. Lots and lots of rain, which means fat, gurgling streams, and flowers and grass shooting high as can be. The birds and rabbits and deer and everything are plump and happy and no doubt rutting like mad.
Lucky them.
Anyway, it will make for wonderful hunting through the rest of the year. I'm not worried for coin. There is something to be said for keeping alone in the wilds and not having to fuss over a house and family and fancy clothes and such.
And now I'm thinking about Pa and Ma and sighing over and over. I feel like Pa is frowning down at me. "Don't look at me like that!" I'd say to him. I don't know if he ever thought I'd settle down and find some nice fella to marry, but that certainly hasn't happened. I can't imagine it happening, either. But dammit, the thought that it might disappoint them...even if it's just their spirits looking down at me...it's unbearable.
One day, maybe. All right? Stop frowning, Pa, I can feel it all the way down here. It's not my fault if your daughter is an intolerable and rootless animal.
Though...whose fault would it be, but mine?
I'd make so many folk smugly pleased if I went into town, got a job at some shop or other, put on a dress, and smiled and nodded and spent each night sewing by candlelight and saying things like, "Yes, indeed, ma'am" and "What a fine day it is, to be sure!"
How the thought alone makes me laugh! I just don't have it in me! I'm sorry, but I don't. Perhaps I'm disappointing everyone in the world and whatever realm lies beyond. They'll just have to forgive me. I must be what I am. We don't ask any other creature on earth to be what it isn't. We don't ask birds to swim or deer to fly or foxes to stand on two legs and walk about. Why do we ask people to be what they aren't? It's all very unfair.
I hadn't been inside the hedge-wall for weeks until last night. In hindsight, I likely should have stayed outside it.
I hadn't even gotten the damn door closed in the Pony, when I heard raised voices and saw a cluster of folk against the far wall. I tried to ask Butterbur what the trouble was, but he couldn’t get two words out, as there was such commotion and things seemed to be happening faster than could be sorted out properly. Half a dozen or so people were crowded around some man that was laughing in the most unsettling way, and rolling and leaping around like a squirrel in a tree and seemed bent on attacking anyone who came close to him. Why no one had run outside to grab a Watcher, I’ve no idea, but there wasn’t time to get an answer, all I could think was to stick an arrow in the madman before Barliman wound up with broken tables and shattered crocks. I recognized Kris among the would-be heroes, but the others were all strangers, including two she-elves, which seemed more than bizarre, and looking back, I wonder if maybe I dreamed that part of it.
I did get an arrow into the back of his shoulder, but then he waved his hand and smoke appeared, just like that, out of nowhere! A damn sorcerer or something, he must have been, and it scared the daylights out of me. He bolted for the door and vanished. I think Kris gave chase, but he came back a few minutes later alone, so... now we’ve a madman on the loose? A sorcerer madman? No, thank you, I’ll just stay in the Chetwood! Even though I lost one of the dwarf-steel arrows that Gungur made for me, dammit all.
I’m being silly, I know. Only children hide from things that frighten them. But everyone is frightened of something, aren’t they? Hmm.
A peculiar evening ended on an even more peculiar note. Who do you think I should see after this crazed lunatic fled the Pony, leaving us all in uproar? Fecking Crow. Perched at the counter sipping a drink as if he hadn’t a care in the world, and dropping my name with all the calm of someone who’d seen me every day for years. Except he hasn’t. Where’d he even come from? He wasn’t there when I went in. Sneaky bastard.
I should be more forgiving. I haven’t seen the man for... gods, it must be two years, at least? I’d like to say I’m not the same person I was then, but how true is that? On the contrary, I feel like I stopped being myself for a long time and only just now am starting to find my way back to who I really am. He seemed as cool and flirtatious and strange as he ever did. I wouldn’t give it more than a thought except he is so very lovely to look at, and he seemed strangely curious to know how I’d been and what I’d been up to. Even though I passed it off as politeness, as folk are always asking how people are, and most of the time, they don’t give two damns for the true answers. I remember him much like he was last night. But I never did get a chance to know him at all, really, did I? Whatever lies behind his pretty smirk and his cool way of speaking is a mystery to me. I daresay I was just a headstrong and stupid girl when we first met, anyway. What did I know then? A bunch of giggling and flirting and word-games was all that ever passed between us. We hinted that we’d like to meet again before parting ways last night.
If life has taught me anything, it’s that folk don’t stick around. No one ever has, and I’m not staking any faith that anyone ever will. It will be no different with Crow. It’s right there in his name, after all.
