People seem to be.. kind to me so far. Some of them remember what I did, but they seem willing to forgive me. More concerned I’m back than whatever I did, maybe, but it’s too soon to tell right now. I’m still meeting a lot of old and new faces despite everything. Good chunk of them old. I feel like.. people are rather upfront with whether they see me with disdain still. It comes off like that at least. I don’t care a lot about that though. Not anymore. People can hate me with all their guts for all I care now as long as I can stay here still.
I have changed though. Gods know I’ve changed, as much as I’ve lost faith in them in the time of everything happening.
I feel in control of myself now. Maybe I am still dangerous, but I can at least keep my temper in check. I can stop hurting people without realizing it, trying to justify it in my head. The thought of it makes me sick now. I have it in me to move on. To stop lashing out. I have to show that to people, be grateful for the ones who already see it.
Maybe I’ll still trip and recede along the way.. but I want to try.
Still got it in me to smith from what it seems like, despite everything. The smell caught me off-guard, probably since it hasn’t been used in a while, but it does little in making less how comforting it is being near the fire of a forge again. Maybe Hugo was right that I was fine maybe just smithing tin trinkets for a living, as much as I found it.. I guess demeaning at the time. It shouldn’t be bad money to make anyway.
..I don’t know if I still need to pay that debt to Fennai for the anvil considering she’s gone, but I might as well leave money for Lacosa when I get around to it. I’ll just have to see whatever critters pull up on me.
I’ve got a handful of keys in storage, otherwise. Elysia paid me a good bit for a silver one and a keyring to go with it. I could probably stock a good amount of tin stuff for people to buy offa if I can help it. If my luck’s good, I can probably work out of Dove’s place, and if not, maybe Harris’ post office.
There’s a few critters willing to support me if things don’t really go well at least, which I’m glad for.
(Warning from this point on for implications of slavery, general violence & brutality)
There’s a different section of the journal, bookmarked with a slightly smaller piece of paper with something drawn on it. The style is somewhat different from the other drawings in the journal.
It’s damaged by seawater.
On the back is something written in lapin at the bottom, done in a more regimented and fanciful style, almost wistful in comparison to that of the journal’s.
“Don’t let them see you weak. The real nightmare starts when they learn what makes you tick. One day there will be home, among the blood and pain. Don’t give up hope. Please.”
My memory isn’t the clearest on what happened in the span of leaving and coming back. I left most of everything behind somewhere by the time I left, and just now I come back to record it all.
Losing my memory at the time though was a lie. I have to make that clear. I don’t know why exactly I did it. Everything in that time was kind of a blur, but I’d guess it was a way to get back at Quarrel for everything, cope with how I was. Make them suffer for what I saw as them wronging me, too afraid to actually face them.
I ran off from Morenth when the shame became so overwhelming I couldn’t keep lying to myself about what I was doing. I’d rather have self-exiled at the time and became forgotten, so I left my things buried somewhere in the sand, and traveled back to my hometown by moving alongside the coastline where I could over the course of days, alone. Not a lot happened because of that. I lived off scrounging and moving into the woods to find clean water to drink. I never saw Constantine, and in a way maybe I didn’t want to in that whole sorta haze of self-hatred, but.. maybe I also wasn’t committed to exile, if I did meet him, and it was known I found him. I doubt there would’ve been turning back if anyone knew, even if only a few critters cared enough for it.
It wasn’t kinder in my hometown. For a moment I felt glad to see that stone pier coming forward from the sand, the ruins that were taken up as home for some of the people there, but I realize now I was pushed to leave for a reason. Some people looked and me and paid no notice, and others were with silent contempt. I found my father’s burrow, a trinket shop that he didn’t really get a lot of customers for, but entering it I only found it dark. I called out for his name and there wasn’t a response. There wasn’t even a trace that he was gone, and the shop was ransacked. I didn’t have any money or could find keys to my old room, so for the days I was there I was staying in a way-shrine, trying to find work. I got turned away from the jobs I used to work in, and my old coworkers seemed to take surprise in seeing me back, then disappointed, angry even.
I was always like this to them. In all my time in Morenth, I only really tried to hide it, and I failed. They didn’t want me back, said I was better off something for someone else to deal with. “The problem child of a criminal and some heartless dynasty noble.”, I think I heard someone say in passing about me, a little to my confusion. They wanted me gone, and that I could tell, but what I didn’t expect was them being so quick to act on it. After a week or so staying there I got confronted, and they told me to leave, screaming I get out when I eventually came to arguing and fighting them out of rage.
It wasn’t long before I got overwhelmed and knocked out. It was certain with how many critters there were, really.
I didn’t wake up on the street or out in the forest, though. When I woke up, I had tangle-cloth pulled tight over my eyes. I was in a ship from what I could tell from everything else. My mouth was locked shut with black magic and from what I guessed they used yellow magic to make feeding me not as much of a worry, keep me unconscious for a long time. I was there for hours, days, weeks, maybe? I couldn’t tell, much less night and day with how I was in the spans I was awake. Only the ship’s interior and the sea outside in its roughest moments, critters speaking with each-other in a language that wasn’t common.
Althas wasn’t crying for me, though.
I couldn’t move. Not like I could before. I struggled, but it only gave attention to the crew on board who’d quickly put me back under if I made too much noise, like it was routine. They didn’t care. I prayed, but nothing I did seemed to make it stop. The final time I woke up there was to the light of a fire crystal while I didn’t have on my tangle-cloth blindfold, laying on my side on the wood. With my eyes not so used to the light, I could only make out that the critter holding it was a rather old looking fox telling me to stand. My fur was covered in my dried blood, and I came to realize how strong the smell of salt and iron was on me. How overwhelmed my senses were here. Still I wasn’t able to do much much of anything, but I was moving. My movements had more sound to them.
I looked down when I stood, and only then I more finally realized why they were metal.
Around my ankles and my wrists, I was in shackles.
