15th Sun, 1st Astral Moon, 1572

Three suns… has it been three? My last entry seems to be dated for the 11th sun… and this day is the 15th.
I suppose it was three then, that the little babe cried and wailed without console. My head is so numb, I can hardly recall the days.

He would just cry. Wailing like I’ve never heard from the twins. It was thee pitch that, if I closed my eyes, I could imagine from a battlefield. Beyond the fighting, the dying and screaming… there is always sobbing in the distance, like the under-layer of those fabrics made from sound.

Falke made Crane and Cygnus irritable, confused… they were both unruly… Crane would knock things over for attention. Tables, plates… anything he could get his hands on. But with Falke screaming in my arms I hardly had the ability to care for all three.
By the third sun I could take no more…

I tucked Falke in his cradle, told the boys to go to their room, and sat outside the front door in the dark, the only light coming from the lamp I lit every night… and the sound of three children wailing within covered the sounds of my own sobbing.
I was used to being sleep-deprived on the road, in battle. By then it had been nearly three suns fully. My ears rang, my hands shook… and I just left them there to cry.

My only saving grace… I can’t recall how long I sat out in the cold barely clothed until she came over.
The old woman from the house closest to ours, the one who often cared for the boys when I had to leave.
I think she hugged me… but her arms were so thin, she reminded me of Eva.
I miss Eva.

She took the children to her house, told me to sleep. I did, I collapsed in my bed, I do not even remember walking there.
The house was so quiet I could hear my own breathing… and where as once I could hear his, it put me to sleep all the same.

My dreams were as muddled as my mind. Snow falling from the sky, hitting my face and tangling in my hair. I run, laugh… but I don’t remember why.
Eva is running in front of me, I recognize her hair. She leads me to a house, guides me inside and places her hands on my shoulders, guiding my to a chair.
I am sitting to dinner at Gunthers then. I do not remember why, dressed so regally, the table so long, it stretched in to the distance, and even my eyes could not see the end. My Lalafell comrade merely nodded to me… and took another bite of his aldgoat steak.
I look down at my hand, wondering if I had my own plate… and find my palm bleeding. A knife in my other hand rimmed in my own blood. There was no more table, only a man standing before me. Ariciont, grasping my bleeding hand with his rough palm, pulling me off the chair, starring at me with bloody eyes. He turns me around and shoves me to a flight of stairs. I do not look back, I continue to descend.
Syesta meets me at the bottom, jumps happily, dirt staining her smithy clothes. She prattles off to me in Garlean, hands me a rifle, so heavy in my hand. She leads me to a target which is no painted board…
Rhio is strapped to it, hanging limp, and she does not look up at me.
I raise the rifle as if I was suddenly back home, my commander behind me, whispering words of encouragement… hands touching me all over. I closed my eyes, and fired.
Then I am suddenly falling against some rough surface, sliding down the face of a cliff. I struggle, I grab a rock, dangle over the abyss. A hand reaches down, grips mine, pulls me up. It’s Oskar, smiling broadly at me, pushing hair back from my cheek… the warmth of his palm against my skin. He hands me a dagger, tilts his head towards the battle near us as if telling me ‘go join’.
I break free and run, the snow now ash against my face, blackening my hair. I lunge for an enemy, dagger forward as he turns to receive me, and the thud of my blade in to his chest, the rip of flesh, comes from Shurin before me. The lance in his hand was not meant for me.
He made no dying sounds as I clutched the dagger, unable to let go or pull back. He merely wrapped his arm around me… kissed my forehead… and then I could hear his breath in my ears, feel his arms around me.
‘Deirdre…’ he whispered so low, so smooth…

I snapped awake viciously, alone in my bed, blankets wrapped tight around my shivering form.
I wanted to cry more but my body had no tears left. My cheeks were already stained and flushed. I had cried as I slept.

And now I must return to my children.

15th Sun, 1st Astral Moon, 1572