Dramatis Personae

All my life, I have never been very good at keeping myself in one piece... I seem to fly apart at the slightest stress. But this blessed leaf... it clears my mind and calms me, makes me able to do and say things that otherwise would leave me a weeping, trembling wreck.

And it allows me to dodge arrow after arrow, doing a dance no one else can see. I laugh at this gentleman's joke, toy with the hair of the other, listen raptly to a third... I must keep all the plates spinning, because if I do not, everything I am beginning to hope for will shatter. I am no great leader, to rally troops with the power of my oratory and the strength of my spirit. I have only what I have, and I must use it... but without ever giving it away... because once I do, all the other plates will cease their spinning, and the whole thing will fall apart.

Leaf give me strength. And may none of them ever know what is truly in my heart.

Am I noble?

What does the word even mean?

By birth, there is no doubt. Although my father's roots were tainted slightly by commerce, my mother was only a few branches in the family tree away from the Sunstriders themselves.

But what is this quality of nobility which he seems so determined to see in me? I am afraid to speak my mind to him, for fear that he will not see what he so obviously wishes to see. I want to be what pleases him, and I only seem to disappoint him at every turn. He says that that golden afternoon two years ago is one of his fondest memories... and yet he keeps his distance now, defers to me.

They all keep their distance. I wish sometimes I had not broken things off with him - because even though it is best for all concerned, the nights are so cold these days, and I had grown accustomed to having warmth beside me, the reassuring presence of a mind and will that, unbent to mine, still chose proximity.

So much of my life has the ring of fate about it. And so much in which I feel confident turns out to be nothing but the whispering of the wind.

When he turned on me again, I thought he was the only one I could go to... after all he was the only one who knew the full history, the only one who could fully appreciate how alarming the situation has become... I wanted to tell him all, to have him hold me and kiss my bruises and tell me that it was not my fault... but instead, when I opened up to him, let the painful words pour forth, he left me there alone! The pain was too much for me to bear. It burned in me like a fire... and I waded into the water to cool it... let the water close over my head... let it fill my lungs, shutting out the agony with sweet oblivion...

...and next thing I knew, she was there, her hands gentle on my hair as the water poured forth from my lungs. She sat with me a while, this near-stranger, and offered me the comfort that a longtime friend could not find it in his heart to give.

I will never forgive him this. Never.

I feel as though I am watching the earth and sky crumble into pieces... from very, very far away.

I must ration my leaf carefully, though... my supply has been cut off. I doubt he will be back, now that he has been found out. Whatever his plan was, he knows it can no longer come to fruition. He knows I no longer trust him, and I'm sure whatever his plans were, they had to have revolved around my trust. Why else would he have said the things to me that he did? Perhaps some of them were truths, but I am too heartsick and soul-weary to sit down and try to sort them out into lies and truths and half-truths. I can only function by believing that everything someone says may be a lie, and therefore taking none of it seriously, or believing that everything someone says to me is truth. I can no longer trust him.

Nor him! Oh, I can trust him to tell the truth - of that I've no doubt - I just can't trust him to keep his Wretched mouth shut. The two people in this world I most want to confide in have proven, in very different ways, how very badly I misjudged them. He says he was serving the Order... I believe he was serving himself. Of all the things that keeps this Order together, keeping MY secrets under lock and key ranks up there pretty sunburned high. It just so happened that he chose to interpret another of my directives as more important, and obeying that lesser directive just so happened to get him, I'd be willing to wager, at least to second base with that little tart.

I am disgusted with all of elvenkind at the moment, and am beginning to wonder why I should care if they all succumb to the madness of their addictions.

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"It's not about aptitude / it's the way you're viewed / so it's very shrewd to be / very very popular... like me!" -Galinda in Wicked the musical.
Played by <a href=http://callsheet.dramatis-personae.com/index.php?a=viewuser&id=38>Mishell </a>on Kirin Tor
<a href=http://callsheet.dramatis-personae.com/index.php?a=view&id=1016>Check me out</a> on the Call Sheet!

This entry is written in the same handwriting as the rest, slightly different from the handwriting in her letters - those who know her well recognize it is the way she writes when under the influence of Bloodthistle...

He has decided to give me another chance... or perhaps it is I giving him another chance... no matter, he smiles at me again, and music sings through every nerve in my body, and my arm feels so at home in his, and his hair catches the sun like all holy Light, and the very smell of his clothing sends me in a soaring spiral of certitude...

He is my destiny... he is my dream made flesh... he is my Sunwell.