[Filter: Hazel]

Yeah, alright. Let's do it. If you're sure about it, too, I'll write to my father and get the money tomorrow.

I like it. Nice place. Already got all these ideas of what we can do with it.

[Filter: Private]

Hm, does look like a nice place. Big, spacious, nice, furnished. Lots of land, too. Reasonably priced, all things considered.

And it's here in Aeda, far from home, which is the best thing of all.

[Filter: Public]

Well, Dragons, after a Guardian of the Altar gives a little sermon for the journalfolk, how am I supposed to say something? You can't really compete there. I'll just look like an idiot. Fuck!

Uh, let's just go with ... Happy Day of Everlasting Light, uh, keep it faithful and good all throughout the year. Right.

Tradition broken.

[Filter: Eriena]

Well, hey there, you.

So after a few weeks of empircal evidence, I have discovered that being married is mostly exactly like not being married.

Maybe it'll be different once we actually, you know, aren't living in the family house, but apparently that's a process and for once my father actually cares what I do. Probably because it's his money that's being spent.

Yeah, that sounds like him.

Children might also make a difference, but no sign of those little assholes yet.

So yeah! That's my life. Grossly overrated in total. How's everybody else?

[Filter: Private]

Well.

This is it.

... yeah.

[Filter: Public]

So hey, magic journals, I went and got married. Good times.

[Filter: Private]

The worst part isn't that I made a complete drunken idiot out of myself, though that was pretty bad, let's be honest.

It wasn't even that she completely schooled me. In fact, I can live with that, though I was apparently pretty worked up about it at the fucking time.

The worst dragonsdamned part is that I think she's ...

I think she might be right.

I've spent the last months running away as fast as I could from what was going to happen, and hey, what do you know, here we are anyways. Nothing I don't do is going to fix anything, so isn't it my responsibility -- oh, I'm good at that one, sure, right -- to do what I can do?

... all this time, I've avoided actually ... saying something because I've been afraid of fucking everything up but holy shit it can't get more fucked up than it already is, can it? I'm getting married tomorrow, almonst, and I can't look at myself in the mirror and say that I really actually want to do it and considering how this has been my one and only dream for -- ever ...

I have no idea what --

Yeah, Eriena, you're right, and fuck you.

... Dragons.

Okay.

Fuck.

[Filter: Hazel]

Hi.

Let's talk.

[filter: p rivate]

fuc kin

ever y thin g

[Fil ter: Er ie na]

well hey

how
s

li fe?

[Filter: Ian]

Okay, so!

Just as a general bulletin for your information, I may wander off into the wilds, change my name, and vanish forever.

I'm thinking Mysterio. Too obvious?

Alternatively, I could just fucking kill myself, but that seems messy.

[Filter: Private]

Seraphine.

... really.

She's the real deal, after all? Really?

I've seen her writing here for years and it's been so easy to dismiss her. It seemed way too dragonsdamned convenient, didn't it? Her just showing up here? No memory?

But Ian believed it from the second I told him -- as a fucking joke. Her father has declared her the genuine article before the entire country. There's celebrations breaking out from Aeda to Lireth, the Pilgram's Pass to Erisport.

Still doesn't seem real.

It's easier, for everyone else. Everyone loved her, who couldn't love her? People loved Seraphine more than Ian! But she was always a degree away from them, wasn't she? A happy shiney flowery pixie. For whatever reason, I was --

Well, I guess I was sor of friends with them, wasn't I?

All those years, thinking Hazel was my only friend. Now I see that maybe she's never thought of me as -- as anything, and the people I thought were just humouring me ...

I'd write to her, but what's the point? She wouldn't remember me and I'm not sure what I'd even have to say. Welcome back! You're alive!

[Filter: Ian]

Crazy shit, huh?

But I guess this is old news, to you, since you always believed in her.

[the writing is a scrawled, weak mess]

knew I shouldn't have poured that last glass

hello, everything I have ever ingested!