page 196

I can't remember much of the past few days, but I can remember all the things I don't want to.

Procrastin abandoning me. Auroran still refusing to speak with me. Grin is no longer my buddy, either, not with Campion back. There's been no sign of Tat Anna and I don't know how to find her. Lingering in the two places I know she's been has proven fruitless and somehow, I feel too ashamed to try very hard. Who wants my company, anyway?

I am so lonely.

This entry seems to have been left and then returned multiple times. Several additional, half-scratched out thoughts follow.

Procrastin's woman friend, Mandy, gave me booze and a cloak for Winter's Veil. I remember drinking with her. I still don't care much for her or the way she keeps insisting on trying to talk to me. There's just something about her that rubs me all wrong, as if I had fur and she's static.

I have yet to return to the loft after the break-in and the confrontation with Seikilos. I hope that he did not steal or break the anonymous gifts that I had gotten in the mail last week. The childrens' toys... I should very much like to keep those, if nothing else. I imagine all of the bourbon is gone, what little of it was not broken over my head, at any rate.

Other than that, there is little to write. I counted this morning. It's been almost three months, a few days shy. Procrastin told me, before he yelled me--no, that's wrong, he told me while yelling at me--that there's little I can do now. Whether I had made my choice or not, it's been made for me at this point.

Procrastin.

Somehow I found myself outside their home, somehow he did not turn me away, but simply yelled again. Somehow I found myself on his spare cot upstairs. Somehow I found myself trying to sleep while Auroran returned home and they exchanged gifts, ate cake, and laughed together.

Somehow I did not cry until later, in the dark and alone, when they had quieted. When they had finished and the bedsheets were no longer rustling or the smack of skin to skin no longer tormented me quite so vividly.

I love them. There's no room for me. Not in their bed, not in their hearts, not in their lives.

Why do I keep hoping?

It's really easy to cry silently, and to hide it, when you can cover yourself in shadow.