· Never underestimate the zeal of a clergyman.

· Where there is poison, there should be antidote.

· Splitting up is a bad idea.

· Healers are a wonderful kind of people. Bring some.

· The mages go in back, except when the back is the front.

· Bone is harder than bread.

I found it behind a loaf of bread, in the very back of my cupboard. I don't have any recollection of putting it there. It's strange. Probably got shoved back there by whoever decided looting the dead man's house was a good idea. The people in Wyndham were too superstitious to do something like that. I miss them.

But ye gods, the bread! It isn't a loaf so much as a slab. I have half a mind to hand it over to some alchemist. No doubt if he could find a way to make stone as hard, the city's walls would be impenetrable. It's quite a lovely shade of green, where it sits under the cupboard. It must have spent months sitting back there.

I always was absentminded when it came to things like eating. And sleeping, for that matter. Dana always said I wouldn't do either if I didn't have a servant putting out the food and turning down the sheets, and quite often she is proved only too right.

That is, after all, why people have written diaries throughout history -- for the sake of their 'I.' So that others would know it as they do, know the 'real' them. Few would be so foolish as to provide a written record of their thoughts and feelings if they did not mean for it to be read. Though I do admit that most journals were written in the knowledge (no, the hope) that they would never be opened by another until after their author's death, if the journal is not burned, then its author wishes it known. Thus a diary becomes a sort of historical record, a way for the writer to pass on his life, his opinions, even after death.

I wonder just how unbiased a memoir written as lesson, message, or chronicle of self can be. Even the act of writing, and thus asserting that one's ideas are worth passing on, is its own small kind of arrogance. If a journal's purpose is to show others the 'true' you, do you even notice if you begin to falsify things slightly in your favor? Does it even feel like falsehood? One can never know how biased, how falsified a record of another's life is. One can only trust the words of the author.

Mine will be burnt.

The weather would grow cold, as well, but I relished it. I'd wrap myself in an old, oversized coat that once belonged to my grandfather, that bore brown buttons and the smell of pipe-smoke, and I would go walking. I've always loved trees, and it was at that time of year that I found them the prettiest. The leaves were most brilliant before their fall, not unlike man, if I wished to be morbid about it.

I would sit among them, a book in my lap, and read. Some days write, when I was feeling particularly bold. Always in the cold, always with that coat -- the smallfolk often whispered about how I was my grandfather come again. Whether they meant that as compliment or not I do not know; I paid them no heed. I was busy reading. Listening.

"Is it morning already?" I groaned and flopped an arm about. The slightest opening of my eyelids was an epic struggle. "It can be morning later. In the afternoon."

She pinched my cheek, hard. "Come on, get up. This is no way for a lord to behave."

"Ow!" I jerked upright, clutching a hand to my now-reddened face. "I'm up! I'm up!"
Dana smoothed out the skirts of her dress. "Mm. Good. You've a long day ahead of you." She might have been smiling, but I couldn't quite tell.

"Urk," I pointed out. At length, I asked, "Where's my mother?"

"'My mother,' he says." Dana gave a smirk and rose from the corner of my bed. "Such formality. I always did like it."

Dana succeeded in baiting me to remain awake. "You're never up this early. And you're only like this when you're plotting something." I groped about on the nightstand for my glasses. "You've got a reason for being here, don't you?"

"I do, I do." Dana laced her fingers together and rest her hands upon her stomach. "Get dressed and we'll talk about it."