July 4 -- Heavy in your arms

[branetalking]

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Dear Diary,

Still alive.

How many days has it been since we left Acherus? I don't really know, honestly. Things have blurred together. I want to say three, maybe four. Every night brings something else strange with it, though, and I don't really understand half of what's happening.

I do know that I spoke to my father. I do know that he was... he's broken. Oliver says it can't be completely because of me, and I want to believe that, but I know how thoroughly a child can break you. I know how wholly you can be pushed to the point of wanting to give up entirely because every time you inhale, they break your heart. I knew that I've been doing this to Dad, and I knew--some part of me knew--that when I talked to him about it, he would tell me that he wanted to die.

Retrospectively, I shouldn't have told him that I would've helped with that. Retrospectively, I should've told him what I eventually did: that he had to stick around for Alma, that it wasn't fair for her. But I wasn't thinking, and Oliver told me later that of course, of course, what I said was because of my own guilt. Of course I was. I knew that. But it didn't stop me from saying what I said or doing what I did. And Dad is... well. He's not okay. I don't think he'll be okay until we find Alma, but I told him that he doesn't have to keep bearing the weight of the world alone. We can help him.

I just hope he listens and that I'm able to stop breaking his heart.

Related, Oliver and I

Well, it was weird. It was something I'd wanted to try, the idea of creating an entire world in someone's mind. It's all in that book that Marius gave me. You can create this world... if a person needs to recover from a trauma or something, you can create a world that will help their body rest while their mind recovers. And if you want to imprison someone but imprisoning their body wouldn't work, you can create a prison for them within their own mind and watch them waste away. It's incredibly complex and powerful and exhausting. Less so when the world is in your own mind. Then it just draws from what you know.

We tried it last night, and it was amazing. We were a lord and lady with a grand house on Lake Mereldar. We were having a party, but we left the party to walk on the beach, in the sand, and the sand was like nothing I'd ever felt before. I didn't realize that my mind could create something as beautiful as that night, as the way we danced by the lake's shore.

And then I gave him his fantasy: I let him kill me and raise me to be mindlessly his. I think... sometimes, I think seeing what that would really be is enough to shock both of us out of ever wanting any of it. I certainly don't want to be mindless, at least not really. I hope he doesn't want me to be mindless, really.

Either way, it won't actually ever happen. Not as long as we can just escape to our dream and see the way things happen there.

-S.

LOG: Senkha and Nialos. Warning: contains SO much bawwww -- here