Dear journal,

Long have I considered you a friend. Back home, I would write in your pages each and every evening, telling you about my day. The ups, the downs, and the middles. It was calming. I felt heard. I felt understood, even if you aren't truly a living thing. Perhaps that is for the best. Living things have so much to say. So very much to say. But you don't judge, for your ear is forever open and your lips forever sealed. Thank you. Though I suppose you aren't the same journal I had in those days. That book is long gone, along with the rest of my homeland. Even so, I still want to treat you as its continuation, as much as I can. Though your binding is different and your pages blank, I still feel the same sense of safety and understanding emanating from your being. You are the same, even if you can't remember. I want to remind you, if you'd allow me.

It has been a few months since I arrived. At first, I wasn't sure how. All I could recall were faint sensations. Screams, some my own. The weight of a sword in my hand, the warm bronze against my skin. Flashes of pain, a pervading sense of wrongness as everything went silent...

They say lost. In a way, they aren't wrong. Loss has become a part of me, whether I like it or not. I feel like my home is lost to me, with its ashes having settled two decades in the passed. Two decades that I wasn't here for. The disconnect is palpable. I am a living relic of my culture, a culture that most Altherians have not even heard of and will never get to know. I'm not entirely sure how to feel about that. You've lost something as well, haven't you journal? All those memories we made together. We'll get through this together, old friend. We always have.

Forever yours,

Daiyu

I found this crumpled piece of paper in the inn... I can't remember exactly where now... and a broken quill among some rubble when I was exploring the city. Things have been... so odd. But later on in a good way. I stumbled into this strange and wondrous place a few days ago. I don't remember how I even got here. I know it sounds confusing. That's because it is. The last piece of awareness I remember is looking around and finding myself in the tavern. Before that... I know nothing. I remember nothing. Everything in my head is like... well, picture roiling fog or smoke. You can't see anything but indistinct gray around you. When you do get glimpses through it, they are tiny points of colorless light, or they are a scattered blur of shapes. You can't get a good look at them, then they are lost again. A word. A voice far in the distance that you strain to listen to. The glimmer of a feeling or a thought, but you don't know if it's a memory... or simply your own imagination toying with you. Anything, any dreams, thoughts, or what might be memories, I have before that first day at the inn are just that. tiny points. Glimmers. crumbled leaves breaking apart as they are tossed about by wind. They mock me and delight in my tortured confusion. My friends, the ones I've met and made here, perhaps think I'm somewhat strange when I stare into a dancing fire or gaze at the rippling water in the beautiful fountain in the city square, sometimes even when it gets chilly. I don't know who I was before, so now I'm just trying... trying to build who I am, or I suppose, who I will end up being, now. I... well, I've just been reaching for things that call to me. Things that I seem to like and am drawn to. I just hope I won't have to flee this life, either. That is one sense of vague remembrance I have. Fleeing, or trying to flee from something. I know now that it's called the blight. But not much beyond that I can say. I have strong emotions sometimes, including a potent, almost cloying fear. From what I don't know. My friends have become a blessing to me. I don't want to forget them, too.