To live within the world, not upon it, this is the meaning of elvenkind. The humans, who will break a branch rather than gently twist to to form into a better position, do not understand this, and set themselves apart. To be elven is to have patience wt h the world as it is, knowing that it can and will change. To be elven is to understand the importance of greeting the morning, greeting the evening, singing the dead to final sleep. To be elven is to be many things beyond words, living only in the musi c.

I do not understand humans. They live so quickly, so hurriedly, with so much time spent playing games with meaning and so little time spent on making it. There is no understanding of the arch of flight, the importance of the properly laid melody, the th oughtful word - it is all hurry and now and reshaping the world to fit the men, and not the men to fit the world. Harsh and controlling, this humanity, with its walls and roofs and palisades, and its Keep Law and other such things. It is said that man a cross the sea has crowded the world such that they come here, and this I can believe. It is good that my distanter kin will keep the green places and the wild ones, where humankind will not trespass, so that some world will remain unbent, as it ought to be left.

Thus is confusion. Those of the mixed blood who live among humans - they may have it easier than I. I do not know, and will not judge. But with the human abruptness, the human force and shaping of the world, there is so little chance to fit in the unde rstanding of what one might miss by not being fully of the blood. And I, who know the songs, who know the trees, who know the sounds and the tunes and the rhythms, who breathe them when I am not locked up in caves or walls of some sort, I know that I do not have the span of time to understand and appreciate all there is to comprehend, and I know that I will not have time to make the paean of my seasons that I would, otherwise.

All comprehensible things are in the music, and the music is in all. The histories, the meanings, the traditions, all fit into chant and tune, so that they will be best remembered. The music is beyond words, can express the things that words lack. It i s what is solid, understood, formed, and tested. Untried thoughts, unbalanced concepts, these all make poor rhythm and worse tune.

Without an understanding of what has been before, one cannot understand what is. Without understanding of what is, there is no meaning to be derived from events. While things shape themselves, form magics long lost to the world, there is nothing to do b ut learn what those magics were, to remember the songs and to make new ones to replace the ones that were lost. These must be remembered, understood, spread, repeated above all.

Books! These novelties, in truth. There are words here, though nothing yet distilled to its essence within music, to be remembered without the burden of these massive pages, this massive copying. But here can be found the hints of lsot songs, ready to b e reborn into a world needing to bear their breath once more. Here is knowledge of more basic thoughts than can be mastered and made into chants to teach, or knacks that can be remembered by the elders and knowing ones of a particular tribe. To read, to study, and to delve into thoughts and meanings is a cacophony of new thought, but one which resolves, line by line, into a glorious harmony.

There is one thing to be said by those who shape their lives around sword, axe, maul, and other such implements - they end the needed battles of the wild rapidly. The urge, eager, incomprehensible, to bend and reform all the world around a fist is one th at I cannot comprehend - to pass silent so as not to rouse the great cat is better than facing its claws. To know the way of beast is to more often than not avoid ire - and as for dangers of a two-legged kind, most of them are the sort whose thoughts tak e only martial form in the first place.

To live, to be, one must partake deeply of the essences of the world. Humans, more often than not, ration themselves by their insistences on walls and single places, without the span of understanding that a walk will take. To not feel wind in the hair, to watch the circling falcon, take in deep breaths of airs that taste different when the weather changes, when the season changes, when the place changes, is incomprehensible. Sun and star and moonlight, and the soft glow of a night's flame, these are al l things that cast different insight into a world of complexity. Slashed away, most of all, from the shape of life that is, fallen trees ringing stifling towns, so safely locked away in a half-life, away from the beasts and the living world, is a way to choke and die. Give me wind and sky, earth under my feet and a spring or stream, give me these things, and then I can truly say I live, not as a shadow, but as a woman at one with the world as it breathes.

The people of the head and the people of the heart - such a dichotomy of language. These words, these words that the people who act from the gut bear, having so much of the mind, no meaning but those most abstracted, most useless, without breath. Then, the people of the mind, having speech that carries with it the full range of the things within the heart. Words... lose their meanings, when confronted with truth of music, words with no music to them being shells, husks, nuts with no meats. Words fall closer and clsoer to the music of the matter, in search of the harmonies, but all fall short, arrows out of range, fallen and forgotten.

Then, to match this seeking mind with seeking flight of falcon, to understand and be understood. This is another level, another sense of being, an entirely different rhythm. This is an interaction, not just with the shape of one music, but two, twining to make patterns of greater complexity and glory. One might think that this is all that one needs to bear, in truth.

And then there is understanding association, and shaping that understanding, and choosing, at last, to cast aside the bonds of a place one did not belong, to fully join a place where one does. This... is the last barrier to starting a whole new music.

My word, if it is broken, is worthless. Trusts given me, if broken, are worthless. I will not step aside because it makes the path easy, I will not play easy with my meanings for expedition.

I do not often give my loyalty to people, to institutions, to such things - for I cannot depend on the same strength of the bond between my word and myself. To my family, there is loyalty, because the all strive for the one, and the one for all, and such is equitable - each gives to within his capability, and those who do not choose such a path leave, as Riza did.

Loyalty to a person, once given, shall last until that person acts in a way disloyal. I do not choose erroneously. Or, if I do, I feel like a thrice-cursed fool - I suppose.

Love is the most difficult of subjects to discuss, to bring to words, to shape. To have family is to love in some ways unquestioningly, for inthe webwork of family, bonds of love are forged from the outset, and continue - should all go well.

Love of companions... less simple. My feathered partners I love, as they I - Argent in his simple way, Faileas for her own reasons. Rain - in his way, for I have made him as one of my family by my petition, because none should be so alone as he.

To love the gods... there is the devotion of a priest, who gives over all of his self to such service, in whatever path such service takes him. There are those such as myself, who are simpler, and revere in our own quiet way. There are those who do not listen - and those I do not comprehend at all.

To love as a mate, as my foster parents do, such things... far, far too complicated. To have found purpose, to have found caring, to have no idea what to do with this knowing, this caring, this... this love. It is a subject impossible to bring into speech for one who... knows such things, among his own people, and my own awkwardnesses are unworthy of him. It is almost worse than being alone - at least alone I knew where I was.

Journal #1

Things grow too complicated. They must be writ down so I will not lose them in the cracks of my mind. If I can figure where to begin. Gwynedd, perhaps, since so much of the confusion is his. He begins to teach me his language, his runes, and the little I know shows how he finds my own tongues so difficult. I wish also that he could teach me his... opened mind, and such -- if only so th at I could bear the weight of at least some of the conversations. When I asked, he adopted an expression of thought like when he has lost the important words, but he said he would try.

There are whole realms to follow -- this unliving sorcerer we have freed, about whom I know next to nothing. Learning, knowing, all these things I would follow -- though Biting Rain points out in his blunt cruelty that my life is too short to chase them all.

There is another puzzle. I am not certain what to make of that one, yet, nor is Gwynedd. So, he bears watching. Watching I do well.

Zev -- I worry about him. He has more human to him than elven, always hurrying, raging about the world to bend it to his will. Was this the first time it bent him instead?

While I ponder my companions, there is Saro. I wonder sometimes that she might not want someone closer to her, but she is so aloof in her books and her thoughts that I do not know how to speak with her -- people are so hard to speak with, truly. It is g ood that Argent understood the command from her, I would not have had her return utterly unguarded. I am proud of him.

I wonder what we will find in this tower of hers. Perhaps Gwynedd will tell me its stories, to give me a frame to settle understanding upon.

I wish there was less need of hurry, though, for I need time to gather my understanding. I am more elven than human in this, most certainly, needing the space to breathe in without frenetic doings.

There is too much happening to piece together into useful songs. This hurry has driven me to write, and now I must carry it until I feel the heart in it and it settles into my center. Then there will be songs, now there is only a discord of solitary ton es.