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I awoke to the sensation of rain over my body, repetitive and rhythmic as the fingers of a piana player. The world felt weightless, fresh and clean. Perfect. I said my hellos to Virgil, drowsing in the rain, and went on to find Ourania by the playground rocks.

We played for a while, sloshing our hooves in the puddles that collected in the rainy rocks, butt-dancing in my preffered rock...The tall one, you know, with the ramp. It's a very good rock for bird-watching. Anyway, Ourania and I played like this for a while, before we decided to rest under the rock-ramp, out of the drenching rain. We were joined for a little while by the fawn Nayu, who I'd like to meet again: he fell asleep so quickly that I barely had time to learn his name.

The sound of the rain was so heavy, so lush, like a jungle of noise with its great canopy trees filtering out the light, its slick jungle underbrush of puddles and wet leaves and splashing noises of water-on-water. In that jungle lived so many strange and quiet sounds, the sort you hear best in the rain, like the croaking of frogs and the different raindrop beats. The song and the light together formed a lullabye, and drifted me off to sleep.


When I awoke, Ourania was heading near the ruins, and we stopped there for a while. It seemed Ourania was listening for something, but I couldn't tell what. I went back to sleep just after that...I wonder if she ever found it?

When I returned to conciousness, I heard Queze and Mystress off in the distance: I hadn't seen either of them in ages, and Queze's absence in particular was keenly felt. I rushed over to greet them: they, too, had gravitated to the rocks, and sitting with them (both were shocked to see me: perhaps my absence for much of this year was also keenly felt? Oh, I do kid myself...) We sat together in the rain, and I was hit by a sudden downpour of memories.

It was as if the Gods wanted everybody to hide and be miserable, as if it were a punishment. Although one could also look at it as an opportunity for new life to grow.

The first dim rays of sunlight shone through the thick boughs of the trees, a jumble of oak, redwood, pine, popular, and the occasional stray birch. A small circular cluster of reddish white toadstools formed a tightly knit fairy ring around my body. As the flickering warmth of the new dawn tempted me from my rest, soft sounds echoed richly from within the curving barriers of leaf and stone that surrounded me. The sound of softly gurgling water and the high trilling laughter of fawns sang dizzily to the melody of the song birds. A whisper of rabbit ear moss and moor heather curled into the depths of my conscience, lifting the tired rims of my lightly hued eyelids, tickling my long black eyelashes into the thin crack that had formed along my dimly lit iris. Stifling a yawn, I looked around the sun touched sides of my cavern. River moss softened the mellow, rich dirt that clumped in the corners of the cave, well lichen and ivy tendrils danced softly to the cooing caress of the forest breezes, lighting the shallow pool of rain and river water collected in the corner of my secret sanctuary, pure and cold, but sweet like the meadow grass that grew at the Twin Gods shrine. The vibrant hues of poppy and wild marigold blended o the harmonies pigment of the lovely and mesmerizing scents of wild Thyme and garlic, with strong whiffs of basil and other earthen herbs. Morning had come at last.

This is my first Diary entry. I hope you like it!

I now carry the bluebird's lifeless body with me. Somehow, I have to get it back to its family.

I tried several times to get spells from De Drinkplaatz... but only once did I become a crow. My belly had been too full of water and there had been no room for me to fly straight enough... outside the misty mushrooms you lose your magic, it seems. But now I lay on the cool stone of the bridge, trying not to retch.

His family must wonder where he has gone.

I can not bring the life back in to the bird, now, as bugs crawl over his carcass. I have vainly tried to shoo them away, but it has not worked any. I give up on that. I have even tried to drown the bugs by dipping him in the water, but that only made him stink, and not all the bugs drowned... more came. Now, he sits by me in the sunlight, the breeze ruffling his lusterless feathers. His eyes, I have closed, but I can still feel them boring in to me.

How could I, a bare spiker, have killed him? He was so beautiful.

And how do I get him to his family?