[=#006400]
"My wife." That was the phrase I thought. It repeats quietly weighing its expectations up against my own mind. It feels pressing like a lead weight. Like love, it halts my breath. And I thought it.

I had met up with Nevilly -- she was miniaturized today. It suited her. She looked so delicate, like a butterfly made of glass with wings as thin as the horizon. She greeted me, and she and (I assume) a friend of hers and I sat down. He sadly took the best place by her side, and I went to sit next to her in the tree she was under. As the third party got up and said his goodbyes, I thought, "Well, at least now I can sit by my wife without being in a tree to do it." And then it occured to me what words had just run through my head. I didn't say "my lover," or "my sweetheart," "my little snowblossom," or "my dear leman." I went through all the words I could have said in my head: paramour, mate, girlfriend...No, I had thought wife.

Should I be thinking 'wife'? It's not an institution not common in the forest...but I think it does still have meaning. I love Nevilly, I always will now... but this is...scary. It's huge. It means things I'm not sure I know how define -- and this, more than love, may change the basic shape of my life.

And if I'm wrong...Would I even know it? I could destroy what we have by putting too much pressure on it, or her feelings could die (I sometimes don't know why she loves someone like me in the first place) -- and there would be no honorable way out that wouldn't be so exposed, so clean, so ragged like a great red wound. I'd never have the courage for it again. It may be better to keep things simple. The list goes on forever...

The scales teeter uneasily, even as we talk about old nightmares and deep memories. Even as we lie together and fall asleep wrapped around one another...On one side, all these objections, my uncertainty, the weakness of my heart, the abuses of time. On the other...is her smile.

Yes, i need to grow up, i'm anxious, and i need 3 more weeks.. or 2 lol. I think 3.
Anyway, im playing, and i LOVE this game. Ill make a drawing soon!

The forest has seemed quiet in the last few days, I've only recognised the trees there are lots of strange deer in the forest and after my initial meeting with the Collector since my absence I haven't seen him since. He seemed a little different at first, not quite as heartless or aware of his surroundings when he slept as I managed to doze next to him for hours. Several fauns started to approach with the hum of forest magic around them trying to provoke the sleeping phantom but I stood and chased them off. Normally I like fauns lovely bouncy little things but today I just wanted to rest, my journey over the past few months has been a long one and taken its toll and i just wanted to listen to the grass and the whisper of the wind in the trees.



Eventually I left the Collector and after bellowing into the stillness of the birch forest I sensed a familiar presence finally, I followed my instinct feeling the long grass on my legs and the delicate scent of the flowers that grow here. But the flowers were not the only pretty thing here...The timid doe Stelmaria - Stella barrelled right past me at first presumably not recognising me, I jerked to my senses and jumped after her calling her as she finally skidded to a halt behind a protective tree to see just who it was behind her. Her ears pricked up as she recognised me and a moment later I was by her side, she was just as I remembered slender and perfectly white apart from the black and red markings of her pelt.