For Dinner: Tomato soup and a salad
Mood:  Survivor's guilt and being haunted.
Written in the Year of our Lord 3580, April  11th, Monday night.
Location:  A small inn along the river Nibulon, called Libal's Scream.

     We were going to stay here a few days while I recovered and Glutheim supervises the clean-up of the massacre of many of the Sia. None of them really understand why I am depressed after being found, or realize why I am distressed at the slaughter of so many Lokiites.
 
     I'm working on the beginnings of a Lokiite glossery.  I wonder if I should work a Cluster glossery for the Lokiites? Maybe they would understand us a little better....
 
     This morning there was a small doll left on my door, with a mask of a screaming face.  It reminded me a little of Voodoo practices.  Glutheim laughed when he saw it.
 
     "Superstitious fools. That was left by some remaining Sia.  It is a Libalist warning....that the ghosts of those who died hold you responsible for their deaths. You're supposed to be worried that the ghosts of those who died will come for you."

     "They hold me responsible for their deaths? They're not the only ones...."

       This shows how exhausted I am. Like an idiot, I asked,

     "Are they dangerous?"

     Glutheim looked at me a little strangely. "Everyone is dangerous, sometimes. But you're well guarded. We've shown how much will do to find you, and your weregild is still enormous. You're as safe as a Survivor."

      "Who are usually assasinated in the end. Somehow, it doesn't comfort me...."

     I was slowly recovering. I think it's more shock than anything else, not to mention the disorientation of being lost on a strange world.

     The first bad argument I ever had with my wife had been over sickness. I caught a case of bronchitis a month or so after we were married. I'm not used to being sick, I'm rarely sick, I'm lousy at it. She wanted me to dry my hair after a shower to keep from getting sicker.  Being unreasonable and stuck in my ways, I said, "No thanks."

      "Come on.  You're sick. I don't want you to get sicker...."

      "No, really. Thanks."

     "I really, really, really think you should, Flint."

     "No. Thanks anyway...."

     CRASH! That was a little glass sculpture being thrown. KRACK! That was a martial arts trophy tossed at the wall. WHAP! I think that was my favorite pen. I was too busy ducking to be sure.
 
       "Hey!!" It was suddenly brought violently home to me that I had offended her, big time.

      Our first argument. Most of them started over literally nothing....very small things, like that.

       She, on the other hand, was quick to catch about any disease imaginable, and had been a bit of a hypochondriac. It got so I was afraid to mention a disease was going around, because if I described the symptoms, she would soon think she was contracting them. Luckily neither of us were the type who were at risk of more intimate

       It's a bad sign when everything a priest does reminds him of his dead wife.

       Last night I had a dream. My wife came to me in my sleep, slipped out of her clothes, and felt my readyness. I "woke" in the dream, as she mounted me, a waking from a dream within a dream, while still dreaming. She laughed and then panted and then climaxed, and then smiled a rueful smile when she saw it was just her, not me.  She then proceeded to pleasure herself a second time, and this time I joined her, both of us in a release that satisfied the horny animalness in us as well as the sweet laughter afterwards, as we let the sweet sweat dry on our bodies... as we were tracing each other's contours....

       Then a white skeletal hand came and she was snatched away, her beautiful body splitting into white clumps of cloud, and then disolving away. Then an old man stared at me, his eyes as cold as a tomb's, his beard crawling with maggots.
 
      His lips didn't move, but a voice rang in my head.

     You are one of my best procurers.  You drum up business for me that no one else can.
Your wife is now with me, your children are with me, due to your carelessness, your not checking all the house's systems before  you left on that trip. How you must love me, to give me those three, your wife you loved so greatly and had such pleasure in, your darling children.

     And now? How many have died because of your clumsiness, your charging around on an alien world, without taking elementary precautions? How many have died for what you did?

      How you must love me.

     "Who--?"

       I have many names, and you know many of them. Hades. Hela. Azrael. Death will do.  But I don't want you yet. You're too useful to me.
 
        He held out a skeletal hand.

        Drum up some more business for me, Redwine.

         Then I woke.

         I don't know...maybe the Libalist fetish is working.
 
 

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