Posthumously Yours, Ilya

[lamentations]

A leather-bound book, covered in dust, and full of notes. The brown cover has a simple title: "ILYA CERVENKO - THOUGHTS AND SONGS AND PEOPLE MET". In some other time, this may have meant something to someone - a journal, an intellectual repository, a creative outlet. The first few pages read out, in a script that is barely legible, a script that may be written by a barely functioning hand, of things well beyond the reader's remembrance...

[lamentations]

Vandak Zadrolbun

A nice enough foreigner. Not as crazy as some of the others I've run into. He seems grateful for kindness and polite enough to pass for well-mannered country boy. His armaments are outlandish, almost devilish in appearance, and when questioned of them he seemed to take pride in his Knightly Order's skill at blacksmithing. Apparently, they have a unique process by which their steel blackens and toughens, while remaining light. He does not know the process, and would like to find out - so I said I would look for this secret. I probably won't find it, but maybe I will run into interesting folk on the path there.

Beyond him, I met a few others. I don't know enough about them to record, though I should. It's been hard, seeking out people again, but I'm told it is the way forward. If only going forward was at all clear, I could make my limbs move and my words to come out... but it is not as easy as it used to be.

pg. 1