Paper, Pen And A Piece Of My Heart.

I need to center myself again.

So much, so many little and big things. Peter has ventured to Namarre, to the temples. He goes once a year, and I am in charge of the house. No time to visit elsewhere with the time I usually have. patrons come and go. The Macaw has yet to be named, but is faring well in the house and amelie has already taught the beast to speak "I love you" to patrons, and to speak "belle Jeanette" The latter Jeanette finds amusing.

We have quarreled, for once I tasted the bite of jealousy. I shouldn't, but I did. The solution to such, is there, within reach, but whether to take it or not. It was spoken, many years ago, that nothing would be done, That was it, a patron gift. Does time change things, would aught be different these days? I can try and find out, I could, or I can respect wishes. What harm will come of either action.

I pray to naamah for her. For things to be sorted, for the way of the right to be found.

She yearns for her. Ah Elua, it is nothing I can do to help her, and nor do I know how to comfort her with such. I never had one to remember. She passed when I was three and all I know of her is that I look like her.

A milestone and.. the one you want to witness is not there. How many more in this city go through such? Those on the hill? The one you want to witness the worth of your life, and to not hear word.

No wonder all is happening as it has. I pray a well, that it is forgetfulness. For her sake, for the sake of the others. A prayer to Azza, to Eisheth, Naamah, Elua, all the companions. A prayer heard loud and far for safety of one dear to one who's heart I hold close.

Andreas is growing into a prat. Supposedly a version of what Gautier was when he was his age. Elua. I hope that Andreas turns quickly into what I know. Arrogance does not fit him well. He is growing up, and trying to find his place, a marque's beginning limned upon his flesh brings change, and he is struggling to come to peace with it.

I miss him. Prosper. I miss his arms, the afternoons in the kitchen and speaking over a fresh loaf of bread, the confiding of the things that worry, fear, gnaw.

As a Heliotrope, should I be falling over my heart for all patrons? Should I be falling in love with a fencepost each time I see one? A gift is a gift, but only for the right person. Better framed it seems, and never used, i'll never know, until it makes it's way back to me.

I feel tossed sometimes. Little pieces here and there, bring me closer to a understanding of the whole, Just doubt, and sometimes disbelief make it hard. revealed by one, shown by another.

And my life progresses. in the arms of patron, friend, lover, whichever crosses my path. Duties of house and heart rule my days.We are allowed our quiet times in life yes?

Another d'Aiglemort.

He came while I was recovering, Or more, we met in the baths with the princess. He has not come to the house though, seeking an assignation, using his name as an almost right to take me as patron. He asks questions though, and thanks me for my devotion to his familial name. I need no thanks, for the love I bear them. He has a hard path though, to bear the name a good mark instead of bad. The people of this city bore the bedroom activities of My Duc as the mirror of his political duties and seem to blame him for the discord and upheaval that plagues the province.  War did that. A lack of successor is transgression, but not any more grave than Namarre or Eisande.

There is only the vestiges of a twinge now, and if one knows how to look, the barest of traces of the accident. A far cry from what Marcello saw and was ready to give as good as I got if someone had dared to lay a hand on me and cause such. I have never seen him in such a fury and know for truth that if someone had done harm to me, he would brandish blade and call them out.

Ariadnh seeks to throw a fete, to celebrate the arrival of spring and life. She asked me for aide to help, and with hope,  I can give her such now that I am not in the state I was. Life as always, it seems, is never without it's interesting paths. These days, it seems to be more interesting. And once more it seems, I share a patron with someone who is not of Elua's ilk. Will this one too take him from me? If she does, then I am content, for he would love him, as much as the other was loved.

Sweet Elua I can barely move, or breath.  Just muscles I was told and  I have soaked for a days age. That had never happened before and I pray it never does such again. To note though, the ceiling of my room is uninspirational. I shall have to change that. All is well. Save my aches. I pray it stays that way.

I've tasted only the surface of the depth of his cruelty. If I could have been swallowed by the earth last eve, after the Night Court Council, I would have prayed it so. No better in my actions than the former Dowayne Bryony. That is what he implied. And in truth It is not, expect perhaps the degree to which I've done it. I do not know if they have met, and I think, perhaps, that I will not know until he is ready to let me know. 

So much approval seeking at the council last eve. Evangeline seeking the council approval to take the title of Dowayne. The Jasmine seeking approval to be recognized as Dowayne. Dowayne Mandrake seeking approval to be the Emissary to the Crown and Council. The former Dowayne Bryony seekign the approval to place Faustine no Bryony as the second. Is that all that we do? Give our approval? For things that... truly, do not need it in the first place.

There was the one thing, that was not approval. Banning of the Aragonian with whom the Bryony had as a patron. I could not vote either way in truth. She commited a grave sin, and let her anger get the best of her. Over 15 ducats. Naamah help me. If fifteen ducats is a pittance ot her, then everyone should be in Bryony. We'd all make our marques in no time. But thne, he as well, retaliated and caused the scene on the longest night. They are both at fault, greviously so, and I could not make a choice one way or the other. We will decide, should he ever grace our steps, whether to gain him entrance or no. For we love, unconditionally, even fools who get with child as revenge, or men who cannot learn that to love a bryony, you will surely loose, they always win.

I am sure, that the coming weeks will be ones hard to endure for my actions. How dare I, he asked. I dared because I love. Bitter medicine. I returned to my house, instead of staying like he had instructed me to. I can recuperate at Heliotrope as good as I could in Camellia. He was upset, moreso than I had seen before when I laid down my promise. If he follows through, he follows through, if he does not... Well. Then I was the better for knowing what little part of him that I did. For now, I rest, get well, throw myself back into the house to keep my time occupied. He will do, and she will do, what they will and my part in this has finished.

 So much pain, and in so many. If I could take it all from them, bear it upon my own shoulders, I would. But I cannot and instead I can only sit and listen. I learned a little more about someone I love and someone I didn't know. 

But now, i'm wrapped in blankets and my nose is raw from some auge that leaves me barely enough energy to write. The days of walking about with my cloak on my arm and not around me, when I used the cold to focus. Thank the companions that my room was fixed in enough time and I am no longer in what they jokingly called the mausoleum. Creams and blues, greens. Even the bed was replaced. No longer a tomb but a garden. I sit in front of the window bundled and watch the sun's light pour over the snow below and then crawl back to bed.  Things will be aright. They have to be. They have survived far worse, far worse and come out the other path still shining. Surely, they can do the same this time. I pray to naamah in my sickbed that they do.

 I'm finally getting around to redecorating the room. Gautier spoke that it reminded him of a mausoleum in Caerdicca. I agreed. So I have been making the drapes to cover the walls, and if it's black in color then it goes. I so dearly loved prosper but I could not understand when I stepped foot in the room how he lived in this room. Cream and blue, green. Cream draperies along the wall with blue stripes and green stripes at the bottom. Some of the furniture is being replaced. Another can have it. All said, I hope that it will be ready soon, and perhaps, not feeling so large and echoing every sound. The window though, looking out upon the garden. I adore it.

My natality comes and goes, another year passed quietly. How swiftly the years move and it suprises me. I sat upon the summit, buried within my cloak and watched the sunrise. My twenty first year, today. Would that this year, be as eventful and loving as last year.

 I'm night unto bursting. I do not know if can do this.  If I can last.

 Thou and no other.

His graces words in the carriage the other day, lent to me a thoughful mind when he dropped me off at my house after the incident at the garden of the palace.

I came into Naamah's service in the arms of two, and finished my marque, in her honour in the arms of two. An oddity I would think for one of my house now that I look back on it.

Thou and no other we say. When you cross our steps and enter into the house that love built we are there for the patron. Love and devotion. I have never found it hard to love anyone. Even those that I dislike. For everyone is worthy of love and deserves it. Sometimes, a patron will ask for two of our number when they come to taste Naamah's love. Easy enough, for it is the patron that we are there to please, and to love them.

But what happens when it is the other way around. When it becomes 'Thou... and one other' So used to focusing upon the needs of one, that when there are two, it becomes confusing. No, not confusing, for I have done such in the past. But difficult. This is no other of my house working with me in tandem to bring pleasure to one. It is three, working as one, to bring pleasure to all. There is the need in me to please one, then the other, and back and forth because I find it easier than to let myself go, or to try and please both.

Have I, as a courtesan become incapable of .. taking pleasure for myself, or of pleasing others not in her name? Of letting myself think of my own pleasure first before anothers?

What of when I do something, in the name of love for another, that I believe they would ask of me. Is there a line that must be drawn?

Though and no other... Thou and one other.

Can the heart truly love.. more than one at the same time? Or do I just... hope so? Am I truly loved, as I imagine I am, as I wish to be? Or am I just imagining such and content to take my small little piece.

Am I doing this because I think it will please him? Or because I want to do it?

I visited Jeanette, to ask her a question. It turns out that the answer while unexpected lays a different path for my actions. But it was nice to sit with her. To sit and speak, jest, share a cup of tea and some buttered bread. We jest that in a few days time we would run off to the wilds of camlach, light candles, offer our bodies to duc's and raise the children there in the woods with love. 

All a jest. Laughable really since I have neither the coin nor the will to journey to camlach and live out the rest of my days there. And of those days I have plenty. But it was an enjoyable conversation and I left before Gautier could return and ask my intentions. It was good to see Jeanette laugh still. I do not hear Gautier laugh. It is almost as if he cannot, that laughing equates with singing, therefore he will not. Serious. Oh so serious.  

And I met a princes. From Kriti. One who smiles and gestures with her hands so that my heart was taken, as it is of late, with rapture at her. So brave she is, so far from home, an envoy from her father. She kept comparing herself to the D'angelines, that she was not as pretty, nor had thier manners. As we sat in the art gallery of the palace I told her that she needed to stop comparing, that she was lovely and beautiful. Simplicity has it's beauty as well. We are all beautiful people so we do not pay too  much attention to such, but to see someone who ahd simple beauty, like she does, was refreshing. She turned my words around on me when Lucien introduced me to her finally, for we had sat talking for ages with only our first names. Gabrielle, one of the most famous courtesan's upon the hill. 

He lies. I am not such. A courtesan from the hill, but one of the famous ones. Evangeline perhaps, or Genevieve, Gautier of a surity, Isabelle the Alyssum dowayne. Golda the Bryony Dowayne is surely famous for her house and for her current situation. I am famous? No. Well known perhaps. But the Princess had asked to visit me at the house or elsewhere in the palace. A question she had, or a favour, one of the two. I think, she is abeautiufl woman, inside and out. There are so many people in this world who are beautiful, but their inside, thier inside is ugly and twisted.

 And so it's come and gone. Joie, music, lamplight, a crescendo of music and people talking, the crush of bodies in the ballroom. The incident with the aragonian and the Dowayne Bryony. I took my leave just after the sun prince and winter queen were revealed. I've had my fill for the night. Back to the house and back to the little ones who are too young to go and to serve joie this night. That and my head swirls with too much of the stuff. at least 5 or 6 flutes, that I can remember. I am amazed that even my quill manages to write straight.

My dress is hung up, my masque hangs on the corner of my bed and the children are all arranged before the fireplace in the room here, blankets and pillows abounding as they sleep. Elua only knows this room is big enough. Amaelie is on my bed. I'll take the couch to sleep this night. I err'd again this night. I directed the aragonian to the dowyane. I do not think gautier is pleased with me and I am sure that I am in store for another visit from him and questions as to why I did it. Joie and the naiviete that the event would go smoothly like it has in years past I suppose. Caught up in the revelry of the moment.

I didn't see marcello, nor the the Comte Tristian. A token gone to waste maybe. I keep thinking back though, to the dove and her finch, of pretending to run her over. I enjoyed that. I enjoyed what little of this night I had.

I stared up at my ceiling all afternoon, not sleeping, needing to sleep. I never know what to say anymore. Any phrase, any word seems to cause discord. In his jaw, the way he holds still, his eyes or his body. Even more now since that morning. I offered the gift to him, but he turned it away citing that nerves and not only mine were still raw. That he couldn't think of taking it, for he feared that we would end up in some place worse than we are right now. It lead me to wonder how he see's me.  As child and still fumbling, or woman and still working her way to learn things and to navigate. His asumptions about what I think, or how I feel. Sometimes they are right and other times... he can insist that is how, but it is not.

The longest night is approaching and the costumes are still not done. I worry greatly. I know that it is the same every year, that they won't be done till the last moment, little things in need of being arranged, sewn, things missing, but that does not lessen my worry. even more since this will be my first one. 

my heart is too open. The new year comes and with it, resolutions. 

1. My house is my priority. As is the night court. For us to flourish, the night court as a whole must flourish. 
2. Find my balance. 
3. Sew myself a dress that Marcello would be proud of. 
4. Help myself to understand that I am a woman, who will make mistakes. They happen, but the companions will help me to overcome them. But realize that not all fault belongs to me. 
5. Stick my foot in my mouth less. 
6. Ask for what I need, becuase it is just that. What I need.
7. Give him the gift, when I am ready. He will either be ready, or never be ready.
8. Not give of myself more than I have, or more than I can.

I will try, that is the most that I can do. My life changes again, for the better or the worse, one with the other.

How do I give him that without hating myself? Without hurting myself ? Why does he want that? For that matter, why does he want me? He confessed that I was not something he would have tasted, partaken of in days past. So what is it, about me, that appeals to him?

I walk the house, tending to things that are under my hand. Order flowers, see to the menu since peter is having me do that this week. I haven't stepped foot outside to even venture to the baths since I was in the woods. It took a few days to get my hands soft again. I'm afraid to go visit Marcello. I send the adepts with the baskets and have them tell him the house keeps me busy. Not the first time that it does such, just the first that it's not true. I ran away in confusion. I ran away and now I am trying to figure out how to walk back.

I think, it's Reignette who is behind it. She is a handful years older than me, has been with the house it seems for as long as I can remember. Her heart I think, has always been peters and she had hoped to become the second. How we go forward from here I od not know. We're not sure yet if it is her. We will just have to wait. As someone said, the power is in the knowledge.

All has eased now with my friend. I no longer want to castrate him. Not that I never would have. Evangeline was a great help, to find the words I wished to speak. There still leaves much to think about. Still learning, always learning, and in so many ways. He speaks that someday I will give it to him, like a present that he will cherish. The though scares me, and i know not whether that is true.

I am... so angry.

 At myself, at him. Angry at what transpired, for not speaking sooner.

Evangeline gets credit for doing the very first ones which can be found  here

last night we got a little crazy in public and I don't know how it happened. Here were my contributions to the secret diaries. The firs tis a freebie, the others, for length, are behind a cut.


V. secret diary of decimus, day 328: I'm dead! i'm alive! I'm dead! I'm alive! No one laughs anymore. Must learn from the Duc hwo to properly do it. Got owned by crossed blades housewoman. Shoulda have stayed dead. Maybe Doliana will like my new attachments. Must prepare my new gravestone, off to meet king. May have to die again."

If anyone should think that I am switching to mandrake, those thoughts were quelled the other night. I ended up being bundled off with Evangeline and the Comtesse Bernadette to the Jardins where we drank and lay before the fire as if we were novices again and sneaking out to the sleep on the floor before the fire in the back rooms to stay warm in the dead of winter.

Which means the red wine that the Dowayne Geneveive had placed in front of me did not sit well and I thank the companions that I won the hand of vingt et un so that the Comtesse would fetch me tea.

I heard that I left before it got more interesting. The cane I was told, was a real treat. I leave that for them. The cat of nines was more than enough for me. I know it is done, out of love and willingly, but I still, in my heart, cannot fathom love in the strike of a lash. But that is why I am Heliotrope and not Mandrake. Or Valerian.

Iphigenie is being a right twit this moment. I have been warned to be careful when I venture forth to Mandrake once again for my lessons.

My problems with my own house have not increased nor has anything happened. I've informed peter of the things that occurred. Even with the dress that has been washed and washed again but does not seem to produce the same issue it did before. We have not figured out who it is yet, and I pray perhaps that the person has got it out of their mind, whatever it is they had in it.

The longest night comes soon. I have planned already for the houses costumes, and already the beading is being set upon. Oh the beading! And the fur. Inspiration comes from Gautier and the Queen. Their conversation that I caught the edges of. Of another place. I cannot wait. The night does not come soon enough.

As I lay my head on my arm which is onthe desk while I write this, I'm so very tired. Not so tired as when I ran the house by myself. But tired still. I am learning the finer arts of managing the salon. Matching patron to courtesan, keeping things running smoothly. I'm starting to plot what the salon should look like, and perhaps redecorate a patron lounge or two. The garden Peter and I will consult with Eglantine I think, and our current gardeners to see what needs to be planted now before the snows fall and the ground is too hard and what will need to be planted come spring to make our garden more enviable than it is.  A winter garden as well. A glassed in hot house. I wonder if we could afford such.

More secrets. Or not so much secrets as things that I am privy to. They run through my head when I think, when I find a span of time. He owes me, that is sure, for placing me in the position that he did and I would have stayed. To hear her ask if I really had to go was strange, from her lips. But I had to go. perhaps the next time i'll st...  :Ink runs like she fell asleep: