Lady Sylvera's Journal

A small hand, soft and almost childish, touches the cover of a red leather-bound book. A finger traces one of the embossed curves before tucking underneath the cover and opening the book. Written on the inside leaf in a careful, correct script is the name 'Sylvera Aislinghall.'

8 March
Stormwind City

I attended the Friday service at the Cathedral this evening. Chaplain Jean Pierre D'Armagnac (I wonder if I've spelled that correctly?) spoke on death and grief and the Light. I confess I did not find the idea that we are all connected under the Light to be as comforting as he no doubt hoped it would be. It is a nice thought, and no doubt true, but it does not seem - to me - to make a difference to the cold reality of change.

Of course I thought of Mother and Father. It is a long time now since I stopped hoping that they would have somehow survived the plague in Andorhal. I know they are dead and at rest, or at least, I sincerely hope and pray that they are. It is hard enough to think that they may have been raised as mindless slaves of the Scourge, but I can't bear the idea of them being somehow alive among the Forsaken.

But... I have thought those thoughts a thousand times before, I do not need to do it again. The simple truth is that I have lost them, but I still have Aestra and Gerard. I can not imagine being all alone, but I know that if they were not with me I really would be all alone, even with the Light. That seems more true to be than any false hope, and it makes me more grateful for what family I have left.

Life is such a fragile thing. I felt as if the Light held mine, and Aestra's, like a silken thread in the days when we fled from Dalaran. We could so easily have been there when the Scourge destroyed the city, yet we were saved. I am alive when so many people are not; when so many people have to go off to war and bleed and die; when people are starving in this very city.

That is why I can not understand what happened at our ball in Daralan. I refuse to understand it. How could Lord Buckholme and Lord Vendrinn truly have wished to kill each other over the matter of who passed through a door first? I was there, from nearly the beginning to nearly the end. Of course I implored them to cease, because I did not want them to come to blows or any other thing, but I did not actually believe they would attempt to... murder each other. When I realised they had indeed made good on their threats of a duel and I came out into the courtyard, when I saw the upraised blade and Lord Buckholme on the ground... even then I could not believe that they would kill each other over something so meaningless.

I do not want to live in this world of the nobility if life is so easily discarded: life is all we have left. Yet I really have no choice in the matter. I am an Aislinghall, and it is not possible to be anything else.

(( Beautiful, a very pleasant read indeed. ))