Tangible

[DjalliDhey]

My name is Djalli Dhey. I have a journal that records my experiments, my work with the plague and with my abominations. This will not be a place for them. This will be a place of feeling.

My brain feels now. It is tangible. Where once it was numb and pleasure came as nothing but changes to the norm, it is now true feeling. I emote. I am upset, or glad. I feel pain in my mind and in my being. I craved it since I knew I could not feel it. When I saw my younger sister, Najme, loved and doted on by our parents. When I saw my mother taken by sickness. When I saw my sister escape the fate that befell me. I was numb to it all. I felt nothing living, and felt nothing dead.

I thought to amuse myself with pain. Why am I a priest? I have no idea. I had no idea then and I have no idea now. Is it truly a connection to the light? Or is it just some strange force of nature? I never tried to be a priest. The power came to me. I could heal the sick. I could mend wounds and make people whole, and remained broken inside. My mind needed to be fixed. I did not know how to fix it. I still do not know how to fix it. I feel shattered and isolated, even through the new sensations and emotions I've adopted.

Where are you, good feelings? I see you in the eyes of a child, who sees me as his caretaker. I see good feelings in the creatures I heal with humble fledgling powers. I feel you when I think of things, certain things. What is wrong with me, truly? is this the rambling of the undead? Or was I never really alive to begin with?

What am I?

[DjalliDhey]

Day 1

I am taking a trip.

Thaelen is coming with me. I am confident in my ability to keep him safe, and I've learned that he is one of the things that keeps my mind grounded to what Iso long to keep. I have deiced that I should find him, my old mentor. Father Hurley was a great man, the only man who ever thought that I might have been more than what I seemed. It is clear to me now that my family thought me brain damaged, which is why they offered me the path of the Light. I am not not convinced that I was not brain damaged, but I do not know why. Perhaps a circumstance of my birth. It matters little now, in undeath.

I never understood the light. Father Hurley told me that it was because of my untouched mind that I could wield it so. The Light had a way of blessing those who needed it the most, and as my mind had nothing, it was open to everything. I never wanted for anything in life, and he told me that was most befitting of a priest. I would heal the sick and mend the wounds of man. I wonder how he will take to me now? I have rotted in some places, and am no longer so pure. I died a virgin. What did that make me in death but a conduit of numb emotions? I wanted regret, but I had none. Even as my body was violated by Kromag, I felt nothing. Revulsion was something I wanted to feel. I projected it, but the truth is that if felt like a poor excuse for pity. Pity for him. He couldn't even make me feel shame.

Now I'm rambling.

I will get back on track. I have brought supplies for Thaelen and I, and we will go to see Father Hurley. If I can find him, he will be in Booty Bay, or near it. I remember docking there often as a child and young woman, and seeing his tiny unattended chapel. Who would visit it, there? only me, because I had nowhere else to go, and nothing else to turn to.

My heart aches for who I really want to see.

[DjalliDhey]

Day 2

We were on board a ship, headed for Booty Bay. I have not been on a boat in some time. Usually I take a zepplin, to avoid the familiarity of being at sea. I was raised on a ship, pafter all. All I knew was the water. If my parents taught me anything, it was how to have a strong stomach, and that human beings could be cruel and unfeeling by choice.

Thaelen is asleep beside me. His face is angelic, like a painting. I have considered returning to painting. When I was young, I painted, and my parents thought that perhaps my skill as an artist could be used to bring me a good marriage. They thought that I was slow, dumb, something that would explain my unfeeling and aloof nature, but that perhaps if I was good at other things I would make a good wife. They corseted me, but I was the one who tightened the laces. I tightened them until I saw stars, hoping that the physical pain would make me want to cry out, to say something. I wanted to want. I felt entrapped by my own numbness. I could have been hysterical, but I was anything but. It was a calmness like death that even death can not compare to.

The sea reminds me of my death as a human. The rocking has put Thaelen to sleep, and his face makes me smile. He lives and breathes and reaches to me and smiles when I speak to him. When I hold him he is comforted, and so am I. I feel guilt for having this love stolen from another, but my heart would never let it go. Not now. I need him, because now I realize that his life began around the same time that mine did.

What I remember of Father Hurley from my childhood is that he was kind to me. After my parents gave up on fixing me with a good husband, they sent me to him to become a priestess. We were a good Light fearing family, and it would have made them proud if I could at least do as much. Father Hurley saw me and took me in, and whenever we docked in Booty Bay, he would teach me the ways. He gave me books for when I went to sea, and I was trapped within my reading. The philosophy, the words, the beliefs.. they felt lost on me. I knew I had power, but it was not there because I believed in the Light with all my heart. It was there because I had nothing else. The Light was my life.

Perhaps it is because I have found life that I find the Light now failing me.

[DjalliDhey]

Day 3

We have arrived in Booty Bay, but it is far too late at night for me to go and look for Father Hurley. Thaelen and I went around the small port and looked for a place to buy a room for the night. Along the way were, of course, the usual scum and villainy that comes with sailors and cheap women. I never felt disgusted before, but I suppose being able to feel has granted me this. A Forsaken man gave me a strange grin that I can only hope didn't mean what came to mind.

In any case, Thaelen and I are safe now. He is asleep and looks very content. My supplies should last me a few more days, but I will have to purchase more food for him soon. I have considered writing to him, but I do not know where to send a letter.

[DjalliDhey]

Day 4

I am excited as I write this.

Father Hurley was just as I remembered him. Tall, kind, and quick witted despite his age. He has aged well, it seems. There are few wrinkles on his face, but those that are there make him look distinguished. When he saw me, his face lit up, and then all to quickly it was replaced by despair. He is sad by what I have become. This, I can not change. He is not afraid of me, but he did think that the plague took what little humanity I had. Then I showed him Thaelen, and for the first time he saw me smile earnestly. Father Hurley smiled, too. He told me that I looked more alive than ever before, and I am so grateful for that.

He told me that it was my ignorance that drew me to the light, and the light to me. It was my absence of love, my despair, that gave me the ability to heal so well. Now it seems that I long for so little, that I've no need of such childish ignorance. I know love and hate and hope and power. I know the feeling of being wanted, and the feeling of being reviled. I am no longer a child of the Light, led by blindness. I am now beginning to understand this power, this budding shadow that has been building in my heart since the first time I heard him say he loved me. He loved me.

I wonder if he received my letter.

Father Hurley's chapel is still very small, and unattended. There are several women who work with him, all of them old and celibate. When they saw T

[DjalliDhey]

(There are several scratched out lines, followed by Djalli's usual handwriting.)

How very strange. I seem to have blacked out. Thaelen's crying woke me, but this is not good. I have never gone unconscious for no reason, before. For the past few days I have felt dizzy, yes, but never unconscious.. I am worried for Thaelen's safety. I hope that this does not continue.

I will write more, tomorrow. For not I must think.

[DjalliDhey]

Day 5

Father Hurley has given me baffling information. All day he has been helping me to uncover my secret affinity for the Light, and while he said that it might have been my ignorance that gave me my power, not he seems unsure. Why now does the little skill I have with shadows multiply, while my healing skills drift away? Today there was an old troll in the chapel. He suffered from a cardiac arrest, and while I could have easily healed him weeks ago, my power was minute. I helped him to breathe a bit better, and then he was dead. All I could do was aid in his passing, and make it easier.

Is that what I am, now? Is death to be my deliverance? Why is it, now that I can finally feel and love, I am a better killer?

[DjalliDhey]

Day 15

It has been a while since last I wrote. I have been here in Booty Bay for some time, learning of my new abilities, attempting to make some sense of them. Father Hurley and the sisters adored Thaelen, but my love brought him home. I think that for the best. I miss them both dearly, but there is one more thing that I have left to do.

[DjalliDhey]

I have lost track of the days.

Oh Father Hurley, why did you question me? I told you about him, and I told you about Thaelen. I so wanted for you to understand. Why couldn't you understand? Was it so hard? Why couldn't the holy ladies who aided you? They loved Thaelen, I'm sure they understood my love for him. So why would you do it? Why would you question my love?

Father Hurley, I will pray for you and your holy ladies. I will say a prayer for you whenever I see Thaelen, because I wish you could have seen him grow. Your lifeless eyes were so sullen. Why couldn't we have kept them alive?

[DjalliDhey]

What am I, now?

I suppose at one point I was like most of the other priestesses I have seen. Recruited by many to heal them, helping adventurers as we ventured into unknown lands. Mending the broken flesh of the living. They helped me to gain a bit of money to fund my research, which would aid the Royal Apothecary Society. I built abominations for general use. I experemented. Was I a scientist? Not hardly.. I'm no genius. All I know is what lives and how to make it so. I can see souls, but I can not mend them. I can mend skin and bone and muscle.. but a soul? How can I fix that?

I do not think that my soul is broken. Rather I think it was dormant. As I've written before many times, I felt nothing before just recently. Now I feel everything, like a rainbow of sensations. I wonder what I am missing, since I am dead. I believe that the love I feel is more powerful than the love I might have felt while living, only because it is not clouded by lust. That very human need is not something that occupies my thoughts, and so all I can do is be astonished by him. Care for him. The both of them. Shadowspeak and Thaelen. Two completely different but I can say that I love them both deeply and willingly.

What am I, now? I was holy. Now I am engulfed in darkness. I can kill. Do I want to? I suppose I have to.

[DjalliDhey]

Despite the oddity, I consider being the mother to a living human child to be quite rewarding. Today he said his first word, which is a word that I use rather often. "Light". I was so proud of him that I rewarded him. Fruit from Stranglethorn seems to be a new favorite, and I am grateful that he no longer requires the milk of human women. It is far easier to purchase fresh food and feed them to him. Caring for a baby is a messy ordeal, but I suppose my work as a creator of abominations has made me less susceptible to disgust.

That, included with being a walking living corpse.

As I stand here, watching him sleep, I wonder if he must dream? What must baby dreams be comprised of? Colors, shapes, sounds.. His brain is developing so quickly. It is a shame that I can not dissect it, to learn. Fortunately, I do have love for him. If it can be called love. Love for the living. I am an abomination.

[DjalliDhey]

What foolish nonsense this lethargy has become. I long for adventure once more, not this strange idleness that seems to have encompassed me. I've decided that in order to fulfill my duty to the Royal Apothecary Society, I must venture out into the world again. To be perfectly honest, I look forward to it. Once there was a time when the Light breathed life into me, and in turn I breathed life into those around me. It was a sickening love I had for them. How interesting that I, who am dead, can revive those who live. How those who's hearts still beat depend on my cold hands to continue to walk. How I am immortal, in a shell that appears to be rotted away.

Do not cry, child. I am here.
Your mother cares.
I will return home each night
with open cold arms.
I will kiss and love you.
I will protect you, until you grow.
When you grow, you will be strong.
Strong enough to carry
a sword.
You will love me as I love you.
My child.
And then
I will use my knowledge.
I will never lose you.