Mine

Ever since I’ve got back from that strange, intoxicating realm, I’ve found this one quite difficult. There’s a drabness to it, a sense of order that part of me can’t help but rail against. Saving those men was…well, it was fine. But they got themselves into that mess.
 
I got us out of a mess and got out of it with profit. My Whisper. I let off a few shots in the forest, just at a tree, and it felt much like my Old Faithful. Longer, for sure, but the strength of that wasn’t an issue now my arm has returned to normal.
 
It felt…familiar. Like it was somewhere it wanted to be.
 
I had a conversation with one of the guards at our Den once. I forget his name, but I recall it was something to do with a toilet. Or a bush. Something like that. It doesn’t matter. He was a swordsman. Not the finest in the land, not the finest in our number, but still better than most in our Ward and proudly held a blade he called Ilhar – Mother, in honour of mine. He told me that in one sense it didn’t matter what blade was in his hand, his hands and eyes would combine to fight just as well. Yet in another sense, it meant everything that his blade was his. That it would dance, parry, feint and thrust for him and him alone.
 
I’d never been given better advice. Old Faithful was a bow. Just a bow. A restrung bow, after that tempestuous elven woman had needlessly struck her, but just a bow nonetheless. Yet she was my bow. She was Old Faithful. She fired strong, true and deadly even as my arm withered before my eyes and the assuredness of my eyes wavered.
 
Death’s Whisper is mine.
 
In other news, the religious woman here was fucking useless. Didn’t tell me anything. Told me to approach Lady Vex’halia, which is the last thing I’m going to do. I’ve resolved to let Melora have her way with me. So far, she has brought Ussi back to me and given my bow to me. I’ll see where it all goes.
 
It also confirmed to me that religious so-called leaders know very little of anything. Nothing will be able to advise me as well as my time on the road with my family.
 
Which reminds me, I must ask Ussi how he is feeling. He seems fine, but he has barely eaten a morsel since he returned to me and his energy is…different. He’s still my Ussi. But…he’s not. There’ss a give to his flesh that there shouldn’t be. He knows it too, when I squeeze him at night he looks at me with those big round eyes and I know he’s thinking it feels different to him too.
But then he licks my face and he moves to watch the door for me and it’s all as it ever was. Changed but the same.
 
As we all are for this journey so far. It has been a strange path I have trod with this Unbroken, but something tells me this is the turning point. This is the point where we really pull together, Abbil. I don’t think anything else can shake us apart now. I think each of us is here for the others as much as themselves and I think I’ve found a home.
 
I think we’ll be together, just as we are, for a long time yet. I hope so. Rafi and I will work things out. I'll make him stew for a few more days then we'll talk, I'll make him see he's wrong and then it'll be fine.
 
I don't think anything can break us now. And that thought, Abbil, makes me quite cry with joy.