Journal 5: 15 Network, 643

15th Network, 643

I am once more bidden to ponder that thing that we call love.

I am quite interested in Maviri. She's a fascinating person, with a strange past of which she speaks little. Her need to arrive at a specific destination, but not at any specific time, speaks to ritual - that her arrival has significance, whenever it happens, suggest a cultural thing rather than a personal connection. There is a symbolism to her that I do not understand, and that she is not yet willing to share. She ... intrigues me.

I will not deny there is some sexual aspect to my interest. The rendezvous with Barracuda, and Fellatia's "orgy night" ... we have not gone without contact. And she is fascinating in that regard, her bluntness, her forcefulness. It is strange that I should find her attractive now, when I felt no such attraction when she played host to Bej. Personality speaks for much, I suppose.

Or am I simply adapting more than I realized to this place, these people, so unlike any world I had known? Dythea has no lush coat to admire, no enchanting curve to the ears. Rile has no sharp clean fangs, no fetching pattern to the fur, no tail to draw the eye - or at least, she did not when we began. My customary standards for beauty are so askew from the panoply of people that I meet out here. Perhaps I am looking beyond such superficiality? Or comparing that which is analogous? Difficult to say. Regardless, Maviri holds my fascination.

And that itself is something to wonder on. She is brusque, and loud, and crude. She is violent, and gloating, a pure libertine. These are not qualities without their appeal, but historically, they have not been my preference. So what about Maviri inspires such fascination?

This, the crux for my contemplation. The thought has crossed my mind, which I find difficult to dispel, that perhaps on some level, I am attempting to recreate piecemeal those aspects of personality I found so endearing in Midyim. In Rile, I see ambition and focus, the need to set goals for self-mastery and the drive to see them through. In Dythea, I see curiosity and intellect, a desire to know how things work and to keep learning until she does. In Maviri, I see a certain spontaneity, a wildness, a joy in life that takes precedence over temporal concerns. There is more, little bits and pieces, on which I now find myself obsessing, asking myself if for all of their unique wonder, what draws me to these fine women is just the point of comparison.

And if it is, is that right? Is that fair to any of them, to be with someone who deep down sees them only as shards of the woman she loved the most? Is that fair to anyone involved? Or am I allowing my self-doubt to undermine the best thing in my life right now, this fear that I do not deserve love finding excuses to self-sabotage?

Dythea told me that she loved me, and that word still rings a bell of doubt in my mind. I care for her, certainly, as I do for Rile. I care for them both greatly, and I do not want to lose them. But love, itself, that is a dangerous word. I do not know that I am prepared to say it to another, just yet. Nothing has changed on that front in the last throct hours, no matter how I peer into myself to find my truth.

Introspection has never been my strongest suit. I'm not a person who is accustomed to living her life second-guessing herself, her emotions, her beliefs. Little journal, I fear that with so little day to day revelation to report upon, I have nothing to tell you but my own spiraling. Maviri is sleeping on the couch in the central hall of our suite, looking a bit worse for wear in the process. I think I will check on her in the morning, when she has had a chance to sleep some of it off. She came with us for a test today, helped in the distraction and the selling of our pretense, though to some degree I simply looked for an excuse to include her with Rile and Dythea. They all seem to get along. We all seem to get along. The others seem to share my interest in bringing her into the fold, though even to you, little journal, I must stress that this is not for a sense of lacking, but for a sense of inclusion. I think.

The overall mission is still uncertain. We have had defections, abandoning of the cause, and there is much doubt in our benefactor. I think tomorrow I need to reach out to someone who knows him better than I, to someone who can offer inside into the way he thinks and whether the entity that speaks to us now has significantly diverged from who Hades once was. I do not think that he has an ulterior motive, or that he is being any less than honest with us, but there is perhaps some reason for concern about his stability. Best to have that resolved, so we can get about the work that we need to do. This work is important, these lives have to be saved.

We will find a way forward.