((sloppily penned in Lumi-kieli))
It is probably not wise to be writing tonight. But I sit alone while everyone else is gathered in groups, in couples, and the calm I have gained came at a great price. If I watch everyone else being together while I am alone for too long and do nothing else, I may feel a need to shatter another plate. Of course the plate I shattered before had his barely-touched pie on it. Shattering some other plate that had nothing to do with him would probably not be as satisfying.
To get it out of the way. Mister Baraque has said his goodbyes to me. In some part of my thoughts I have always expected that this would happen and perhaps it is better that it was so soon. Thanks to all the fuss with Furley, we really got to do almost no wooing. Even the goodbyes were much like the wooing itself: barely anything was said, and none of it with any clarity or directness, and it was almost immediately interrupted. All he really said is that I probably will not see him after tonight, and if I do, it would be as a patron only. It was a test of my resolve to be able to treat Furley as a patron with the proper courtesy. It will be more of one to have to serve Baraque his wine politely. It would be better if I do not see him at all, I think. He would say nothing more, and soon he had someone else it was more important to speak to than me, some Watcher who later asked to speak to me, and when I agreed, left without doing so.
I never thought that there would be wooing here in Bree. So it is not a great setback that there is not, after all. All I really hoped was that I would make friends, which I never managed in Sûri-kylä. Maybe I am doing better. It is hard to know. After the business with Furley, Miss Bexly was so eager to make sure we were still friends, but since then she has been so busy with other people she has hardly said a word to me apart from ordering drinks, except saying we would speak after she went on some journey. Mister Nathan seemed friendly, but then he seemed so cold and angry about the fact that I asked whether there might be a better animal-name than Fawn, that he has not spoken to me since. After I threw the plate, Mister Dem and Egfor were so busy fighting with Miss Aellwenn that they all forgot about me. There is something happening with Miss Ruizir that she does not wish to speak to me about I think, and she has said not a word to me in weeks. I have not even seen Bright-Eye to return his key to him. I do not feel like everyone is sick of the sound of me like I did in the Great Lodge, exactly, but I also do not feel like they would notice if I just stopped arriving for working at the inn. That is why, on the very night when Baraque told me goodbye, I sit alone and forgotten while everyone speaks about everything else with everyone else.
It is only fair to say that I did tell them I was better. Perhaps they avoid me because they think I wish to be alone with my thoughts. Smashing his barely-touched supper did make me feel better, for a time. But even if I do not hurt for the lack of him as much as I thought I might, I am still alone. Everyone else is with someone, is welcome at someone's table, and I am alone.
No, that is not true, I am not entirely alone. There is Suojelija. Maybe Suojelija is the only friend I will ever have. I have never even written the name down before now! I did not know the name that she had been called by, before my tumble, and it seemed if I gave her a new name, that was disrespectful of her old name, so I only called her Dog. But the vahna-vaki, I do not even know her name, the one who always sits by the door reading, she says she can speak in the vahna-väki words and then hear even a sled dog answering, and that Koira gave as her own name 'the one who steadfastly watches over others', which is a bit too long for a name, so she is now called Suojelija and she answers to this more than she ever did to Koira.
No, there is one other: Rusvá. She is a delight in every way. But even if I can call her sister (sisser!) a girl of only three summers who has her own family and lives far from here is not going to fill the emptiness.
Perhaps it is poetry, then, that I tried so hard to get Dalish red wine because Baraque liked it and I wanted to please him, and when I thought I had found it, I was only being tricked, and robbed, and fooled. Learning what a fool I am. Now even he is a painful lesson just as his wine was. I have paid for the loss of silver, and now I will pay for the loss of whatever hope I had. And of course I will return the harp. It was too fine a gift for someone he barely knew, and I am sure he is thinking the same.
I thought the hanhi was a better fit than the fawn for me for many reasons I admitted: that it lives both in the north and the south, that it is loud and brash and eventually everyone cannot bear its noise, and that it is clumsy and ungainly. But also for the reason that it seems harmless but is actually fierce and fearless when cornered, and far more dangerous than it seems. Now this thought feels self-indulgent. I do not know of any animal that suits me.
Reminders:
find a price for a harp and save to buy my own since I am giving his back to him
find someone I can give the gold penny to who will help people with it
return Bright-Eye his key
It is all going to be for the best. Someone as brash and blunt as me could never be tolerated by someone as reserved and coy as him. Someone as physical as me, by someone as staid as him. We were a poor fit. I do not know what he thought he saw in me.
Tomorrow I will put on my smile and serve cider. Maybe I will feel that I have some slight friendships, and maybe one day it will lead to a true and deep friendship and a feeling of belonging that I have always longed for. That everyone else seems to achieve with so little effort, and take for granted. Or maybe I will not. Maybe I will always just be the forgotten serving-girl in the background, overlooked, whose pain is unseen by everyone; but at least I will have a warm place to sleep and food in my belly. My misfortune would be a blessing for some. I should be grateful.
