The King's words about Tevis somehow did not reassure me.  Well, I didn't expect them all to trust him just because I do.  I know the man he used to be, and I know what it is to try to rebuild oneself.
     It's funny.  I don't understand why Tevis couldn't locate Amanda after she left.  Traveling the shadowpaths shouldn't have taken her that far away, and he knew the general direction just based on what paths she wanted to map.  She tried to set him free to keep his vows even though she didn't understand them.  She returned the ring because she knew she couldn't answer the promise implicit in it.  She couldn't stay, and she'd let him think that she might.  I don't think that she really looked at things objectively.  She'd always told him that she had to go home.  That wasn't the lie between them.  The lie was that she wouldn't welcome him company.  She knew how important it was to him to be part of the Wall Guard.
     But all of this is not something that I can articulate in a way that will make sense to the people around me.  Fayne thinks that I should concentrate on present skills rather than on retrieving the past.  He doesn't understand the contradictions and impossibilities there.  Amanda shouldn't have existed, and she shouldn't have disappeared.  Who's playing games with me?
     It's also strange how easy it is to slip back into my routine.  Breakfast with the kids.  The new lessons.  Physical training.  Lunch with whoever's around.  Teaching Biscuit to draw Trump.  Dinner with the kids.  Drawing Trumps of my own whenever I can.
     Biscuit's successful Trump sketch is surprising.  She's improved incredibly while I've been gone.  She must have natural talent which is good because I was afraid she wouldn't be able to learn at all.  So few can.  This gives her a skill to replace her lost technology.  I'm a little surprised, though, that it's adequate.  She's told me about what she did back home.  Drawing and using Trumps isn't going to even come close.
     I'm never sure what to make of Fayne.  He helps me.  A trade for Trumps, he says.  Then he gets annoyed because I don't follow his thoughts or don't agree with them.  I don't think it's exactly me making him grumpy, more Amber in general.  I'm not sure why he stays.
     The fact that Dara has my tarot deck worries me.  That deck will tell her a lot about me if she looks at it.  I'd rather not have her have that tool.  Besides, each card of that deck is a memory, stolen moments of almost freedom.  My only independence.
     All these worries are small.  War will be here soon enough.  I'm fairly sure that the Wall will fall.  None of the things I'm doing right now will help unless they do help me remember something that matters to the war.  Am I being a fool to think that there's something there?

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