Insomniac, in Foil
	
	Looking out the bedroom window, I can see the diggings from my 
little pattern-garden experiment that I haven't had a chance to finish.  
The moonlight is shimmering on the landscape, picking out the white tents 
of the last puca of the army camped down by the stream, outside the garden.
	
	Look at the things I have wrought.  Today, nearly 20,000 puca 
died under my command.  But the rest-- the probably 5,000 healthy males 
and the thousands of others who didn't fight today, live on, and 
tomorrow, I'll lead them into another shadow.  There will be no puca left 
in Foil.  
	
	That damn spell.  I would say there is a score to settle with 
Chaos, but there's about 8,000 of us, and about 5,000 of them, so, never 
mind, eh?  I'm not about to lead the humans of Foil into battle.  For one 
thing, I don't think they would go.  For another, Senlin would be very 
angry with me, and whether he believes me or not, I do try to do the best 
for this shadow that I can.  The liberation of the puca is nearly 
finished.  Less than a generation of enslavement was not about to atone 
for what they percieved as an egregious wrong, but this mass killing will 
have sufficed.  There will be a few humans who will be angry to see their 
slaves go, but they can argue it with me, if they have to.

	I have a trump of Foil now, thanks to all this.  I should 
probably still pay Ulysses, even though this isn't what I had in mind for 
a commission.  I have one trump of the manor.  I was planning a series, 
of the manor, the Globe, Senlin's castle, my favorite haunts from around 
the shadow.  I don't know.  Time will tell.
	
	I am so tired...  I should sleep.  It's autumn here.  The Wild 
Hunt was just a few weeks ago, after all.  The moonlight decieves one 
into believing the night is calm, but the wind rushes in when one opens 
the casement. Chilly.  The sound of wind through dying leaves.  I should 
undress.  I feel like I've been wearing these clothes forever.  I have, 
in fact...  I'm quite certain that in the course of this day, some shadow 
with phenominally fast timelines, has seen the rise and fall of empires, 
and is now dying completely...
	
	Sit down on the edge of the bed.  Pull off the boots.  The candle 
light flickers...  The bathtub is steaming, and the faint scent of 
lavendar smells wonderful.  I need it.  I was cracking up at dinner.  I 
started laughing and laughing, thinking that we'd fought all day in an 
all out war and none of us ended up in the infirmary, but that several 
engagements with creatures one on one had incapacitated nearly all of the 
younger generation at one time or another.  A good stiff drink cleared 
that up.  But it was true.
	
	Off with the boots.  The mail?  Call a servant?  No, no puca.  I 
can't believe that whole thing.  Is it really my fault?  I couldn't say.  
Probably it is.  Benedict blamed Fiona and Bleys though...  Mother is 
here.  Caitt Sponcc, of course, not Fiona.  She helps me with the chain 
mail, and smiles at me, murmurs a few words...  She doesn't ask, though.  
She never has said a word about Amber.  I'm her changeling child, and she 
still loves me as any mother loves a daughter.  I wonder, sometimes, 
looking at her...  She is the best sorceress of the realm.  She could 
tree Senlin...  Oh, god.  I bet she's a shadow of Fiona, somehow.  How 
ironic...
	
	She places my towel near the fire and leaves.  I watch her go, 
and pull Sequence.  Not a nick, not a scratch, not even covered in gore 
(I did give it a cursory wiping down, earlier).  But it needs a 
polishing...  I begin to do this, humming softly.  We fought well today, 
I know, my skills at commanding against an army who knows every thought 
my men have aside.  Oh, well.  I was simply fighting earlier, but I was 
out for blood when Benedict trumped us through to near where Archimedes 
was.  Who, incedentally, killed the eldest son of Duke Borrel.  He looked 
worried when Caine told him this at dinner.  Ah, well.  Just another 
thing to worry about.  And Jubal.  I truly do not comprehend Jubal.  But 
he fought well, especially in that one form of his.  If I could be 
convinced to leave my sword behind, I would love to be able to rip 
through an army like that.  Well, perhaps not.  Fiona would find that an 
even worse lack of finesse, and she already finds the art of war rather 
crude.  The look she gave Benedict today, when he was reaming her out...  
I could swear I've felt that same look on my own face.  Perhaps I am her 
daughter.  And one must admit, her "distraction" was amazingly violent 
and crazed.  Gouts of blood, after all.
	
	That's better.  Sequence doesn't have that haze of blood and 
stuff on it now.  I worry about it.  It's all single-minded purpose now.  
I wonder if bringing it back from the dead was such a wise idea, if it's 
so unhappy.  I don't know.  I sheathe it, and lay it on the bed, and 
undress the rest of the way, and step into the tub.
	
	It was a good idea, all of it.  The 20,000 on the flank should 
have been a deciding factor-- deciding in favor of a positive win.  
However, it was not.  Chaos is a damn interfering thing, and I'm sorry we 
have to deal with it at all.  I start to scrub at the grime and paint and 
blood furiously.  A cursory scrubbing before dinner did not begin to 
remove the layers of the days...  What a long two days.  Images of death 
come towards me.  Images of dead puca.  Like lambs to the slaughter...  I 
don't fight the memories, just let them pass like clips of old film.  
Better to let them come now, than while I'm trying to sleep....
	
	Wake with a start.  I've fallen asleep in the tub.  I climb out, 
and take up the warm towels, wrap myself in them and fall into the bed.  
War is a sublime hell.  One never feels so alive as when one is killing, 
but the ghosts of the dying faces come back to haunt sleep.  I've heard 
other people remember screams and such, but my memories of war are always 
strangely silent.  I'm dreaming I'm falling...  I wake with a start, and 
reach out to touch my sword.