So.  This is my life, here, at this moment.

	

	It's not bad enough that I'm the most scatterbrained person in the
family, but now any concentration I may or may not be able to summon is
broken by --

	

	Damn faeries.

	I'd explain it all -- the bit with the brothel, the faeries, the
assassination attempt on Vixen -- the whole nine yards.  But you know
what, with the snot running out of my nose from this spell, and my stomach
absolutely aching from the constant spasms, I'm just not in the mood.

	

	Though it does make me think of killing faeries.

	Looking down the mountain, over the sleeping city and at the
lights in the harbor winking in the distance -- looking up at the stars
and the place where the Tir shimmers into existence sometimes -- I wax
nostalgic for nights such as this, for

	

	warm Lughnasa breezes with the promise of autumn on the air.  But
my memories are of a night that lives in the shadows of this night, the
one, true night of the one, true world.

	

	There was a point, after the Mergence War...

	-- sad, isn't it, that I can no longer say "the war" and know what
I mean?  That I must name these conflicts for my own personal history? --

	when I thought of Amber with only hatred.  Amber, shining and pure
on a mountain I'd never seen in a land that should have been my home, but
for the folly of an uncle I had not met.  Amber, unsullied by these
conflicts of Shadows that I had made my own.  I felt, somehow, that for
all that Amber was the one, true world, that it was less real, for I did
not think that the people there lived and loved and fought as fiercely, as
nobly.  Something about the shorter life span, living life on the edge,
without guarantees.

	

	Learning to accept that I had more than my fair share of
guarantees from my heritage meant that, for a while, I didn't know.  And
eventually, I realized that yes, Amberites were Amberites, and that though
the life I'd lived in the Shadows of this shining realm was real and
fierce and noble, this life was too.  And more so.

	

	And less so, too, some days.

	Never forget, in dealing with me, if you care at all about what I
do, that the reason I began a war and enacted genocide was because the
faeries killed my sisters and my niece and took away my brother.  What I
do, what I have done, has been out of love of family, and revenge.

	I can never forget that.  And there is no need to forgive, since I
killed those responsible.

	

	Looking out towards the dark mass of trees that is the gate to
Julian's country...it is almost as though I look out through Shadow, to
the burning heart of a stolen jewel in an impenetrable castle that
purports to be just as real as here...

	I fight not for Amber, but my family.

	Look at how much I hated and killed, before I even had children of
my own.

	

	Though I might just kill these Unseelie critters, just because
they pissed me off.  Ugh.

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