Did you miss me? Like the Loch Ness Monster, I surface every several years or so and then dive back down and vanish, leaving many to wonder if I exist at all. I'm sorry to be such an unreliable writer and correspondent, but I hope those who have missed me will forgive me and that those who haven't noticed will…continue to not be annoyed? I certainly haven't lost interest in these stories or the desire to write fiction in general, but I often lose inspiration, motivation, and most crucially of all, the time to write.

I've got a really good Life reason for this most recent hiatus, though, and for my (and your) pains you can now call me Doctor Anon E. Mouse. That's right. Anon E. Mouse, Ph.D., at your service. (And my first order of business is to tell you that the Loch Ness Monster isn't real. Sorry.)

I don't want to promise regular updates or posts because I'll almost certainly break that promise. Instead, I promise to post what I can when I can. Know that I am always, somewhere in the back of my mind, sitting with these characters and these stories, and when the words come I will try to set them down. To those who have read and reviewed over the past ten (ten!) years, I dedicate this to you.

This story, if we can call it that, will not make as much sense to you unless you have read the most recent chapter of To Trammel Some Wild Thing, in which we learn that a human Vlad Dracula is about to be married for the first time to a girl named Johanna, the daughter of the Elector of Saxony. In keeping with my habit of giving characters other than Anna their own oneshot, this is hers. I started puttering about with this two years ago but wrote most of it in a rush over the past 24 hours, so here we are. Johanna is entirely my creation and all writing below is my own. Each chapter represents one of the bits of parchment that she's writing on. More extensive authors notes are included at the end of the last chapter.

As always, I hope that you will read, enjoy, and REVIEW!

Rated "T" for sexual content.

Under the lime tree
On the heather
Where we had shared a place of rest,
Still you may find there,
Lovely together,
Flowers crushed and grass down-pressed.
Beside the forest in the vale,
Tándaradéi,
Sweetly sang the nightingale.

I came to meet him
At the green:
There was my true love come before.
Such was I greeted –
Heaven's Queen! –
That I am glad for evermore.
Had he kisses? A thousand some:
Tándaradéi,
See how red my mouth's become.

- Walther von der Vogelweide, "Under der Linden" (late 12th/early 13th century), trans. from the original medieval high German by Raymond Oliver.

I.

I am writing this in a cipher that they will not understand. It feels very naughty, scribbling secrets on scraps of parchment that I had Ernest pinch from his tutor and stuffing them inside my book of hours. But I am to be a married woman, and married women must have secrets. I suppose the Virgin will forgive me for making her complicit in my duplicity; perhaps she will even regard it as a sort of prayer. If I sit here very quietly with the book in my lap and my beads in my other hand, Elsebeth will think I am at my devotions. She is stupid and does not know her letters, but I believe I shall miss her when I go away. In the Prince's castle I will have ladies instead of a nursemaid: a new lady to dress my hair, a new lady to put on my clothes, a new lady to fetch my milk at night.

Outside the window sparrows are chirping and the wind blows the faint scent of the chestnut trees that have only just burst into bloom. I shall miss them, too. In Latin Transylvania means "the land beyond the woods," so perhaps there will be sparrows there, singing among the trees.

Married. I am to be married.