Entry the Ninth – Camp by the South River

Once the tribe had fallen asleep and the Sun gone to bed as well, I rose and walked into the forest to listen, as is my custom. Tomorrow, I was to escape, but a part of me wanted to stay. The trees sensed my discontent and tried to console me. A sudden shiver among them announced Magar's arrival, although he moved silently otherwise. In the moonlight he didn't look much like an orc at all. He turned to me.

"Memoria," he said haltingly.

"Yes?" I replied, somewhat startled.

"I- I'm going to miss you." He blurted, his sunken eyes welling up. He sniffed and roughly brushed the drops from his eyes. I was doubly amazed, both at his emotion and at my reciprocation of it.

"I'm going to miss you, too." I said. My own tears nearly overcame me as I reached for him. He pulled me in, close to his heart buried deep within what looks at first glance like a beast. I took comfort in his strong arms around me, and yet I wept. We separated and he gently wiped away my tears, and some of my disguise with them.

"You're so beautiful, underneath all that mud and ashes..." he said. I looked up into his eyes and we got steadily closer until our lips met. The universe shone a little brighter at that moment when some small fragment of the eternal war between our worlds was laid to rest.

"This is not your purpose, Valkyrie." He said, as if reading my mind. "You have a greater quest to complete." My heart plummeted.

"But I love you!" I said.

"You don't know what you're getting into. The life I've chosen is no life I want to drag a lady into." He looked at me lovingly.

"If your life is Hell, that's all the more reason I cannot let you face it alone!" I cried.

"No, Memoria. It must be this way. You must leave tomorrow." He said, the pain visible in his eyes.

"Alright" I relented. He turned to walk away, but then turned back to me. After looking into my eyes for a second, he placed his hands on my neck, cupping my face.

"Spend tonight in the forest with me." I said. Magar nodded in agreement. He pulled me to him and we shared another kiss, deeper and fierier than the first, which soon became the first of many. I threw my arms around him and wished once again in vain that this could all work out. Yet I knew that this was how the dice must fall. I was like a captive bird; I must be set free, but I loved my captor.

I slept well that night, content in the knowledge that no force on earth could take away the joy this night had brought me, even though it was laced with pain.