March 8, 1601
Some people are calling this years the Vekcharna, which means the Dark Times; from what I have seen they have more wisdom than most think. My mother may be named "hopeful" but my name can be directly translated as "doomed to die". I haven't introduced myself yet have I? My name is Lonan Aurëkson. I hate my name. I am now 15 years old, and "looking more like my father everyday" so Grandma says. From what I have seen in the water's reflection (we use all our money from the inn to buy food and have no extra money to buy a bronze mirror), I am not too terrible to look at. My hair is already graying though and I have blue eyes that some would call lifeless.
My face still has child-skin and baby-fat left over from my younger years but is thinning out due to what I suppose is a slight lack of nutrition. My lips are pale and thin, like all the others in my family. One could not identify me by my nose, it is too normal, not big, wide and fat, nor crooked, skinny, or pointed. All in all I am a boy who has had much book learning but no experience. So far I haven't needed any, and I don't plan to do anything that requires it.
Some people would say that I live a sheltered life, but it is of my own free will that I stay indoors. Grandpa Attila often tells me to go outside, breath the fresh air and shake the demons out. But outside it reeks like cow dung, filthy animals and humans, death, and has so many people running around in all different directions not knowing where they are headed that I can't find one open spot of fresh air. Not to mention the danger of it, but I would not be afraid to go, I just don't see the need. If you go outside and you look like you have money all the beggars will crowd around you and almost kill you to get it. I have given up hope, after running away from a mob of beggars the few times Grandpa managed to push me out the door, of finding a tranquil spot just to sit down and breathe. Even as I sit in the stalls now, writing, I haven't found a place free of odors and noise. Smells of horse dung and filthy mules hang around this place day and night. My bedroom offers no comfort either, it is too hot during the daytime and I go to bed with the sun. The kitchen is scorching because of the fire, the activities have been slowly dying down in that room, so slowly that I barely noticed it at first, and just recognized it the other day when I went in to grab some lunch and nothing was sitting out ready to eat and no one was even there.
If I sit in the common room everyone will wonder where I got the paper and pen and question me about what I was writing and what I plan to do with it. Am I writing a letter to a girl, who is she, what family is she from, when the wedding is, if I love her, and so many other useless questions that I would not even get to write anything. It's not just my Grandparents and Mother in the common room, there are also a bunch of neighbors and whoever else wants to come in; that's why its called the common room. Word would spread quickly that I was planning to secretly marry a witch that night in an old graveyard in the middle of the haunted forest of Vekdamon. What is the use of arguing, they are women and don't understand a thing (although I have to say that some men believe anything they hear and love to make up their own stories just as fast as women do). What is the use of arguing when you're going to get caught in one of their traps sooner or later? People twist words and are never considerate of what is really happening. My life story had been to stay quiet and just pay no heed to them and their petty attempts at whatever they are trying to get me to say or do. Because I am so quiet I have been labeled a death-worshiper, a Vekdamon child, but nobody has the guts to come out and hang or burn me. They respect my grandparents too much, Grandpa Attila because of his age and Grandma because of her cooking and healing abilities, so they overlook me.