Thank you, reviewers! You are all beautiful people!
Sorry for the slow update and the fluffy chapter. I'm presently very distracted by an all-consuming sewing project at home. Halloween's a-comin'!

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

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Sixteenth Waking.

We're still here.

Greys said think positive. Positive. Positive.

What is there?

Are we going to live?

We have not seen the monster or the giant or any others like them again.

We still drink blood. I still get stomach-aches. Can we live like this?

Positive? Anything?

All we can do is stay alive. Here in this sunless land. We don't want to use too much energy.

Where are the Moons? I don't see them.

All I can do is remember.

I need something positive. Something positive.

But there is nothing here at present. And I can only remember. Are all the positive things in my memory only? Is that the only place left for them? Behind me? I've had them all my life--what a wonderful life I've led. I've been happy, well-fed, and loved by my family.

But now I am sunk to Deep Sky, surviving on mud-worms, and... And. I'm sure somewhere in the skies above us, someone is still loving me. That's positive. I've found something: My family still loves me. Grandma, my sister Elena, uncle Sal and all my cousins. What will they do when I don't come back at the end of the season? But at least I got to see Elena's wedding. She and Diego will be very happy. But that story is in the black leather notebook with the long strap. That was the journal I used before this voyage. Before the one that burned. So I guess I can say that it was my last journal before this one.

My last journal.

But I don't think anyone will ever find this one. So the black one with the long strap really is my last journal. My last journal to the world. I shouldn't think like that.

How did I end it? I was making my writing very small--I hate running out of room at the end. I was writing about growing up. About how it was just a moment ago that Elena was ten and I was seven and we were climbing trees and playing hide-and-seek. And now she's married. Odd, the flight of time.

Happy things, happier times, only in my memory.

No. Not only in my memory. In my journals too. And those are safe back home. Except for the one that burned. It was so nice. The cover was light-beige leather, and it had a shiny brass buckle and strap to keep it closed. There were brass buttons and things woven into the spine, too. Whenever I would pick it up and hold it open, the brass points would always feel cold against my hand, and then slowly warm up.

I must sound like a fool. Here going on about a book as if it were my one true love.

Maybe it is.

Before I left, Elena pestered me to get rid of all my books, to clean up a bit. I said "No way." Writing, reading, paper and books, it's what I do. I can't just disregard it. They're full of knowledge, full of memory. I feel like letting them go would be like erasing part of myself. Like disappearing.

I don't want to disappear. I'm dead enough already. I'm in Deep Sky. I'm lost. Maybe the season's already over. Maybe somebody noticed the Zephyrus never came back. Maybe my family's heard, and they're making a little monument for me on Grave Rock right now.

Is it day or night? I miss the sky.

Oh, I'm very positive right now. What's wrong with me?

I like it better when I can just sink into memory, and relive something nicer. Sometimes I do that. We can't do very much else here. Sometimes I lapse into my own mind until I almost think I'm dreaming. I wish we could just dream ourselves away and back to the sky. That's what it feels like, remembering.

Other times I get visions in my head of living out our lives down here. These thoughts make me shudder, but I indulge them--there's nothing else to do. I can see us; we would become a mighty clan, blanketing the landscape, flitting over the mud where before we would have sunk, hunting the monsters and the giants, using their giant bones and their skins to build our dwellings. Or taming them to be our devil-steeds. Or learning to live like them. We would become a mud-people, and scour the bottom of the world for our nourishment. Savages. Animals.

Why do I write this down? Who would want to know this? But if I didn't write it down, it would be missing. Lost forever. The entry would be incomplete. I write it down because it's what happens. It's what I feel. I've written my happiness before; can I not write my misery?

But do I really want to remember the misery?

Maybe the log-lust is a curse.

But I don't want to think of evil anymore. I want to remember something pleasant.

I don't remember the date, and I don't remember the finer details, but here's something from the one that burned: One time during mine and Haley's shift, there was a marocca that came up, looking to get a part of our catch, I think. It was a nasty one, too. We tried to fend it off with a mop-handle or something, but it didn't work very well. One of us, I won't say who, took a swing at it, and accidentally snapped the pole in half. So we each took a half, and kept trying to chase it away. But now we had a shorter reach, and we only succeeded in getting sucker-marks all up our arms. Then it chased us around the deck. I'm sure we must have looked like a couple of scared little girls. We ran around like idiots until Dhalan came out and finally killed it for us. But when he killed it, it inked him. Completely.

Ah, and I laugh. He just looked so funny. He's usually so stoic and taciturn. And he was still trying to look stoic and taciturn, it's just that he was... covered in marocca-ink from head to toe. He flung the dead marocca over the side, wiped off his cutlass, straightened up, and just looked so ridiculously dignified as he walked back inside and below decks to go wash up. So drenched, so wet... and yet still so dry.

Dhalan. I wonder what's in his head. I don't know a whole lot about him. He's just so quiet, so closed. Maybe I'll go talk to him.

That's something to look forward to. Getting to know someone better. That's something positive. And it's in front of me, not behind me.

How blest am I.