Thank you so much for your wonderful comments, Reviewers. And, while I'm at it, to those of you who don't review, thank you for reading anyway. I see the hits I get in my stats for this piece, and those numbers also help me to keep writing. So thank you for the hits. Of course, I'd always love to hear from you in a review, too!

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

------------

Twenty-Second Waking.

But then, I did not sleep. I did not sleep between this entry and the previous one. Does that make this still the twenty-first waking? There is nothing to measure by to make any number right.

Aha, and something ridiculous, it strikes me. I did faint. Does that count as a sleeping? It was only a few moments, but they were not a conscious few moments. Maybe this is the twenty-second waking after all.

But then I was supposed to have slept, so I will stay with calling it the twenty-second waking.

I am very tired. I should have slept.

No, if I slept I would not have recorded the Doom.

Yes, it is good to remember, and bad to forget.

Greys and I are on the mountain. We have left the Zephyrus. She was a fine ship.

She was a fine ship?

I write strange. Like a bard's tale.

She was a fine ship,
the Zephyrus fair.
But pirates descended
down out of the air,
and fires they flamed,
and lives they claimed,
'til down went the ship
in utter despair.

I just made that up. Really. That was strange. So weary and yet my mind sends these things through my pen, somehow.

I've read much better poetry.

No, enough of this, I must record. Yes I am tired. But I must tell you.

We have left the Zephyrus. We cannot survive there any more. We tried for as long as we could, but we must leave her be, in her muddy grave. She can sustain us no longer. Farewell, Zephyrus. And we will walk. We have walked. All this waking. We are walking up the slope. We do not know what we will find, but we know that to stay behind would be to die.

We have taken all the water that Porter had hidden. The skins are fairly large, but, not really. There are two left, one full, the other nearly so.

Porter. And Dhalan and Shanda. We left them.

No, we left--I cannot write this and not sound evil to myself.

We have taken a supply of meat with us. We took what we needed, all that we could carry, and laid the remains beside Haley's marker. Porter was too heavy. We composed him on the platform and covered him with a canvas tarp. Perhaps in time the mud will take them all into its bosom. We did not take meat from Porter.

I have taken Shanda's ring. I keep it on a cord around my neck. It was... hard to find. Gruesome. Writing about it... sounds wicked to me now. Is it grave-robbery? But I wanted it. It is memories. It seems... too precious a thing to leave down here. Not in the mud, not in this darkness. It should see the light again. I have also taken Dhalan's cutlass. I keep it clean. He always did, so I try to as well.

I am a walking collection: Shanda's ring, Dhalan's blade, and Haley's book. Anything from Porter? We have his water-skins. Captain Peralta? There is still some loqua left. I hope we will not need it. I am happy that Greys is still here to carry himself. If he were not... could I carry on with the weight of six people behind me? But I will not think of it, of what might have been. I should only think of what lies ahead of me. Ahead of us. Greys said think positive.

Is that what has saved him? Is that why he is still alive? Is that why I am still alive? Have my thoughts been positive? It seems a depressing log I have kept. My other journal, the one that burned, was much happier, much more positive. Well of course. Anything is more positive than this.

I should stop, else I run myself in circles.

Thinking positive. Well, Greys is still alive, isn't he? Maybe it is what saves him.

We have taken the meat with us, and the water, and the loqua, two small pots, a few thick blankets and some extra planks, a big length of rope, one lantern and a lot of moonstone fragments. Greys and I took the big moonstone out of the chamber in the engine, and we chipped off some smaller pieces from it. The shapes aren't exactly perfect, but if we jam them in at the right angle, they work all right powering the lantern. We haven't had decent lantern light in quite a few wakings. Maybe I used too much of it for writing. But we have plenty of moonstones to use now. The big one from the engine would have been too heavy to take with us in one piece. It had to be big enough to power the whole ship, and the oven in the galley. It hadn't been replaced in a long time, but I think the fragments will still be good for a while.

We put everything on sleds made of more planks. Wrapped up and tied down. We drag the sleds behind us with a rope over each shoulder. Loops for our arms, like sleeves.

I have to stop. I must sleep. On planks on the mud.