on the subject of journaling and ephemera
a few pages from a guidebook i designed, wrote, and printed.
for more
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’ (tr. by R. D. Boylan)
Vex lies awake that night. She tries to let Percy’s light snores and Trinket’s heavier, louder breathing coax her to sleep, but she can’t shake the restless energy buzzing through her. Tomorrow—in just a few hours, even—she’s going to see Keyleth again. After six months, after an entire dead season of winter, she’s going to stand in front of her again. She has no idea what will happen. She can’t even remember the last time she was this nervous.
Of course, the last time she saw Keyleth comes close. They’d been apart for months then, too, and Vex wasn’t sure Keyleth would make it to Emon for the Harvest Close festival. But she said she was coming, and all their friends said she was coming, so Vex had dared to have hope.
And then Keyleth was there, standing in front of a candy apple cart in one of the cluttered, cobblestone streets of Emon. Somehow, Vex had stumbled upon her when they were both alone. Percy was somewhere in the crowd with Pike, and Scanlan and Grog were off trying to win back money they’d already lost in one of the street games.
Vex’s feet were moving before she even fully believed it was her. But the clouds broke and the autumn sun lit up the street—lit up Keyleth—and there was no denying that fiery hair, those gleaming antlers, the dark lines of her tattoos wrapping around freckled, toned arms.
Vex came to a stop just behind her. The words spilled out of her in a rushed, relieved breath. “It’s been so long, darling.”
Keyleth startled and twisted around. Her eyes were wide when they met Vex’s, but she kept turning her body so they could face each other.
“Vex,” she breathed. “Hi.”
“Hi yourself.” Vex watched Keyleth’s shoulders rise with tension. She gave her best smile—the one that could always make Keyleth just shut up and take her word for something. “Is that how you greet an old friend?”
Keyleth slumped a little. Her gaze fell to the floor. She wrung her hands.
Vex went on, pushing away her own anxiety to let amusement and fondness color her voice instead. “Because I know you’re the beloved queen of the Ashari, and practically a god now and all that, but really—”
Keyleth scoffed, the tension snapping and melting away, and rushed forward. Vex felt something break in her own chest as Keyleth’s arms wrapped around her.
“I missed you, too,” Keyleth whispered, mouth close to her ear.
Vex gripped her, fingers digging into Keyleth’s back. “Then why has it been so long?”
“I’m sorry.” Keyleth’s own hold tightened with the apology. “Whitestone is…hard. This is easier.”
It wasn’t enough, not really, but Vex took the explanation. She didn’t know where pushing would get them, and she didn’t want to find out. Not when Keyleth was finally in her arms again.
They’d spent the day together, exploring the festival arm in arm just like they used to, but Keyleth had retreated into herself by the time the sun went down. When the next morning came, she left without even saying goodbye.
It didn’t used to be like this. After all was said and done, after Vox Machina saved the world and had to figure out what comes next, Keyleth didn’t do this. Not at first.
But then, Vex hadn’t paid much attention to her then. She watched Keyleth long enough to make sure she was still functioning, and then she fell into Percy. Percy held her together during those empty days and long, agonizing nights. He spoke gently when she needed him to and kept quiet when she didn’t. To this day, Vex doesn’t know what she would have done without Percy. And though she often thought, who’s there to help Keyleth?, she didn’t always know how to act on it.
Perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise when Keyleth began to retreat. But by the time Vex felt like herself again—truly and wholly herself, not just one broken half of a whole—Keyleth was too far gone.
Carl Sandburg, from The Selected Poems of Carl Sandburg; “Baby Face”
I've been super preoccupied with other writing projects so getting work done on One Hour without getting distracted has been difficult. but I've been doing a tiny bit of editing so here's a little excerpt of this part in chapter 3 that I'm editing:
Like a foetus, I drew my knees up to my chin and embraced my legs with my arms. I held myself tightly, as if afraid I would break apart and drift away, but my grip did nothing to steady the shakes that had seized me. I was terrified, and had to fight back tears—but most of all, I was irritated. I hadn’t had episodes of panic like this in ages, and yet in the past day I had fallen victim to those old familiar shakes far too many times.
“Allen?”
Constance was hovering in the doorway, her white pyjamas aglow in the dim light of the bathroom. When I turned my head to look up at her, she crossed the room and knelt down beside me.
“Oh, Allen, you look terrible.”
I gave a weak cough. “Thanks. You look nice this morning.”
Constance ignored the comment, instead placing the back of her hand across my forehead. “You’ve got a bit of a fever.”
“That checks out,” I said. “I feel like shit.”
“It wasn’t the steak, was it?”
“It wasn’t the steak.” I coughed again, trying to bring some moisture back to my throat. Pushing out words felt like grating my voice box against sandpaper. “It’s not that kind of sickness, I think.”
“Is it another panic attack?”
“Something like that.”
Constance crossed her legs and placed a hand on my hair, running her fingers through it. She stopped mid-motion. “Sorry.”
“It’s alright. I don’t mind.”
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Alicia Ostriker, from The Imaginary Lover; “A question of time”
Fawziyya Abu Khalid, tr. by Farouk Mustafa, Edited by Nathalie Handal, from The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology; “Two little girls”
Alicia Ostriker, from The Imaginary Lover; “In the twenty-fifth year of marriage, it goes on”
Alicia Ostriker, from The Imaginary Lover; “The unsaid, or what she thinks when she gets my letter”
The excursion into the mountains, A short story by Franz Kafka
