Leaving Ar behind. Forfeiting her freedom and public dignity. The loss of her hair and raimant. Creature comforts and separation from those categorically beneath her. Shall I continue?

I took even more from her as the weeks and months wore on, and yet she never wanted to turn back. I worried all the time that those were her last days; that her death might swiftly and inevitably arrive somewhere on the open highway... far far from her home and her own ancestral tombs. Far away from my son, Mykel. And yes, I still worried for the boy, too.

At some point after the caravan had left Torcadino, I urged the seer to read the omens for me. For her. Hoping some light would be shed upon our fate. But I suppose they cannot be forced... as something else entirely arose from them that night.

I placed the other four slave girls outside the wagon for the night, chaining them to the axle frame with an empty tin set to the ground before them. Clearly they were for use, and to boost the morale of weary travelers and hired swords.

From the nearby peasant village's roadside trading post, I purchased three vulo hens. But not for consumption. Instead they were for Athamé... to disembowel in a little bloodletting ritual. I suppose this is a strange gift for a man to give to a woman, and stranger even for a master to bestow upon his slave. But she seemed rather thrilled when I presented her a coarsely woven sack stuffed with three very nervous little birds.

That was the first time I had seen my lover actually slay a living thing. She found a rather peculiar joy in the act, and I'm fairly certain that it is for such an unnatural bloodlust that most folks would avoid the seer. Except perhaps in dire circumstances when they might be forced to swallow down their own revulsion in exchange for knowing how a particular life-changing situation might turn about in advance of the actual event. I used to hold the opinion that such was cheating the Fates somehow. Now I am not so sure I hold the same convictions anymore.

Within a few ehn, the inside of my wagon resembled a rather macabre slaughter house, replete with crimson sprinkles and bloody handprints smeared along the walls... and my Athamé crouched like a heathen over the tiny livers of her offal.

"What do you see?"

She replied in riddles, none of which came clear to me. She had opened a window... a portal of sorts, leading me to a place that seemed very murky in my mind. And yet the silhouettes with their sanguinous outlines muchly resembled a place I had seen before with her. The Elysians.

They have but a singular interpretation in my mind... Death. And still my lover did not beg to turn back.